A YA Book for Rosh HaShanah - AKA A Book Review: A World Worth Saving

Is the world worth saving?
Some days, I’m not sure, but I’m glad Kyle Lukoff seems to think so.

A World Worth Saving (Hardcover, 352 pages, Dial Books, 2025) by Kyle Lukoff is an extraordinary young YA fantasy that weaves together Jewish folklore and contemporary experience, queer identity, supernatural adventure, and urgent real‑world themes. It’s a story that asks: If the world feels determined to reject you, is it still worth saving? And shows that it is.

Stop the presses!

I wrote this review before I met Kyle and before we had our Spill the JEWce book club meeting.
Kyle joined us online for the first half of our time together, and, I mean, okay, read the rest of what I have to say about his book - it’s a great book and a lot more people should read it . . . but I even more need to say this now: If you are in a position to bring in an author for a book discussion, invite Kyle and pay him for his time. It will be worth it. It will be more than worth it. He was fantastic with my YA readers and an all-around delightful human to spend time with. Seriously. He’s delightful. And he creates worlds worth saving in shared spaces, too, as well as in books.

Okay, now read on and find out what this book is about.

What’s it about, you ask?

A is a 14‑year‑old Ashkenazi Jewish trans boy. Since coming out, he’s been forced by his parents to attend weekly Save Our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD) meetings — a conversion‑therapy group very badly disguised as family support. There, youth like him are deadnamed, pressured to conform, silenced, sometimes even separated out for “advanced treatment.”

When A’s friend Yarrow disappears after a particularly difficult meeting, A begins to investigate. Along the way, he meets a golem (a being inspired by Jewish folklore) who helps him uncover that the group SOSAD is more than just emotionally harmful — sheydim (Jewish demons), are feeding off the pain and fear of trans and non‑binary people.

Balancing trauma, fear, and hate, the story becomes a fight for identity and justice. A doesn’t have all the answers, and his struggle to be seen, to love who he is, and to learn heaps along the way makes him a pretty fantastic hero's journey hero. 

Hard to talk about this book without talking about conversion therapy

Conversion therapy in this book refers to coercive efforts by parents, groups, and sometimes religious organizations to change or suppress a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation. It can mean being forced to attend meetings, having pronouns and names ignored, being shamed, being told feelings are invalid or just a phase. It’s psychologically damaging.

In A World Worth Saving, SOSAD functions as this: it misgenders and deadnames, uses euphemistic language (“advanced treatment”, “support”) to hide the real harm, isolates kids, and threatens erasure. It’s awful. It’s painful. As a rabbi, it’s important to me that in this book there are Jewish parents and Jewish families participating in this harm - because this abuse is horrifying and it happens in our communities just as it happens everywhere and we need to own that and do more about it.

This book? So Jewish. 

First of all, this book is brimming with golems, sheydim, Jewish rituals, and the whole story happens between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The magical rules of the world, the stakes, and how A learns about identity and power are all super Jewish. Jewish folklore and mysticism? I’m here for it.

Then Jewish concepts like tikkun olam (repairing the world), the power of speech and naming, communal responsibility, and moral struggle are central to the story and to the character development. A’s fight is both personal but communal. A also wrestles with the idea of “chosenness” and what it means in the big picture and for him personally.

A’s rabbi is an important character in the story, and his synagogue is a critical space of both safety and conflict.

Representation matters, and here we have a trans Jewish hero whose Jewishness and transness are both integral, not incidental.

Why do I recommend it to YA and adult readers? 

While wrestling honestly with very real harm, Kyle Lukoff’s novel offers community, friendship, found family, and spiritual and magical tools of resistance. Kyle handles very painful themes (conversion therapy, rejection by family, identity suppression, threats to safety and more with emotional honesty, imagination, and sensitivity. Nothing is pretended away, but the story also isn’t overwhelmed by despair. The fantasy elements are deeply symbolic. The pacing allows for rest and breath and also moves along quickly giving space for sweet moments of friendship, acts of kindness and community, and humor. 

The characters aren’t morally perfect, which makes them relatable and often more likeable. 

A World Worth Saving isn’t only special because it’s a Jewish queer trans fantasy story that leaves us grappling with our own complicated reality, it’s also special because it looks at pain unblinkingly without letting it take over. We have to accept the heartbreak, and we also have to be part of the hope. 

This story insists that none of us is alone, that we are each part of something that matters - something that is bigger than any one of us, and that there are still things in the world worth saving . . . especially ourselves.

There is a lot of horrible in the world right now.
As Kyle Lukoff wrote when he signed my copy of his gorgeous book, “Outlive them.”