Tag Archives: literary fiction

A Page-Turning Mess of a Queer Love Polygon: The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan

Posted on by — Leave a reply
the cover of The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan

Buy this on Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary!

If you’re looking for something fun, marathonable, the right amount of messy, and full of queer love polygon drama, then look no further than The Happy Couple. I listened to this as an audiobook (a short and snappy 5.5 hour experience) and I found myself always looking forward to my next drive or run just so I could hear what happened next. 

Celine and Luke are engaged, and their wedding date is quickly approaching, but will they go through with it? Luke is a pretty obvious serial cheater and Celine is so focused on the work of being a concert pianist that she has just ignored it. Yes, the oh so happy couple. Additional layers of drama unfold as more and more angles of their love polygon are exposed. Archie is Luke’s best man as well as Luke’s ex-lover who is definitely still in love with the groom-to-be. Celine’s ex, Maria, shows up at the engagement party and stirs the pot. Celine’s sister Phoebe knows Luke has something to hide and is convinced to get the bottom of it. And Vivian, yet another ex of Luke’s, is willing to call people on their craziness and bring some tough love to her friends in this mess.

Buckle up, folks. This cast of wild characters really brings the drama that can only be fully encapsulated by interrobangs. Luke doesn’t show up to his own engagement party?! It’s hours before the wedding and Luke needs a new shirt but who comes to switch shirts with him other than his ex-lover, Archie?! Celine’s ex is having long heart-to-hearts with Luke?! 

The Happy Couple felt like reality TV in the best way. I was immersed in this story’s twists, turns, and reveals that provided a welcome distraction when my brain needed a break from the current world. But what I loved most is that it didn’t just feel like gossip that pulls me in but at the end of the day makes me feel icky. Naoise Dolan writes her indeed flawed characters with a kindness and nuance that allowed me to see them for more than their often infuriating actions and reflect alongside them in the gray decisions they find themselves having to make. It was a delightful balance of unhinged meets kind. 

If you’re driving home for the holidays and need a book you can finish in one road trip, I highly recommend pressing play on this one!

Content warnings: toxic relationships, drug use and abuse, infidelity, suicidal thoughts

Natalie (she/her) is honestly shocked to find herself as a voracious reader these days – that certainly wasn’t the case until she discovered the amazing world of queer books! Now she’s always devouring at least one book, as long as it’s gay. She will be forever grateful for how queer characters kept her company through her own #gaypanic and now on the other side of that, she loves soaking up queer pasts, presents and futures across all genres. Find more reviews on her Bookstagram!

The Perfect Sapphic September Read: The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer 

Posted on by
the cover of The Adult

Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

The moody, fraught, and atmospheric energy of Bronwyn Fischer’s novel The Adult (Random House, 2023) is the perfect September read that reflects the joy and the chaos of a new academic year! 

The Adult follows Natalie, an eighteen-year-old student who has just arrived in Toronto to begin her first year of university. Moving from her remote, rural hometown to a bustling city is destabilizing to say the least, and on top of it all everyone around her seems to fit in perfectly, while Natalie always stands apart. From the beginning of the novel, we can tell that Natalie is searching for an identity—for the exact code that will allow her to effortlessly blend into her new life without all the sharp edges she can’t seem to stop running into. She studies her would-be friends, searches online, and spends most of her time contemplating just how apart she feels from everyone else. 

Enter Nora, an older, mysterious woman who suddenly takes an interest in Natalie after a chance meeting. As Natalie is drawn further and further into Nora’s life—and into her intense, all-consuming feelings for the other woman—she wonders if this relationship contains the answers she’s been searching for. However, because Natalie fears how her friends will react to her relationship with an older woman, she quickly begins to lead a kind of double life while attempting to keep her time with Nora separate and sacred. But eventually, Natalie must reckon with the discovery that Nora is not all that she seems, and that the secrets she keeps could have devastating consequences for Natalie’s life. 

The Adult is a fabulously literary lesbian novel all about coming of age and coming out. In many ways, it’s easy to sympathize with Natalie’s insecurity and her desperation to fit into a world that seems to fast-paced and unfamiliar. We spend so much of this novel deep inside Natalie’s head, privy to her cyclical thoughts, her fears and anxieties, and her overwhelming obsession with Nora—an obsession that is made worse by Nora’s unclear feelings. It’s impossible not to find this novel immersive and captivating. 

While the plot of this novel is slow to unfold and the text is driven forward by the characters, I still found myself unable to put it down. Fischer’s writing carefully unveils the intricacies—and inconsistencies—of Nora’s life, which left me desperate to uncover (as Natalie eventually is) what all of the clues meant. It was fascinating the way Fischer played with readers’ expectations and then subverted or denied them at every turn. While the end wasn’t a huge surprise to me, I’m not sure it’s intended to be. Instead, it seems that what Fischer really wants to focus on in Natalie’s response to and growth from her relationship with Nora. I loved the way this novel was woven together. In some ways, it really did keep me guessing until the very end. 

There are certain plot twists I wasn’t overly captivated or convinced by, and I wasn’t sure how to handle them as a reader—especially when Natalie’s character struggles to cope effectively with anything. The twist I’m thinking of definitely added some intensity and urgency to the novel, but that could have been accomplished more effectively in other ways, I think. 

Overall, I very much enjoyed The Adult and I think it’s an excellent novel to read for fall! 

Please put The Adult  on your TBR on Goodreads.  

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. 

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars. 

The Perfect Sapphic Historical Fiction for Your Fall TBR: Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

Posted on by
the cover of Learned by Heart

Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

Emma Donoghue’s much-anticipated new novel, Learned by Heart (29 August 2023), is a heartfelt biofiction about the life—and love—of Eliza Raine and her relationship with the famous Anne Lister. Drawing on Lister’s copious five-million-word diaries, Donoghue brings Raine’s story to life in this vivid novel. 

While Anne Lister’s life and work have become enormously famous over the last five years, with Sally Wainwright’s ground-breaking television series Gentleman Jack centralizing Lister’s lesbian life and diaries, Learned by Heart approaches Lister’s early years through a different lens. Donoghue’s novel is characteristic of Donoghue’s historical biofiction, which rarely tells the stories of famous historical subjects but rather seeks out history’s fragments or outright silences. In this case, Eliza Raine and her life are central to Donoghue’s writing. As an orphaned young girl from India, Eliza arrives in England at six years old with the distinct and lasting sense from those around her that she is other. However, when she meets the young, brash, and brilliant Anne Lister at the Manor School for young ladies when the two girls are fourteen, Eliza finds a kindred spirit—and more. 

Learned by Heart is one of my most anticipated novels of 2023, and I was delighted to receive an early copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This novel is another stunning addition to Donoghue’s impressive catalogue of historical fiction, and while series like Gentleman Jack focus on Lister’s later years, with her lovers remaining central but ultimately supporting characters, Donoghue flips the script in her biofiction. Eliza is our protagonist here, and we grow along with her as she moves through a journey of self-discovery. As Anne becomes more and more central to Eliza’s life, she paints a fascinating portrait of the other young girl’s earlier years. 

This novel was everything I hoped for and more. Learned by Heart transports its readers to nineteenth-century York with its vivid descriptions and minute details, and typical of Donoghue’s writing, no part of nineteenth-century girlhood is overlooked. Years of research and dedication shine through in this novel, especially in the supplementary information at the close of the text. While this novel is a sweeping narrative in its own right, Lister researchers and historians will also adore Learned by Heart. 

I can’t recommend Learned by Heart enough as the perfect historical fiction to read this fall! Learned by Heart hits shelves on August 29, 2023. 

Please add Learned by Heart to your TBR on Goodreads and follow Emma Donoghue on Twitter.

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. 

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

A Fraught, Erotic Fever Dream: Mrs. S by K. Patrick

Posted on by
the cover of Mrs S.

Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

Every so often I read a novel that just has the perfect summer energy about it—and even though I read a review copy of Mrs. S by K. Patrick (Europa Editions, 2023) in the spring, I was thinking of summer the entire time. Perfect for fans of novelists like Emma Cline, Mona Awad, or Leon Craig, Mrs. S is an unforgettable novel. 

This novel is the kind of fascinating, character-driven historical fiction I’m drawn to. Set at an English boarding school sometime in the second half of the twentieth century (the timeline isn’t clear), an unnamed narrator arrives under the position of matron at the school. As butch lesbian from Australia, our narrator feels like an outsider in more ways than one. That is, until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster’s alluring and captivating wife. At first, Mrs. S seems to be the narrator’s opposite in many ways—primarily through her self-assuredness and her carefully performed femininity—but as the summer wears on and the two women grow closer together, the narrator comes to realize that the two have far more in common than she thinks. 

A lesbian affair conducted in secret at a British boarding school? There is no novel I would rather read. Plus, a butch lesbian protagonist is a refreshing perspective. I read Mrs. S in one sitting, and it was exactly the kind of fraught, erotic, fever dream novel I hoped it would be. I loved the narrator’s insular personality and her struggles with her queerness were issues I could both sympathize and identify with. Although this novel is framed as the narrative of an affair, it is really more about the narrator and her thoughts, feelings, and journey to come to terms with who she is—a journey that isn’t close to complete by the novel’s end. 

The narrator’s relationship with Mrs. S has the kind of chaotic, fated, anxiety-inducing intensity that I hoped for. Mrs. S has an untouchable, unknowable air about her that always keeps the narrator (and us) on the outside, even when she appears to let us in. Nevertheless, we fall in love(?) with her alongside the narrator, and the second half of the novel seems to hurtle toward the end. While it seemed to take a long time to get to any kind of movement in the plot between these two characters, I now think that that’s a result of this novel really being about the protagonist’s trying to find a place in the world. 

Speaking of places, the boarding school setting is so fabulous, and there’s a reason why queer authors return again and again to the idea of a girls’ boarding school, a place that supposed inculcate “proper” heterosexist codes of femininity and often ends up complicating them instead. Mrs. S’s status as the headmaster’s wife further undermines the “power” of the boarding school as an institution and I think there’s so much to be said about the usefulness of this setting for Patrick. The atmosphere of this novel—contributed to by Patrick’s sensual descriptions—is part of what kept me reading. 

I highly recommend Mrs. S as your queer novel of the summer! 

Please add Mrs. S to your TBR on Goodreads and follow K. Patrick on Twitter. 

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. 

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

The Aftermath of Gay Conversion Camp: Tell the Rest by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Posted on by
the cover of Tell the Rest

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

In 2014, I read The Big Bang Symphony by Lucy Jane Bledsoe based solely on the fact that it was included on a book list called “Lesbians In Cold Places.” And you know what? That was a great decision, because I really enjoyed it. It was a slow-building character study set in Antarctica, with a queer main character, of course. So when I saw that she had a new sapphic book out today, I had to pick it up.

I have to start this with some heavy content warnings, because this is a book about conversion therapy and its aftermath. This review will discuss conversion camp and homophobia, and the book includes homophobia, abuse, rape, religious trauma, and suicide.

The book starts with two kids, a thirteen-year-old white girl and a sixteen-year-old Black teenage boy, running through the woods, trying to escape conversion camp. Then we flash forward to 25 years later.

Delia is fresh from a divorce and has just gotten fired as a college basketball coach. She’s also struggling with uncontrollable attacks of anger. She’s never felt so lost or out of control. So reluctantly, unbelievably, she drives across the country to her hometown in rural Oregon to move in with her brother and coach her old high school’s girls’ basketball team.

Her coach in high school was her hero. She gave Delia a path to follow, skills to develop, and a passion to nurture. Since then, basketball and the discipline she has around it has been her guiding light in her life. Maybe she’s hoping that by confronting her past, she can address the anger issues she’s having. Maybe she wants to step into her old coach’s shoes and inspire a new generation of kids. Maybe she just has nowhere else to go. Whatever the reason, she’s determined to take this team to victory, and she demands the best.

While I think this is Delia’s story, we do also get some point of view chapters from Earnest—the boy she escaped with. They never saw each other again after that night, but they both are still grappling with it and their experience at Celebration Camp. While Delia is at a difficult time in her life, though, grappling with her past, her personality, her anger, her family, her career, and more, Earnest seems more settled.
He has a job teaching poetry and a boyfriend he loves. The central tension in his story is struggling to write a poem about his experience at camp and their escape—something he’s been trying and failing to do for years.

As both of them find themselves needing to confront the past, it seems inevitable they will meet again. As we follow along with Delia and Earnest now, we also get chapters of their time at Celebration Camp, revealing more about the experience that had such an impact on them. Still, this is more about the ongoing effects of that experience than the camp itself.

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t a light read. It feels like an open wound: Delia especially is still hurting so much and hasn’t gotten closure on it. Eventually, though, we do see her begin to work through it, accompanied by the glimpses of the lives of the teenage girls she’s coaching.

If you like to read character studies and quiet stories about working through trauma—and trying to lead a high school girls’ basketball team to glory, because that really is a big focus—I highly recommend this one. It’s a thoughtful, sometimes painful, but effective narrative, and it’s one that’s interesting to read after books like The Miseducation of Cameron Post, because this looks at not just the immediate horror, but the aftermath of being taught to hate yourself as a young person.

Rachel reviews The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton

Posted on by
the cover of The World Cannot Give

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

Described as a cross between Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, Tara Isabella Burton’s novel The World Cannot Give (2022) is a dark, Gothic, and powerful meditation on the dangers of desire and the consequences of ambition. 

The novel follows Laura Stearns as she arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, a prestigious school on the coast that her favourite novelist, Sebastian Webster, whose book All Before Them has inspired her move across the country. Webster died at nineteen fighting in the Spanish Civil War and Laura idolizes him, believing that her time at the school will replicate the events of the novel. And indeed, Laura finds some of the intensity she is looking for among the school’s very exclusive chapel choir, led by the compelling, charismatic, and somewhat neurotic Virginia Strauss. 

Laura is immediately drawn to Virginia because of her similar devotion to Simon Webster, and Virginia is a born-again Christian, fanatical about her faith and her rigorous routine, including the miles she runs every morning. Virginia demands excellence from herself and the members of the choir. When Virginia brings Laura into the fold, sharing with her the rituals and routines of the choir/cult, Laura feels like she’s entered into a world heavy with meaning. But soon, things begin to fall apart as Virginia’s authority is challenged by various actors at the school, and Virginia’s demands get more and more outlandish before Laura must make a choice between following Virginia or saving herself. 

Overall, this book was enormously compelling and is perfect for fans of queer Gothic literature. I haven’t seen a lot of press around this book, but it really is perfect for fans of The Secret History and lesbian pulp. The intensity and power between characters in this novel left me unable to put this book down. The relationship between Virginia and Laura changes from hot to cold minute to minute, and Virginia’s pathology is so compelling. 

The setting alone is captivating. An elite boarding school on the edge of the sea, the novel strikes a balance between this bizarrely intense group of high school students who are surrounded by decades of history. The twists and turns of this novel continued to surprise me, and I was on the edge of my seat until the very end. The end of this novel caught me off guard in the best way. 

For anyone interested in queer Gothic mystery and intrigue, The World Cannot Give is a must-read!

Please add The World Cannot Give to your TBR on Goodreads.

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. 

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

Rachel reviews House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

Posted on by
the cover of House of Hunger

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

From the author of The Year of the Witching (Penguin 2020) comes a new queer Gothic novel about blood, power, and control. House of Hunger (Penguin 2022) was enthralling until the very last page, and I still want more! 

House of Hunger is set in a world where the upper class literally feed on the blood of lower-class women they enlist into their service. Marion Shaw has been born and raised in the slums of her city, and she works as a maid to make ends meet for herself and her brother who has fallen into a drug addiction that takes him out of the world he lives in. Her life appears monotonous and dismal, dominated by tyrannical others who seek to use her for their own ends. One day, though, she sees an ad in the newspaper: someone is seeking a new bloodmaid. Although there is an enormous stigma amongst the lower classes around such a job, it is the only way Marion can hope to escape her circumstances. She applies to the position and is whisked away into a new life, leaving behind all she knows, in a matter of days.

What follows is a shocking and unfamiliar journey into the far north, where Marion is drawn into the upper classes as a bloodmaid in the House of Hunger, an infamous and ancient clan of vampiric aristocrats. Surrounded by debauchery and hedonism, Marion is quickly swept away by her new mistress, Countess Lisavet. Marion’s blood keeps Lisavet healthy, and Marion is drawn in by Lisavet’s magnetic pull, but soon she realizes that things might not be as they appear. Suddenly, bloodmaids begin to go missing, and questions begin to arise about what exactly happens once a bloodmaid has outlived her term at the House of Hunger. Eventually, it is up to Marion to uncover Lisavet’s secrets and save herself and her friends. 

When I read The Year of the Witching, I couldn’t put it down, and when House of Hunger arrived, I had high hopes it would be a similar reading experience and I was not disappointed! This novel is a fresh and exciting take on the idea of the vampire, with adaptive elements from folklore and legend that I really appreciated. The world Marion lives in is a haunting and exaggerated comment on class systems, gender roles, and exploitation. It was exciting to see Countess Elizabeth Bathory queered in the figure of Lisavet (as she arguably always should be). Marion’s character is someone we root for, and it was interesting to experience so much of this world for the first time alongside her. 

This novel definitely has the Gothic intensity I’ve come to expect from Henderson, and the plot is fast paced, engaging, and kept me guessing until the very end. I could very easily spend more time in this world and I think others could too; there is so much I still want to know about Marion’s society and many other plots to follow. 

If you’re looking for a gripping read this holiday season, House of Hunger is definitely it. I will be reading Henderson’s fiction for a long time to come! 

Please add House of Hunger to your TBR on Goodreads and follow Alexis Henderson on Twitter. 

Content Warnings: physical violence, gaslighting, assault. 

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. 

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

Rachel reviews Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Posted on by
the cover of Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Amazon Affiliate Link

Famous Canadian author Ann-Marie MacDonald returns with an incredible new historical novel. Fayne (2022) sweeps readers away to an expansive world of fantasy and wonder. 

Set in late-nineteenth-century Scotland, Fayne follows Charlotte Bell, who is growing up at Fayne, the lonely and isolated Scottish estate that straddles the border between England and Scotland. Charlotte has been kept from society by her father, Lord Henry Bell, who adores her. Charlotte’s isolation is the result of a mysterious condition that compels her father to keep her from public view in order to protect her. 

But Charlotte is bright, curious, and clever, always exploring the moor and reading everything she can get her hands on. She is haunted, however, by a portrait of her mother that hangs over the staircase at Fayne. Charlotte’s mother has died in childbirth after having her, and Charlotte’s older brother, Charles, died shortly before that. One day, when Charlotte’s explorations on the moor uncover a strange item, Lord Henry announces that he has arranged for Charlotte to be cured of her condition. What follows is a twisted and winding trail of family secrets, hidden truths, and nefarious individuals that will take Charlotte through a mystery that will upend her sense of her own identity. 

This book was incredible—easily one of the best books I have read this year. As the latest iteration of neo-Victorian queer fiction, this book is a wonderful contribution to queer literary production. As an over seven-hundred-page text, the narrative is thorough and expansive, and the text places small details throughout that later come to have significant meanings for the whole plot. Therefore, this text requires careful reading, and it draws you in. I read it in a span of four days, and I was sometimes literally unable to tear myself away from the intricate narrative MacDonald has crafted. 

Charlotte’s perspective is mesmerizing—I was rooting for her, and I was compelled by her mind and her quest for truth and identity in a world that appears to dissuade her from finding and understanding those things. Her journey is beautiful, and it resonates with contemporary readers as she embarks on a quest for autonomy and power in a highly binarized, gendered world. 

There is also a magical element to this book that was alternately mysterious and compelling. MacDonald uses setting to her advantage, framing Fayne as a character in itself, and the surrounding bog as a place of wonder and danger. 

Alternately touching, harrowing, enraging, and memorable, this book took me through a range of emotions to structure a tale that will definitely become an instant classic. 

Please add Fayne to your TBR on Goodreads.

Content warning: medical violence, physical abuse, child loss, psychological abuse, non-consensual medical procedures. 

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. 

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

Rachel reviews The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

Posted on by
the cover of The Book Eaters

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

A fast-paced, truly unputdownable fantasy novel, Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters is the kind of expansive adventure novel that draws you in and keeps you there. Dean’s writing represents a fabulous new voice in fantasy literature. 

The world of The Book Eaters introduces us to a secret lineage of aristocratic beings who live on isolated and private estates. For them, secrecy is necessary, because books are food. After consuming a book with their “book teeth,” the eater retains all of the content of that book. They give a whole new meaning to the idea of “taste” in literature. Some book eaters prefer romances or fairy tales, while others eat crime thrillers or comics. Encyclopedias taste bland, and the book eater children are punished for bad behaviour by a diet of dictionary pages. 

The novel centers on Devon, a book eater whose value as a female book eater comes from her ability to procreate. While Devon’s brothers enjoy the many freedoms their gender provides, including eating all of the books they want, Devon is permitted only to read fairy tales and other relatively empty pieces of fiction, limiting her knowledge and her capacity for choice. When Devon is married off and has a son whose hunger is not for books, but for human minds and memories, she must make a critical choice between the life she has always known and her son’s future, which could easily come at the expense of her own. 

I truly could not bear to put this novel down. I finished it in a day almost immediately after it was released. It has a thoroughly fast-paced writing style and a world that seems wholly original in its construction. I think this book is perfect for fans of authors like Ransom Riggs who are interested in dark and paranormal horror. This is not a light-hearted fantasy novel; it is intense and harrowing at times. I was absolutely gripped until the very end. 

I feel like there was a period of time this year where I was reading fiction that sounded interesting, and it ended up being about queer women without being overtly marketed that way (that I had seen). So, let me definitively say: this book is queer! It was really interesting to read about a queer main character whose resistance to an oppressively heterosexist space was just one dimension of her rebellion. I feel like Devon was a thoroughly realized character with her own motives and desires that she was compelled to pursue in order to fully embody herself. I loved the queer dynamics in this book, and I found myself rooting for these characters and for their happiness. 

I cannot recommend The Book Eaters enough, especially as the perfect queer read for the Halloween season. 

Please add The Book Eaters on your TBR on Goodreads.

Content Warning: Forced marriage, child abduction, domestic abuse.

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. 

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

Danielle reviews Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress

Posted on by
the cover of Sirens and Muses

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress is a novel that follows four artists as they embark first on art school before conquering New York City. I loved everything about this novel. Everything. The characters are rich: Angress has done a phenomenal job of creating realistic characters who are not always likable—which, to me, makes them even more real. The four artists are flawed, have their own anxieties and grievances, and are at times self-conscious. Despite times throughout the novel when they are extremely unlikeable, by the end of the novel, two of the four characters, Karina and Louisa, have become some of my favourite fictional characters. It’s important to note that Angress seems to be a master of character development. Cruel at times, each character stumbles. I loved watching each character change direction and reach their potentials despite their earlier suffering and anxieties.

The dynamic between Karina and Louisa is what makes Sirens & Muses for me. Its 368 pages simply don’t have enough of them together. Karina is the character I found most difficult to like at the start of the novel, while Louisa is easy to love. By the time I finished reading, I’d fallen in love with both of them. Between the lines, they have a beautiful love story: obscured by the other two characters’ stories, Angress gave just enough to pull me into their relationship, and desperately hope for some sort of sequel to their story.

My heart hurt for the characters throughout Sirens & Muses. I found myself truly caring about them, and in that sense, Angress has created a masterpiece. The novel is part academic, part love story, part art discourse, and she weaves all of those themes together seamlessly. It is a smart, well-written book that I was immediately captivated by, and have remained captivated by weeks after reading it.

It was the perfect length, leaving you satisfied yet still wanting more, and with such realistic and detailed descriptions of the characters’ art, I felt as though I was walking through an art gallery of their creations: a fictional art gallery filled with the fictional art created by fictional characters. Angress has written a vivid and captivating novel that comes to life off the pages.

Danielle is a Lesbrary guest reviewer. If you would like to submit a review to be featured on the Lesbrary, check out the About page for more information.