A review by nataliedc
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

A genre-bending character study of queer 22-year-old shapeshifter Paul Polydoris living in the gay scenes of various towns across 1990s America. Despite the amazingly unique premise, I struggled to get into this story at first due to its odd, slow pacing and lack of chapter breaks. With that said, the middle part (in which Paul becomes Polly and lives with a girlfriend, Diane, in Provincetown) really caught my attention and I finally started to sympathize with this complex, yet deeply loveable character. I love Paul as a character - faults and all - as well as the ambiguity of his shapeshifting abilities. I definitely think this novel could've been a lot tighter (there were a lot of short stories scattered about Paul's own story that I didn't fully understand the whole context of) but, nevertheless, this was an extremely memorable read that I hope to come back to someday.