A review by offbalance80
The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

2.0

Apparently fanfiction is just dandy with the Iowa MFA crowd as long as the source material fits certain criteria. This book is Paris is Burning fanfiction. It could easily have been posted on Archive of Our Own, but with a pedigree like this, it landed an agent and a book deal. The pity being I've read much better LGBTQIA-themed pieces of AO3. Or, even more so, this read like what started as an early treatment for Ryan Murphy/Steven Canals' fantastic series Pose, before they figured out that it's possible to tell stories about the LGBTQIA community during the crisis years and not turn those stories into a tragedy bingo card. I'm not someone who enjoys heartbreak porn, so the crush after crush in the end lost its power and just got tedious. Yes, we all know what happened to poor Venus Extravaganza, but these human beings deserve to be remembered as more than just tragic statistics, but members of a vibrant community who created loving families.