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

adventurous funny fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No

3.0

Paul is the most obnoxious person in your college’s queer social club—or he would be, if he weren’t too self-consciously cool to attend more than a few meetings.

Undeniably well written, and made me laugh as much as it made me cringe in recognition. Paul is deeply flawed but always compelling, and this balance generally worked for me—though sometimes it really didn’t. The degree to which his cruelty and selfishness are ignored by the narrative is frustrating.
It never occurs to him that Tony Pinto’s calls might be about an AIDS diagnosis (despite this being painfully obvious to me, given the date and the tenor of the messages)—instead, he flatters himself that his old boyfriend is begging for him back. And why not?
Everybody adores Paul, though nobody so much as Paul himself. It’s not a crime to be self-obsessed to the point of blindness towards other people’s feelings, but it does make our hero increasingly hard to love.

All that said, I can’t relate to most of the complaints I’ve seen about this book—I thought the sex scenes were great, hot and effective at what they were trying to invoke, be it pleasure or disgust. Similarly, I don’t mind the lack of explanation around the magic elements
(though I wish we had seen/heard more about Diane’s powers)
. Lawlor is clearly taking a magical realism approach here, with Paul’s ability to transform being more an extension of his personality than a physical reality. The “how” isn’t the point. I do agree that the ending felt weak, though it might have worked better for me if Derek had more of a presence outside of the last ~20 pages. He’s more of an archetype (a Christopher, or a Ruffles) than a fully realized person (a Diane or a Jane), and he didn’t mean enough to Paul to be the catalyst for Paul’s final moment of self-acceptance—ending a relationship on his own terms, rather than molding himself into what his partner wants him to be.
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