WHEN WE WERE MAGIC is kind of like The Craft meets Lisa Frankenstein, but delightfully queer and strangely surreal. The book literally opens with the heroine, Alexis, accidentally murdering a guy during a hookup by making his dick explode with magic. Desperate, she calls in her squad of five friends to help her. They're all kinda sorta witches, and their original plan is to bring him back to life with magic. Instead, they separate his body into pieces, including his heart.
There's a little bit of The Telltale Heart with this book, too, as the pieces of the boy haunt each girl as they're forced to dispose of the body, while also reckoning with how his disappearance/murder impacts the community, their relationships, and their magic. I think the beginning was stronger than the middle and the end, which felt a little unsatisfying to me. Especially since I know Gailey can do better. I'm reading one of their adult novels right now, JUST LIKE HOME, and it positively drips atmosphere and character development.
One of my friends said that this would make a better movie than it would a book and I see what she means. It would be a good visually arresting artsy horror movie, like Lisa Frankenstein or Velvet Buzzsaw. Not bad, though.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT is a sapphic Greek myth about Limos, the goddess of famine, and Demeter, the goddess of harvest. Long ago, the Fates decreed that they should never meet, because their powers were great enough, and diametrically opposed enough, that they could be responsible for one another's destruction.
Limos is obsessed with the specter Demeter plays in her life. When people approach her to bargain, she is always second best. When a poor farmer has a poor harvest, he turns to Limos to spite his competitors. She is used as a weapon against people, an instrument of suffering. One day, Demeter comes to her, asking her to do the same.
I thought this was a great tale of obsession, with two morally grey women who are too powerful to be controlled. It really did feel like one of the Greek myth stories I used to read in my copy of D'Aulaires as a kid, especially with what happened to the king who was foolish enough to kill one of Demeter's favorites in this book. Truly chilling.
What a great short story. I hope she writes a novel.
You've heard of the "gay for you" trope, now let me introduce you to the first "bi for you" I've ever read.
HER DRAG BARBARIAN is about a woman named Elowyn who is an archaeologist but has a dad who's into a business conflict/rep management type of business. He doesn't think Elowyn's future as an archaeologist is all that promising and has strongarmed her into taking on one of his clients: a drag business called Heavenly Lights.
Most of the problems-- sexual misconduct, hostile work environment, things involving fire-- are being caused by Je Sweet, the drag persona of a 6'4" French man named Beau, who is basically chaos in gaff tape and too-tight shorts.
Unfortunately for him, Elowyn is just as unhinged and psychotic as he is, and sees no problem threatening him with bodily harm or shoving his head into a table if it means keeping him from destroying the business that her very HONOR now dictates (or dicktates) that she save.
The comedy and banter in this book were honestly top-tier. I actually liked this book a lot more than THE CATCHER even though they had similar plots because it didn't feel like the heroine was as much of a victim and the breeding element made a little more sense here. I also liked that there was a little bit of a mystery, and how the pronouns of Je changed depending on whether or not she was in drag. Also, both the FMC and MMCs are chaotic bisexuals, which is a fun change in a genre where everyone tends to be so rigidly on one end of the Kinsey scale that it feels very y=mx+c y = m x + c m, if you know what I mean (did anyone else take Geometry? Lmfao).
HUSHED has been on my Kindle for a while but I wasn't in the right mental state to read it. Now that I've finished, I'm glad I waited, because this is one of those risk-taking books that kind of challenges the constraints of the genre its written in, and it does it for the best.
Archer is a stoic and damaged young man who is just starting college. He's incredibly withdrawn and depressed, and reads a little like an incel but without the sexism that goes hand in hand with that. He's desperately in love with his childhood friend, Vivian, an emotionally manipulative young woman who keeps getting into bad relationships where Archer ends up sidelined until she drops the guy and decides she needs him again. This is the forever cycle the two of them are locked into until Archer meets another guy named Evan.
This love triangle from hell would be toxic enough if Archer weren't also a murderer. Because he and Vivian basically grew up as brother and sister, and when they were still both kids, Archer saw Vivian's brother and all his friends sexually assault Viv. Now he's been slowly killing them off, one by one. And if Vivian-- or Evan-- ever finds out what he's been doing, there might be hell to pay.
HUSHED is a great book. It's one of the darker YA books I've ever read, which keeps the content from being darker than it probably would have been if it were an adult novel. The psychological elements are really well done and I was really impressed at how all of the characters were drawn. The whole thing is plotted like a movie, and I'm honestly shocked it doesn't have more ratings than it does. Any of the dark romance girlies who are also into M/M are going to LOVE this book. It has all the same beats.
Rosemont is an idealistic little town that looks like it could have come out of a Norman Rockwell painting, and is famous for its "eternal roses." But when Kit goes there with her mother to visit the paternal grandmother her father never told her existed, a pall hangs over the town. Everyone stares at her, whispering her name. She hears a strange man's voice in the middle of the night. And what's this about a festival?
STARLINGS is a pretty solid YA gothic novel with some genuinely creepy scenes and an empowered bisexual heroine and, of course, the hawt and sinister villain. I honestly wasn't expecting this to be as sensual as it was, and there were some excellent body horror scenes and implied grotesqueness that made me squirm.
Points off because it got a little weird in the third act and there wasn't as much build-up with the love interests (who weren't really love interests) as I would have liked. But if you're into vibes and atmosphere, and love folk horror, this is your jam. I recommend this particularly to fans of Ann Fraistat's WHAT WE HARVEST.
GODDAMN. This book is everything I want out of the YA genre. Richly atmospheric, darkly feminist, with a sexy queer romance between two girls who are tired of men being shits. READER, I MURDERED HIM is a Jane Eyre retelling told from the POV of Jane and Edward's adopted daughter, Adele, and it's an interpretation I've never seen before and didn't know I needed.
Adele in this book is the daughter of a prostitute. When she comes to Thornfield, she is haunted by the ghostly appearance of Bertha, and the sickly, miasmic influence of the house's sinister influence. When she's shipped off to an all girls' boarding school, that's when she comes into her own and learns not just the value of female friendship, but also the harsh truths of inequality in the world, and how men use and abuse their privilege to take advantage of vulnerable women. Obviously, this means triggers for everything from SA to homophobia, but I thought the author handled everything really well, and Adele always had agency.
And that twist at the end, OH MY GOD.
I had chills.
This is a vigilante story but it's a really good one. The story isn't as heavy-handed as I first feared it might be (I thought it was going to be edgy-for-the-sake-of-edgy). There were so many passages that I wanted to highlight the shit out of. If you like dark coming-of-age stories, chaotic queer women, and strong female protagonists, you'll love this book. I'm honestly shocked that this has such low ratings, because the writing and story were everything. This is the third Jane Eyre retelling that I've read this week and as much as I love the source material, I loved this interpretation.
My only qualm is that the epigrams with lyrics from modern pop songs are so cheesy and really ruin the atmosphere of the book. As much as I love the artists, Brandi Carlile, Beyonce, and Kate Bush have no business being in a Victorian novel.
I'll be recommending this book to everyone I know, and you can bet I'll be checking out this author's other books.
I was so excited to get a copy of this book. One of my favorite historical fiction (and fantasy, let's be honest) tropes is court intrigue, and the prospect of a gay romance filled with spymasters, assassins, and Shakespearean plays really tickled my fancy. Mostly because I'd read a book before with that exact blend of tropes, called AN ASSASSIN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND TREASON, and loved it. I fully expected to become just as obsessed as this one. Which is maybe not fair to the book, but it's a fact of the world that if you read something in a genre that blows you away, that's going to frame how you approach similar books going forward.
BY ANY OTHER NAME is an okay book. Honestly, it felt like more of a 2, 2.5 book but I'm rounding up a little because the writing was great and it was fun having a shallow, self-absorbed hero as the protagonist. He's an actor and he, well, acts like it. Which made him more fun than the stoic, super macho heroes that seem to be en vogue nowadays. I like a hero who's lax with his masculinity. He has a sad backstory too: he was nearly sold into slavery and only barely escaped, and now lives on the fringes of society with revenge in his heart, as he plays females on stage to survive.
When his voice starts cracking, though, that throws a wrench in his plans and through a series of unfortunate circumstances, he ends up working for one of the lords of society that he hates so much, trying to stop Queen Elizabeth from being assassinated. DON'T read the summary/blurb for this book by the way. It has major spoilers, including something that I assumed would happen right from the beginning but is actually gradually foreshadowed and built up to in the narrative. I think it's supposed to be a shock in the book, but because it's mentioned IN THE SUMMARY, it was not a surprise at all. Publishing houses, I'M BEGGING YOU. Don't do this.
I'm giving this a mid rating because it felt much, much longer than it needed to be. The pacing is not great and the book takes ages to build up to where it's going. It's also less about court intrigue than it is about one of those SIX OF CROWS-ish heist gang sort of plots, and had I known that, I wouldn't have applied for this book, because I don't like SoC or heists. I also didn't really feel the chemistry between Will and James. They felt very platonic, more like friends than love interests. I wish their relationship had been developed more, maybe with pining or, you know, some sort of emotional understanding. Just because you have your characters physically get together, that doesn't mean you're selling it.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
This is one of the strangest manga I have ever read. Komazu is a little sparrow who is afraid of snakes, but one day a snake saves him from a stampede. The snake is named Shirato. The two of them have a very strange relationship which ends up causing them to fall in love with each other, but because they are predator and prey, the fear that Shirato might eat Komazu looms over them. Also the author went kind of weird with the animal anatomy so, like, Komazu only has a cloaca and Shirato has a spiky snake-dick?
***WARNING: SPOILERS***
I had to read this because I just wrote a book that metaphorically involved sparrows, so it felt like fate. And I thought it was cute. A lot of the yaoi/shounen-ai books that were circulating when I was young were kind of rapey, and even though Komazu is maybe a little too aggressively curious about touching, this book didn't feel rapey, and I appreciated that. Fun one-shot if you like shape-shifter vibes that sort of but not really goes into monsterfucking/furry territory, although I will say that it is so damn weird that the HEA involves the snake guy creating a magical peen for the sparrow guy.
THE HILLS OF ESTRELLA ROJA is a queer college-age YA graphic novel set in Texas, with supernatural elements. Marisol is forced to return to the mysterious town she hasn't been in since she was a child after the death of her grandmother. Kat, on the other hand, is a paranormal podcaster who receives a mysterious email urging her to go to the same town to investigate something called "devil lights" and various mysterious disappearances.
Estrella Roja, which means red star in Spanish, is creepy right off the bat. They don't get a lot of outsiders, so there's a lot of ominous staring and whispered conversations that the girls clearly aren't meant to hear. Kat ends up approaching Mari because they lock eyes at a diner and she seems the friendliest out of everyone. They end up hitting it off, as two queer girls in a weird situation. When they go to the library, they find old articles hinting at murder and occult phenomena. Mari finds creepy photographs and journals in her aunt's house. Basically, SHIT GETS REALLY WEIRD.
I don't want to spoil anything, but this was a pretty cute read. Even if you don't like horror, nothing too scary happens. (I'm not a fan of horror or gore-- I will be very quick to nope out if heads start rolling.) My ARC was not full-color, but I liked the art in the few sample pages I had. It's done in that minimal, indie style, which is common in imprints like First Second. I also liked that one of the girls was Latina and a lesbian, and the other girl was bisexual and had a non-binary best friend. The diversity felt super casual, and added to the story-- especially with regard to Latinx folklore. Tonally, it reminded me a lot of the '90s Scooby Doo movies, like Zombie Island and Witch's Curse.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
The best retellings renew your appreciation of the original work while also making you fall in love with the story all over again with brand new eyes. ANNE, for me, was exactly that. It's a modernized version of ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, where Anne is interested in art and zines (instead of reading) and falls in love with her best friend, Diana.
I thought the author did a great job maintaining the core of who Anne was as a person. Matthew and Marilla were wonderful and I thought it was very clever to turn Avonlea into an apartment complex in Canada called Avon-Lea. Also, in keeping with modern perceptions about bullying, there are now discussions about why Gilbert's behavior isn't okay and how it isn't fine to harass someone even if you're doing it because you like them.
This is just such a wonderful adaption. I actually teared up a little while reading it because it was so good and so cute.
Whoa. This book was... something else. The first half of it was fantastic-- character development up to here, settings and atmosphere that had me feeling jealous, and the perfect blend of character-driven and story-driven elements propelling the book forward. The second half was... weird. Very, very, very weird. I was trying to think about what this book reminded me of and then it hit me: Stephen King's ROSE MADDER. The ending was like something out of a fever dream and I wasn't sure it worked. There was also some major insta-love between the two characters. They were both so broken, I wish there had been more time for them to build a rapport with each other on an emotional level before deciding they were in love after they did it once. I mean, really.
The story is very dark and I would advise anyone picking it up to go in with caution. It opens up with a violent murder-suicide scene and there are graphic depictions of self-harm. Towards the end, there's a lot of gore and emotional trauma. I didn't see many reviews warning people about this. The self-harm passage was particularly visceral and had me feeling a little light-headed (I think it occurs around 25% in the Kindle version).
Our two heroes are Zach and Trevor. Zach is a computer hacker and the son of abusive parents. Because of this he has major emotional intimacy problems and can't sleep with anyone he loves (or love anyone he sleeps with). Trevor, on the other hand, is the sole survivor of his father's murder rampage in their home. His father was an artist and an alcoholic before he just became an alcoholic (and then a murderer). Now Trevor himself is an artist and has become numb after a life spent in and out of foster homes. To anchor himself, he has returned to the scene of all of his traumas: the house in Missing Mile.
I think this book is worth reading because it is a work of LGBT+ horror, it is chock-full of '90s fringe culture references, and does a great job with atmosphere and setting. If the romance and the story had been just a little more fleshed-out this could have been an easy five-star read. I'm a little shocked that so many people were condemning this book for being too sexually graphic. Apart from being a little too descriptive about bodily fluid, this is more story than it is sex scene. I found the violence way more frequent and off-putting (funny how way fewer people are talking about that).
UPDATE: Goodreads did that thing where they deleted my old review (and all the likes) because I guess my review and love of T. Kingfisher were just too amazing for this world. But that's okay because I'm just going to use this as an opportunity to scream at you to READ HER BOOKS BECAUSE SHE'S AMAZING. Also, stop being toxic, Goodreads. ♥
I'm not usually into horror novels but I like classic horror that relies less on blood and gore and more on psychological tension and atmosphere, and this book has both of those things in spades. WHAT MOVES THE DEAD is a delightful bundle of tropes: creepy animals, crawling mold, a gothic castle, a family filled with madness, and a dark, dank secret that would chill the blood of men, all told by a dryly witty nonbinary protagonist, Alex, who has come to the House of Usher to aid a childhood friend as she succumbs to a mysterious illness.
I don't know if any of you are familiar with Magic the Gathering lore, but this has very similar vibes to the plane of Innistrad when it was being influenced by Emrakul: picture a quaint 19th century European village being slowly poisoned by toxic and sinister influences. The interactions with the flora and fauna and the palpable terror of the villagers made this feel like an old skool horror movie that could have starred Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff. I also liked the comedic elements that came from Alex and the proper Ms. Potter, Beatrix's fictional aunt, and determined female mycologist.
Less is definitely more going into WHAT MOVES THE DEAD because part of the fun is figuring out what's going on. But this is definitely creepy and despite being under 200 pages, the pacing was economical and perfect. If this isn't made into a movie, somebody's not doing their job.
Just in time for Pride Month, 365 GAYS (plus one for leap year) is a comprehensive tome of many famous and inspirational LGBT+ people, spanning as many letters of that alphabet as possible (as well as including a handful of allies who performed exceptional works of allyship, such as Princess Diana, who helped normalize people who were HIV+ in a way that very few were willing to do at the time). The careers shown in here are amazing, from writers (Dorian Gray and Alice Oseman), to YouTubers (Troy Sivan and Jojo Siwa) to actresses (Kristen Stewart and Dan Levy) to politicians, activists, royalty, athletes, artists, scientists, and more. It's racially diverse as well, which is also wonderful, because I have read other books about LGBT+ folks that have, unfortunately, skewed very white. This is just a really great and important collection and the cover and illustrations are beautiful, so it's AAAART, as well.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
Whoa. I'm honestly kind of shocked that this has such low ratings because it seems like it's a pressure cooker of everything that the YA community claims to love: mature voice, lyrical writing, chaotic sapphic energy, morally grey characters, poison, and court intrigue. Even better yet, I read this hot on the heels of another work of Elizabeth Bathory fanfiction, THE BLOOD CONFESSION, and I actually think this one might be better!
Less is more going in but I'll try to give a brief summary. Anna Darvulia is a midwife's daughter who lives in a home with an abusive father. She and her mother barely scrape enough together to earn a living with the father drinking all his profits, so when she catches the eye of Countess Bathory and earns her favor, it seems too good to be true. Anna and Elizabeth eventually grow close, developing an almost romantic bond. And as Anna falls deeper and deeper under her spell, it seems like there's nothing she won't do to keep her status as Elizabeth's "dove."
The writing in this book is great and I thought the author did a really great job managing that historical tone without being too verbose. Once the book started rolling along, it had me clutching the book with white knuckles, desperate to find out what happened next. It's pretty violent for a YA and the fraught relationship between Anna and Elizabeth reminded me of some of the 1970s bodice-rippers I read, where the "hero" was actually blatantly unapologetically evil, and I think this is the first F/F book I've read that captures that same energy-- although this is not a romance.
I'll definitely be checking out more from this author because this was slipping-off-the-edge-of-my-seat good.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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