Quick Take
- Narration: Vikas Adam handles the tonal shifts between Athan’s slick charm and the horror creeping in at the edges with confident control, though the POV-style switches in the text occasionally create friction even the best narrator can’t fully smooth over.
- Themes: Queer identity and self-discovery, occult horror in urban settings, the danger of visibility and being watched
- Mood: Unsettling and stylishly frenetic, with moments that land somewhere between surreal dread and campfire horror
- Verdict: Beholder rewards readers willing to ride out its structural idiosyncrasies for the sake of La Sala’s genuinely original queer horror vision.
I started listening to Beholder on a Tuesday evening when I needed something that would hold my attention without requiring me to track seventeen storylines. What I got instead was Ryan La Sala doing something considerably more demanding: a queer YA horror novel that begins with a penthouse massacre and never really lets you settle into comfort. By the time Vikas Adam had finished narrating the discovery of those elegantly arranged corpses, I had no intention of stopping.
La Sala’s protagonist, Athanasios “Athan” Bakirtzis, is the kind of character who has historically coasted on surface appeal. Charm, good looks, the right invitations. The premise is clever precisely because it strips all of that away in a single night. As the only known survivor of a supernatural slaughter, Athan becomes simultaneously the least safe and the most visible person in New York City, and the horror of Beholder operates largely on that frequency: the terror of being seen, of having something watching you from behind your own reflection.
Our Take on Beholder
This is one of the more genuinely ambitious queer YA titles I have encountered in recent memory, and not just because of its subject matter. La Sala is working with a hereditary power at the center of the plot, the ability to rewind a reflection and see the recent past, and the mirror conceit threads through the entire narrative in ways that are both literal and thematic. The occult society machinery feels fresh, and the eldritch horror La Sala deploys has actual teeth. Where readers have noted the prose can feel disjointed, particularly during POV shifts between first person and a blended second-and-third perspective, I would argue this instability is partly by design. It mimics the fragmentary experience of watching something monstrous unfold from inside a locked bathroom. Whether that instability fully pays off is a question each listener will answer differently.
Why Listen to Beholder
Vikas Adam is the reason this audiobook works as well as it does. He brings Athan’s surface-level charm to the foreground without letting it become grating, and he modulates between wry social confidence and genuine terror in a way that feels earned rather than performed. The David Lynchian quality one reviewer mentioned is real, and Adam’s pacing leans into it rather than away from it. He does not rush the horror sequences, which is exactly right. When the story turns toward the supernatural, he pulls back slightly on affect, and the effect is more unsettling than any amount of dramatic escalation would have been.
What to Watch For in Beholder
A few caveats worth naming. The romance subplot is genuinely present here, and a reviewer who does not care for flirty dynamics in their horror novels flagged it as an overabundance. I would put it more moderately: La Sala is interested in Athan’s social and romantic life as part of his vulnerability, and that interest means the horror and the flirtation share page time more equally than the genre marketing might suggest. If you are coming for pure dread with nothing else, you may want to calibrate. The structural POV experimentation also does not resolve neatly. The concept of mirrors is introduced with real intent and then not quite fully formed by the end, which is the most honest criticism one can make. This is a story where the parts are more exciting than the sum.
Who Should Listen to Beholder
This is the right audiobook if you enjoy queer YA that does not settle for safety, if the phrase eldritch horrors with rather distinctive taste makes you lean forward rather than backward, or if you have appreciated La Sala’s previous work and want to see him push further into stranger territory. If you need your horror to stay on one side of a clear genre line, or if you find structural fragmentation frustrating rather than interesting, you will likely end up where the three-star reviewer landed: compelled by the plot, unmoved by the execution. But for readers who liked the ambition of something like Wilder Girls in YA horror terms, Beholder belongs in that conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Beholder work as a standalone, or is it part of a series?
Beholder is a standalone novel. The supernatural mystery introduced in the story is resolved within this single audiobook, though La Sala leaves enough of his world’s mythology open that a sequel would not feel forced.
How graphic is the horror content in this audiobook?
The horror leans atmospheric and surreal rather than viscerally graphic. The opening massacre is disturbing more for its elegance than its gore, and the eldritch elements stay largely in the psychological and occult register. Listeners sensitive to body horror should be aware that the corpse sculpture scene is genuinely unsettling.
Is the queer identity component central to the plot, or is it secondary to the horror storyline?
It is genuinely woven into both. Athan’s identity, his visibility, and the particular danger of being seen are not treated as separate from the supernatural threat. La Sala integrates the two rather than running them on parallel tracks.
Does the POV experimentation that some reviewers found disjointed affect the listening experience specifically?
More than in print, yes. The shift from first-person to a blended second-and-third perspective is something Vikas Adam navigates with skill, but audio listeners will notice the tonal change more immediately than readers who can slow down and reread. It is not disorienting to the point of losing the story, but it does require an adjustment the first time it happens.
