Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Contemporary
Cemetery Boys meets The Taking of Jake Livingston in Till the Last Beat of My Heart, a speculative young adult romance by debut author Louangie Bou-Montes where the sixteen-year-old Afro-Latinx son of the local mortician accidentally reanimates the dead body of the boy he had more than friendly feelings for and has to uncover the truth about his family's necromantic abilities to keep him alive for good.
When you grow up in a funeral home, death is just another part of life. But for Jaxon Santiago-Noble, it’s also part of his family’s legacy. Most dead bodies in Jaxon’s town wind up at his house; his mom is the local mortician, after all. He doesn’t usually pay them much mind, but when Christian Reyes is brought in after a car accident, his world is turned upside down.
There are a lot of things Jaxon wishes he could have said to his once best friend and first crush—and this might be his last chance. But what was only supposed to be a short visit downstairs to the mortuary for a final goodbye turns into an accidental resurrection. If inadvertently reanimating the boy who got away wasn’t enough, Jaxon isn’t sure he’s done a great job since he didn’t know he could do it in the first place.
As Jaxon exhumes his late father’s past to uncover the truth about his abilities, the more he learns about his necromancy, the more he realizes that Christian’s running on borrowed time—and it is almost out. Navigating dark, mysterious magics and family secrets, Jaxon realizes that stepping into an inherited power may also mean opening up old family wounds if he wants keep the boy who he may have more than friendly feelings for alive for good.
