Queer media often goes for the weird and the wonderful when pitching stories, taking a seemingly random idea and transforming it into something remarkable and unique for audiences to enjoy. Spoiler alert – this book is not that. It may be trying to be that, but oh how it struggles.
Bored Gay Werewolf is exactly that – a bored gay werewolf who is leaning to cope with his condition. One day, he meets a fellow werewolf at work, and they start to work together to develop a service for other werewolves like them. But he changes Brian for the worse, and he begins to detach himself from his loyal group of friends. When his mentor’s intentions take a turn for the dark, he faces an extraordinary struggle to free himself from his dark grasp, with more than he could ever imagine at stake.
This story is quite frankly half-baked at best. It takes a very random idea which feels like a stretch even by fiction standards, blends it with a loose story and has packaged it up into this book. From the pacing to the story to the overall ideas behind it all, this book was lacking on almost all fronts for me. There were sections of this book that were drawn out far beyond their need, and others inexplicably rushed and not explained in the slightest. Both times Brian ‘comes out’ as a werewolf, it was handled badly.
The first time, when Brian comes out to his parents, the whole affair is sorted in 5 lines. I can’t claim to be an expert in this area but I feel like such a groundbreaking revelation would need more than 5 lines. And when this is revisited at the end to reveal his condition to his friends, they surprise him by saying they already knew. This is bad form for someone coming out as queer but someone coming out as a werewolf? No, there’s absolutely no way that in a world where these creatures aren’t known about people predicted you were a werewolf.
The queer ‘representation’ in this story was also incredibly lacking. For a book entitled Bored Gay Werewolf, this didn’t feel like queer representation in the slightest. I’m all for not making a big deal of someone’s sexuality in a story where it’s not needed, but if you’re going to include the word ‘gay’ in the title, you’d be forgiven for assuming this was a somewhat important part of the story. I don’t know whether in previous revisions this had more of an impact, but this name honestly feel as though it’s been thrown in there for the sake of having a queer title that people will find comedic. There is some good non-binary representation in the story, but this is fleeting.
I don’t know what I should have expected going into Bored Gay Werewolf but what I got was wholly unsatisfying. There is just too many underdeveloped ideas going on all at once that simply do not work as well together as the author assumingly thinks they do. It wasn’t a tough read at all, but did feel pointless at many points, and sadly, did not have any satisfying element to the plot at any point. Brian may have transformed with the full moon, but until this book does the same, it’s not one I’d be rushing to recommend.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Bored Gay Werewolf (ISBN: 9-781838-957018) was published in 2023. A copy is available to borrow from the LGBTQ+ Lending Library in the LGBTQ+ Lounge
