Better the Devil
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jan 20, 2026
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A harrowing, edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller about a queer homeless teen who, in a bid for safety, assumes the identity of a boy who went missing ten years ago...only to find that his new home is anything but a safe haven—from All That's Left in the World author Erik J. Brown!
Perfect for fans of Karen McManus, Holly Jackson, and Ryan La Sala.
When a runaway teen is arrested for shoplifting, he's desperate not to be sent back to the hyper-religious parents he knows will never accept him. While at the police station, he notices a resemblance to the aged-up photos of Nate Beaumont, a child who went missing ten years ago—and, in a moment of desperation, he takes Nate’s identity in hopes that it will help him make a quick getaway.
Before he can run again, Nate’s family arrives and welcomes him home to a life he never had. As "Nate" watches and waits for his chance to escape, he finds that the Beaumonts are nurturing and loving, very different from his own parents.
But soon unsettling things start to happen—vandalism, alarms going off in the middle of the night—and it becomes clear that someone knows "Nate" isn't who he says he is...and that the real Nate wasn't kidnapped, but murdered.
As he starts to unravel the mystery, he gets ever closer to the devil he may know—and learns he might be their next victim.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brown (The Only Light Left Burning) fuses survival thriller and suspenseful mystery to deliver a resonant psychological roller coaster. Having spent eight months living unhoused after running away from his religious parents, who intended to send him to conversion therapy, a queer unnamed 16-year-old, driven by hunger, is apprehended by police for stealing food from a store. At the station, he claims that he's Nathaniel Beaumont, a boy on a missing persons poster to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. Now going by Nate, the teen is united with the Beaumont family, whose warmth is undermined by an unsettling current of suspicion. As unexplained incidents such as break-ins and gas leaks escalate the tension, the protagonist begins to feel the strain of his new role and plots an escape. Upon accidentally confessing his secret to a neighbor, true crime aficionado Miles, he is coerced into investigating Nathaniel's mysterious disappearance a decade prior. Organic first-person narration persuasively captures the narrator's adolescent immaturity, self-awareness, and desire to belong. His conviction that love is always conditional—informed by his parents' rejection and his neglectful upbringing—lends emotional weight to the suspense. Main characters read as white. Ages 13–up.
