Access Instantly The Gay Teens Guide To Defeating A Siren: The Seeker (The Gay Teens Guide To Defeating A Siren, #1) Produced By Cody Wagner Shared As Electronic Text
liked this book.
Was it amazingly crafted with a story that drew me into the pages and got me wrapped up in a world that I never wanted to leave No.
Was the story fun to read and will I probably read the second book Yes, . . maybe.
Overall, this book was OK, It took nearly three quarters of the book for anything exciting to remotely happen, and when it did, it was so small it was kind of glazed over, The ending was shocking mind you, but there are still so many unanswered questions, I felt like I learned next to nothing,
The book was mostly a story of gay teens sent to a reform school, yet the school was all a sham to give them a safe place to grow up.
A little extra and over the top, but it was still nice, You got to see the everyday life of these perfectly normal teens and get small glimpses of something bigger going on, But that is all that it was, Small glimpses.
Hopefully the second book has more action, For the love of all that is holy, the title talks about a Siren, to which, you never discover much about, So, if you are looking for a series to start, and like a little light humor and don't mind a little confusing dialogue, then give it a read!
I really enjoyed this book! It felt like Hogwarts if all the students were gay and they didn't learn magic in class, but still had house competitions.
And of course there is some magic happening, but you'll have to read the next book to find out more about that,
I loved the characters and found the writing style very engrossing, So I was super excited to read this book because it seemed like a very campy read and I was not let down, I found the characters very likable and the build up to the ending had me reading till the AM, This reads like a middle grade I would definitely recommend if your a fan of the Percy Jackson series, I loved this book! It's a humorous scifiish/fantasyish/notrealisticish book about a gay kid who accidentally comes out of
the closet and gets sent to a "pray away the gay" camp.
Little does he know the danger that awaits him there, The good thing is he has a superpower, He's gay.
Y'all, I freaking loved this book, I won't tell you anymore, lest I give too much away, I just have to say, go support a selfpublished author and order this book, It's not in any way offensive to religion he manages to keep religion pretty well out of the book other than the fundamentalist preacher who insists his parents send him away to camp for healing, and it's not a "gay" book.
It's just really fun. I can't wait for Book! This book, the story and these characters are making me want more, . i Blaized though the book pun intended
What ever happens to anybody, . . its a amazing read!
At the first few pages i was reading what the book is about i was confused, Read on i would say!!!
The book is great and make you feel things, anger/hate/love/confusion/amazement,
I cant wait for the second book,
Go on writhing Cody, you are amazing!
XXX I have to confess, I read one of the very, very, very first drafts of this book from what I understood, there were several and I very much enjoyed it, However, I enjoyed the final version even more!
Blaize Trales yes, that's his real name is a gay teen in a small town, This is not an idyllic situation, After a series of unfortunate events, Blaize is sent off to Sanctuary Preparatory Academy one of THOSE schools,
But as it turns out, life at Sanctuary is anything but ordinary and far from what Blaize expects, I don't want to give away any spoilers, because one of my favorite things about Cody Wagner's writing style is his keen voice and his knack for surprising his readers in the best way possible.
The first time I read this book, I thought I was going to be reading a runofthemill, comingofage, LGBT YA book, You know, one of those feelgood novels about love and self acceptance, but that get kind of boring after a while, Like Blaize, reading The Gay Teen's Guide to Defeating a Siren was nothing like I expected, There's adventure, comedy, friendship, and best of all Supernatural Mythology in a Modern Day World! Not your average comingofage YA book by a long shot!
The best part is that now that I've finished the book, I'm dying to know what happens next.
I need to know who this Siren is, how she works, and why she's targeting specific groups, I also really want to know if Blaize will end up with the guy I want him to end up with but that might just be me being a girl who can't resist a bit of romance.
Well done, Cody! Your debut is a triumph! Okay, even though this is not a long book, or even remotely approaching densely written, this was a bit of a slog.
Nothing actually seems to happen until about/of the way through, and the plot was fairly thin, I know it's got a bit of the "first book in a series" thing going on, but so little happened in this that, for me, it didn't do the job of setting up any anticipation for the next book.
We didn't find out enough about the supernatural stuff to be interesting, and none of the characters seemed particularly fleshed out, I'll be kind and hope that was a deliberate choice, as the narrator is quite selfcentred,
In short, I really wanted to enjoy this more than I did, but it turned into a bit of struggle, Wagner's book, which is apparently the first in a series, is what happens when you combine the plotbunnies of "What if one of those gay conversion therapy camps was scamming the parents and all the kids inside got to grow up in a secret supportive environment instead" and "What if Hogwarts had queer students" The similarities to the Harry Potter books jumped out at me right away the principal is an appealing, fatherly figure who's hiding things about magical bad guys from the students, the protagonist quickly acquires a smart, assertive female friend, and by the end of the book a paranormal Big Bad has taken precedence over stressing about tests and bullies.
There are some interesting differences, though, The Golden Trio is replaced by a Golden Quartet that isn't all white, for one thing, There's a main character death that I wasn't expecting because the HP books didn't get that dark until book four disclaimer since I know my fellow queer girls will go there: it is not either of the MC's two lesbian besties.
The paranormal aspect of the book is also really different from Rowling's in that it posits the idea: what if some of the homophobes out there are being mindcontrolled by evil magical forces In other words, unlike the complete sequestering from the outside world that Rowling's magic users adopt, this one is related directly to it.
Also, this is different from Hogwarts in that the kids aren't at a magic schoolthey're at a regular school, just one for queer kids that's lying to parents and saying it's a cure campbut it still felt very Hogwartsy to me.
An interesting detail that I appreciated is that, like most other YA I've read, the main character has to deal with the "cool kid" bullies, Even when everyone at the entire school is gay like he is, As someone who was hurt quite a bit by a "cool couple" within my queer community as a teenager this really resonated, We can be kind of awful to each other even within our marginalizations, And there's a lot more to being accepted than marginalizations or lack thereofthere's that intangible, elusive quality of "cool" that often has a lot to do with not expressing your interests too enthusiastically or who knows what else.
There's a lot less romance than I've usually read in YA just the faintest hints the bullies are a couple, the protagonist does get one kiss, amp you can tell who the love interest is going to be as the series moves forward but given the age of the kids that makes complete sense and it's also really important that we get queer YA out there that shows queer kids making friends with each other and getting to live a queer life apart of specifically romantic and/or sexual relationships.
Something else I thought was neat about the book is that, while YA in first person often has faily statements on the part of the teenage narrator for example, fatshaming this book was the first one I'd ever seen where the instant the narrator says something faily he immediately dials it back.
He knows he fucked up, Like, there's a whole paragraph of him criticizing a homophobic pastor's appearance, and then he backpedals and acknowledges he's being unfair to criticize the way he looks instead of who he is as a person.
I am so grateful for that, There is so much gratuitous fatshaming in YA, and even if it's supposed to be unreliable narrator kids don't always know that, He even follows up a comment about Nazis with admitting he doesn't know what he's talking about, It wasn't antisemitic, but it was an inappropriate comparisonthink Godwin's Lawand I was so impressed that the character swallowed his own words within the same paragraph,
It's hard for me to know what to do with the ending emotionally because while it was a good ending, it's also like the Harry Potter books in that now I need to wait for the next book to see where this is going.
The Big Bad is still out there, but the students being protected by the school are still safe from their parents and from the outside world,
Definitely worth a read if you're one of those people constantly grasping for "but where were we" in your Hogwarts fantime, and love the idea of vast conspiracies of gay teachers protecting gay students from homophobic parents.
There isn't really bi representation in this book and if there were trans kids at the school they weren't mentioned or shown but I didn't catch any biphobia, either, Very good story. I was really pulled into it, It had humor and true to life drama, This is an alternate cover edition for sitelink
National Indie Excellence Awards,st Place Winner, LGBTQ YA Fiction
Readers' Favorite Book Award Winner
New England Book Festival,nd Place, Gay Fiction
Los Angeles Book Festival, Honorable Mention, Young Adult Fiction
Came out of the closet by accident Check.
Sent off to a prayawaythegay school Miserable check,
Shenanigans ensued Megaquadruple check,
Blaize Traless world falls apart when hes dragged to Sanctuary Preparatory Academy, a boarding school that claims to fix gay teens, The place sucks so much they even serve food like “Cleansing Corn, ” Blaizes misguided parents eat it up and hand him over for brainwashing,
But things at Sanctuary arent what they appear, Blaize soon discovers the schools antics are all a lie, Theyre also at war with an ancient enemy, Between surviving bullies, rescuing students from mysterious attacks, and passing algebra, Blaizes life is going to get outofcontrol crazy,
And freaking dangerous,
Lucky for Blaize, he wields the ultimate weaponbeing gay, And hes pretty good at it, I've never read a book in the "Gay/Lesbian" category before, and when I learned that the story was mainly about teens and preteens, I wasn't sure what to expect.
What I got was a magnificent story about teenage angst, awkwardness and friendship, Yes, the fact that most of the characters were gay was the main theme of the book, but the story wasn't really about that, specifically, It wasn't that they were homosexual, it was that they were different, . . and as such, were the unjust targets of bullying, isolationism and prejudice, of the most horrible kind,
Cody Wagner does something in his first book that I think is a great sign of things to come he outlines just how friggin' stupid homophobia and, in fact, ALL prejudice is, and draws a big red circle around it.
But he does it in a way that incorporates the main characters' youth and innocence, and more than a little sense of whimsy, There is also just a HINT of something supernatural going on could a mythical siren be responsible for converting otherwise normal people into homophobic jerks but it is barely touched upon.
I think this is because Mr, Wagner wanted to use this book to set up the characters and the story without using the fantastical as a crutch to hold it up,
The characters are SO endearing, and may be kids that we all know or knew, Blaize Trales great name!! is skinny and gangly and aloof, His roommate Jimmy is chubby and annoying yet somehow insidiously endearing, and his other roommate Cassie is young enough to be adorable and yet still precocious enough to be the wisest by far of the group.
The way these three, as well as an older girl named Roze, bond as friends is a joy to read,
I won't lie the ending of the story threw me for a loop, and really tugged at my heartstrings, The very notion of being so different that your own family and friends won't accept you for who you are is a scary one, and this book throws that fear into sharp relief, without even once losing the humor and innocence that stories about kids, and for kids, should have.
Bravo, Mr. Wagner. Please hurry and finish Part Two!
This book is not good, A lot of this book was fun, but that was coupled with a fair amount of less fun things associated with trauma around conversion camps even though this is not a conversion camp.
Overall I enjoyed reading this though, TW: Homophobie, Mobbing
Wow, Dieses Buch war einfach ein richtiges Abenteuer, Es war eine Mischung aus Percy Jackson und Winger, und jeder der mich kennt, weiß, dass solche Geschichten meinen Namen schreien, Ich liebe einfach Internatsgeschichten mit einer tollen Freundesgruppe, Die Charaktere waren so greifbar und toll gezeichnet, ich bin hin und weg,
Das Ende hat mich richtig zerstört und ich kann kaum es kaum erwarten, den zweiten Teil zu lesen! I didn't expect that this novel would be fantasy, instead I thought this novel was a contemporary genre.
I just found out that this novel is fantasy in part towards the ending, I don't read the synopsis, But the story is great,
.