Book Review: F.T. Lukens – Love At Second Sight

I might’ve mentioned before that F.T. Lukens is one of my absolute favourite authors since they write queer fantasy in settings where queerness isn’t questioned, so the focus is on other aspects. After reading „Otherworldly“, though, I was a bit hesitant because it wasn’t exactly my favourite book of the year. So it really took me quite a while to pick up their next book, „Love At Second Sight“. Actually it was decided by chance, since I have a box full of snippets with the titles of unread books and this year I basically pull a snippet out of the box and (most of the time) read what’s on it. Despite my hesitation, I was excited to finally read a new F.T. Lukens story and, spoiler alert: I was not disappointed.

Short info: MLM romance, nonbinary character, BIPOC characters

The Plot

Cam is a normal human kid that is about to start a new school year in a new high school. Since the school has freshly been founded and school districts have been revisited, it allows him to attend school with his best friend again, a witch called Al. Cam’s plan is to fly under the radar, but fate has a different plan and right on his first day of school, Cam stumbles into a fight between other students – and has a vision: A beautiful girl getting murdered. As if the vision itself wasn’t terrifying enough, it also teaches Cam that he’s not as normal as he and his family thought. With the help of Gemma, a girl that is very much invested in all things supernatural, Cam tries to confirm what his vision hints at: he’s clairvoyant and can see glimpses of the future of a person when he touches them. As a clairvoyant, flying under the radar is pretty much impossible, since all other magical communities – witches, werewolves, psychics and the like – have an interest in winning Cam to help them with their cause. Cam, however, has a very different mission ahead of him: With Gemma and a group of friends that suddenly forms around the former loner, now that he’s no longer a ‚boring nobody‘, Cam tries to find the girl from his vision and to prevent it from becoming reality.

The characters

Oh, the cast of characters is diverse in all possible senses. Besides Cam, the human protagonist, there are all sorts of magical creatures gathering in his small circle of friends. There’s a nonbinary witch called Al and if I remember correctly they’re described as a person of colour as well. In my opinion, Al is not the most sympathetic character of the book. The old „the best friend that somehow sucks“ issue, but I gotta say that while Al drove me mad at times, I still like their vibes and the way the story turned out.

Then there’s the Lopez family – a Latinx werewolf family with a lot of sass. The most important one out of the werewolf trio of brothers (plus their cousin) is Mateo, who Cam is crushing on pretty hard. And I kid you not, Mateo is one of the loveliest characters I’ve seen in a while. A rather shy werewolf who isn’t in full control over his powers and occasionally grows fluffy ears whenever he blushes. CUTE.

Then there’s Mateo’s best friend, psychic Kaci, who sees ghosts but can’t communicate with them. Kaci’s a sympathetic, empathic and very understanding girl and she helps Cam a lot.

Then there’s Reese, a sprite with swamp powers. Reese was part of the conflict with the Lopez brothers that led to Cam discovering his abilities and throughout the book, he’s the „weak spot“ of the friend group, since his position seems the least secured. However, Reese turns out to be one of the good guys and he brings a lot of entertainment.

And then there’s Gemma, a girl who is interested in all things paranormal. She’s the one to make Cam’s abilities public, and he wins her over as his personal advisor / agent to help her figure out more about his abilities and coordinate the requests of all the other parties involved. Gemma is a colourful, bubbly personality that sometimes talks before she thinks, but also with a good heart.

So all in all the overall cast is diverse and it’s easy to love most of the characters. As I said, for me, Al was the „most critical“ part and I honestly wonder why so many books have best friend characters that just suck at being best friends, but at the same time … I guess I get why. Huh.

My overall opinion

I loved this book a lot more than „Otherworldly“. There isn’t really that much worldbuilding (there never really is much worldbuilding in F.T. Lukens’s books) and it isn’t exactly necessary, since we’re in a fictional small town with a high school, you just have to add various groups of magical creatures to the equation and most of them are so well-known in folklore that they don’t need much explanation anyway. The different factions, however, come with a bit of lore that is explained in the book in a way that comes across as natural since most of the specifics are either told Cam by members of the different factions or through Gemma, who comes across as a bit of an ADHD girl with a strong hyperfocus on all things paranormal.

The development of the love story between Cam and Mateo is as sweet as sugar, especially since Mateo is such a cute character in itself. There’s the obligatory difficulty in their story, but they overcome it and I think it makes their relationship indeed a lot stronger. The book is tense at times and I’d say perhaps a little darker than most other stories of F.T. Lukens, since the entire story is overshadowed by the fear that Cam’s vision will become true and that they can’t really do anything about it. So there’s indeed a bit more tension, although the overall story is rather … bubbly. Suddenly, the most normal human kid ever is no longer normal and boring, but has a shit ton of stuff to deal with that a normal boring human kid shouldn’t have to deal with. It’s entertaining, it’s fascinating and yes, it’s tense at times.

The plot twist in the story is wild and although it was foreshadowed a little, I was still surprised and yeah … It was a really good turn in my opinion.

All in all, the book was highly entertaining, heartwarming at times and sometimes a little painful. I don’t know where to place it in my „F.T. Lukens book ranking“, but I do know that it’s somewhere far above „Otherworldly“ (I am so sorry. „Otherworldly“ is not a bad book per se – but it wasn’t my story.)