TGON Reads: You’re No Better by Andrew Joseph White

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“I may still be paranoid, and a bitch, and an overwhelmed shut-in with a vicious distaste for human interaction, but I am not my father.”

From the author of You Weren’t Meant To Be Human and Hell Followed With Us comes a new coming-of-age YA thriller about the fear of becoming your parents and escaping the cycle of trauma, You’re No Better.

Andrew Joseph White’s upcoming novel follows Morgan Slaughter, a 17-year-old autistic trans boy and the son of the notorious serial killer Graham Nathaniel Slaughter, seven years after he walked out of the elevator of his father’s penthouse, covered in blood, and asked for someone to call the police. Seven years after he put his father in prison and drew the attention of the world to himself and his family.

It never mattered that Morgan was only 10 years old. Since that day, the world has only ever seen him as his father’s daughter, a child doomed to become his father.

Now, a documentary crew’s intrusion into his life threatens to ruin everything. Old wounds are reopened and secrets are unveiled, all while Morgan tries desperately to prove the one thing everyone seems so sure of, that he is not his father.

“If I can’t get out of this documentary, then I won’t give it what it wants. I am not Graham Nathaniel Slaughter. Yes, according to my psychiatric and criminal record, I am a dangerous child with a proven history of impulsive violence. Yes, that girl died, mutilated and afraid, while I watched.

But I am not my father.”

And to prove that, Morgan vows to do something his father would never do: discover the identity of his father’s final, unidentified victim. Maybe then will he finally be able to step out from under his father’s shadow.

But to unravel the mystery surrounding Jane Doe, Morgan must unearth memories he has long since locked away and confront the pieces of his childhood that have shaped him into the person he is today, for better or for worse. It is an impossible task and is only made more complicated when a classmate, Felicity Keating, reveals that they know the truth about Morgan’s involvement in his father’s murders and blackmails him into letting them help him with the investigation.

Jane Doe is the key. If only Morgan can survive what it’ll take to find her.

“I’m not hurting myself. Or, I’m not hurting myself more than I have to. Sure, I figured it’d sting, sticking my hand back into the mess, but what’s worse? This, or living the rest of my life with everyone breathing down my neck, waiting for me to snap? This, or letting others control the story forever.

I controlled the story once. I can do it again, and better this time. For real this time.”

You’re No Better is a dark, bloody look at the effects of parental trauma and the fight to claw your way into adulthood when you feel too messed up and broken before you even had the chance to live. It’s going to be a rough one, but the fight (and this story) will be worth it.

Mom vs. Dad: who was the better parent?

“If I had to pick which of my parents I trust more, I wouldn’t pick Mom.

Why would I? Dad refused to fuck me over in that courtroom. He had every chance to set the record straight, tell the judge and jury the real extent of my involvement, and he didn’t. He changed his story to fit mine. He may be a monster, and he’ll resent me for the rest of his life, but I’m still his child.”

Morgan has a lot of shit to work through over the course of this book, but one of the conflicts that I find the most compelling is the idea that his serial killer father is a better parent than his mother. Now, to be clear, the bar for “best parent” is extraordinarily low. So low that, as the Tumblr user omnybus famously put, the bar was so low it was practically a tripping hazard in Hell, yet here you are, limbo dancing with the devil. Morgan, for sure, had been limbo dancing with the devil his whole life. Two of them. And although it might sound crazy that his father is the better parent, it is obvious that Graham Nathaniel Slaughter has always cared more about his child than Bellamy Slaughter ever did.

Both of Morgan’s parents resent him for different reasons. His father, for turning him in and ruining everything they could have built together. His mother, for being autistic. For being trans. For being the reason her perfect life crumbled around her. Isn’t it interesting, that Morgan’s father resents him for the choices he’s made while his mother resents him for the things about himself that he can’t change?

“I hate him for this. I hate that my mother is keeping me in the closet with a hand around my throat, when my father—one of the most disgusting, violent, depraved men on the planet—accepts me for who I am in thirty seconds flat.”

Morgan’s father has every reason to reject him. To hate him. Yet he protected him throughout the entirety of his trial. Yet he accepts Morgan as a man the minute he comes out to him as transgender. He is the one who calls Morgan his son, even as he tries to convince him to kill his mother in the same breath. Somehow, within his twisted brain, he still understands what it means to be a father, while his mother has done everything but treat Morgan like her child.

All Morgan’s mother has done is use him. Whether that be to garner sympathy on the internet or as a shield to hide her own despicable qualities behind, she has never treated him like a person. It really makes you think, how might things have turned out differently if Bellamy was a real parent to Morgan. If she actually viewed him as her child.

“‘You’re right. It’s just, nobody wants to confront the ugly sides of autism. Aggression, the—the lack of empathy…’

Leah shifts uncomfortably. Alyssa chews on her bottom lip.

‘I don’t think it’s that,’ Alyssa says. ‘It wasn’t because Morgan’s autistic or anything. It’s because you didn’t help him.’”

How much of Morgan’s story would have changed if his mother had actually helped him, like a mother is supposed to?

While it is definitely interesting to study the family dynamics that allow a serial killer to be the better parent of the two, the reality is that they are both awful parents and never should have been able to raise a child together in the first place, but this brings up an interesting point. Can someone still be a violent, despicable creature and have the capacity to be a good person?

With Morgan’s dad, absolutely not, even if he was able to achieve the basic fundamentals of supporting his child. But as Morgan tries to navigate through his trauma and tangled web of feelings to prove to the world that he is better than his father, it is important to think about. Is Morgan capable of being a good person? Or, at the very least, of doing the right thing? Can he be redeemed? Can he prove that he isn’t his father?

I am not my father

“Mom says, ‘Do you want to be a boy because, because’—she shakes her head, throat tightening like she’s about to cry—’because you don’t want to be like me? Because you hate me?’

She says, ‘Or is it because you want to be more like him?’

Oh my god.

This bitch.”

Morgan’s main motivator throughout You’re No Better is to prove that he isn’t like his father, that finding the identity of Jane Doe will simultaneously absolve him of some of his festering guilt and prove to the world that he isn’t his father. But Morgan’s identity as a trans boy adds another whole layer to his internal struggle, especially when he already looks so much like his mom. It’s almost as if he is transitioning from being like one parent to being the other. That if he remained a girl he would end up like his mom, but being a boy means becoming more like his dad than he already is.

The fear of becoming your parents is a crippling thing, and it’s even worse when one of them is a serial killer.

“‘If you want to be a man,’ he says, ‘you need to start by putting a bitch in her place.’

I try to pull away, but he’s stronger. ‘Let go.’

‘And if you want to take your father’s advice, you should probably start with your mother. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.’”

Morgan is already so much like his father, how much more like him will he become once testosterone is added to the mix? What does it mean that Morgan identifies as a man when the only example of masculinity is his piece of scum father? Is his mother right, does he want to be more like his father? It would make sense. He does already dream of violence.

But when Morgan thinks about taking testosterone, he also thinks of keeping his hair long. Of wearing makeup and clothes that emphasize both his breasts and chest hair. Of becoming something neither his mother or father. Of becoming something that cannot be recognized as either of them. But that only helps so much when most of the damage is on the inside.

“I hate that being a boy means I’m proving everyone right about how terrible I am. I hate that being a man means being a man like him.”

Watching your dad kill someone at the age of 10 would mess anyone up. But being involved with the torture and the killing as early as the age of 7, as early as Morgan was able to lock the penthouse door, as early as Morgan was able to hold a knife, that does irreversible damage to a person. Which begs the question: how much of Morgan is himself and how much of him is his Dad?

He was always his father’s daughter, before the thought of testosterone even entered the picture.

“I found out with Alyssa that I can’t date girls. When I put my hands on them, I want to hurt them … And I know I can’t date boys. He’ll touch me and I’ll like it, probably, as long as I can ignore the sick feeling in the back of my throat. I’ll never, ever be able to prove that he isn’t Dad. I’ll never be able to convince myself I don’t have to hurt him first.

This is Dad’s fault. He stole this from me.”

Morgan’s father stole a lot of things from him. A childhood without trauma. A father figure he could look up to. A stable home. A normal life. But there’s other things you don’t really think about, especially for someone who is still developing and discovering who they are as a person. Like your sexual orientation. Like your gender. Like your identity as a human being. The pieces of him that will forever be dirtied by the memories of what his father did. Of the things he did. Because Morgan was 7 when his father started bringing him to the penthouse, and how was Morgan supposed to know that the things his father was inviting him to do, the things he was teaching Morgan to enjoy, were not normal? He hit his breaking point at 10. But maybe that was already too late.

And that’s why Morgan has to discover who Jane Doe is. Because Morgan might be a bitch and might have a pension for violence. He might think about killing his mother and he might deserve being called a heartless psychopath for the way he treated Alyssa. But he is not his father. And as important as it is that the world knows it, it’s even more important that he does, so that he can prove to himself that he can be a man and not become his father.

Nature vs. nurture: who is Morgan really?

“Sometimes I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, and ask—am I actually autistic, or did my parents never teach me how to be a real person? Did Dad ruin me so early, so totally, that my brain failed to develop properly? Checking the lock on my bedroom door five times a night isn’t a symptom. Neither is wanting to hurt people, and neither is whatever made Alyssa call me a heartless psychopath last year.”

Everything boils down to this: Morgan’s fear that his parents messed him up beyond repair before he had the chance to be a real person. That he is doomed to the fate his parents made for him. That he is already too much like his father to be redeemed. But this whole story is proof that he isn’t. Wanting to be better is proof. Wanting to find the identity of Jane Doe is proof.

It’s so interesting, to see Morgan go to such lengths to prove that he is a person beyond the messed up thing his parents made him into when he proves over and over again that this is not the person he would have become if he had had the choice.

“If I could recall every moment in perfect detail, I’d be worse off than I am now. I wouldn’t be able to function at all. By thirteen years old, I probably would’ve laid down and died.”

Children are impressionable and will often do the things they’re told. But that doesn’t mean they have to like it.

Morgan admits it himself, that if he could remember everything he saw in the penthouse, if he could remember everything he did to those girls under the watchful guidance of his father, that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. And while this doesn’t change that the violence his father exposed him to won’t be a piece of him forever, that he might never be able to fully free himself from the violent thoughts that plague him, it does prove that he isn’t the same as his father.

Because his father reveled in the heinous acts he committed, and there’s absolutely a difference between a trauma response and the desire to actually do something.

“I think violence comes easily to you, Dr. Ly said during one of our first sessions together—after I put William Campbell in the hospital, after I pointed the finger and wrecked Dr. Reich’s practice—because you’ve found it’s often the only form of communication people respond honestly to.”

People look at Morgan and see what they want, a continuation of the Slaughter legacy. A child following in his father’s footsteps. So when Morgan is violent, when Morgan hurts someone, whether it be with his hands or his words, people only see his father. They don’t see his trauma. They don’t see a 7-year-old child being brought into the penthouse, or a 10-year-old child choosing to turn their father in. Or a 17-year-old, still a child, trying to bring justice to their father’s final victim.

But, in the end, it really isn’t about how the world sees him. It isn’t about the classmates who send around the Daddy’s girl.MOV video when Morgan has an outburst. It isn’t about his mother who uses him to play the victim. Or Alyssa, who can’t stand to watch the ways he has to hurt himself in order to finally be free of his cage, of the Saw trap. It’s about how Morgan sees himself. It’s about knowing that even though he thinks about hurting people, that he would not enjoy killing them. That he is not his father.

“I don’t destroy Felicity for this. I’m better than that.

I am. I am better than that, I swear. Because I didn’t look at Mom’s body on the powder room floor and feel good. I didn’t enjoy it, not like Dad did when he looked at his victims. I’ve been so hurt and so scared for so long, and I was forced to do awful things, and it’s obliterated the wiring of my brain. I’m not irredeemably evil, just fucked up.”

And that’s it. He isn’t his father. He isn’t irredeemable. Just fucked up and trying to be better.

My final thoughts…

I rated You’re No Better 5/5 stars.

This came as no surprise to me. I have been a fan of Andrew Joseph White for a while now and I truly think that every one of his books gets better and better. His books have always been important to me, because, while he doesn’t necessarily write about new topics, he does not shy away from the ugly parts of them that is often an actual reality for some people.

I have always thought that the horror genre is an underrated media to tell people’s stories, but Andrew Joseph White truly gets it. Not everyone has a pretty story to tell, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth hearing. In fact, sometimes the ugliest stories are the most important ones to hear.

You’re No Better is no exception. While Morgan’s situation is extreme, I think it raises a lot of questions about parental trauma and the fight to become your own person as you transition into adulthood. There are so many people who fear becoming their parents, who fear getting stuck in the cycle of trauma they were born into. It was definitely a rough journey, but Morgan made it, and I think that is really important for people to see.

I absolutely recommend this book, though please make sure to check the trigger warnings before reading. I will be shouting from the rooftops for everyone to read this book, because even though I had so much to say about it, there is also so much I didn’t even get to touch on (Felicity and Morgan, I’m looking at you).

Thank you to NetGalley and Peachtree Publishers for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. You’re No Better comes out on October 20th, 2026 and is available to preorder on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.