Month: December 2013

TB reviews Tighter, Tighter by Lynn Kear

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tighter,tighter

Today I’m pleased to review Tighter, Tighter by Lynn Kear. This is the second novel I’ve read by the author and I have to say I’m quickly becoming a devoted fan. Before I say more, here’s the synopsis:

Eighteen-year-old Kath Branch disappeared from St. James, Illinois in 1975. That same night, local sandwich shop owner Billy Carlson was gunned down and dumped in the St. James River.

This cold case is personal for prosecutor Meredith Carlson. Billy was her husband’s father.

Convinced she’s solved the case, Meredith lures the now legendary rock star back to her hometown for the first time since she left thirty-five years ago.

Meredith has no idea she’s about to unearth shocking secrets about herself, her husband, and her family.

A couple of months ago, I read and reviewed Black-Hearted Bitch and really enjoyed it. I mentioned in that review that Kear hooked me right away. The same can be said for this novel, Tighter, Tighter. From the very beginning I wanted to know more. I won’t try to explain too much since I don’t want to accidentally include any spoilers, which is why I copied the synopsis for this review. I hate finding out too much before I read a book.

The story has a lot going on and there are a few twists and turns. Yet, Kear’s writing simplifies the plot. She has a unique way of throwing a lot of curve balls at the reader without confusing the reader. Sometimes authors are too busy keeping their readers off-balance that they forget that the plot has to make sense. This isn’t the case with this book. Even though Kear kept me on my toes, I never thought I was lost at sea. Each chapter added to the suspense.

The characters are all pretty selfish and I didn’t relate to them personally, but I found myself liking many of them on some level. It’s difficult to create flawed characters and yet still make them somewhat likeable and I have to give kudos to Kear for accomplishing that.

I didn’t intend on reading it in two days, but I did. Simply could not put this book down. I look forward to reading more by her.

Danika reviews 1222 by Anne Holt

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1222

When I first saw this book mentioned on Queer Books Please’s list Lesbians In Cold Places: A New Genre, I was already super enthusiastic about the list itself. I like seasonal reads (hence my October binge on horror), and combine that with lesbian main characters? Sold! Then I read the description of 1222 and found that it fulfills one of my favourite tropes: the Closed Circle. And it was compared to And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, which I read last month and enjoyed. So an And Then There Were None-esque story about people snowed into a creepy hotel, with a lesbian main character who is in a wheelchair? You could not have hooked me any more than you already have. And maybe that build-up was the problem, because I did not enjoy this one nearly as much as I was expecting.

For one thing, this is a mystery, but it is not similar to And Then There Were None. There are more than a hundred people in the hotel, and to avoid spoilers, let’s just say it’s not as if a large percentage of those people end up dead. Also, they are only stranded for a few days, so the stakes weren’t as high as I was expecting. And then there’s the main character, Hanne, who is utterly unlikeable. I enjoy flawed characters, so I don’t need main characters to be likeable in order to appreciate the read–I found the main character in the Red Tree delightfully causter–but Hanne is a complete misanthrope. She looks down on other people. The line that made me recoil is when she is describing her housekeeper: “But I’m not fond of Mary. She is simply there, like a human piece of furniture, and I have learned to live under the same roof as her. That’s enough for me: Nefis, Ida, and a tired, dried-up whore who cooks our meals.” Later she calls a little person a “dwarf” and continually describes him as looking absurd and clownish, even when she begins to like him. She calls all religion a “scourge”. And on a slightly different note, there is pitbull hate in this book, which I don’t appreciate. And, [spoilers, highlight to read] there are only three people of colour in this book, all minor characters, who all end up being revealed to be carrying concealed weapons. [end spoilers]

I also realized that this is actually book eight of the Hanne Wilhelmsen series, but 1222 did a good job of filling me in on the basics of her backstory so that I didn’t actually feel like I was missing anything. The action starts off strong: the book begins with the train Hanne is on crashing. Unfortunately, I did feel like the rest of the book was a little bit slow. I found the characters difficult to keep track of, because most of them I just didn’t care about. To be fair, I didn’t see the resolution of the mystery coming, and it did all make sense, but I wasn’t invested. (Also, the very end was… a little outdated now.) Overall, I can recognize the writing quality itself was good, but without being interested in the plot or the characters, I didn’t find it to be very compelling. I’ll admit that I haven’t read a ton of mysteries, so that may affect my outlook, and other book blogs seem to give 1222 a high rating. Maybe a mystery buff who likes anti-heroes would enjoy this one, but I would recommending passing on this Lesbians In Cold Places read.

Lesbrary Link Round Up: December 5 – 18

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AllWeKnow   NoStraightLines   MermaidinChelseaCreek

Autostraddle posted

Band of Thebes posted The Best LGBT Books of 2013: 92 Writers Name Their Favorites.

Cleis Press posted We are looking for interns!

Elisa posted 2013 Rainbow Awards.

ELIXHER posted Alternative Realities: Staged Readings by Three Black Lesbian Writers.

LadyLike Book Club posted Episode 22 – Conley is Steam.

freshtracks   howpoetrysaved   bestlesbianerotica2014

PrettyQueer posted Lesbians Who Eat Their Young: How Sarah Schulman and I got the boot from Best Lesbian Erotica 2014.

queer book club posted Diversifying Your Queer Reads: Suggestions wanted!

Queer Books Please posted Lesbians In Cold Places: A New Genre and Episode 46 – Sled Dogs, Regency Romance, More Cold Weather Lesbians.

Women and Words has been hosting the Holiday Hootenanny: 12 days of huge book giveaways!

Alison Bechdel‘s Fun Home is getting a cast recording of the musical.

Amber Dawn was interviewed at Arsenal Pulp Press.

palewings   collaterallight  Sisterhood

Collateral Light by Julia Cohen was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Pale Wings Protecting by Lesley Davis was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Sisterhood by Julie R. Enszer was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Training Days by Jane Frances was reviewed at C-Spot Reviews.

SBF Seeking… by LaToya Hankins was reviewed at Loving Venus – Loving Mars.

West of Nowhere by KG MacGregor was reviewed at C-Spot Reviews.

Dysphoria by Karelia Stetz-Waters was reviewed at Loving Venus – Loving Mars.

For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter page! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads and tumblr. 

This post has the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee.

Danika reviews Fresh Tracks by Georgia Beers

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At the end of November, when I was planning the books I’d like to pick up in December, I took a look at my shelves to see if there were any holiday or wintery books I hadn’t read yet, and Fresh Tracks immediately jumped out at me, so I knew it was a must-read for the month. I’m glad that I took that look, because this was a great December read. It takes place just after Christmas and into the new year, so it’s… holiday-adjacent, without being a blatant Christmas book. Fresh Tracks is about seven lesbians who get together in a cabin in the woods for a vacation, and lesbian drama, of course, ensues.

I ended up liking this book a lot more than I was expecting. I thought it would be a quick, fluffy romance book, but I ended up really enjoying the characters. Even though there are seven main characters, they are distinct and easy to keep track of. There are Jo and Amy, the lesbian couple who have been married for fifteen years and are still adorably madly in love, who act almost in a nurturing, parental role over their friends; Molly and Kristin, who have also been together for a while, but their relationship is falling apart due to Molly’s passive-agressiveness and Kristin’s workaholic tendencies; Sophie, who is recovering from a devastating break-up; Laura, who realized she was gay after she married a man, then got together with a woman and left him, only to have the other woman leave her; and Darby, Jo and Amy’s smartass niece who is terrified of commitment but happy to seduce any woman standing next to her.

Phew! Just describing them makes it seem like there are a lot of characters, but they really are easy to keep track of, and even though the narrative rotates between them, I never got annoyed by that. I’m often losing track of names of characters, so that’s a pretty good sign. Plus, they are all different ages (Amy and Jo are the oldest, Darby is the youngest, and everyone else is somewhere in between) and have different personalities and voices (which should be a given, but sadly isn’t always). There even is, shocker, a lesbian of colour (Sophie). They also sort of end up in pairs or groups: Amy and Jo act as a unit, Molly and Kristin push and pull against each other, Sophie and Laura bicker (because Sophie sees Laura as a cheater, and Sophie’s ex-girlfriend left her for another woman), and Darby bounces between Molly and Jo in character interactions.

Understandably, with seven lesbians in one small space, there is lesbian drama, but the drama is entirely realistic, and entertaining. (Though I did think Sophie was a little over-the-top in her resentment of Laura, but that’s still believable.) I started narrating what was happening to my roommate: “Darby, what are you doing?” There is definitely enough tension to keep in interesting, but not enough to make it uncomfortable. And each character has their own arc in the story, perhaps excepting Jo and Amy, because their lives were pretty great when they started. The plot manages to balance all of those storylines really well, while playing characters off each other. I was really enjoying it, with my only real complaint being the “Your generation” comments that some of the characters made (“Your generation, with your cell phones, and your internet, and your lack of social skills”), with Darby kind of reinforcing those ideas…? And then there was one detail near the end that unfortunately really affected my enjoyment of the story as a whole. To express it in a non-spoiler way, there was an event that I don’t think was properly dealt with and addressed. Specifically: [spoilers, highlight to read] Molly makes out with Darby, and never tells Kristin, even though Molly and Kristin are back together at the end and working on their relationship. It’s not addressed at all that they kissed. [end spoilers] That felt like a really huge loose end, and I was surprised that it wasn’t dealt with at all. It made the ending not feel like a complete resolution, even though everything else was addressed. I still liked it a lot, but sadly that one detail makes it not feel like one I’ll want to re-read. It’s still one I would recommend, though, especially as a lesbian winter read. Also, there’s a lesbian Christmas tree. I enjoyed that.

Tag reviews 25 Years of Malcontent by Stephanie Byrd

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For November I reviewed the follow-up collection by Byrd, A Distant Footstep on the Plain. I’m doing it a little backwards this time by reviewing her first collection second, but it’s for a reason.

25 Years of Malcontent is, like its successor, raw and painfully real, but some of the works in this collection (e.g. “Mother’s Cadence”) are a little loftier, a little harder to grasp if you’re not well attuned to fine details related to the classics. Each poem is masterfully crafted and grabs your attention entirely; this is not a collection to read idly. I found that not only was I completely pulled into each poem, but that I reread it over and over– not necessarily due to confusion, but because each poem has such a powerful punch that I couldn’t help but reel and re-read sometimes to try to recover. Byrd’s writing is intense, she doesn’t pull any punches, and she doesn’t give you time to recover before the next one.

Her poems cover her own experiences; racism, the experience of being a lesbian, but in less of an upfront way compared to her later collection. This earlier collection is a little more masked, a little more intent on searching for the meanings of each poem, which are not always immediately apparent such as in “Dem Bones”: “it’s here! another bone for my garden / it’s received! another lady to tea”. Again, these are not poems to be idly read. If Byrd’s carefully crafted writing doesn’t get you, the raw emotion will. A few lines in “Mimi” illustrate this well: “i watched the rain destroy the roses / the length of time is not essential in these matters / i had only to wait to see the petals crumble with each drop”.

25 Years of Malcontent is beautiful and engaging, but I would caution that this collection in particular is not necessarily for someone who doesn’t understand much about poetry. Those who don’t “get” it will find themselves frustrated and missing out on Byrd’s amazing writing if they read it quite before they’re ready, I think.

[Editor’s note: This chapbook is available for free in ebook format!]