The Rich Kid Crush Trope, Perfectly Done in The Dead of Summer by Ryan La Sala

The Dead of Summer by Ryan La Sala introduces its love interest with one perfect, extremely rich-kid line, and Joseph and Ben have personal experience clocking it. This clip is from our full spoiler book club breakdown of The Dead of Summer, and it's a conversation about Sam, the mysterious wealthy visitor who becomes Ollie's page-one crush. Joseph and Ben zero in on Sam's classic rich-kid deflection, insisting he isn't rich, his parents are, a line Joseph says he heard constantly growing up in Los Altos, and use it to launch into a broader discussion of tourist town dynamics: the strange, mutual envy between locals and visitors, and how that tension shows up from the very first page of the book. Ben, who works in tourism outside the podcast, connects this to real-world overtouristed places like Hawaii, Santa Cruz, and Croatia, and talks about how believable and well-observed this specific social dynamic feels layered into a gay resort town setting. It's a great example of how The Dead of Summer grounds its horror-comedy plot in genuinely sharp social observation. It's rare to see a YA horror novel take this much care with its social commentary, and Joseph and Ben spend a good chunk of the full episode unpacking just how well-observed this specific tourist-town dynamic is. It's a detail that could have easily been glossed over, and instead becomes one of the more quietly sharp threads running through the whole book. Ben, who has professional experience in the tourism industry outside the podcast, brings a genuinely informed perspective to this conversation, comparing Anger's Mercy to real overtouristed destinations and explaining why that specific, uneasy relationship between locals and visitors tends to show up in similar ways across very different parts of the world. Gay Panic! Book Club is a queer literature podcast hosted by childhood best friends Joseph Price and Ben Lilly, where every month we do a full spoiler discussion of a queer book, whether that's queer horror, queer YA, queer literary fiction, or anything else that crosses our radar. We're not a star-rating review show. We're two lifelong readers who happen to be gay, talking through the books that made us feel seen. This month's pick, The Dead of Summer, follows Ollie, a teenager reuniting with his newly cancer-free mother on Anger's Mercy, a small, aggressively gay tourist island, right as a coral infection turns the whole town into a zombie outbreak. Along the way we meet Sam, a wealthy and mysterious new arrival, and Bash and Elisa, Ollie's childhood best friends turned pizza shop coworkers turned reluctant survival team. Fans of Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller will find a lot to love here — queer found family, body horror, grief, and a whole lot of camp, wrapped around a genuinely well-constructed horror plot. Watch the full episode, where we go through the entire book from the ferry ride to the finale twist:    • The Dead of Summer by Ryan La Sala | Coral...   📖 GET THE BOOK Every purchase through our affiliate link supports the Malibu Village Bookstore GoFundMe 🔥, helping rebuild a beloved independent bookstore devastated by the Palisades Fire. 👉 The Dead of Summer: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-dead... 👉 Full Gay Panic! reading list: https://bookshop.org/lists/gay-panic-... 📲 FIND US 📸 Instagram: @book_clubbin_podcasts 🎵 TikTok: @book_clubbin_podcasts 👍 Facebook: Book Clubbin' Podcasts 🗓️ NEXT EPISODE Next month, we're trading zombie coral for gay James Bond with The Tuxedo Society by Paul Rudnick, a queer mystery-comedy about a man recruited into a secret society of gay spies. Keywords: The Dead of Summer, Ryan La Sala, queer YA horror, queer book club, gay book club, LGBTQ books, queer literature, tourist town dynamics, rich kid trope, love interest, YA horror, queer YA, gay YA books, book review, book discussion, reading podcast, Gay Panic Book Club, Book Clubbin Podcasts