skygiants

Picking up a book called Part Time Girl about a high school kid who switches (physically, magically, inconveniently) back and forth between Being A Boy and Being A Girl, I was like, okay, I know pretty much what the vibes of this are going to be. And the first couple chapters in which protagonist Michael/Kayla worries about a Sort Of Girlfriend and a Hot Boy and I Have Taken This Part Time Job As A Girl But Now I Need Girl Clothes, Bra Shopping! So Stressful!! did not really lead me to think anything different!

Then about 40% of the way through the book our protagonist was suddenly running through the woods from evil wizards, and I'm like, okay, this I did not expect.

It turns out the plot of this book is NOT high school drama and figuring out your complicated gender feelings! The plot of this book is that evil racist homophobic wealthy wizards called the Clan (yes) run the world and you have to team up with your traumatized neighbor to fight them, while also figuring out your complicated gender feelings along the way.

Also, the protagonist and the traumatized neighbor bond by hanging out and watching the 2014 kdrama Healer, the plot and cast of which is lovingly described in text. This is in fact plot relevant because they later use their arguments over which cast member is hotter to prove their identities to each other when it's in question. Now I do love Healer but given that it came out, again, in 2014 and I haven't heard anyone talk about it pop culturally in more than a decade, this possibly surprised me even more than the evil wizards.

I can confidently say that at no point did I predict some of the major turns this book took, and I will put them under a spoiler in case you, too, would like to experience this Experience as I confidently believe it was meant to be Experienced:

- the exclusive high school graduation part is an event for evil wizards to recruit and brainwash new evil wizards
- both Hot Boy and Sort Of Girlfriend come from prominent evil wizard families
- the kdrama neighbor's backstory trauma is that she's a SECRET AGENT for the RESISTANCE ORGANIZATION [well-funded] [funding unspecified] and she was captured and tortured freeing wizard prisoners from a high security prison; the guy who tortured her is coincidentally here working as a bodyguard for the local evil wizards and she really wants to kill him, which, eventually, they do
- our protagonist wants kdrama neighbor to help free the Sort Of Girlfriend from the clutches of the evil wizards, so they plan to roofie the Sort Of Girlfriend in order to get her out of their clutches, BUT instead of a roofie kdrama neighbor slips a different drug into the drink that will kill both Sort Of Girlfriend and Hot Boy if they go through the full wizard binding ceremony
- which is fine. everyone eventually forgives kdrama neighbor for this
- this happens at a local costume party club event where the protagonist is dressed as Magenta from Rocky Horror, kdrama neighbor is dressed as Uhura, Sort OF Girlfriend is dressed as Dread Pirate Roberts, and Hot Boy is dressed as the drummer from Spinal Tap, btw. This isn't plot-relevant but I think it's worth noting
- anyway then our protagonist comes clean with Hot Boy and Sort Of Girlfriend, both about the roofie-ing and about the boy/girl double identity situation, but it's fine, because Hot Boy is gay and Sort Of Girlfriend is protagonist-sexual and they all have a triumphant threesome in Hot Boy's basement
- it turns out btw the protagonist is an incredibly powerful shapeshifter from a family of shapeshifters that have been on the run from the evil wizards for generations, and the sex switches are just symptomatic of this and also of being genderfluid
- finally protagonist, kdrama neighbor, Hot Boy and Sort Of Girlfriend all enter in a plan to disrupt and destroy the local evil wizard organization .... which is mostly a success, helped by our protagonist shapeshifting into the villainous torture bodyguard and using Wheel of Time arguments as secret code to alert Hot Boy to the fact that this is a Disguise. but alas! Hot Boy nobly stays behind to sacrifice himself and dies!!
- rip to the threesome
- but it's fine because now the protagonist and now Officially Girlfriend get to go to resistance school to become omnicompetent anti-wizard secret agents and don't have to worry about summer jobs or college admissions. The end!