Content warning: this review includes discussion of suicide, violence, and rape. Ever since I heard the premise of One’s Company, it’s been on my TBR. So when I was choosing the first book to read in 2025, this seemed like the perfect kind of weird, thought-provoking literary fiction I was in the mood for—and itRead More
A Palestinian Family’s Story Shows History Repeats: The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher
Far from the Rummani’s ancestral home of Palestine, Betty Rummani is born a striking, permanent shade of cobalt blue. That same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory is destroyed in an air strike in Nablus. The family matriarch and keeper of all Rummani lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history,Read More
A Haunting Gothic About Family in (Climate) Crisis: Private Rites by Julia Armfield Review
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
The Unique Venom of Found Family: Sister Snake by Amanda Lee Koe Review
Su and Emerald are sisters with nothing in common: Su lives in Singapore, playing the perfect wife to her conservative politician husband. Emerald is a queer sugar baby in New York, barely scraping by living with an artist friend. While their current lives look very different and they rarely speak, they have a shared past:Read 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 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
Lush, Atmospheric Queer Historical Fiction: A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland
A lush, atmospheric queer historical fiction for fans of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and The Birth House, Rose Sutherland’s A Sweet Sting of Salt (Dell 2024) is the perfect read to cozy up with this fall. Sutherland’s queer retelling of the folktale The Selkie Wife follows Jean, a midwife in a Nova Scotia village who is as renowned for herRead More
A Fresh, Queer Take on Crime Fiction: Behind You by Catherine Hernandez
Amazon Affiliate Link In her new novel, Catherine Hernandez weaves gripping suspense and affecting emotion into a story of trauma, survival, and healing against the backdrop of one of Canada’s most terrifying historical events. Behind You (HarperAvenue 2024) follows Alma, a Filipina woman working as an editor for a true crime series called Infamous, which features sketchesRead More
The Beauty and Bitterness of Unrequited Love: The Italy Letters by Vi Khi Nao
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! The Italy Letters by Vi Khi Nao (August 13, 2024) reads like bitter chocolate with rich undertones that will pique the acquired tastes of readers looking for poetic experimental fiction and stories about the mid-life crises of disillusioned literary fiction writers who are not cishet whiteRead More
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 9
- Next Page »