Member Review

It's 1989. The AIDS epidemic is decimating the gay community, leaving everyone with a hole in their heart where friends and loved ones used to be. Joe Agabian, depressed and directionless after losing the love of his life, travels to Fire Island Pines with his best friend to find work and distraction in the hedonistic gay paradise. What Joe finds are a pair of quirky, older men, members of a secret disco witch coven tasked with protecting the island, who will guide and help him on his dangerous journey of love and healing.

Perplexingly, the least interesting thing about this book are the Disco Witches. Not because they're bad or unmagical, but because what pulled me in and wouldn't let go were the more emotional and human elements of the story. Everyone has lost people to the epidemic, living in fear of who they might lose next or even of getting sick themselves. Through it all, they're still making connections and finding ways to celebrate life by being part of a community.

Joe is a great guide through the story because he's a part of that community, yet finds himself feeling apart from it due to the trauma he experienced after the way he lost his partner to AIDS. He has a lot to process and heal through if he hopes to make it out of the island, and the kindness of the Disco Witches is the perfect remedy.

A couple of things feel a little cliché or even like they're making a joke out of the gay community, but it might just be inside jokes that my outsider perspective doesn't understand.

Very happy thanks to NetGalley and Alcove Press for the magical read!