Month: October 2016

Shira Glassman reviews Swan's Braid and Other Tales of Terizan by Tanya Huff

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Fantasy literature is rife with ‘clever thief’ protagonists for the vicarious entertainment of the virtuous, like Bilbo Baggins, but most of them are not even female, let alone lesbians. Swan’s Braid and other Tales of Terizan gives us the wily but honorable Terizan, who waltzes away from the first story in her collection with the affection of a female mercenary with whom she maintains a casual romance for the remainder of the book. Most of Terizan’s adventures aren’t love stories, but “capers”–she gets assignments from the Thieves’ Guild, which she joined pretty much for their health insurance plan (“the guild takes care of its own,” and she’s worried about what would happen if she ever got more seriously hurt during one of her falls from a mark’s window. It’s that kind of book.)

The plots themselves are pretty clever, with inflection points and twists and rising action and punch lines, reminding me of Maurice Leblanc’s dashing gentleman burglar Arsène Lupin, only in a fantasy setting with a lesbian heroine. Whether Terizan’s adversary is a ghost, a wizard, a prince, or the cult of an upstart goddess, reading about her besting them was satisfying and not stressful at all because they’re written in that “good old fashioned fun” way, not grimdark.

The prose is easy to follow, with the occasional evocative bit like “[…]sales pitches as wilted as the vegetables[…]” Huff’s worldbuilding is unobtrusive and “generic fantasy” enough to be pretty easy to understand, yet with enough originality that I didn’t feel like I was reading homage or parody. And I really can’t say enough good things about how relaxing it is to read a story about a woman Doing Things in a shady underworld without having to fear gendered violence. The villains in this book are mostly men, but their offensives and defenses against Terizan never include a sexual element.

I love so much about what Terizan’s stories have and don’t have. Her best friend is a bisexual male sex worker, her adventures aren’t gendered (in other words, she gets to interact with her fictional universe pretty much the way male characters usually get to), and her three bosses at the Guild are a man, a woman, and someone who “could be either or neither” whose gender is never further discussed. These days things like this are becoming easier to find in SFF, at least if you’re like me and play Heimdahl with indie LGBT publishing, but this particular story was written in the NINETIES. So I quietly hold this up to those who go around leaving skeptical, ossified reviews on fiction with nonbinary characters.

I would love to see these done in graphic novel form.

(Warning for the word ‘whore’ used a few times; I think it was only said by the sex worker character but I can’t actually remember and I returned my eBook to the library already.)

Find more of my reviews here.

Find my f/f fantasy books here.

Marthese reviews Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin

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“Isabella was joy and excitement and adventure and everything else seemed dull in comparison”
Silhouette of a Sparrow is set in 1920s America and follows the story of Garnet. I had been meaning to read it since it came out; the chapters of the book all feature a different bird which is a quirky concept that ties in well with the story.
Garnet is 15, finishing high school and loves birds. She had to conform to her mother’s expectations, so instead of bird watching, she does bird silhouettes on the spot. She is sent to live with the Harringtons over the summer for many reasons, but primarily because her father suffers from PTSD after the war and her mother needed some time alone with him.
The Harringtons are not very interesting company, so Garnet finds a job at a hat shop–interesting choice for a bird lover. But Garnet is not just a bird lover: she is an activist as well. At the shop, Garnet meets and makes friends with Isabella, a flapper who is close to her age. Isabella wakes up Garnet’s more rebellious side and soon she has to make a choice between freedom and conformity.
This book is more than this plot. To me, it is also about complex parental relationships. Parents who have their own story, who only want the best for their  children but do not always know what that is. It is also about love for ones family, and the choices one has to make to incorporate them in their future. It’s about taking a stand for your future and growing into someone’s true potential.
The ending is open with potential. Things are just starting. It is not a fairy tale ending but it is far from sad or tragic. It is realistic.
It was interesting to read this book–to learn more about birds, but also to reflect on the importance of families while enjoying a cute love story that was bound to happen. I feel that most people would enjoy this book.

Tierney reviews The Butch and the Beautiful by Kris Ripper

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Jaq meets Hannah at her ex’s wedding and is instantly smitten – despite the fact that Jaq has been forewarned that Hannah is “batshit crazy” and in the middle of a messy divorce. The two fall into bed that same night, both vowing to keep things casual… but if they had been able to keep that promise, this wouldn’t be a romance novel. Jaq is looking for commitment, but has a history of bolting when things get uncomfortable – but despite the mess in Hannah’s personal life, Jaq keeps coming back for more.

The Butch and the Beautiful is the second novel in Ripper’s Queers of La Vista Series (and the only work in the series that I have read so far). Its plot theoretically stands alone, but the novels in the series are interconnected, and main characters from one novel pop up as secondary characters in others. One of the major pluses of the series is that almost every character is queer, which is awesome.

But a downside to this structure is that the plot spills outside of the confines of the novel in ways that make it hard for the reader to follow. There are too many characters, each with too much backstory and drama, and there is just too much going on. The arc of the story feels disjointed, and many plot lines aren’t concluded in a satisfactory fashion, ostensibly to leave room for further novels. But this emphasis on other characters’ crises makes it hard to focus on the protagonist’s romance: Jaq falling for Hannah seems relatively. inconsequential in comparison.

With all these side-plots, there is little room for character development (and little room for the reader to get attached to the main characters). The novel spends a lot of time telling us about the characters, instead of showing the reader who they are: Hannah, for example, is described as “batshit crazy” without ever actually doing anything to warrant the label.

The characters also make weird offensive comments throughout the novel, that are are recognized to be offensive but dismissed and never resolved. One of Jaq’s friends makes some transmisogynistic comments that are totally gratuitous, have nothing to do with the story, and are completely shrugged off by Jaq.

Hannah and Jaq have a sweet romance, and the novel reads fluidly, for the most part. But unfortunately these positives aren’t enough to save it from its flaws. It’s a quick read – but there isn’t enough substance there to make the reader feel invested in moving forward.

Kalyanii reviews Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side by Rayya Elias

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After stumbling upon the announcement of Elizabeth Gilbert’s coming out last month, l thought I’d key a quick Google search in order to become acquainted with the woman who’d rocked her world. It took the perusal of only a couple results to discover that Gilbert’s relationship with Rayya Elias is no fly-by-night romance; rather, Elias has been her dearest friend and confidante for the past fifteen years. So, when I learned that Elias had published her memoir in April of 2013 (with an introduction penned by Gilbert herself), I grew determined to get my hands on a copy. Little did I realize at the time that Elias would rock my world as well.

Born in Aleppo, Syria, Elias and her family knew more than a modicum of luxury, residing in an eight-room flat, complete with long marble hallways and manicured gardens to look down upon from the several balconies above. Beyond a handful of secrets and emotional scars, the family made pleasant memories while surrounded by the warmth of its members, good friends and caring neighbors; yet, the relative ease of daily life began to slip away with the rise of nationalism as the Ba’ath Party came into power. Amid mounting religious and political tensions and threats to his financial security, Elias’s father decided they had little choice but to leave all they knew in order to seek safety and a better life in America.

Elias was only seven years of age when her family arrived in Warren, Michigan, near Detroit, and the transition was anything but easy. Not only was their standard of living well below what they enjoyed in their homeland, but cultural differences set Elias apart as the target of incessant and utterly relentless bullying. All the while, her desire to assimilate into American culture left her feeling alienated from her family and the local Arabic community within which they had found a sense of home.

It was only in her early adulthood that Elias’s fashion-forward outlook and talents, not only as a hairstylist but a musician as well, provided her the positive regard that enabled her to flourish. The club scene, with its techno new wave vibe, enlivened and inspired her while offering the promise of a world to which she belonged.

… this was the 1980s, my time, and I was enamored with both the music and the look. They allowed me to escape; with no rules or boundaries, I could express myself and be part of an underground culture that accepted my newfound ambivalence toward being “normal,” and make cross-gendered sexuality look cool. Instinctively, I got it. Everything about this genre spoke to me, and it was the first time and place in society that I felt cool and accepted by gentle, intelligent, creative, and like-minded people…. I’d found my clan, my own pack of wolves.

With two careers budding simultaneously, Elias began to wonder if she might be outgrowing Detroit. She craved an independence beyond her family’s protective embrace and the freedom to discover her most authentic means of self-expression, both creatively as well as sexually. Thus, Elias decided to petition the owner of the salon at which she worked for the opportunity to prove herself on the East Coast whenever one became available. As luck would have it, there was need for an artistic director in Stamford, Conneticut, just 45 minutes outside of New York City. If Elias wanted it, it was hers.

The bulk of Harley Loco follows Elias’s rise as a high-end hairstylist and cutting-edge musical force into her descent within the hell of hardcore drug addiction, complete with overdoses, arrests, evictions, threats to her life, homelessness and a well-remembered stint at Rikers Island. All along the way, she takes the time to introduce her reader to those who inhabited her world during those tumultuous years, from lovers, party buddies, drug lords and down-and-out junkies to fair-weather friends and guardian angels. She shares heartrending moments of the most intense love and desire for a woman amid several doomed attempts at navigating the ever-shifting terrain of polyamory, the no-strings-attached comfort of a stranger’s bed as well as the loss and devastation sustained within a committed relationship when another’s love, regardless of how true, cannot come close to competing with that initial high.

Aside from a handful of returns to Detroit, Elias’s memoir is set against the backdrop of New York’s Lower East Side as it was in the 1980’s and early 90’s with its underground clubs, drug-dealing bodegas, shooting galleries and dens. The seediness of Alphabet City, so vividly drawn through its cast of characters, proves enthralling as Elias proceeds to paint an utterly visceral portrait of what the neighborhood was prior to gentrification. Though I spent only one night amid those streets during that epic era, the experience remains permanently etched within my memory, for the edginess of the neighborhood was nothing less than mythic in its time; and, given her penchant for telling things precisely as they were, Elias reveals with uncompromising grit the reality behind the legends that we had all so naively romanticized from afar. Though narrated with an ambivalent air of nostalgia, Elias’s innumerable falls from grace are evidence of the true underbelly of a drug culture that film, literature and the other media of its day portrayed as captivating rather than demoralizing and often deadly.

Given that Elias lived to tell the tale, it’s probably safe to say that the unfathomably hard lessons learned while looking down a gun barrel, seeking shelter within Tent City at Tompkins Square Park or writhing, dope-sick, on the cement floor of a holding cell were all a part of a journey which awakened a voice within her—a voice which, at last, spoke with certainty, “Rayya, you don’t need to do this anymore. You can be free.”

Immediately after the acknowledgements, Elias includes a section entitled “Music Links,” which directs readers to her website, where they can access the six tracks that she considers something of a soundtrack to Harley Loco. As you might expect, I beelined to my laptop, keyed in the web address and promptly pressed “play.” With palpable harkenings of Aimee Mann, Portishead and early Sleater-Kinney, the tracks presented so satisfyingly meld that which influenced us back in the day with the hard-earned jadedness of the present. My favorite track, by far, is “Fever,” which boasts a chorus I simply can’t shake:  “Got a fever in my soul, cancer in my heart; never had any place to shelter, never had anywhere to start.”

According to Gilbert’s September 7th Facebook post, it was Elias’s diagnosis of pancreatic and liver cancer that brought her to crossroads, where, after fifteen years of friendship, she chose, what else, but love.

Death — or the prospect of death — has a way of clearing away everything that is not real, and in that space of stark and utter realness, I was faced with this truth: I do not merely love Rayya; I am in love with Rayya. And I have no more time for denying that truth. The thought of someday sitting in a hospital room with her, holding her hand and watching her slide away, without ever having let her (or myself!) know the extent of my true feelings for her…well, that thought was unthinkable.

It’s beautiful yet heartbreaking, isn’t it, that which brings us face-to-face with who we are and who it is that we truly love?

I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to come to know Elias through her memoir as well as her music, which has not only brought me back to the ecstatic sensation of inhabiting my own skin but provided me a sense of the badass that I always fantasized I’d been. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if her soundtrack were to end up playing a role in the creation of my own.

In conclusion, to quote Gilbert’s courageous coming-out post once more, “Truth is the force that guides us to where we need to be in life, but love is the power that heals us once we arrive there.”

With that in mind, I wish both Gilbert and Elias the most treasured of journeys together.

Bessie reviews Modern Lovers by Emma Straub

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I really enjoyed this novel. I like comfortable domestic novels, but far too often they’re overwhelmingly straight. This was not. It’s about two families who have been friends for a very long time, growing together, and taking each other for granted. There are two couples, with one teenage child apiece. That one of the couples are interracial lesbians is delightful. It’s about teenagers growing up, and parents going through midlife crises. Taken together Straub suggests that coming of age is really an ongoing process, not something we finish at the end of adolescence.

I like how flawed the couples are. Their relationships feel very lived in and authentic. The romance is found in the way they’re still trying, and working on ways to be together after being together for more than twenty years. This sort of worn-in taken for granted partnership is a sharp contrast from the rush of confused discovery the teenagers are tripping through.

The best part of the kid’s story is the element of knowing someone for a very long time and then getting to know each other in a very different way. They grew up together, have known each other for their entire lives, but as eighteen year olds they are starting to see each other as people. One of the more interesting parts of growing up isn’t just figuring out who you are, but watching the kids around you decide who they are as well.

Modern Lovers is a coming of age story that doesn’t focus on identity. It talks about class, sexuality, and race, and has interesting things to say, but never gets too far away from the relationships between people. For Straub these are all parts of identities that inform how characters relate to each other.

The way Straub writes characters who have money is fascinating. Both couples are more than well off, and there is some family wealth as well. Different characters relate to this so differently, showing discomfort, indifference, and different sorts of evolving class consciousness. Differing  attitudes towards money also impact relationships. Money isn’t really a problem, but it’s an issue, and taking this on adds something. There are lots of comfortable domestic novels about families who have money that never acknowledges that these families having money is significant, and Straub manages to avoid that.

The issue of money plays into a more major theme, which is characters wondering how to be creatively fulfilled by their lives. Three fourths of the adults used to be in a rock band in college, with another girl who went on to become famous before dying young. The three of them have different relationships with music now, but having started with the dream of rock’n’roll informs who they are as adults. Trying to find the right outlet for artistic expression is an important plot point, and at times a major source of tension.

I love the hyper local specificity. I don’t know anything about the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, but it was presented with such clear authority. The characters have a strong relationship to the place, and that connection is clear to the reader, the affection and exasperation, the sense of home. It references street names and landmarks casually, in a way that adds depth and authenticity without becoming cluttered or confusing. I feel like I could take a copy of the book to navigate around the neighborhood.

As far as I’ve seen, Emma Straub is straight, and this sort of representation is what I want from straight authors. There are lesbians, and they are interesting, and flawed, and sympathetic. Their sexuality is important to the story, and to who they are as individuals, but not the only or even the most important thing about them. They’re given as much space and sympathy as the straight couple in the book. Not every book needs to be super queer, but it’s so good to read an enjoyable story where it feels like I could exist somewhere in the world.

This wasn’t the most exciting book I’ve read lately, but it was one of the nicest. It’s a very bright and clean book. It’s incredibly nice without being cloying. What I appreciated the most is that Straub treated her characters with incredible kindness while not shying away from their flaws.

Megan Casey reviews Chicken Run by Alma Fritchley

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Letty Campbell, ex insurance agent, becomes the owner of a small chicken farm in the small town of Calderton, a half hour outside Manchester, U.K. . When the niece of a neighbor asks her to introduce her shy but recently-out-of-the-closet aunt to the lesbian scene in the nearby large city, Letty finds herself smitten with the woman. But also, through a series of coincidences, she also finds herself hosting a big-bucks automobile auction at her farm.

The most curious thing about this mystery is that is doesn’t seem to be a mystery at all. With only three chapters to go, the only unexplained happening is Letty’s suspicion that someone broke into her house for no reason and stole nothing.

As lesbian mystery novels generally go, the sex in this one is rather tame, with the the horrid word “after,” beginning more than one paragraph. But this is certainly no surprise in a mystery that is generally classified as a cozy. The writing is simply adequate, the mystery kind of nonexistent, and the humor—much praised in the blurb—muted at best.

I’m terrifically glad I was able to get hold of this book so I could judge it for myself. It is one of the few cozy lesbian mysteries and a welcome change from some of the blood-and-guts dramas and high-octane sex I have found in several other lesbian mystery novels. Still, I doubt I’ll go on to the next one in the series. Quite frankly, I didn’t find Letty very interesting. And when your main character is bland, your book tends to be rated less stars they the author might wish. There are four of these “Chicken” novels, all written between 1998 and 2000. I suspect that Fritchley gets into a better stride in the next novel, makes Letty use more of her wits, but that is for another reviewer to decide.

For more than 200 other Lesbian Mystery reviews by Megan Casey, see her website at http://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/  or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Rachel reviews The Beast at the Door by Althea Blue

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A new lesbian novel has just been released, The Beast at the Door by Althea Blue. It is a historical romance with a few elements from Beauty and the Beast, as well as a good feminist theme.

The story begins in England in the late 1800s with Patience, a spirited noblewoman. She is the youngest of four siblings and the only daughter left unmarried. Patience has had a regimented life she cannot stand, so when her parents tell her they’ve arranged for her to marry a nobleman she finds repulsive, she runs away from home that very night. But Patience soon realizes how exhausting (and dangerous) her life can be always on the run. By chance she finds a house deep in the woods and sees a strange creature occasionally roaring out the door and window. While her first instinct is to stay away, hunger and chill finally draws Patience to sneak into the house. She meets a young woman named Ada who lives here with the beast, and after much pleading, Ada allows Patience to stay in the house. But the conditions include staying away from parts of the house and never interacting with the creature guarding the place. Ada herself is kind and intelligent, but there are clearly things she’s hiding about herself and the house. The girls become friends and later on there’s a deep love that completes them. But outsiders stumbling in are always a real threat to their secrets.

The Beast at the Door is a relatively short read (208 pages) and while I liked a lot of the story, I had the feeling that more subplots and characters could have been added in to make it fuller. Patience and Ada live in a time where women were restricted by rules and marriages, but they both defied the expectations forced on them. Both were avid readers and always came to their own opinions about the things they learned. While Ada’s father had understood about letting his daughter read, Patience’s family decided what was appropriate for her. Her brother Mason was the one that secretly lent her the books she really wanted and helped shape her into the bright, forward-thinking woman she is in the story. Ada especially is resourceful in tight places and with Patience’s assistance they’re quite a team. Althea Blue was wonderful with her portrayal of these two women and their love story is beautiful. It’s not the central plotline for Patience and Ada but clearly their love for each other strengthens them.

However, there were very few character interactions in The Beast at the Door. Most of it was between the two women at the house, and I think the story would have been more engaging had there been other regular characters with their own stories. The pacing of the book seemed to go too fast, and that further gave the impression more subplots would have helped. There were also questions raised early on about a couple characters that were never answered. I thought I would learn what was happening with them but at the end nothing had been revealed. That and the epilogue didn’t feel like strong resolutions to me. Then again, I don’t know if Althea Blue is planning to write a sequel to this book, so perhaps these questions will be addressed later.

Even though I can’t recommend it, The Beast at the Door is still a good story and will draw in readers, especially those who love books centering on history and women’s rights.

JJ Taylor reviews The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie

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In a future where pirates rule the open seas, the fleets the shore are kept at bay by genetically engineered giant sea creatures bonded to their ships and guided by their trainers. You want to read The Abyss Surrounds Us. You really do. It has pirates, sea monsters, queer lady romance, lady villains, pirate queen moms, an Asian-American lead character – it’s packed with all the things you’ve been wanting in your YA. Honestly, I think most books could benefit from a good dose of lady pirates.

This is fantastic sea adventure with a queer lady romance that doesn’t pull it’s punches. The fights hurt, the romance hurts, and it’s all worth it. This sea adventure ride is full of twists and turns and they start right away.

Spoilers ahead! I’ll try not to give too much away, but it’s hard to get to the heart of this book without some spoilers.

Cassandra Leung goes through an incredible journey. At the start of the story, she’s a teen just about to go on her first mission for which she’s been trained on all her life. By the end, she’s surviving and thriving in a completely different world. She transforms into a competent, brave, skilled commander of a Reckoner, and a clever and savvy fighter. She sense of herself and where she belongs, even if it means turning her back on everything she knows.

The world of Reckoners pulled me in from the first scene. I was convinced our future could look like this, with condensed political nations in the wake of rising sea levels, flooding destroying whole portions of continents. Like all good speculative fiction, the changes in the new world don’t seem that far off a possibility from our current world.

We feel the loss of Durga, Cas’ first trainee, throughout the whole book, which is about the only way I can tolerate animal loss in a story. It was awful, don’t get me wrong, but it was awful for Cas and the loss remains raw and informs her decisions all the way through the story, even in the end. It’s not for the faint of heart, though, and there are more vicious attacks of sea monster on sea monster further into the story. Cas knows what it means to turn a Reckoner on other Reckoners, and she knows what she’s done in training Bao, the Minnow’s Reckoner, and in using him as a shield in battle. It’s an adult awareness that marks part of Cas’ growth as a character. Bao is never the quiet friend that Durga was. He’s a beast, and Cas bonds with him as she raises him, but the circumstances of their relationship were too forced, and ultimately too violent for it to last.

And that brings me to The Pirate Queen. Santa Elena is a terrifying villain. She’s not a kinder version of a pirate just because she’s a mother; she’s cruel, manipulative, calculating, and she has no qualms hurting those who hurt her. She sets Cas and the crew against one another in a myriad of ways, and delights in the outcome, even when it’s violent. She’s dangerous from start to finish.

And Swift, oh, Swift, with her bird tattoo like her name and her ship brand on the back of her neck like the sword of Damocles. I fell for Swift as hard as Cas does, but she also remained unknowable until the very end. I loved the tension of their building romance, their struggle to find one another on equal footing, and I was disappointed that the two proto-pirate queens don’t get an HEA. I had several theories while reading about how the book would end, and none of them were anywhere near being right. Cas and Swift aren’t together, but at least they’re not apart. They face nearly as many challenges as they did at the start, which has kept them on my mind days after I finished the book.

Go get The Abyss Surrounds Us. You’ll suddenly find yourself hatching escape plans for Swift and Cas, or maybe you’ll be rooting for Santa Elena. On the ship full of cutthroat lady pirates, you can’t go wrong.

Warning for animal harm/death

Aoife reviews Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

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Jessica Tran is almost seventeen, bisexual, Vietnamese-American, a ‘high school nobody’, average student – and haver of no superpowers. Not that she hasn’t tried. Her sister does, is off somewhere being a journalist slash super hero, and her brother is at least a science genius. But what does Jess have? Well, hopefully, an internship.

The best way I can describe Sidekick is as something of a cross between Strong Female Protagonist and Always Human, while still doing its own thing. Set in the future, the Sidekick world was devastated in the early 2000s by something to do with solar flares, which caused a bunch of natural disasters and a war, and also gave a number of people across the world meta-abilities, or superpowers. Her parents, who met in a refugee camp, were two of those people, and now divide their time between their cover lives – real estate – and their jobs as Shockwave and Smasher, the C-class superheroes of Andover, Nevada. The world itself is run under a bunch of kind of capitalist collectivist dictatorships; North America is now the North American Collective, where all media prior to 2035 is banned, there’s some other shifty stuff going on, and absolutely no one seems to think there’s a problem with the government. The American high school seems unchanged, though, so I guess that’s something. Probably not a point in their favour.

This book isn’t perfect, but I loved it. It’s never explicitly said, but there’s a lot of textual evidence to say that Jess has ADHD, which is exciting, and in addition to our excellent bisexual protagonist, we have a trans best friend (Bells) who is tragically in love with the other best friend (Emma), and a very lovely romantic lead (Abby). Also, Bells is Creole-American and Emma is Mexican-American; I think the only white main character is Abby? Pretty damn cool. I also liked the exploration of Jess’s – I guess race anxiety? She’s Vietnamese, and she feels Vietnamese, but not Vietnamese enough for other Vietnamese people. It made her feel more real, somehow.

The plot is pretty obvious – I figured out the majority of the ‘big reveals’ and plot points halfway through chapter two, and the others were also not particularly surprising – and the villainous characters are incredibly two-dimensional, to the point where I wonder if Lee did that on purpose. However! while it would have been nice if everyone was a little more perceptive, I loved this book. I loved the romance, I loved the characters, the writing is good, I’m super excited to read the next book… it definitely deserves its five stars. Lee does relationships really well, and she was so good at writing Jess being in love with Abby that I’m pretty sure I’m also in love with Abby now. 

Like SFP, there are a lot of really interesting implications within the world building that Sidekick barely scratched the surface of, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where Lee goes with it. There are a lot of good but short interrogations of things here, like Jess’s criticism of the school’s LGBTQIA club, and I have to say, I’m really interested in Lee’s choice to keep all of the queer stuff accurate to the present, as opposed to doing something like Always Human. I just want to read more.

The next book in the series, Not Your Villain, is out sometime next year (2017) and will be told from Bells’ perspective. I’m excited.

Trigger warnings: nothing particularly big I can think of. Jess gets electrocuted at some point? Missing family members?

This and other reviews by Aoife can also be found at https://concessioncard.wordpress.com/.

Stephanie reviews The Dawn of Nia 

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I’m always hesitant to read books by people that I know personally, because I know at some point they’ll ask me what I thought, and I know that if I don’t love it, I’ll have to figure out how to say that without ruining the relationship. In this case, I can say without reservation that I did indeed love The Dawn of Nia. Let me count the ways:

I liked that fact that The Dawn of Nia is focused on family relationships and the ways in which secrets can devastate families or force them to reckon with their past misdeeds. Nurse Nia Ellis is a single, attractive, Black lesbian who has recently lost her friend and mentor Pat to cancer. What Nia doesn’t know is that Pat had a secret, and that Pat’s secret is going to change her life. This first secret is revealed right after Pat’s funeral, which Nia attends with her best friend Jacoby, and the novel just explodes with drama from there. It’s a bit of a challenge to write about this novel without giving too much away, but just know that secrets, lies, betrayal, and a $350,000 estate are at the crux of the story.

I was also really impressed with the character development. All of the characters in this novel are deeply flawed. The protagonist Nia is the poster child for bad decision-making. At one point while reading I nearly threw the novel across the room. I found myself yelling at Nia: “Girl what the heck are you doing? You know that Kayla is going to start some mess!” But I couldn’t stop reading. Jacoby, Nia’s best friend, is the epitome of male privilege. To put it nicely, he’s an ass, and there were times when I just couldn’t figure out why Nia remained friends with him.  Tasha, another close friend, is always hooking up with Ms. Right now, instead of waiting on Ms. Right.  Even Nia’s parents have issues that span their 30-year marriage. The other women in Nia’s life, her ex-girlfriend Kayla, and new love interest Deidra, are connected in ways that are impossible to untangle, even though Nia tries her best to keep the women apart. It is a testament to Cherelle’s skill as a writer that not only was I able to keep up with all of these characters, but I found myself rooting for some to succeed, and hoping that karma would catch up with others.

The novel has excellent pacing. It never felt rushed or to seemed to drag. I was always anxious to get to the next chapter to see what was going to happen next.  However, my only critique of the novel is that it probably could have been just a few pages shorter. A couple of scenes at the end just didn’t seem necessary.

Finally, at its core, The Dawn of Nia is a story about love: what do you do when your heart has been broken but you want, sorely need, to give love another chance?  How do you keep your past mistakes from ruining your future? Can any relationship survive lies and deceit? Why do lesbians move in with each other so quickly? I’m generally not one for reading romance, but I loved every minute of this story, even as it was driving me crazy.  If you like your romance spiked with a bit of family drama, this is definitely the novel for you.  Cherelle is a masterful storyteller and this novel is a welcome addition to the growing canon of contemporary Black lesbian literature.

Trigger warnings: Mild violence, brief mention of sexual abuse