When Devils Sing
Xan Kaur
Hardcover/ebook
ISBN: 9781250357175
Henry Holt & Co Books for Young Readers, May 2025, 400 pgs

Sam is the daughter of a handyman whose propensity for violence is directed by a guy who is rich, sketchy, and runs things; Sam’s younger brother ends up in the hospital, and she’s given a dangerous, supernatural choice. Isaiah is the son of a judge, an amateur podcaster on the side, and his family has very high expectations. Neera’s grandparents run a failing motel, and her mother has made some questionable choices, so they are staying with the grandparents until they can figure out their next steps. Reid is the son of the most powerful guy in town, but his mother was looked down on by many—which means he, in turn, is in a strange position of being both rich and powerful as well as a powerless outcast, depending on the context. When Dawson goes missing, all four of them are pulled into a tangled plot which involves conspiracy and a long, dark history.

From the beginning, the strength of this book is how it immerses you in characters who feel complex but grounded in real problems, with complicated connections to or relationships with each other. Another strength is the little details in the challenges the world presents, things that make navigating the world trying and precarious, but things that also feel true and relatable; such as managers and other kinds of gatekeepers who enjoy their little slice of power a bit too much and exert that power in ways that make living a little harder for the people who deal with them. Most of us won’t know what it’s like to have a judge for a father, but many of us will see ourselves somewhere in the iterations of relationships in these pages, as well as in the roadblocks that life, or people, throw in front of us. The author brilliantly marries the dramatic with the plausible, creating a readable, compelling, and relatable story, even as there is a “devil’s bargain” trope at play, and even as the lifestyles of the wealthy are involved.

The protagonists aren’t perfect, which lends to the feeling of them being fleshed out characters; and again, the delicately drawn relationships, and the individual needs and stressors, provide not just relatability, but elicit sympathy during the read; making this a set of characters readers will want to follow. The power of this well-grounded storytelling gives Kaur room to do nearly anything. This means that a story about a devil’s bargain is far from campy or trite, but vibrant and infused with elements that feel important. Kaur improves on this another step by tweaking the speculative idea of a devil’s bargain a bit, making it more dynamic and interesting, while still being something many readers will find familiar enough to be quickly digestible. While I have seen many devil’s bargain narratives, I hadn’t seen this one. It was exciting to discover what the author has in store. Even while the characters urged me forward through the read, their individual and overlapping narratives are a powerful draw to find out what kinds of problems are coming up and what might happen to them.

Meanwhile, of course, there is a group of wealthy folks who have a few sinister secrets. In fact, early on, you get the feeling that to one degree or another, parts of the town may be complicit, such as the police; and that not just Dawson, but a string of people, may end up in terrible situations at the hands of the wealthy. In real life, time and time again, we hear of wealthy people or big organizations gaining at the expense of others, so I think the presence of sinister wealthy folks doing bad things is an evergreen trope: it’s something which will always appeal to many readers. Kaur’s wealthy folks are distinctive enough to work quite well, and this serves as another familiar story element rendered intriguing.

Rippling along the currents of the supernatural thriller plot are social issues that mirror real life. They feel present in the book in the way that these issues are present in the lived experiences of real people. That is to say, the book doesn’t feel to me as if it is deliberately diverse to “make a statement” so much as that it showcases diversity because diversity is true to life. In the United States, that is real, there are all kinds of people: it would be unrealistic to have an exclusively white or heterosexual cast of characters. If utilizing a diverse set of characters, it would be unrealistic to pretend that racism didn’t exist, that prejudice wasn’t an aspect of living in this country. So, racism and other issues exist in the book in the ways that they do for many people in real life. This doesn’t feel to me like a narrative focal point per se, nor an argument for anything specific, as much as it is simply and elegantly bringing truth onto the page. In my opinion, Kaur does fantastic work in writing these experiences—some of which may be outside of the author’s own directly lived experiences—and this increased my enjoyment of and immersion in the book.

When Devils Sing is exactly the right amount of creepy and intense. While the publisher page describes it as a Young Adult book, for ages fourteen to eighteen, I think if you are an adult and no one told you that this is a Young Adult book, you probably wouldn’t think of it as such. Kaur is a wonderful storyteller, and if you like immersive, character-driven tales that lean dark and gritty, you’ll really enjoy this one.