Available Formats
Hot Boy Summer
By (Author) Joe Jimnez
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
12th August 2025
Reprint
United States
Young Adult
Fiction
Childrens / Teenage fiction: Friendship stories
Childrens / Teenage personal and social topics: Friends and friendships
Childrens / Teenage general interest: Places and peoples
FIC
Paperback
304
Width 140mm, Height 210mm, Spine 19mm
Four gay teens in Texas have the summer of their lives while discovering important truths about realness, belonging, and friendship in this explosive prose debut for the gays and theys growing up outside of the box (Booklist, starred review).
Mac has never really felt like he belonged. Definitely not at homehis dads politics and toxic masculinity make a real connection impossible. He thought he fit in on the baseball team, but thats only because he was pretending to be someone he wasnt. Finding his first gay friend, Cammy, was momentous; finally, he could be his authentic self around someone else. But as it turned out, not really. Cammy could be cruel, and his advice often came off way harsh.
And then, Mac meets Flor, who shows him that you can be both fierce and kind, and Mikey, who is superhot and might maybe think the same about him. Over the course of one hot, life-changing summer, Mac will stand face-to-face with desire, betrayal, and letting go of shame, which will lead to some huge discoveries about the realness of truly belonging.
Told in Macs infectious, joyful, gay AF voice, Hot Boy Summer serves a tale as important as hope itself: four gay teens doing what they can to connect and have the fiercest summer of their lives. New friendships will be forged, hot boys will be kissedand girl, the toxic will be detoxed.
Joe Jimnez is the author of the poetry collectionRattlesnake Allegoryand the young adult novelsHot Boy SummerandBloodline. He was the recipient of the 2016 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize, and he was awarded a Lucas Artists Literary Artists Fellowship. His writing has appeared on thePBS NewsHourand Lambda Literary sites. Joe lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he is a high school English teacher and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. Learn more at JoeJimenez.net.