A high school senior named Jay is sitting in the comfort of his bedroom playing video games and thinking about how he is going to spend his summer break. His bedroom door opens and his father walks in silently with a deadpan expression. Jay did not bother to turn back as he was so captivated by the television screen. The father was the first to break the silence, “Your cousin Jun. He’s dead.”

Patron Saints of Nothing was a fiction novel that took inspiration from the Philippine drug war, in which many innocent people were murdered. It was one of the darkest periods in Philippine history, and Jun—Jay’s cousin—was one of the many casualties by the police on the street.

The cold open of Randy Ribay’s Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay drew me in. When I first began reading, I thought it would be just another generic class-assigned book that had nothing special to it. As I dug deeper into the story, however, I realized I was wrong.

When Jay decides he is going to uncover the dark secret of his cousin’s death, it brings the reader a special thought of automatically bringing themselves into the book.

 When Jay finds out the truth, I wouldn’t say it’s a climax, because of the truth that Jun was one of the people that he didn’t want to become, which is both selling and doing drugs. I would say that the climax is when this book really makes the readers feel like they are a part of the book, thinking that if they were one of the characters in the book, what would they do at the time when a character is struggling.

Overall, Patron Saints of Nothing features more than a story about the mysteries behind someone’s death; it also holds an exploration of identity. By forcing both Jay and the reader to confront the harsh realities of the Philippine drug war, the story leaves you questioning how far you would go for the people you love.