'Dream Boy' by Jim Grimsley

Dream Boy

Author: Jim Grimsley

Rating: A-

Vibe: Haunting Southern gothic with lyrical prose and devastating intimacy

Content Warning: This book contains depictions of severe physical and sexual abuse, including abuse of a minor. Please take care of yourself.

I'm still not sure how I feel about Dream Boy.

I can tell you this—Jim Grimsley's prose is stunning. It borders on poetry without ever tipping into self-indulgence, and the restraint makes it hit harder. The story follows Nathan, a teenager who's just moved to rural North Carolina with his abusive father, and Roy, the older boy who lives next door. What unfolds between them—tentative, fragile, necessary—is one of the most quietly devastating depictions of first love under impossible circumstances that I've read. Grimsley understands how desire and survival can become tangled when you're young, scared, and desperate for something that feels like safety.

For most of the book, I was completely absorbed. Nathan and Roy’s relationship isn't idealized or easy—it's messy, codependent, shaped by trauma—but it feels real. They're doing the best they can with what they have, and that's enough to break your heart. Grimsley also handles the abuse with care for most of the novel. It's brutal, yes, but it never feels gratuitous. The violence serves the story. You understand what Nathan is surviving, and why Roy becomes so important.

And then the final chapters happen.

I don't want to spoil anything, but the book takes a turn—supernatural, ambiguous, and accompanied by one scene that crosses a line for me. Where the earlier depictions of abuse felt necessary and handled with gravity, this moment felt like too much. It veered into territory that started to feel exploitative, like trauma for trauma's sake. And I'm genuinely unsure what happened in the final few chapters, let alone what it means. There are multiple ways to read it, and I'm stuck between interpretations that would make me love this book and interpretations that would make me want to throw it across the room.

Here's the thing, though, I still gave it an A-. Because even with those final chapters, Dream Boy does something rare. It captures the specific loneliness of being a gay kid in a place that has no room for you, and it does so with prose that's both beautiful and unflinching. Nathan and Roy are real people—not symbols, not idealized tragic figures—and their connection, however brief and fraught, matters. That's worth something. That's worth a lot, actually.

I just wish the ending hadn't complicated my feelings quite so much. If you can sit with ambiguity and you're prepared for the content warnings, this is a book that will stay with you. I'm just not entirely sure how it will stay with you.

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