Nineteen-year-old Jake Margate has had terminal leukemia for five years and is ready to let go but his mother has other ideas. She's found a rogue doctor pursuing radical treatments and takes her son to a remote institute where he does seem to get better...at first. But then the treatment begins to fail in strange ways just as Jake begins to fall for another of the test subjects. Slowly, he realizes he's been turned into something truly horrible. Two-timeLambda Literary Award-winning author Thornton has written a contemporary queer twist on the Frankenstein monster story.

"With a deft touch, Thornton takes his dark premise—a dying boy whose mother will do anything capable of offering a shred of hope—and spins a coming-of-age story suffused with chilling darkness. Jake's voice as a boy confronted with a dire illness, facing down a potential love that may come at too high a cost, charms with genuine notes that don't fade even as the story twists further into the macabre. Thornton treads a fine line between horrific and coming-of-age, and doesn't once misstep." - 'Nathan Burgoine, author of Light and Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks

"Never Rest injects new life into the gay Bildungsroman with his dark yet wry tale; dying boy meets dying boy has never been rendered so well." - Steve Berman, author of Vintage: A Ghost Story