Quick Take
- Narration: Joel Leslie is an ideal fit for this material, bringing Mike’s interiority to life with both the comic timing and the emotional vulnerability the character requires.
- Themes: Queer identity in a religious community, first love, faith and self-acceptance
- Mood: Warm and occasionally funny, with real emotional weight underneath the humor
- Verdict: One of the more fully realized queer YA audiobooks I have encountered, with a narrator performance that genuinely elevates an already strong debut.
I finished There Goes Sunday School on a Tuesday evening after two very different listening sessions. The first was on the train, where I kept smiling at the teenage voice and the sharp, self-aware humor that runs through the early chapters. The second was late at night, where the book had shifted into something considerably heavier without ever abandoning the register that made the opening chapters work. Alexander C. Eberhart writes in a mode that can hold both of those things at once, which is rarer in YA fiction than it should be.
Mike Hernandez is sixteen, closeted, and attending a church run by a vocally intolerant pastor. His only real outlet is his art, a secret sketchbook of drawings that expresses what his life does not otherwise permit. When that sketchbook goes missing in the middle of Sunday school, the story kicks into motion with a kind of comic-thriller energy that Eberhart sustains even as the stakes become genuinely painful. What follows involves the pastor’s son Chris, an unexpected kiss where Mike was braced for a punch, and a slow, complicated negotiation between the comfortable life Mike has built on concealment and the possibility of something more honest and more frightening.
The Sketchbook as Structural Device
The missing sketchbook is smart plotting. It creates immediate, concrete stakes in a story that is primarily about interior experience, which is the perennial challenge of queer coming-out narratives: how do you externalize the drama of something that is happening almost entirely inside a person’s head? Eberhart solves this by giving Mike’s inner life a physical object, one that contains his most honest self-expression and that could expose him at any moment. The threat of that exposure drives the early chapters, and by the time the book’s emotional terrain deepens, the reader has been pulled into Mike’s perspective completely enough to feel the stakes of the more internal crisis with full weight.
Multiple reviewers have noted the authenticity of the teenage male voice. One reviewer, specifically noting their identity as a gay man who grew up in the church, called the dialogue for the two male leads authentically male and praised the snarky teenage quips alongside the portrayal of the angst and fear of living a lie. That specificity of experience is visible throughout the writing: this is not a generalized queer YA narrative but one grounded in the particular texture of a conservative Christian community, with all the specific theological vocabulary and communal pressure that entails.
Chris and the Romance That Subverts Genre Expectations
The relationship between Mike and Chris is the book’s central and most interesting element. Chris is the pastor’s son, which means he carries his own version of the closet, shaped by an even more direct and immediate threat of exposure than Mike faces. What could have been a simple pairing of two boys discovering each other within a shared secret becomes something more complicated, because Chris’s approach to his own truth is different from Mike’s, and those differences have real consequences for how the relationship develops and where it can realistically go.
A reviewer who described initially expecting violence and encountering a kiss instead captured something important about how Eberhart subverts the genre’s tension conventions. The moments of physical danger that the conservative church setting implies do not resolve the way a less careful writer would have resolved them. Eberhart is more interested in the internal negotiation than the external confrontation, and the pacing reflects that editorial choice throughout the entire second half of the book.
What Joel Leslie Brings to This Audiobook
Joel Leslie is one of the more accomplished narrators working in LGBTQ fiction, and his work here is among his best in the genre. He reads Mike’s first-person voice with the particular combination of comedic reflexiveness and genuine vulnerability that the character requires, giving equal weight to the humor and the fear without allowing either to undercut the other. The supporting cast, including the pastor, Mike’s parents, and the friend group that surrounds the central romance, stays distinct without Leslie resorting to broad vocal differentiation that would tip the performance into caricature. At just over ten hours, the length allows the story room to breathe, and Leslie paces it in a way that honors both the comic energy of the earlier chapters and the heavier emotional material that follows. Several reviewers described not being able to stop listening, and the narration is a significant part of why that quality holds across the full runtime.
Who Should Listen to This Series
Readers who grew up in conservative religious communities, regardless of sexual orientation, will find a particular resonance here that more secular coming-out narratives do not offer. The faith dimension is not background noise but a genuine weight in the story, and Eberhart handles it with enough respect for what belief means to these characters that the book avoids the easy anti-religion positioning that some queer fiction defaults to. Fans of Love, Simon and similar titles will find this comparable in emotional ambition and considerably more specific in its community setting. And for listeners who want to hear Joel Leslie at his most committed and technically sharp, this is essential listening. The series reportedly continues from this strong foundation, and on the basis of this first volume the continuation earns the investment. What Eberhart has built here is a queer YA novel that does not treat religious faith as simply an obstacle to be overcome, and does not treat coming out as a simple act of courage followed by resolution. The messiness of Mike’s situation, the way that love and faith and community and fear are genuinely entangled rather than neatly separable, is what gives the book its staying power long after the final chapter closes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is There Goes Sunday School appropriate for younger teens or is it aimed at older YA readers?
The book deals with themes of sexual identity, religious intolerance, and first romantic and physical relationships. One reviewer described intimate scenes as tasteful but present. The content is appropriate for older teens and adults, and the author’s handling is considered rather than gratuitous, but parents of younger teens should preview accordingly.
Does the book require the reader to have a background in conservative Christianity to connect with the story?
No. Eberhart provides enough context within the narrative that readers unfamiliar with evangelical church culture can follow the specific pressures Mike and Chris face. That said, readers with lived experience of these communities will find additional layers of recognition, as multiple reviewers with that background specifically noted.
Is There Goes Sunday School the first book in a series, and does it end on a cliffhanger?
It is the first book in the There Goes Sunday School series. Based on reviewer comments, it provides a satisfying arc for the characters introduced in this installment rather than ending on an unresolved cliffhanger, though the broader universe clearly continues in subsequent books.
How does Joel Leslie’s narration compare to his other well-regarded LGBTQ audiobook performances?
Leslie is consistently praised in the LGBTQ fiction space, and his work here is cited by reviewers as particularly strong. His ability to hold Mike’s comedic voice and emotional vulnerability simultaneously without letting either undercut the other is specifically highlighted as exceptional even within his broader body of work.
