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Book Review: K Ancrum's Icarus is a tender, queer tale that aches before the fall
American author K Ancrum's queer love story for young adults explores themes of longing, fear, and freedom as the hero reflects on adolescence and its loss.
There is something timeless about the myth of Icarus: a boy, a father, wings made of hope and hubris. What follows is the long fall.
In her recent outing, American author K Ancrum reimagines the ancient tragedy as a star-crossed queer love story, by placing it firmly in the emotional terrain of the young adult (YA) fiction genre. The result is Icarus, a novel that aches in deliberate ways while exploring longing, fear, and the intoxicating pull of freedom.
At its heart, this novel is about two boys circling each other in a world that feels too sharp for tenderness. The titular hero is a quiet high school student by the day, and a cat burglar by the night. Being raised and trained by his oppressive, formidable, and emotionally absent father – whose bond is limited to speaking of their (only) victim – Mr Black, who took away almost everything from them. The shy boy thus, has no friends and his fleeting experiences with human touch are quite haunting. Not that he isn't aware of the gaps in his childhood and upbringing, but he chooses to remain also loyal to the mission set by his father until he meets Helios, and their worlds begin to collide.
Ancrum’s writing leans into atmosphere rather than spectacle. The wings here are metaphorical and represent ambition, escape, selfhood, as well as the dangers that come along with wanting more than one is allowed! The prose carries a soft melancholy and develops an understanding that adolescence is not merely a phase of discovery, but of the loss of innocence, certainty, and even safety. Every emotional beat feels suspended between hope and inevitability. But as a reader, one is able to sense the fall even if one is rooting for the flight.
What makes the book stand out in the YA landscape is its restraint. It doesn’t rush toward romance as a reward. Instead, it treats love as something fragile, something that grows in silences and half glances, in shared fears and stolen moments. The queerness of the story isn’t performative or ornamental but deeply embedded in the characters’ sense of risk-taking. Loving someone, here, is itself an act of defiance.
That said, this piece of writing does becomes too inward at times, but for its own good. The pacing can feel slow for some. The chapters are short, but may just seem staccato. So readers who prefer plot-driven works may find themselves drifting away because the mythological scaffolding remains subtle and occasionally feels underutilised, too.
If a quiet yearning in an honest bildungsroman appeals to you, then only Icarus is the book to pick. Because it doesn't thrive on grand twists or cinematic pay-off. It’s a sincere and intimate narrative that captures the adolescent sensation of standing at the edge of something vast, unsure whether it's the beginning or the end. After all, some stories are just meant to leave a little bruise, and nothing more.
Title: Icarus
Author: K Ancrum
Publisher: HarperCollins
Price: ₹599
