HOLDEN SHEPPARD Yeah the Boys. Reviewed by Michael Jongen

Holden Sheppard’s latest novel revisits some old friends in a fresh new story exploring masculinity, identity and friendship.

Sheppard’s critically acclaimed debut novel Invisible Boys, published in 2019 and later turned into a miniseries on Stan, was the story of three teenage boys as they struggled with their sexuality and isolation in small-town Australia. He followed this with The Brink, about a group of WA school-leavers stranded on a remote island during schoolies, again looking at sexuality, trauma and masculinity. HIs third novel, King of Dirt – his first aimed directly at adult readers – was an unabashed examination of a self-destructive, closeted tradie, Jack Brolo, who returns to his hometown for a family wedding, forcing him to deal with family rejection and addiction.

Yeah the Boys begins with a prologue where Sheppard clearly lays out what his novel is about and where it will end:

It will never change. We are who we are. We are who the world is disgusted by and who the world does not want us to be. We pretend not to be ourselves even among those who claim to love us. We contort ourselves into publicly pre-approved, psychologically unsound pretzel shapes to be spared total social opprobrium from the rest of the tribe.

Or we die.

Which is how this was always going to end, when the three of us collided with the world.

Yeah the Boys brings together Charlie, Zeke and Hammer from Invisible Boys, who have not seen each other for seven years, despite all of them living in Perth. Mason from The Brink and Jack Brolo also have important cameos. Nonetheless Yeah the Boys does stand on its own. This isn’t a cozy interwoven‑lives series in the style of Tales of the City. The connections matter, but Sheppard isn’t offering comfort; he’s interrogating masculinity, friendship, and the long shadow of trauma with the same raw honesty that defines all his work.

After not seeing each other for so long, Zeke and Charlie almost hook up at the sauna and they quickly take up their friendship from where it ended after Zeke went back to Geraldton. Zeke has compromised with his family, letting them think that he is bisexual. Just about to graduate, he is sharing a flat with a female friend and is happy to let his parents think he is in a relationship.

I grimace unintentionally. ‘Well, uh, you were right,’ I say. ‘I took Sabrina to the ball in year twelve. We hooked up and were … sorta together, for a while.’

‘Look at you go,’ Charlie says, smirking. ‘Bisexual king over here.’

‘I’m not bi,’ I insist. ‘We never had sex. Third base, that’s it. I eventually came out and we agreed to be friends.’

Charlie’s smirk broadens. ‘Oh yeah, that always pans out well. Lemme guess: you never saw each other again.’

My momentary guilt must show up on my face, because Charlie clocks it. ‘Or … you did.’

‘Uh. Well. Me and Sabrina live together now.’

Charlie nearly chokes on his Heineken.

Charlie in the meantime has been struggling as a musician and is boarding with an older gay couple, Curtis and Ahmed, who are planning to open a men-only gay bar with a cruising space. Zeke and Charlie are involved and begin working there when the bar opens. The bar attracts the ire of a gay influencer, Xander, for not being inclusive.

Zeke and Charlie are floundering when Hammer, now a successful AFL footballer for the West Coast Eagles, comes back into their lives. Their reunion forces old wounds to the surface. Still closeted, Hammer sparks outrage when he attacks his club’s diversity round. Xander also gets involved in the controversy.

These dynamics tap into ongoing tensions within queer communities, especially among gay men in Australia. Yeah the Boys is about identity, politics, masculinity, and belonging. The reader gets asked to consider what is gay identity, what should queer spaces look like, and how masculinity, trauma, and visibility collide in modern queer life.

Layered over this is the emotional volatility of closeted masculinity colliding with out gay life, plus class and cultural divides that shape how different gay men understand identity, safety, and visibility. This is a portrait of a community that is united in name but fractured in practice, negotiating who gets to define what ‘gay culture’ means now. I particularly enjoyed the characterisation of Xander and Curtis, each the antithesis of the other.

The book presents working‑class masculinity as a valid, complex and emotionally rich identity, pushing back against the idea that queer stories must be polished, inner‑city, or middle‑class to be legitimate. On Sheppard’s social media he often leans into ‘bogan pride’ with humour and affection, talking about utes, working out, football, and small‑town WA, but he never romanticises the harm that can come with it. Instead, he uses that world to explore shame, trauma, anger, and the ways queer boys survive environments that weren’t built for them.

Yeah the Boys is a celebration and critique at the same time. It’s also great fun, well plotted, a rollicking and moving story with a great supporting cast of characters that Charlie, Zeke and Hammer collide with as they negotiate their way through early adulthood. It’s a powerful novel, proving Sheppard has all that it takes to become a respected observer and chronicler of Australian life. I loved this book.

Holden Sheppard Yeah the Boys 2026 Pantera Press PB 432pp $34.99

Michael Jongen is a librarian and you can find him as @larrydlibrarian on Instagram and Threads.

You can buy this book from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW. You can also buy it from Booktopia. We receive a small commission if you purchase through these links.

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.

Tags: Australian fiction, Australian writers, gay culture, identity, influencers, Invisible Boys, masculinity, queer communities, The Brink