"The Pretender (Animorphs, #23)"  by K.A. AppleGate

Reading blog: back dated 10/27/2025

This book continues one of Tobias’s ongoing struggles: identity. Now that he can morph again, he faces the choice of becoming a human nothlit: regaining a human life but losing his morphing powers. The dilemma cuts to the core of who Tobias is. Is he human, hawk, both, or neither?

Tobias’s conflict deepens when a supposed “cousin” offers him a chance at having a family again. His emotional turmoil peaks in a heated exchange with Rachel, where she insists he isn’t truly a hawk, citing his empathy, his ability to read/write, and thought are human things not hawk things. Tobias argues that he is too human to be a real hawk, yet too hawk to be fully human. Rachel wants him to choose humanity, both to ease his pain and because she loves him: “What am I supposed to do, Tobias? I’m a girl. You’re a bird... We can’t hold hands, Tobias. We can’t dance. We can’t go to a movie together.”

As the story builds toward its climax, Tobias reflects on what it means to be human: “Humans didn’t have a great record of getting along with people different from themselves... Hard to imagine humans welcoming seven-foot-tall goblins into the local Boy Scout troop when they couldn’t even manage to tolerate some gay kid.”

That line really got to me as it directly links Tobias’s struggles to the experience of being queer and "othered". That's what makes his story resonate so deeply. He realizes that humanity itself is a balance between instinct and emotion, savagery and compassion, which feels like the perfect resolution to his long identity struggle: “It’s a rotten situation, I guess. But my duty is to be what I am. A hawk. A boy. Instinct. And emotion.”

By the end, Tobias hasn’t chosen one identity over the other, he accepts being both. His moment at the end of the book with Rachel, celebrating his birthday together, feels like quiet healing after so much pain even if Tobias still has more struggles ahead of him in later books.

Tobias’s journey has always reminded me of the queer experience: the desire to belong, the fear of rejection, the struggle of your past identity and your new one, and the courage to define yourself as both, neither, or however you see it. The fact that the book itself acknowledges this parallel makes it even more powerful.

Perfect. Five stars. No notes. 

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