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A review by wendy327
I'm a Gay Wizard by V.S. Santoni
3.0
I’m a Gay Wizard introduces Johnny and Ali, two teens on a journey of self-discovery. Their journey, however, gets much more complicated when they decide to dabble in magic, cast a spell with serious consequences, and get kidnapped by a mysterious group of people who take them to a secluded magic school. But even the magic school isn’t all it seems. Secrets hide around every corner and trying to uncover them may cost them their lives or the lives or their new friends.
I have mixed feelings about this book. First, the positive. The representation and diversity of characters was a welcome change. Johnny is openly gay; Ali is a transgender; Blake seems to be pansexual, though he never states this; and Hunter struggles with his sexuality due to the way he was raised. All of these characters and perspectives are woven in seamlessly and the sadly realistic backlash to several of the claimed identities can also be viewed by the reactions, both verbal and physical, that the side characters exhibit.
There were some aspects of this novel that I found challenging. The writing at times felt unpolished. For a debut novel, particularly one that originated on Wattpad, that is forgivable, particularly if the characters, world, and plot are able to drive the story. As mentioned above, the characters worked; however, the world and plot felt flimsy. The plot, while relatively straight forward, suffered from the fact that the world needed to be developed more. There were several groups and plot threads that could have been teased out to allow more connections to an awesome group of characters and this would have created suspense for the eventual story finale. On that note, there were other aspects that seemed extraneous and probably could have been cut to allow more space for this development.
Don’t get me wrong. I really wanted to like this novel and I think there was great potential here. But I probably should have known that it would be a bit of a struggle when I started the book, read the first five chapters, and had to put it down for nearly six months. Though there is a planned sequel, I’m a Gay Wizard had a definite ending, and a happy one at that, and I’ll most likely just leave it there since I probably won’t be picking up the next book in the series.
I have mixed feelings about this book. First, the positive. The representation and diversity of characters was a welcome change. Johnny is openly gay; Ali is a transgender; Blake seems to be pansexual, though he never states this; and Hunter struggles with his sexuality due to the way he was raised. All of these characters and perspectives are woven in seamlessly and the sadly realistic backlash to several of the claimed identities can also be viewed by the reactions, both verbal and physical, that the side characters exhibit.
There were some aspects of this novel that I found challenging. The writing at times felt unpolished. For a debut novel, particularly one that originated on Wattpad, that is forgivable, particularly if the characters, world, and plot are able to drive the story. As mentioned above, the characters worked; however, the world and plot felt flimsy. The plot, while relatively straight forward, suffered from the fact that the world needed to be developed more. There were several groups and plot threads that could have been teased out to allow more connections to an awesome group of characters and this would have created suspense for the eventual story finale. On that note, there were other aspects that seemed extraneous and probably could have been cut to allow more space for this development.
Don’t get me wrong. I really wanted to like this novel and I think there was great potential here. But I probably should have known that it would be a bit of a struggle when I started the book, read the first five chapters, and had to put it down for nearly six months. Though there is a planned sequel, I’m a Gay Wizard had a definite ending, and a happy one at that, and I’ll most likely just leave it there since I probably won’t be picking up the next book in the series.