The Rules & Regulations for Mediating Myths & Magic
by F. T. Lukens
Urban Fantasy / Young Adult / Romance / LGBT
287 pages
Published 2017

I loved this book. The wit is dry, the action easy to follow, the confusion of the main character absolutely warranted (Mermaids? in Lake Michigan?!), and it’s just wonderful. And it stars a bisexual teenage BOY. Male bisexuality could use more visibility, so this made me really happy. I picked this book for the M/M for Pride; I was really excited to find the main character is bisexual! It was a great surprise.

Bridger (an unusual name, but it fits him) is a senior in high school with a crush on his next door neighbor. He plans to go to school far away – Florida – where he can just BE himself instead of having to come out. But for that he needs money; so he answers an ad for an assistant doing….well he’s not sure exactly what. When he finally demands answers, he learns the truth about the world of myth and magic, and things snowball from there.

He wrestles with keeping it secret from his friends – because really, who would believe he saw mermaids in Lake Michigan? At the same time, he’s trying to wrap his head around his attraction to Leo, star football player, who just might like him back, and how to tell his mom he’s bisexual.

I loved Bridger, and his best friend, Astrid, who will kick the butt of anyone who looks wrong at Bridger, and Leo was an absolute dreamboat. I also want to know more about Pavel and his companions! I really really hope the author writes more books in this world, because I want to read them!

From the cover of The Rules & Regulations for Mediating Myths & Magic:

Desperate to pay for college, Bridger Whitt is willing to overlook the peculiarities of his new job – entering via the roof, the weird stacks of old books and even older scrolls, the seemingly incorporeal voices he hears from time to time – but it’s pretty hard to ignore being pulled under Lake Michigan by . . . mermaids? Worse yet, this happens in front of his new crush, Leo, the dreamy football star who just moved to town.

Fantastic.

When he discovers his eccentric employer Pavel Chudinov is an intermediary between the human world and its myths, Bridger is plunged into a world of pixies, werewolves, and Sasquatch. The realm of myths and magic is growing increasingly unstable, and it is up to Bridger to ascertain the cause of the chaos, eliminate the problem, and help his boss keep the real world from finding the world of myths.