Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
2.5/3 I wanted to like it more but it just felt really slow and disjointed. I just wish it had been a more fleshed out creation, it fell flat.
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book was an emotional journey. It deals with grief, love, found family, and hope. The characters were all so loveable in their own ways and I found myself rooting for just about everyone. I came away from the story feeling glowing hopefulness. The author does a lovely job of showing emotional depth while mixing in humor and realness from each person.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Grief
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It was too messy. I didn’t like how Fergal shamed Elliot for setting boundaries such as he didn’t feel like he wanted to get into a relationship with someone with HIV (since he lost his previous lover to AIDS I think this was perfectly reasonable). HIV in the 1980s had a high mortality rate so most likely Fergal was going to die despite claims that he might live.
I didn’t like the repeated use of the word swarthy which as a dark-skinned BIPOC made me uncomfortable but it doesn’t seem like anyone else had that problem so maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal.
I didn’t like the repeated use of the word swarthy which as a dark-skinned BIPOC made me uncomfortable but it doesn’t seem like anyone else had that problem so maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Sexual content, Sexual harassment
Minor: Biphobia
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Medical content, Medical trauma
Moderate: Death, Homophobia
Disco Witches of Fire Island is a Sweet Valley High novel for gay boomers.
It contains dialogue like "their tongues met like two Turkish oil wrestlers grappling" (I paraphrase bc I have already returned this to the library)
The main character is instantly adopted by a group of stylish eccentrics and spends his time as a lusted-after bartender
There's a Save the Bar subplot
AND at the same time, this all takes place with the backdrop of the AIDs crisis, a horrific disease that is slowly killing everyone's dear friends and lovers and possibly themselves
It's a really interesting place to be tonally but it kind of works??
Like, actually there are real stakes! There is real melancholy! But at the same time there is lightness and frivolity and parties and joy, and that's the whole point of the book
And like, the whole thing is just so campy and fun!
Although some of the looks into gay male culture of the time......
Like. Actually I would not want to know that someone craves me merely by my genetics,
But I'm just built different I guess
Also, here's what I mean by bad writing is good actually:
"Anyway," Fergal said, adjusting his own crotch
LIKE
Have you ever read a more cursed or more excellent phrase
Anyway:
Disco Witches of Fire Island is about Joe, a 28-year-old orderly with vague dreams to go to med school but no real drive. He's sweet, sensitive, and mourning his ex-boyfriend Elliot, who died of AIDs.
He's got that like, mopey, caring, but fiery only to his love interest ingenue type personality
Joe gets adopted by a bunch of ageing Disco queens who actually do disco magic by dancing together in weird little outfits! Their purpose is to save talented young queer people from the Great Darkness, and of course Joe doesn't fit any of the requirements from the prophecy.... (except actually of course he does)
The Great Darkness in this case manifests as an egregore, a being of pure lust/self-hatred
Which kind of checks out for the queer community
Howie is our main look into the Disco Witches! He's also in mourning for the many, many friends he's lost, but also a dreamy true believer in magic
In the meantime, Joe's best friend and aspiring sugar baby Ronnie is falling in with the Wrong Crowd of People (rich, mean, party gays) while fighting his own feelings for the hot yet poor Irish bartender he has a fling with
And Joe is constantly getting bailed out by the rude-yet-sweet Fergal, the island's bisexual ferryman who also like... may be the son of Poseidon??
The mundane soap opera drama and the AIDs crisis actually work kind of in synergy when it comes to the storytelling? Because like... yes, even during the AIDs crisis people were living mundane soap opera lives! It's not just sadness and noble suffering
Like, Joe's big issue is actually that he had broken up with his dead boyfriend about a year before his boyfriend actually passed, because he was actually really bad at being someone's caretaker and smothered him immensely! Fergal is also HIV-positive and Joe has to decide whether he's strong enough to go through the experience of watching a lover slowly decline again
Joe's good friend (sapphic and sad Elena) is our token girls can get HIV too!! representation, as she got it from sharing a needle with an ex-boyfriend
And Joe's medical aspirations give everyone hope that he might be The One to end the crisis
It's just a very sweet and lovely and fun book
And the overblown, campy Sweet Valley Highness of the writing really worked for the kind of book it is!