This was a difficult book to get through. There is a glimmer of important discourse/discussion that lies at a low level throughout the book, but, in my view, it is oversaturated and bogged out by heavy, heavy nostalgic references to 1990s culture (some of which are actually kind of cool, but most are superfluous or seemingly rammed in artificially to “set the scene”), and dialogue that is sometimes so monotonous, artificial and confusing that a lot of the time I simply lost track of who is saying what and I think “nobody would ever in their right mind speak like this”. The inspiration and general tone/flow of this book is undoubtedly Brett Easton Ellis – but the problem is, the author is simply not as good a writer as his inspiration, and that comes across in the tediousness of the text. I feel a bit bad giving poor ratings as it is always a bit of a gamble with reviews you are asked to do by the publisher, but I would rate this book 2.5 (rounded to 3) stars. My thanks to NetGalley and Permuted Press for the ARC.

A little too edgy for my tastes.

Freshly seventeen and entering his Y2K senior year, Brad is feeling fatigued by the cookie-cutter image his new-agey Oprah-loving mom and corporate-Boomer dad expect him to maintain. So, when the new transfer students, Lu and Shane, invite him out to the woods, he agrees to see what this Baphomet-worshipping goth kid and classic-rock stoner have to offer.

Soon, he’s dealing with the delicate balance of a double life, forsaking old friends for his new ones, and secretly embarking on a journey of indulging his darkest impulses—even documenting some of their most dangerous and disturbing exploits on their Handycams. But as their hijinks increase and threaten to expose him, Brad is forced to reconcile who he really is or risk drowning in his downward spiral.

At turns hair-raising and harrowing, Alex Kazemi’s thrilling debut novel is an unnerving examination of the collision of traditional masculinity, the early internet, and irresistible pop culture that shaped the turn of the century and transformed the way boys engage with the world. The bastard love child of Bret Easton Ellis and Gregg Araki, New Millennium Boyz presents an uncensored and unsettling portrait of the year 2000 that never could have aired on MTV.

I'm in actual PAIN that i was not obsessed with this book...based on its synopsis and the fact it was blurbed by 2 of my all-time favorite authors (Kazemi's magazine work has been on my radar for awhile too), I was so sure this would be one of my favorite books of the year. sadly the writing style in this book just really did not work for me - as someone who was a kid during that era, I appreciated the Y2K setting but it was SO overblown with constant pop culture references, including obnoxious dialogue between characters that really consisted of nothing other than band namedropping. I don't mind following unlikeable or annoying characters but it felt like a lot of the ones here were cringe just for the sake of being cringe. by the time the story started actually picking up, I was already exhausted.
there's definitely an audience for this book and I can see it being a beloved niche title, but the very specific voice here was just not my personal taste. I am still interested in checking out Kazemi's future stuff though, because I do think he has interesting ideas.

Despite perpetually edgy teen talk, this is still blatantly woke—which makes for an odd audience choice. It’s about boys who like cursing and discussing the sex they’re not getting. Or at least they’re inundated by peers who do. The tone is unserious as two gay”-feigning” ‘90s dudes should be, the music and movie references heavy-handed. Like a millennial Bret Easton Ellis in his blunt phase (I mean that in both ways). The slang is ironically douchey. The funniest part is how the friendly use of the n-word has asterisks as though this isn’t a book/dialogue. This is softer and less bro-y than I expected.

Imagine being a reviewer who seriously thinks showing bigoted people makes an artist homophobic or thinking that groupies don’t get off on a man’s fame/cool factor because that would be “misogynistic” to say so. This book proves we have overcorrected from the ‘90s disaffected culture to a startling degree. I imagine the MCs as Bratz Boyz: ski-themed pouty hotties w/ TV movie dialogue: unnaturally wordy. But they’re stuck at a (allegedly Christian) camp where everyone is flaming.

Satirical like Not Another Teen Movie. Three references a sentence. New Agers like retro Goop girls. Though it’s OTT, I like a decent amount of the branding, cute lake/pool scenes, and funky fashion sense like taped-flower faces. These characters are weirdly between a tween penchant for Pokémon temp tats and collegiate existentialism.

Finally, someone not kissing Tom Green or Daria’s boring ass. Lol. Repetitive w/ the girls-are-holes-and-titties talk. The MC secretly seems to dig the novelty of talking to girls, or new ppl w/ lower energy—even though everyone is an idiot of a dif flavor. Of course it’s satire but it’d be more impactful if slimmer and not 2D, try-hard deep w/ characters falling only into the categories of MTV vapid and Oprah faux-enlightened.

Showcased here is the self-hatred of being a teenager, waiting for a taste of real life or what the candy movies sold us. Most memorable parts include Robotussin-loaded water guns for syrup-tripping between classes, Marilyn Manson fanboying, and how everything is strangely orange. Everybody’s curating a “badass” image yet nay-saying posers; everybody’s depressed but doesn’t like validating it with words.

I would have much preferred the more applicable IRL message of “People talk(ed) this way scaled back and it’s usually for comedic effect/not literal and they’re more relatable/good than you think.” I hope this moves the dial in at least people seeing this queer author is using the “bad words” for a “good”/popular message so let’s not condemn words like a bunch of nuns.

"New Millennium Boyz" is a darkly hilarious, satirical look at turn-of-the-century masculinity and coming-of-age. It's racy and uncomfortable, but in all the ways that poke at the larger problems of society. If you enjoyed the manic narration of books like "American Psycho" and "Maeve Fly," you'll love following along as Brad tries to figure out who he is and where his place is in the world.

Thank you to NetGalley, the Publisher, the author for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

"You want to know who the antichrist is? The antichrist is a teenage boy, and do you know where he lives? In my house, up those stairs."

I loved this book but also don't want to recommend it to anyone because I'm a little scared I'm going to get canceled for rating it 5 stars. It's not horror, but it is horrifying. It's not comedy, but it is hilarious. Brad would roll his eyes at the idea of being one-dimensional enough to be sorted into a mainstream genre, anyway. 

Brad Sela is 17, the year is 1999, & MTV is life. The Columbine shooters are famous, image is everything, & no one understands him. Until he meets Lu & Shane, new kids in school, who indulge his desires to do absolutely anything in order to feel something. Apathy is cool, but being complacent in it? Gag. These characters are all absolutely horrible to each other, because there's nothing quite as homoerotic as male rage, & feelings are for losers. 

This is a vitriolic satire of society's toxic nostalgia for decades past. I've seen some reviews ding the author for use of more modern phrasing, but to me it almost felt like a fourth wall break, like he was mocking me directly for even reading this book. If you're just looking surface-level, it can read like a Y2K Pinterest board made by a member of Gen Z. But it's more like how embarrassingly tryhard it would be to live your entire mundane life as if it was the step-by-step construction of said Pinterest board, & then STILL not nail the aesthetic. 

There is something so uncomfortably funny about this book capitalizing races correctly or censoring slurs in the same sentence where characters use the r-word. It's like the book is winking at you. "I know it's 2023, that would have been offensive to include." If you love Bret Easton Ellis to the point that you almost want to satirize yourself for enjoying the satire so much, this is the book for you. If you have any triggers at all, it it decidedly not for you.

Thanks to Filip @ Permuted Press, who reached out offering an ARC of this one in exchange for an honest review! I had a good time & feel kind of guilty about it, what more could you ask for?

Big thanks to Net Galley and publishers in exchange for an honest review of New Millennium Boyz by Alex Kazemi. I wrote a long review on Goodreads that I will link below. Long story short, it's filled with some massive triggers that readers should heed before reading this. I am someone who can read dark content but this one still upsets me at times. All in all, as someone who mostly reads about the female gaze, I still enjoyed this book immensely. It's shocking and provocative but I also find it insightful. Read my Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5782930887

DNF @ 20%

The year is 1999, I was a weird teenager, and on the cusp of entering high school. The millennium couldn’t come soon enough because I was ready to be the strange pink-haired high schooler. Then it happened and it was over before I knew it.

I was excited to read this book. It sounded like something I would absolutely enjoy but it just wasn’t what I was thinking. This book was really messed up and that’s coming from me. I read a lot of fucked up things but this one was different. The dialogue wasn’t believable (not sure if I know anyone who has ever spoken like these characters have) and all the characters were nauseating.

I can say that I tried. It just wasn’t for me but I’m sure others will enjoy this.

if Larry Clark or Harmony Korine did YA

It's interesting to see that while the world is obsessed with Y2K, we forget how toxic of a time it actually was. That threshold of the 90's coming into the turn of the millennium was shockingly homophobic, misogynistic, and violent. Why praise a time through the fashions of its aesthetics? Kazemi goes beyond the aesthetics and delves right into the very act of nostalgia.

He writes within the time. So much so that it feels like it was a product of its own time, honoring the teen angst and ennui of what it meant to be a teenage boy at the time.

From 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘶𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴:

𝘋𝘰𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺? 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴.

𝘊𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢: 𝘖𝘣𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺, 𝘋𝘰𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳, 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘢 13-𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳-𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭.

This book is a response to this. That to be a 13-year-old boy was also worth mourning about.

Products from that time period, be it an Eminem verse or even MTV's 𝘋𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯, art has always scraped the surface of what it meant to be as a teenager during the late 90s and early 2000s. Larry Clark was only ever interested in the Supreme-ification of teen ennui through the film grains of the cinematic eye. Harmony Korine, on the other hand, worked within the same aesthetics, but was more concerned with the socio-economic sphere of middle-America landscape in the language of Wim Wenders. Both artists, in all their respective transgressive natures, were aiming to paint the teen, but were referencing photographs instead of the subject itself. For example, what good is it to have filmed underaged teens simulating transgressive acts in cinema without letting them see the byproduct of their very selves (𝘒𝘪𝘥𝘴 1995)?

Though I haven't read all of Brett Easton Ellis or Dennis Cooper to see how they saw the 90's, I imagine only dirty nails scratching into the scalp of it all without it being the whole damn cranium. Here we have what feels like every teenage emotion in existence, crammed through Linklater prose without edits, conveying a naturality in the evil that exists in most of us. Unfiltered. Unashamed. Naked and born into the world. But here's the catch:

It's written as if it was for a YA audience. There's an accessibility in the language, in its fluidity, that makes it suitable for teens. Many would beg to differ, but I grew up on Skins, Ellen Hopkins, and also reading and watching a bunch of other things I shouldn't have been consuming during my teens. If you read George Bataille's 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘺𝘦 at thirteen, you could totally do this. And as an angry, depressed teen, I would've wanted something much like this when I was still young and impressionable. Though the satire might be hard to fork out if read when young, the ugliness of man is apparent, and exists, as we know, at an early age. To be faced with that ugliness, to see it up close and personal in my acne ridden face, perhaps would've made me less ugly, allowed me to seek out beauty in ways that weren't so harmful, and dissuade me from spending so many hours in harmful self-discovery for my own becoming.

So, Kazemi goes back in time, writing through years becoming for the hurt teenager inside the underbelly of the 90s, creating not just an accurate representation of the malaise of the times, but an entity that never knew how to be exorcised.

Presumably this is what a seventeen-year-old boy sounded like at the turn of the century. While I recognize some cultural touchstones, as a Gen-Xer, I wouldn't know. Accurate or not, I will never recommend a work so full of misogyny and homophobia as this. Thanks, #NetGalley

i hate men. i will always hate men. but there is something so wonderful about reading this novel as a lesbian with feminine rage. you reap what you sow, brad sela.

it's the late 90's. brad goes to summer camp and meets a girl, aurora, he truly cares about. after the summer, he writes to her in an open and honest way. however, his behaviors and actions are absolutely rancid.

brad and his "friends" get into the dark sexual parts of the internet post-columbine. they start doing copious amounts of drugs, torturing people (people of color, disabled people, teenage girls, teenage boys, animals, anybody), and being deviant pieces of shit. it's dark, it's rank, and the more i read, the more i drank. and i read it in one sitting.

filled with 90's nostalgia, this book makes me so fucking happy i was born in 1999. i've always had so much love for the 90's and kazemi captured the time period perfectly. this is the toxic teenage boy anthem. the scum of the earth fuckboy incel manifesto.

and yet, it's so human. do we not all wonder what we could be pushed to in the terms of harming others? i have never hurt animal nor human and i am by default a nonviolent nonbinary being. but, fuck, i want to take a switchblade to these boys, brad included.

what is the most sick thing about this novel is that you keep reading it. you want to beat the fuck out of these boys, yet you keep reading about their abuse and injustice. and you know what? actions have consequences.

so, yes, i hate the characters of this novel, but kazemi's satirical writing makes it addictive. i didn't enjoy this novel, and you won't either, but that sick feeling you get when you reach the end alone warrants five stars. it's fucked up, but it's a purposeful fucked up. if you want to hate the world and everything in it, read this book. maybe the 90's weren't so great after all.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review. men r trash.

I had to ponder this one for awhile as it is so different from most books I've read. I loved the 90's references; albeit there were MANY of them! Seventeen-year-old protagonist Brad is a "typical" millennial as he jokes around with his friends, seeks out willing girls, pranks friends, and lives for social media. Most of this takes place at a summer camp where he meets others like himself as well as the lovely Aurora. The novel is rife with profanity and if you can get beyond f-bombs every page, the story is intriguing and draws you in as Brad is (somewhat) lovable in his desire to find meaning, get laid, and ultimately find his place in the world! And oh, that ending had me gasping and crying as well!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

"Sometimes I relate so hard to something I forget if it's something I thought or something I saw."

"Everyone is in their own world. The biggest challenge you'll ever have is bringing someone into it."

Graphic, violent, weirdly hopeful. Somewhere between Less Than Zero, Ghost World, and Gus Van Sant's Elephant, New Millennium Boyz makes the 90's sound like the most sick and evil period in recorded history. Packed full of histrionic, nihilistic edgelords who claim to want to provoke others, but really just want to get a rise out of themselves amid the anesthetized consumerist hell they're forced to navigate. If you still feel nostalgia for Y2k-era aesthetics or the idyllic feelings of "simplicity" we tend to graft onto the past after reading this, I would get your head checked.

Kazemi captures the feeling of paralysis that going too far down an Internet rabbit hole can give you: no one is holding you at gunpoint forcing you to keep scrolling on a shock site, to keep reading that creepypasta, to watch something you *know* is going to upset you, but you can't stop. It's a 7-car crash, a journalist's beheading, a puppy getting kicked. It's cruel and nauseating.

The book's cardinal sin is endless monologuing-- your mileage with Kazemi's writing will depend entirely on your willingness to believe that even the most self-involved, tortured teens would speak how they do in NMB. The prose that comes out of these 17 year olds' mouths is often strikingly beautiful or completely gutting-- but just as often, you get the impression that Kazemi doesn't fully trust his readers to "get it." Lots of dialogue between characters comes off as rationalizing, over-explaining, or analyzing Kazemi's own scenes moments after they unfold. When it works, it's surreal-- when it doesn't, it feels like we aren't dealing with human beings.

Beyond worth your time. Has so much to say about vulnerability, surveillance, self-mythologizing, our need to aestheticize our lives, what women are capable of bringing out of men, the beginning of the end for the Straight White Guy-- plus some really filmic and intense party scenes that left me totally reeling. Kazemi doesn't write scenery to describe this period of time that's obviously very important to him; he writes a tapestry of products, brands, and marketing ploys, and it winds up being the most true-to-life portrait of the 90's imaginable.

Will be divisive, but what a relief to have someone hack away at things we aren't supposed to remember, revere, or fear about the very recent past. Loved!

This won’t be a book for everyone but the people that get it will find a lot to enjoy. The pop culture references are absolutely tiresome and oftentimes feel like they’re mentioned for absolutely no reason. The book also feels like goes a little overboard with trying to shock you. However, I found myself tearing through this in just a couple days. It gets better as it gets on and has a great climax. 4.5 rounded up.