Essentially Harry Potter for queer people in Brooklyn (and dedicated to “everyone who feels betrayed by J.K. Rowling”). Like Osworth’s banger of a debut, We Are Watching Eliza Bright, it’s super weird, hard to categorize, and unlike anything I’ve ever read. I can’t shut up about it.

Awakened is a hilarious and heartfelt magical adventure where a coven of trans witches battles an evil AI, exploring community, identity, and the power of awakening. This might just be the best book I've read so far this year! Definitely top of my list.

Awakened does a wonderful job of pulling together elements of our present time, trope from Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and Queerifying it all resulting in an engaging, heartening, and complex read.

From the world of Sci-Fi, we have the threat of AI gaining consciousness. From the world of Fantasy, we have a Brooklyn-based coven of witches. From the queer world, we have pretty much every single character in the novel.

In this world of witches, one isn't born/raised as a witch. Instead, one becomes aware of one's specific witching skills (if one has any) as they emerge over time. It means building community and learning to control one's gifts can be a complex, rather long-term process. I very much appreciated the unstructuredness of this version of the magical world. It's a satisfying change from Dark Academia, which seems to be the sub-genre of the moment.

If you're looking for a read that will keep you in just-one-more-chapter mode and that will challenge some of the tropes you've grown accustomed to, Awakened will fill the bill nicely. I highly recommend it.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to review this book, because I really didn't like it, but I think it's mostly well done. It's a good book for someone, and that someone is not me. It seems like the kind of book that should be right in my wheelhouse—queer and trans found family, magic, fighting evil—but for me, the characters never felt believable enough in their choices and reactions. They did things, and said things, and reacted to things, but none of it seemed to come from an emotional narrative that I could follow. It felt more like playing a game, where there are outer designs meant to tell you who the players are, but what they do is based on what the outer narrative needs and not their inner narratives. Which is maybe a fun and fine experience for some readers, but I found it really frustrating.

I also wasn't a fan of the eventual video-game-villain-turned-AI-turned-ubiquitous-evil plotline, either. I think it could be nostalgic to some, but it just felt dated to me in the way that media from the 90s about the dangers of technology coming to life and taking over the world feel dated. Now that we live in a world where AI of various kinds is common (and none of it is "intelligent" in the way the name implies), it feels inaccurate to place the "evils" of technology so squarely on the technology itself, and not on the human minds that create it and use it. I think the author tries to address that a little bit, but it didn't do it for me.

But I have to say, I will be thinking about "Pay attention. Something amazing is about to happen." and "The amazing thing has happened. Fuck yeah." as the opening and closing to magic spells for a LONG TIME. By far my favorite thing about the book!

Awakened follows a coven of witches in Brooklyn where the "big bad" is literally an evil AI. Not only is this a unique plot (and likely a precursor to a new trope in scifi, thanks chatgpt), it was fun while still being open and prioritizing serious topics (being an adult as queer person, family, trusting others, and so on). I'll be completely honest, I did not care much for the evil AI plot until the very end when we got to really see the culmination of character development for each of our witches and even then, it was their growth as individuals and a family that kept my attention.

Everything I enjoyed about this book had its own downside. The plot moved quickly and kept me engrossed but it almost moved toooo quickly to the point that I couldn't follow and needed to reread a few pages more than once. I loved that the characters (even the side characters!) felt so real but again, the story wraps up so quickly, that we don't get to see the relationships reeeallly develop further.

An extremely unique aspect of Awakened that I really loved was the way it was narrated and how the narrator was eventually introduced. I've never read anything with that twist and would be so intrigued to see more in this style. Overall, Awakened was fun, emotional, and blessedly, gay as hell.

Thank you A.E Osworth, Grand Central Publishing, and NetGalley for the Arc in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5 ⭐️
The dedication got me. I enjoyed it and the depth of how much the characters are described and presented. I loved that the story flowed so well. The chaos was saved paced at times but it didn’t hinder the story. The concept of an evil demon AI is of course unsettling. It did seem a bit long and a bit verbose at times. But overall I enjoyed it a lot!

What a unique storyline! I really appreciated the depth the different characters had. The writing style is easy to follow, even if the storyline is a little fantastical.

This one was a wild ride! Wilder, a reclusive, thirty-ish enby wakes one morning with the power to understand all languages. They reluctantly join up with a coven of trans witches to take on sentient AI.
This is a story of found family with underlying themes of trans power. The unreliable narrator makes the tale hard to follow until the role they play in the story is revealed, then all the pieces start falling into place.
And Hex, the newly "born" AI, was actually a nuanced character. Wilder's initial attempts to befriend and teach him were endearing.

I received this ARC from publisher Grand Central Publishing, a division of @hatchetteus through @netgalley. The opinions are my own.

Awakened was released on April 29, 2025 and is available at booksellers now.

I would like to preface this review by saying that I have not finished this book yet.

A.E. Osworth’s Awakened is an unapologetically queer love note to the world of magic. Wilder wakes up realizing they have come into magic, suddenly able to understand and speak languages effortlessly their mundane, one note life is upturned. A coven of Trans witches begins to aid Wilder in their awakening to the magic world. This book is full of found family, comfort, humor, and magic.

The way that A.E. Osworth describes each person’s power is so colorful and at time poetic. I’ll admit, when I first started reading this book I was entirely thrown off by some of the names. Quibble for instance felt like such a strange chosen name to me that I just couldn’t help but laugh but that being said I think he is by far my favorite character. I think that this book is 100% worth giving a try, the concept is original, and the characters are loveable but flawed.

(Below are my thoughts on the book so far based off what I have read. If I finish I will revisit my rating and review.)

I’m giving this book a lower rating is because at times I felt like the writing was ruined by some of the immature thoughts or descriptors. This really became a bit of a turn off for me when the line “Artemis feels herself get hard, but only a little bit, and hidden enough to maintain her plausible deniability” came into play. Maybe it could have been written differently and been better, but it felt unnecessary, and it stuck with me as I continued reading. Though I know their supposed to be flawed, Wilder was probably one of my least favorite characters because of the way they acted towards others. I felt at times that the way they came off was more like a teenager and less like a thirty-year-old.

As a trans man I really love the representation and the overall idea and themes. But I feel the execution could have been better. Regardless, I think this book is worth having on the shelf at our bookstore.

Thank you Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for the ARC!

We love a chaotic, funny, silly book -- trans witches, evil AI, a fight against capitalism. It's great to see trans stories by trans authors, and the humor of this book felt very authentic to the experiences of transness. Lots of heart in this book!

DNF. Kind of devastated, but I’m at 61% and I JUST. DON’T. CARE.

This was right at the top of my most-anticipated 2025 releases! I was SO FREAKING EXCITED! But…GAH.

It doesn’t read like fantasy. It doesn’t FEEL like fantasy. It feels more like…somewhere in the overlap between lit fic and contemporary fic. It’s not a Story, it’s a Message. (And I say this as a nonbinary person.)

All of these characters – I would love to be friends with them in real life. But as fictional characters, they bore me.

There’s no PLOT. Not until about 60% of the way through, and to be honest I was disappointed with the evil AI, who is evil mostly because he is a Fourchan dickhead rather than because of something fundamental to being Not Human. I have a huge hangup about nonhumans who are not even a little bit alien, and that’s very much the case here; if anything the issue is that Hex is TOO human – just, the wrong kind of human, transphobic and misogynist in the extreme. YAY. Sorry, but that is just not interesting to me.

I also REALLY dislike seers; I think very few storytellers can pull them off in a way that’s believable, interesting, and not overpowered, and this is not one of those times when it’s managed. All-powerful seer who is inexplicably nerfed Because Plot: no. Boring. I hate this.

I didn’t like the magic. There’s no wonder, no awe (although an attempt is made, it’s an odd kind of tell-don’t-show awe). It’s maddeningly vague and hand-wavey. I hate ‘hard’ magic systems, I do NOT want Brandon Sanderson levels of rules and limitations and whatnot, but this is… Gandalf’s magic is soft magic; I don’t know what to call this. It felt like what was possible kept changing to allow for the needs of plot. The Awakenings and the seer and the capital letters, it all seemed so arbitrary and honestly, very lame.

I don’t feel any desire to finish reading it. I’m annoyed I stuck with it this long.

Far from my usual genre, I ended up loving the character so much that I enjoyed the sci-fi aspect. Very fun and unique.

The found family is lovely, the antagonist is terrifying and I found the combination of the unique narration and beautiful prose very compelling. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while and recommending it whole-heartedly

Trans Witches, Rogue AI, and RICOOOOOO!!

Awakened is the new Charmed for the next generation! Within these magical pages is Wilder, a trans human, who discovers a magical new ability. Wilder then meets Quibbler, Artemis, and Mary Margaret, and magical things are about to happen (F*** yeah!). This story is emotionally charged and the representation made my queer heart so beyond happy.

The plot starts slowly, choosing to take time to set the environment and introduce characters in a natural habitat. It does take a minute to understand the unique storytelling as well. Osworth's voice in this story is just a creative masterpiece that takes reading the whole story to understand the full circle moments that are planned. However, once the characters come together in their more traditional coven moment, things get intense. AI has never seemed scarier than it does within this book. It was genuinely terrifying.

Osworth broke my heart in this story. They ripped out the pieces and then stitched them back together. The conclusion to this story plays out on an epic level. A story, the likes of which I have never read in my entire life. It was powerful and emotional, and I'm HURT. But the ending was also beautiful and right for what was happening. Prepare for the worst, but understand you are reading the BEST! Check out this story.

Awakened is a dazzling, genre-defying fantasy that blends queer magic, AI paranoia, and the power of chosen family. A must-read for fans of urban fantasy seeking a story rich in heart, humor, and social commentary.

I DNF at 2% because I cannot read third person present tense. I won't review this on Goodreads or Amazon since I didn't read far enough to get a feel for the book.

I'm not really sure where I got the idea that this was a horror but I was very wrong. That's not to say this isn't a great fantasy but it's definitely a fantasy. This was actually a really great fantasy to be exact. The magic reminds me a tiny bit of Liv Grossman's The Magicians minus the college and other world. The system is similar with the idea that magic is pain and using it isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I also really loved how diverse this book was. I mean the mc is a queer nonbianry person and most of the side characters are trans or queer in some other way. Its rare to see a book that is so sure of exactly what it is but this books manages that. This is definitely one I can see myself reading and recommend over and over again.

I really struggled to get into this one. The writing style felt like it kept me at arms length from the characters and the plot felt meandering.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Awakened by A.E. Osworth is a mixed third and first person-POV Trans contemporary fantasy. When Wilder awakens their powers one morning and discovers that they can now understand and communicate in any language, they are taken in by a coven of Queer witches. But when an AI turns malicious and starts to go for the teen witch in their group, everything is at risk of falling apart.

A.E. Osworth is not interested in playing by the rules of respectability politics or ignoring the reality Trans people face in America. There’s brief mentions of the banning of drag queen story hours and multiple mentions of transphobia. A Queer bar is also one of the main locations in the setting as well as a home owned by a transwoman and her trans daughter. There’s a trans woman with a beard and a Nonbinary lead and overt Queer sexuality threaded throughout. In essence, this book is a celebration of the diversity of the trans community and refuses to hold itself back, which is awesome.

Mary Margaret was probably my favorite character. She’s that typical, sarcastic seventeen-year-old that is determined to do things her way and won’t let other people tell her what to do, even if that means not making the best decisions. Her and Wilder’s initial meeting also involved her stating she’d come out at fourteen while Wilder came out at twenty-five, which has a lot of layers to it (growing up in a time where it’s more accepted to be trans, some people grow up in environments where it’s more difficult, some people take more time, etc) and you can kind of feel that she is a bit dismissive of Wilder taking a bit longer, but I didn’t really take it as malicious. It felt like something a teen would say. Mary Margaret also goes onto Tinder a year before she should, putting her in contact with the malicious AI, which targets her. She shouldn’t have been on Tinder in the first place because it’s an adult space, but in many ways, she is an adult (including being emancipated) and thinks of herself as such.

The AI stuff does get uncomfortable and fairly creepy. It feels like it’s spying on the characters and some of the communication between it and Mary Margaret are a lot of people’s worst nightmares when looking in online dating spaces. What gets really interesting is that Quibble is determined to misgender the AI but Wilder defends gendering it correctly because they are a community of trans magic users. I think it opens up a very complex conversation because it’s never OK to misgender someone on purpose, but can AI have a concept of gender? Is it just copying how humans speak?

Content warning for depictions of transphobia and misgendering

I would recommend this to fans of trans fantasy looking for a contemporary fantasy with covens and readers of witchy fantasy looking for a book that celebrates the trans community

This was a fun, chaotic ride with a premise that immediately hooked me—trans witches taking on an evil AI in a magical battle against late capitalism. The story has a lot of heart, and I appreciated its humor, big ideas, and exploration of identity. While the writing style didn’t fully work for me, I still enjoyed the creativity and the themes at play. It’s always exciting to see more trans stories by trans authors, and I’d love to see what this writer does next.