What does it mean to be different: Boy With Wings by Mark Mustian #bookreview #BoyWithWings #NetGalley

What does it mean to be different? From Mark Mustian, founder of the Word of South Festival of Literature and Music and award-winning author of the international bestseller “The Gendarme,” comes the new Southern gothic novel, “Boy With Wings” (March 15, 2025, Koehler Books).
About the book: Johnny Cruel is born with strange appendages on his back, frightening his neighbors and leaving him struggling to find a home. Johnny ends up in a “freak show” traveling the 1930s South, where he bares his back to onlookers who come to gape and fawn. Is he a horror or an angel? Should he hide himself to live his life?
As Johnny comes to grips with his uniqueness, he embarks on a journey of love and finds the miracles that give our lives meaning. Mustian’s thrilling and emotional story of self-discovery is perfect for book clubs and fans of historical fiction.

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Hi and welcome to my review of Boy With Wings!

Ah, the dreaded three-star read. An okay story to read, a nightmare to review. It’s so much easier to rave about a book you love or rant about a book you hate, but the ones in the middle? The ones you picked up because you thought you would love them but then didn’t? I hate those 😅

So yeah, I picked up Boy With Wings on a whim. I liked the cover and I liked the premise even more and I felt sure it would be right up my street. Unfortunately, though, something about the execution didn’t quite work for me. Magical realism is always a bit hit or miss for me, that might be part of it. My inner Fickle Frieda made a comeback and that sure didn’t help. Neither did the fact that I seemed to have the attention span of a gnat again. But the cold, hard truth is that reading Boy With Wings took quite some effort at times and it felt much meatier than the 300 something pages it actually is.

Boy With Wings tells the story of Johnny, a boy born with green eyes, white fluffy hair on his head, and winglike ridges on his back that only grow and extend and even sprout some kind of feathers as he grows older. Being different is never easy, but when it’s that obvious, it’s even harder. To the point that his mother stages his death so they can get away. When his mother dies, he is taken care of, loved even, by a group of former slaves, but he gets snatched away and ends up in a freak show. 

I enjoyed that first part but then it all sort of fizzled out and by the end, I felt little connection to any of the characters, and little urge to find out what happened to them. The story just lost me.

Boy With Wings, for me, missed the mark. If you’re intrigued by the premise, or enamoured with the cover, don’t let me stop you, you may well enjoy it more than I did.

Boy With Wings is out in digital formats, paperback and hardcover on 15 March.

Thanks to Koehler Books and NetGalley for the DRC. All opinions are my own.