Yeah, yeah, yeah, I too was drawn in by the super fun title. It set expectations of hilarity a touch too high. This is a thoughtful and emotional book, although quirkily laugh out loud and outrage fun at many points, and Blair Fell succeeds spectacularly in the end. When I finally got there. I kept throwing it over for other books from Netgalley and my own TBR pile, so my recollection is a little bit disjointed. Once I felt the book got going (halfway?? two-thirds??? or so??), it did become an enjoyably strange and strangely enjoyable ride. I intend to re=read it all the way through.

I love the character growth of Howie and Lennie -- I can picture those two quite clearly that I can almost hear them. I was daunted by the description of the AIDS crisis. As a child during those times, I was scared to death for my uncles, both of whom survived the times, one with AIDS who made it to the point where there was treatment that keeps him alive and well today. I still loathe the president who callously shrugged at their suffering. This is such an important part of history that needs to be recognized today, and I know there is no chance for books like this to be required reading in an educational setting for the foreseeable future. I have a teenager and I realize this is part of our divide. He does find homophobia to be clearly bizarre and idiotic, but he also has no clue while it's insane he's older than legalized marriage.

I’ll admit it—the title is what pulled me in. I love disco and kind of wish I’d grown up in that era. Not that I’d actually go out and dance, ha. Witches have always fascinated me; they strike the perfect balance between reality and magic without veering too far into fantasy, which just isn’t my thing. Plus, I spent a few summers on Fire Island, so I get the culture, even if I was way too young in the ‘80s to experience it the way this book portrays.

I loved revisiting certain aspects of that world—the humor of older gay men looking out for the younger crowd, the wild and sometimes shocking moments, and the sheer energy of it all. There’s a great balance of comedy and tenderness that keeps the story grounded. That said, the magical elements didn’t quite land for me; instead of enhancing the themes of tolerance and imagination, they felt like a distraction.

This isn’t a book for the faint of heart when it comes to promiscuity, explicit scenes, or strong language, but it *is* a book that captures depth, personality, and the party scene with striking honesty. Well done, even if not entirely my thing.

In this refreshingly original novel, Blair Fell combines supernatural fantasy with historical authenticity in a story set during the AIDS crisis of 1989. When Joe Agabian reluctantly joins his friend Ronnie for a summer in Fire Island Pines, he finds himself living with two eccentric older men who are secretly disco-dancing witches protecting the gay community from dark forces.

Fell excels at capturing both the vibrant celebration and underlying tensions of Fire Island's gay scene. The characters are wonderfully drawn, particularly Howie and Lenny, whose flamboyant personas and magical practices form the heart of the story. As Joe develops feelings for a mysterious ferryman with webbed feet, the coven works to protect the island despite their powers being weakened by the epidemic.
The novel's greatest strength is its balance of campy supernatural elements with the very real complexities of gay life during this devastating period. While the romantic storyline occasionally feels at odds with the more compelling magical narrative, Fell ultimately succeeds in creating a world where whimsical fantasy and historical reality coexist.

"Disco Witches of Fire Island" delivers both an entertaining escape and a poignant reminder of a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ history - a magical tale that doesn't shy away from acknowledging the shadows that loomed over the community it celebrates.

I really wanted to love Disco Witches of Fire Island. The premise is incredible - queer witches casting spells on a dance floor? Romance? More than a touch of spice? Unfortunately, while the vibe was immaculate, the execution didn't quite land for me.

The biggest issue I had was that the chapters and writing style felt imbalanced - the coven's POV chapters felt magical, whereas anyone else's felt dragging and airhead-y. There were moments of glittering magic and energy, and the fizzy magic of Fire Island was vibrant. I was just left feeling minimal chemistry between the pairings and was waiting for things to come together before the end of the summer.

That being said, I think this book will still find its audience. If you're here for the queer joy, disco aesthetic, and a fun, witchy coven, there's definitely enjoyment to be had. Personally I just wish it had been a little more polished so I could've fully lost myself in the fantasy magic.

This was a 3.5 read for me rounded up. I know there are going to be some that this will anger, especially the younger crowd. This plays in to hard the gay club scene in the 80s where some of the negative gay stereotypes come from (i.e. sleeping around with multiple partners.) I remember this. I was a doctor in NYC about 4 years after this novel is set. I saw the devastation of AIDS and had to give countless HIV diagnoses.

And make no mistake this is NOT a book of queer joy. Oh there's some of that there but it about their agony as HIV destroys their world. And one of the hardest hitting lines was about how the entire country came together to find out what happened to a few dozen people who died of Legionnaire's disease but the same could not be said when thousands of queer people were dying. I also remember doctors refusing to see HIV infected people. I had no respect for them. I was not one of them and yes I was exposed to HIV while in NYC (I got lucky)

Content warning. HIV infection/death, loss of loved ones, grief, drug use, casual sex, suicidal ideation

The main character is Joe, a young Armenian would-be doctor who lost his lover, Elliot to AIDS and his new friend, the Fabio-look alike, Ronnie who has the big idea of we're going to bartend on Fire Island and find us some rich boyfriends. All Joe really wants is to get away from himself and his pain and gets talked into it only to find out Ronnie didn't have all his ducks in a row.

Homeless and jobless, Joe is taken in by two year round residents, Howie, rather a hippie and Lenny, a bondage guy, both of whom are middle aged house cleaners and two of the titular Disco Witches. They give him a home and find him a job working with Vince, a truculent Irish bartender who works for an old woman who has this bar and her home open to dying AIDS patients with the help of her friend D'Norman, a nurse (both of them are also witches)

It follows Joe and Ronnie over the summer. We spend most of our time in Joe or Howie's heads with occasional journeys into Ronnie, Lenny and a few others. We have Scotty Black, the biggest club owner trying to destroy Joe's place of business. We have the Disco Witches who are as they sound, a group of queer folk who believe in the Great Mother Goddess who is good and needs to be in balance with the Great Darkness which is not. Their leader, Max, is dying of AIDS sequelae and their group of twirling disco queens is falling apart and Howie fears that the Egregore a mystical villain who will kill one of the holy lovers if he can is back on the island.

We the reader know things Howie doesn't (such as Joe has been lying and he fits the holy lover rubric and he's been seeing the Egregore) We can also guess who is going to fulfill the role left when Max dies. I loved Howie and Lenny. Joe I wanted to slap half the book.

This is a pile of angst with a happy ending. I won't ruin it but I will say it doesn't end badly. The Disco Witches will dance another day.

Now for the problems because yes there are some beyond the above mentioned casual sex. But honestly that IS the biggest problem for me because it goes on and on and on. The author thanks his editor for helping carve this down to something readable. Yeah, it needed carved down more. It's overly long and it began getting repetitive with Joe constantly beating himself up over Elliot and then Fergal, someone he met on the Island. Some of the metaphors were pretty tortured and this is the horniest bunch of people gay or straight I've ever seen. It did get to be a bit much. Still, I am glad I read it though it brought me back to those times and the people I lost in the late 80s and early 90s to AIDS, to exposure fears and just how easy it is to victimize an entire group of people unjustly.

A secret coven of gay witches can fight off evil spirits through the magic of disco dancing. That’s a literary premise I may have been waiting for my entire life, and for the most part, the author delivers with wit and campy fun. Set in the late 1980s, the story also captures a complex time to be gay, witch or not. In his author’s note, Fell explains that he drew on his lived experience from that era, and it shows in his evocative storytelling.

The book actually centers on an ‘ordinary guy’: twenty-nine-year-old Joe Agabian, who is a somewhat reluctant accomplice to his best friend Ronnie’s scheme to spend the summer chasing fabulousness and debauchery in the Fire Island Pines. They’re two young men from Philadelphia with nothing tying them down, and one could say their whole lives ahead of them, though it’s the height of the AIDS crisis, accompanied by Christian bigotry festering in national politics, which are ever-lurking terrors. Joe recently lost his ex, Elliot, to AIDS and carries guilt for not fighting harder for their relationship when Elliot defensively pushed him away. Still, he’s hopeful that immersing himself in gay partyland might help to break out of his funk, and when the summer’s over, he’ll be reenergized to pursue his dream of going to medical school.

The plan goes sideways as soon as they step off the ferry, and Ronnie confesses that his promise of bartending jobs for the two of them was a tad overstated. He’s got a housekeeping gig with board at the island’s hotel that will certainly turn into something more glamorous when the hotel owner recognizes the hot commodity he is, and as for Joe, he just needs to find work and a place to stay. Joe is livid, but stuck. He manages to find a room with a pair of older men, Howie and Lenny, who have space in their modest house while the third in their share is getting treatment for AIDS at a New York City hospital.

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that Howie and Lenny are two of the book’s titular disco witches. They have a pantry full of foraged herbs and medicines, and their personal stylings are a combination of Mrs. Roper from Three’s Company and Rip Taylor. Joe suspects there’s something odd going on with the two guys, which makes him a bit uneasy, but meanwhile he lands a job at a low key bar that suits him better than the flashy clubs in town. He’s also distracted by a handsome ferry worker, Fergal, who either hates his guts or wants to get down his pants. The vibes he’s picking up are confusing.

We learn more about the coven through Howie and Lenny’s point-of-view scenes. In addition to their ailing friend, Max, their quintet (a requisite number to channel their elemental power) includes an aging Earth Mama, Dory, and their equally flamboyant contemporary, Saint D’Norman. They’ve been working together since the late 60s and (vaguely) protecting lost young gays from murderous ‘egregores’ escaped from the Great Darkness. Howie and Lenny sense that another egregore is near, with maximal possibility of bridging worlds on the upcoming blood moon, and that Joe may be pivotal to averting disaster, unbeknownst to Joe himself.

There’s a ton to like about the book. The characters are well-drawn and appealing, the fantasy elements are fresh and delightfully ridiculous, and perhaps most of all, Fell captures the Pines scene with the perfect balance of over-the-top queer merriment and the gay beach town’s uglier strains of ageism and class snobbery. One feels though that the story tries too hard to be everything to everyone, beginning with the publisher’s claim that it’s “perfect for fans of The House on the Cerulean Sea, the Tales of the City series, and Red, White, and Royal Blue.”

Huh? Someone on the marketing team sure likes hedging their bets. And unfortunately, bowing to market trends, one supposes, the things the author does so well, like embracing the paradox and nuances of the time period, are interrupted by emphatic romance conventions that are probably too few and far between to satisfy mm rom-com fans anyway. Meanwhile, those expecting Armistead Maupin will skim over the heavy-handed love scenes, wondering when they’ll get back to Howie and Lenny, who have the more interesting stories to tell.

Well, it's a strange time we live in. I caught a social media thread about the book proclaiming Fell as “an Armistead Maupin for the new millennium.” Nevermind that Fell has been writing for decades, and he and Maupin are from the same generation and take inspiration from gay life in the twentieth century. Everything old is new again, I guess, but one wishes that a story about being queer in the 1980s didn’t have to struggle with the notion of widening access points.

Reviewed for Out in Print, to be published in May 2025

Disco Witches of Fire Island is incredibly fun and unapologetically gay. I immediately was hooked by the quick-witted writing style and the queer joy seeping from every page. For a book that takes place in and consistently discusses the AIDs crisis, it felt surprisingly light– emphasizing the joy in finding a like-minded community and the love that can come from being surrounded by those who understand and support you. The magic in this book is simply the magic of belonging, of a support system for even the most lost gays. I really enjoyed this.

Handling the AIDs crisis with an adept pen, Blair Fell paints the picture of a world where queer joy and even queerer magic can resist even the harshest of realities.

This is an incredible read. Gripped me from the get go and held on tight as I read it in basically one sitting. Tough in parts, but it should be when dealing with the AIDs pandemic and fallout for the queer community. The whole book reads like a fever dream in the best way.

A fun romp to Fire Island (LOVED the setting!) with a colourful cast of characters, each struggling with their own issues that come to a head over the course of a summer. There was a lot of care and respect put into the focus of the AIDS crisis and how it affected multiple characters, overall striking a balance between serious and sad moments while also keeping it lighthearted with lots of witty quips and fun dialogue. However, I was disappointed in the fantasy aspect- we really only get a taste towards the end, and it was more magical realism. The writing style and pacing was a bit jarring at times and didn’t always flow, but I found it really shined during emotional moments between characters. I very much felt for each one struggling with their personal hardships, and I appreciate the care the author put into showing their growth or resolutions.

Thank you to NetGalley and Alcove Press for the ARC!

I was really hoping for a campy good time but I got t a lot of weird phrases and cringey jokes. Joe could have been a great character but he wasn’t.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, it was different than many of the others things I've read recently and made a nice change. I appreciated the harsh look at the AIDs epidemic and the how traumatizing and heartbreaking it was. Ronnie's growth, from looking for a rich sugar daddy to being happy on the island with Vince, and Joe's acceptance of things he cannot change while trying to look for the happier times, even in all the darkness made for a great arc. I loved that Ronnie overcame it all and became a Disco Witch in order to save his best friend. I loved the Disco Witches, and how much Lenny and Howie took care of Joe throughout the summer was adorable. I wish I could see their house in real life because the way it was described sounded amazing.

However, in everything going on, I felt like there may have been TOO much going on. Ronnie, Joe, Elena, Howie, Lenny, Fergal, Saint, Dory, the Gladiator Man.... all had their own stories in a relatively short time span. There was mythology, magical realism, romance, historical, and political aspects, and while they mostly came together well, it felt a little overwhelming at times. I don't think that Fergal needed to have a mythological parent, nor did it really add much to the story... sorry. And, personally, the sentence structure seemed short and choppy at times, feeling more juvenile in a very non juvenile book. But that is just a personal issue that I notice, and is something I think is happening more and more. No more lengthy, complex structures for us, just tell and not a lot of show in the publishing industry.

3.75 stars rounded to 4.

This is the story of Joe and his summer in the late eighties on Fire Island. Joe along with his best friend Ronnie decide to leave Philadelphia and take summer jobs on Fire Island. Ronnie was "promised" bartending jobs and rooms to stay at one of the most popular gay clubs on the island.  Joe arrives a few days after Ronnie. Both with the hopes of finding true love. Joe finds Ronnie working as a hotel porter / maid and living in a tiny room. Joe does land in the attic of a couple of friends and workingbas a bartender in a small club. The story is a dive into the gay community in the eighties when AIDS was a ruthless killer. The search for love and acceptance. Follow Joe and Ronnie's summer on Fire Island. A rollercoaster of emotions, highs and lows, love and loss. The true bond of friends.

I don't know what I was expecting, but this was not it. While I was intrigued by the whole premise of the book, I ended enjoying it way more than I thought I would! There were moments that were gut-wrenching, but also heartfelt moments. You root for Joe's healing and wish for friends like Howie and Lenny. I love a good fantasy read, but I feel like with such important topics like LGBTQIA+ representation and history and the AIDS crisis, too much fantasy would have been a bad thing. Disco Witches of Fire Island had just enough sparkle to make it magical, but not so much that the importance of preserving LGBTQIA+ history and spaces was lost. Hopefully one day we will see more of what came next in a second book!

I love the 80s so was delighted to read this book. Really enjoyed the description of Fire Island and the love and bravery of the gay community on the island through the HIV/AIDS epidemic. A romantic story but thought there would be more of an fantasy aspect. Thank you to Netgalley and Alcove press for ARC.

I wasn’t exactly a fan of this book, which is so disappointing. The initial premise of it seemed so incredibly interesting and something that would 100% be right up my alley but the execution did not give me what I was looking for.

The writing was hit or miss for me. At times, it was overly descriptive and I found myself lost amongst all of the information being piled onto me but there were definitely times that I found it charming and fitting for the story.

Like I said above, the premise is very cool. An island of disco witches in the 80s providing refuge from the AIDs crisis? I was like count me in! However, I think a large part of my disappointment comes from the characters themselves. Joe wasn’t very compelling to me and, while I did feel for his loss, I just found him annoying. Most of the other characters were also pretty annoying to me, sexed up and constantly talking about it. Maybe it’s the borderline asexual in me but I’m just not a fan of the “I’m horny all the time” archetype, especially in queer media.

I also felt like the book was needlessly long. It definitely could have benefited from cutting down on filler.

All that being said, it’s so extremely important for books surrounding queer problems and spotlight queer communities to be published. Even though this book ended up not being for me, I deeply appreciate the fact that this book was written and taken on by a publisher to be published and it definitely will be important and loved by someone out there.

3.25⭐

LIKED:
- The setting of Fire Island in the late 80s was fun to read as someone who was not alive during that - time. I’m not sure if it was the most accurate in description but it very much felt like its own little world
- The topic of the HIV/AIDS crisis during that time and how it devastated different people and groups of people was really emotional to read. The way that the disease and its aftermath affected the different characters was quite compelling.
- Generally, I liked the characters.They were very flawed, but each of them had something about them that was relatable or captivating in some way. Joe was deeply frustrating, which is kind of the point, so I don’t want to fault him too much. He was written in a way that made him feel way younger than he was (acting more like the 24-year-old he was lying to be rather than the nearly 30-year-old he actually was).
- Ronnie was my favorite character. I found him to be the most nuanced and his interactions were the most fun. Vince was probably a close second.
- I really like the cover. It’s very eye catching even if it doesn’t tell the whole story.

LOATHED:
- Saying that it is and marketing this book as a fantasy is a bit unfair to the readers. This book probably lies somewhere under the magical realism umbrella, but even so, I was left pretty disappointed in the aspect. The main draw of me for picking this book up was the magic and the idea of a coven of gay witches in the 1980s. We got a smidgen of it towards the end, but I think we, the reader, were left way too in the dark about their practices for the majority of the book
- Others have also mentioned this in their reviews, but the pacing and flow of this book is clunky. There was a really lovely chunk of the book around 20-25% where I was feeling really invested and immersed, but then the character decisions and everything would take me back out of it.
- I did not feel any chemistry or interest in Joe and Fergal. I did not care. Actually, in fact, I wanted Fergal to leave.
- I also wanted more description and details about Fire Island. I wasn’t able to really make a mental map of the island, and having never been there, I think it would have helped me immerse myself even more. Honestly, I think I could say that about most of the locations, sans maybe the witches’ house. But I still could not tell you what Asylum Harbor looked like at all.
- The writing of the sex scenes or anything sexual was not for me and honestly quite cringe. There were some analogies and metaphors that just made me uncomfortable.
- This is a personal thing, but I don’t care for books like this writing real people into the story. Like, yes, Jerry Herman was a very important, prominent figure during the AIDS crisis in New York specifically…but him being there added nothing and just felt like a cameo for…a cameo’s sake? It also did not read like him at all.

LONGED FOR:
- More magic
- More descriptions and detail about the locations and the island overall
- Further character explorations that added further clarity as to why certain characters were making the decisions they made (Joe less so)

Will I read the next one? : Maybe? This was a tough read for its content. I’ve seen good things about A Sign for Home, so maybe I’ll possibly check that out.

(3.5 stars rounded up) At it's core, this is a queer found family story with magic. It is a blend of romance, fantasy, and history. There are a good amount of interesting concepts thrown in and the nostalgia is real, but it doesn't always hit the mark. Some info dumps make certain parts drag on and throw off the pacing. In the end, I think there is more to like than dislike, but I do wish it was a bit more polished.

This one... was a struggle. The writing style wasn't particularly compelling to me, but I was intrigued by the concept and loved the idea of diving into the world of late 80s Fire Island and the aids crisis, esp. with promised sprinkles of fantasy elements so I pushed through reading it despite wanting to DNF a few times.

Overall, this is a case of potentially fun concept, poor execution for me. The pacing was simply atrocious. Too slow for about 85% of the book where reading felt like pulling teeth and too fast for the rest where absolutely no time was spent on the resolution and climax of the novel. I think this could have benefited from being a much shorter story. And while I understand the fantasy elements were not necessarily the most important of the novel, esp. thematically, they felt incredibly underdeveloped to me which was hugely disappointing.

I will say I found most of the characters engaging, which was the novel's saving grace for me. Their grief and their fears and the sense of urgency to live life to the fullness and be reckless in some cases, or overly careful in orders, in the light of the aids crisis ravaging their community felt raw. Unfortunately, the moments where the novel engages with this fully without the disappointing fantasy plot getting in the way were rare.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The story starts with Joe, the protagonist, having lost his boyfriend to the virus. He is alone now and on a night out he meets Ronnie, a wishful thinker who becomes his best friend. Ronnie convinces Joe to leave his job and go with him to work bartending in Fire Island for the summer. Things don't go according to plan and Joe gets involved with some peculiar characters.

The AIDS pandemic is the bigger context in this book. It's a theme that makes me feel queasy and uncomfortable. I've seen people get sick, people die, but also people living with it and carrying on with their lives. I'm thankful that things have been improving over the years, but I can't help getting worried or scared sometimes, and reading related stories triggers the fear and makes me nostalgic and sad. As I kept making progress in the story I realized that the context made the life and personalities of the characters shine brighter, and a lot more interesting. How do Disco Witches keep on living with death always threatening?

In the end the story put me in a down mood, I felt sympathy for the characters and the hardships they had to face. It's a story that goes into that space in fiction where tragedies keep piling on until we arrive at a cathartic end. A journey with romance and some spicy scenes, which is what I enjoyed the most. I would really like for gay stories to divert from drama and tragedy, but at least this one doesn't dance around the ugly parts.

I was so excited to get approved for this novel! This book is not for the faint of heart (strong language, sex scenes, etc.) but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the elder gay men and their perspectives on things. I would recommend this book.