As an avid reader of all of Julia Armfield’s fiction, I was eager to pick up her newest novel. From the author of Our Wives Under the Sea (2022), Private Rites (Fourth Estate, 2024) promised to be poignant, haunting, and literary. Set in a future world where environmental disaster has flooded much of the world with ceaseless rains, threeRead More
Folk Horror and the Troubled Teen Industry: What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould Review
In European folk and fairytales, a journey through the woods represents the characters’ coming of age—their passage from the pastoral, relative security of familial and familiar hearths into a fraught, shadowy place where metaphors for social anxieties lurk around every corner. Only with wit and friendship can one come out the other side, though theyRead More
A Future of Dirty Computers: The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe Review
This is an entire collection of short stories, but I am only focusing on the titular short story for this review. “The Memory Librarian” follows Seshet, the Director Librarian of New Dawn who monitors citizens’ memories. In New Dawn, the government cleanses citizens of troublesome memories that cause pain, fear and confusion. It allows peopleRead More
The Perfect Sapphic Horror Read for a Cold Winter’s Night: Feast While You Can by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta
Just in time for dark, chilly winter nights, Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta’s Feast While You Can (Grand Central Publishing 2024) is one of my top reads of 2024 and has quickly become one of my most-recommended queer horror novels! Marketed as perfect for fans of novels like Nightbitch, Feast While You Can is a novel of queer love andRead More
Compelling, Real, & Raw: Roses in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman
Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, alongside her best friend, Saima. When a family rift drives the girls apart, Razia’s heart is broken. She finds solace in Taslima, a new girl in her close-knit Pakistani-American community, all while trying to manage the religious and cultural expectationsRead More
The Ghosts and Secrets of Suburbia: The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste
If I had a nickel for every book I’ve read recently about a suddenly haunted suburb, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but I guess authors are stepping up to throw those sorts of neighborhood into the ghost void. The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste is a great little horror romp about a disappearing neighborhood,Read More
All of the Sapphic Vampires, None of the Victorian Homophobic Overtones: An Education in Malice by S. T. Gibson
Like many queer women, I’m sure, I have a strange relationship with the original Carmilla. On the one hand, sapphic vampires are objectively sexy. On the other hand, the way the danger she poses is framed as inextricably linked to her queerness (and her foreignness) is, well, unpleasant, to say the least. I always say thatRead More
The Perfect Queer Gothic to Read on Halloween: My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johnna van Veen
I’ve been trying to spend the fall reading Gothic fiction, and as Halloween approaches, Johanna van Veen’s queer Gothic horror novel, My Darling Dreadful Thing (Poisoned Pen Press, 2024), is the perfect book for this time of year! Veen’s debut novel follows Roos Beckman in the 1950s. Roos has a spirit companion, Ruth, has been dead forRead More
Queer Small Town Livin’: Like Other Girls by Britta Lundin
Mara loves basketball—which is a problem, because she’s currently not allowed to play. After getting in a fight during a game, her coach kicks her off the school team and bars her from rejoining until she can prove that she can be a team player. In an attempt to prove her ability to not let her angerRead More
Must-Read Poetry Collections by Queer Women
It can be easy to feel overwhelmed during trying times, and to feel like you have less time/energy to sit down with a book and really immerse yourself in plot or nonfiction. I’ve personally always turned to poetry during periods like this, and in light of everything going on everywhere, these books have been particularlyRead More
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 21
- Next Page »