Tag Archives: YA

A Disabled Jewish Lesbian Time Loop Story: Time and Time Again by Chatham Greenfield

Posted on by — Leave a reply
Time and Time Again by Chatham Greenfield cover

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

I love a time loop story, so I had to pick up up this sapphic YA take on the trope—especially one with with fat and disabled characters on the cover!

In the first chapter, Phoebe is living August 6th for the 26th time in a row. Every day is the same, and every day she does the same thing, including eating pancakes with her mom, playing Scrabble at her dad’s place, researching time loop stories, and ending the day with a painful IBS flare-up. Then, one August 6th goes a little differently: she steps off the curb a little later than usual and is hit by a car—gently. Jess is driving, and now they’re stuck looping with Phoebe.

Phoebe and Jess used to be close childhood friends until their fathers argued and they stopped being allowed to see each other. Now, they’re the only out lesbians at their school. They’re also both Jewish and disabled, and they immediately settle into their old friendship again—but Phoebe worries if Jess will have time for her after they return to real life.

This is the most relaxed time loop story I’ve ever read. Neither of them seem particularly worried or in a hurry about breaking the loop. They do talk about it, but they don’t panic. In fact, they sometimes are reluctant to return to their time, though Phoebe is counting down the days until she can see a doctor who might actually by able to help with her health problems and not just tell her to lose weight.

They also don’t do what I associate with time loop stories, where they have a montage of whacky or deadly experiences they would never do in real life. They do get revenge on a bully at one point, but it’s not a big departure from typical teen activities. They drive to a different state or go to a concert or shave their heads—all pretty mild reactions to having endless do-overs.

That’s not a complaint, to be clear! Part of what I liked about Time and Time Again is how it used the time loop format in a different way. (The ending also resolved timelines in a way I haven’t seen before, and it explains some other choices in the plot.) It makes perfect sense that Phoebe is stuck in time, because she already feels lost and aimless. The end of high school approaches, and she doesn’t know what she wants to do afterwards. Her anxiety prevents her from taking chances and trying new things, including driving. (Same.) It doesn’t feel like a sci-fi story as much as a metaphor for what’s already going on in her life.

As you’d expect, then, the focus is much more on the characters and their relationship to each other. It’s so nice to read a book with a romance between disabled Jewish lesbians: that kind of representation is still pretty rare, and especially when it’s both main characters. (Jess is also nonbinary.)

If you like time loop stories and don’t need them to be action-packed sci-fi stories, I definitely recommend this one. I’m happy to see this book came out of a fellowship from Reese’s Book Club: I’ll definitely be watching to see which other books are published through LitUp! Hopefully this means that stories like Time and Time Again get the marketing push to put them into more readers’ hands.

The Queer Graphic Novel That Had Me Sobbing at 3 A.M.: The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag

Posted on by — Leave a reply
The Deep Dark cover

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

You’re all fired for not tell me how good this is.

I liked The Girl From the Sea, so I put a hold on Ostertag’s newest sapphic graphic novel, but I hadn’t heard anything about it, so I my expectations were pretty grounded. I definitely didn’t realize it was almost 500 pages; not the one-sitting read I was expecting… or so I thought.

I started reading this before bed, fully intending to get through a chapter or two before going to sleep. Instead, I was glued to the page until I finished it, after which I fully started not just crying but sobbing to myself. (It probably wasn’t 3 A.M., but give me some creative liberty here.) My roommate had to patiently listen to me weepily describe how good this book was. And then he offered me a chocolate chip cookie, which I definitely needed.

This review will have minor spoilers: the back doesn’t tell you what it is that happens in the basement every night, but it’s revealed early in the story. This is about Mags, a teenager who is trying to balance being the primary caregiver to her ailing grandmother, going to school, holding down a part-time job—and feeding her monster. Every night, she descends into the basement, offering her hand for the monster to feed from. It means she doesn’t get a lot of sleep on top of everything else, and it means she feels isolated: how could she ever have a real relationship, when she has such a terrible secret?

Mags is sleepwalking through life, as we can tell from the washed-out colour palette. She’s sleeping with a classmate from school who has a boyfriend. She doesn’t have a social life outside of these secret hook ups. Then, a childhood friend reappears: Nessa. Nessa is bisexual and trans, and she knows Mags’s secret already, because Mags told her when they were kids… except Nessa thinks she imagined it all. As Mags and Nessa spend more time together, Mags begins to wish for more from her life.

My heart broke for Mags, who is carrying so much on her shoulders. Her mother is horrified by her monster and stays distant from her. She thinks, “Mom says I’m so mature. And that’s code for not her problem anymore.” Her abuela is the one who forced her to start feeding her monster as a kid and to keep it a locked away secret. Her uncle, who was the other person in her family in the same situation, ran away with his monster and was never heard from again. She feels alone and like she doesn’t deserve real connection or support. She’s so tired that she’s beginning to faint at random times, and it’s obvious she can’t keep this up forever.

Ultimately, this is a story about accepting and loving the darkest, angriest parts of yourself—and allowing other people to love you in your entirety. Nessa offers Mags a glimpse of a possibility outside of just isolating herself. It’s painful and difficult, but it’s worth it.

As the title warns, this isn’t a light read. On top of Mags’s difficult emotional state and the discussions of intergenerational trauma, Nessa is also recovering from an abusive relationship, one that turned into stalking after they broke up. I also want to give content warnings for violence, death, child death, gun violence, and threatening suicide.

I did not mean to read this in one sitting, but I’m glad I did. I was immersed in this story, and I felt so deeply for Mags. It made the ending cathartic—hence the sobbing. This was obviously written from a personal place, and it’s so effective. This is a new favourite.

Religious Trauma and Queer Awakening: Gay the Pray Away by Natalie Naudus

Posted on by — Leave a reply
Gay the Pray Away cover

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

Content warnings: homophobia, child abuse, religious abuse, physical abuse

Gay the Pray Away by Natalie Naudus follows Valerie Danners as she begins to understand and live her own truth. Unfortunately for Valerie, the truth of her sexuality is beyond unacceptable to her conservative Christian community, and she may not be able to have herself and her family.

I looked forward to reading this book. It combines two of my interests, sapphic characters and high-control religious groups, and one on count it thrives. The relationship between Riley and Valerie progresses naturally and is beyond adorable. I loved their sweet moments sharing each other’s passions and getting to be carefree teenagers together. Their stolen and cobbled-together dates shine throughout the book, even with a tremor of fear always running through them. I knew from the summary on the back cover that discovery was inevitable.

Which leads into the book’s weaknesses.

First, the blurb tells a majority of the story. In a way, that’s hard to avoid; this is a character-driven book, not plot-heavy. Maybe most readers found the book predictable. Maybe that doesn’t matter. With the character’s arc at the heart of this story and the warmly colored, borderline-idyllic art on the cover, even mildly savvy readers likely guessed the sort of ending this one had in store. I don’t mean that as a criticism. Plenty of queer readers want happy endings and with good reason.

However, the character’s initial perspective deserves analysis. This is supposed to be a book about Valerie deconstructing her faith. I assert that due to several scenes in which she confronts new information and experiences in the light of conservative Christian teachings. That is the book I wanted and the book I came for.

Unfortunately, it is not this book. From her introduction, Valerie does not hold those teachings. She tells us at the start how boring she finds Bible study, how she constantly daydreams during morning prayers. After sneaking a queer book from the library, she holes up in her closet to read it; this closet is set up as her little hideaway. Valerie complains about the rules under which she lives pretty much from the start. This is something that frustrates me because it feels like this fear of making mistakes. It feels like a concern on the part of maybe a writer or editor that Valerie won’t be likable enough if she holds unpopular beliefs. But a lot of people growing up in high-control religious groups genuinely hold beliefs they are raised with, beliefs many of us would deem problematic—they hold, in essence, the beliefs from which Valerie claims to be deconstructing. She is not deconstructing. You cannot deconstruct what was never built.

That is my biggest criticism of this book. Its lack of plot I can excuse. Its predictable ending seems reasonable. But the summary selling this as a deconstruction story, the passages in which Valerie claims to hold beliefs that conflict with what we’re shown prior just long enough for her to change her views? That frustrated me. The intended core of the book serves a context wholly different from the one provided here.

Gay the Pray Away is not a bad book. If you want a sweet romance in dangerous times, this is an excellent choice. My frustration is aimed at the marketing. This isn’t about a girl picking apart the toxic messaging she’s internalized; those scenes could have been removed without altering the story at all. My recommendation would be to go into it aware and keep your expectations reasonable.

A Sweet & Sizzling Summer Romance: A Bánh Mì for Two by Trinity Nguyen

Posted on by — Leave a reply
A Banh Mi for Two cover

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

If you are looking for a sweet and sizzling summer romance to end your summer on a high note, A Bánh Mì for Two by Trinity Nguyen is a sweet romance between a Vietnamese American college student and a food blogger in Sài Gòn who is looking for her inspiration again after the death of her father. I would like to thank MacMillan for providing the Lesbrary with an ARC—A Bánh Mì for Two comes out on August 20th. I greatly enjoyed this novel; the romance is sweet, and both characters have interesting arcs as they struggle to deal with what becoming an adult means in terms of dealing with family and making big choices for themselves. Plus, I learned about street food in Sài Gòn and got very hungry in the process!

The romance takes place between Lan, a girl who currently helps run with family bánh mì stand with her mother and cousin, and Vivi, an American college student in Sài Gòn for a semester abroad. Vivi has told her parents she’s studying in Singapore, but in reality has come to see if she can track down the family history her mother refuses to speak about. As a bonus, she hopes to visit the places that her absolute favorite food blog has written about before they went on a long hiatus. Lan is helping her mother with their stand after the death of her father—she had had aspirations of going to college and being a writer, having enjoyed the popularity of the food blog she had started with the help of her father, but has felt both adrift and drowning under the weight of family expectations. A chance encounter in a park connects the two girls. Vivi, upon realizing that Lan is her favorite food writer, is excited, a little starstruck, and determined to help her find her writing inspiration again; Lan realizes that her deep roots in Sài Gòn could be what Vivi needs to discover her family’s past. As they spend more time together, they grow closer, they begin to realize that this may be more than a summer friendship.

I thought the romance between Lan and Vivi was very cute. Both girls, after a rocky start, are smitten with each other. Through Vivi’s eyes, Lan once again falls in love with her home city and her passions, and through Lan, Vivi is inspired to be bold and reach for what she wants. Both girls inspire and help each other and their feelings grow from that. If you are looking for some sweet first love, this is the place—even their first fight is barely worth the name, and they’re soon back to being joined at the hip.

Besides being a cute romance, this book also has a lot to say about growing up and figuring out how to deal with your family as a newly-fledged adult. Although they come from very different backgrounds and life experiences, Lan and Vivi are both at the same stage of life, where they are technically grown but still trying to figure out how to make their life their own. For Vivi, this study abroad experience is her chance specifically to make decisions that her parents wouldn’t approve of. Lan, on the other hand, is having trouble not taking all her family’s problems on herself, even when they urge her to live her own life. Throw in Vivi’s hidden family history, and there’s a lot for the girls to deal with on top of their burgeoning romance, but it is, in my opinion, the meat of the story. 

All in all, A Bánh Mì for Two is a cute romance that successful drew me into a wonderful mood and distracted me from the simmering summer heat. I would again like to thank the publisher for the ARC.  A Bánh Mì for Two comes out tomorrow, and I absolutely recommend it if you are looking for a cute summer romance to round out your summer.

A Home Run Against Student Loans in Bunt! Striking Out on Financial Aid by Ngozi Ukazu & Mad Rupert

Posted on by — Leave a reply
the cover of Bunt!

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

If you are like me, you are either anxiously awaiting news of your student loans being forgiven (if only) or desperately trying to not think about it at all (sorry). If only we could utilize our soft skills to vanquish them—if I could take out a percentage of my student loans for every book I read, I would be thriving. But thankfully for Molly Bauer, whose art school scholarship disappears at the start of her freshman year, she and nine other art students can receive a massive athletic scholarship if they win just one game. However, as Molly and her ragtag team of art compatriots struggle to learn the sport, they do learn how to work together on one of the most daunting assignments of all time: the dreaded group project.

I thoroughly enjoyed how goofy Bunt! is. It would have been so easy to sink into the scary situation Molly finds herself in, but Uzaku and Rupert refuse to let Molly (and the reader by extension) wallow. The illustration style and color palette add so much to the larger-than-life personalities of Molly and her friends, placing them on the top of my “fictional want to befriend” list. This team of queer weirdos galore make you want to cheer them on and on, even as the book is ending.

That being said, Bunt! does not shy away from harsh topics. The predatory nature of student loans and capitalism as a whole lurk almost constantly (even if it is hidden behind a cutesy shark with dollar-sign eyes), making Molly’s struggles even more relatable. Add to that the gentrification of Peachtree by PICA, the struggles of breaking free from family history as shown through Susanna and Ryan, and the stigma of dropping out of college in Ryan, and you have a book that would serve well into a discussion starter.

Comp titles include: the Scott Pilgrim series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, the Check Please! graphic novel duology by Ngozi Ukazu, or “Love and War #1” by Andrew Wheeler, Killian Ng, and Aditya Bidikar.

If you enjoy ragtag protagonists, college towns, sapphic romances, and saving a buck, you can order your copy of Bunt! Striking Out on Financial Aid through Bookshop, your local indie bookstore, or your library.

Sapphic Sleepaway Camp: Wish You Weren’t Here by Erin Baldwin

Posted on by — Leave a reply
Wish You Weren't Here cover

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

Priya Freaking Pendley seems to have everything a girl could ask for: social media stardom, the handsome track captain boyfriend, and millions of adoring fans. Juliette might have to live with that during the school year, but at Fogridge Sleepaway Camp, Juliette reigns. It’s the one place where she can be herself instead of too “intense.” Their last summer before college, Juliette is ready to make the most of her summer, until she finds Priya as her lone bunkmate. Can she tolerate her childhood rival while making the most of her summer, or will Priya ruin it all?

The premise of two high school seniors dealing with their animosity while they’re forced to bunk together at sleepaway summer camp? Sign me up! This was a soft, heart-warming, great first step for a debut author. I’m curious to see what Baldwin will write next. I adored Baldwin’s ability to capture the magic and nostalgia of sleepaway summer camps. You’ll fall into the atmosphere as you read this one, with crickets chirping, twigs cracking, and the scent of burning firewood in the air. The queerness is authentic and natural; not overly discussed, but instead one beautiful aspect among many for several characters. Juliette’s story is one of self-realization and acceptance; perfect for a young adult about to make their way into the world.

From the story’s premise, I expected so much more tension from the start; animosity with reason. Instead, these two girls just…dislike each other. That’s it. It’s blown out of proportion, overdramatic in the prettiest sense. Juliette has no other reason for disliking Priya beyond the fact that everyone else adores her. Yes, that can get annoying, and I understand that high school girls develop “frenemies” (I honestly don’t think that’s the right term for what’s going on here, but “enemies” and “rivals” are too strong) growing up, but you don’t feel anything that Juliette feels toward Priya in this story. Once Priya arrives at camp, you start to see who she is beyond the glossy veneer, which I love, but Juliette’s slow abandonment of her hostility toward Priya doesn’t seem earned because it doesn’t start with any real strength. It just seems like… she’s so used to disliking Priya, that she can’t recall why she really does. The first chapter, at the party, really should have enforced their disdain for each other. Instead it’s just… there. There aren’t any real sparks of chemistry, either; just an entirely too slow burn that eventually leads toward an anti-climatic queer awakening. There was so much room for forgiveness and character development and instead every moment just felt flat and underproduced.

The Vibes 

  • Debut Book
  • Contemporary YA
  • Rivals to Lovers
  • Summer Vibes
  • Sapphic Romance
  • Found Family
  • Love to Hate/Hate to Love
  • Opposites Attract
  • Slow Burn

A Love Letter to Summer Camp: Wish You Weren’t Here by Erin Baldwin

Posted on by — Leave a reply
Wish You Weren't Here cover

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

Enemies to lovers is a popular trope, but most people don’t have full-on nemeses in real life. So in contemporary settings, rivals to lovers is more common: the people you compete with, argue with, and hate. Wish You Weren’t Here presents a lower stakes version of even this: what if you fall in love with the girl from your class who annoys you? You’ve never had a full-on fight, but you both avoid each other and are snippy around each other. That’s the vibe of Juliette and Priya.

As you can imagine, this isn’t the same stakes as a typical fantasy novel’s enemies to lovers story, where you’re both trying to murder each other at every chance. At first, I thought it was too little conflict to be interesting, but as the story continued, I started to appreciate the dynamic. This isn’t the fine line between love and hate, kissing each other in a moment of passion. It’s the confusing moment of seeing someone in a different light—writing someone off and then seeing that they’re very different than you imagined them to be.

The other big factor in this teen sapphic romance is the setting. Wish You Weren’t Here is an unapologetic love letter to summer camp. It’s the only place Juliette feels she can entirely herself. Everywhere else, she’s too “intense.” Here, she’s celebrated for it. That’s why she has such a hard time when popular, rich girl Priya shows up to steal the spotlight: this is supposed to be her safe place. Priya gets everything else, so why does she get to take this from her?

At Fogridge Sleepaway Camp, lifelong friendships are forged. Campers see each other year after year and develop their own inside jokes based on shared history. Juliette adores this place and knows it inside and out; she clashes with a new counsellor partly because she can’t help but consider herself more of an expert and authority on camp. It’s interesting, because I went to summer camp every year, but this is a whole different vibe than my experience. For me, summer camp was a way to reinvent yourself, but it existed in a bubble—I pretty much never saw the same campers year to year. It’s interesting that in the author’s note, she says that she fell in love with summer camp as an adult counselor. Obviously, summer camp means different things to different people, and it was fun to get a glimpse of this version.

I wasn’t sold on this story in first half, partly because while Priya and Juliette bickered—mostly because of Juliette’s prickly personality—there wasn’t that much conflict overall. (Also, the scene with her and her six siblings stressed me out! No wonder she can’t wait to escape to summer camp.) The second half got me, though, because I thought the flirting and tension between them as their relationship shifted was so well done.

I ended up enjoying this more than I thought I would, and it was such a fun summer read. I read this partially in print and partly as an audiobook, and I recommend both. The short chapters—all of which have fun titles—make this a quick read, and I think anyone who has a soft spot for summer camp will get a dose of nostalgia. (Follow this up with That Summer Feeling by Bridget Morrissey if you start dreaming about adult summer camp!)

Love and Rebellion: We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia

Posted on by — Leave a reply
We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia cover

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

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia is a young adult novel that follows teenager Daniela as she navigates becoming one of the wives to a vicious up-and-coming young man while simultaneously becoming a secret member of the rebel group La Voz that undermines him and those like him on his way to the top. The girls at the Medio School for Girls are trained for five years to either be perfect Primeras or Segundas. Every rich, distinguished young man gets assigned two wives at the Medio School’s graduation ceremony: one Primera, to be his equal and his defender, and one Segunda, to bear his children and support him emotionally. In Medio, this is considered the norm. Though the privileged claim that this is a decree by the Sun God who himself chose two wives to stand opposite each other, Dani, the best Primera the Medio School for Girls has ever produced, soon finds out the truth: that the rich and powerful will use whatever they can to get and keep what they want, no matter the cost to those less privileged who live on the other side of the wall.

The world Mejia builds is so detailed and expansive. The book opens with a prologue detailing the story of how the Sun God attained his two wives through a fight with his brother the Salt God, and at the end of it, you find out that this is the introduction to the rulebook that the girls at the school have to follow. After that, each chapter opens with a different rule for Primeras from the Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition. Each rule applies to the chapter in which it appears, and the reader gets to watch as Dani starts to bend them or use them in ways the Medio School never would have approved of the more she gets involved with La Voz. As it turns out, a lot of her Primera training makes her a good spy. She is quiet, determined, able to hide her emotions, and knows how to look someone over for weaknesses. As Sota, the leader of La Voz, says at one point, Dani is “a hundred shades of a girl.” She knows how to hide her true emotions and layer another emotion or façade on top of it that she wants other people to see. She’s been able to keep her real pedigree a secret for years by becoming the best Primera she can be. She has to be the best; her parents risked everything to get her onto this side of the wall that separates the powerful from the weak. Her identification papers are fake, and she has been able to get by until the night of her graduation when Sota comes into the Medio School for Girls and starts Dani on the path to becoming more than a Primera or a girl trying to live a life only her parents wanted for her.

Dani’s growing relationship with Carmen, the Segunda to the man Dani marries, is another strong point of the book. The novel’s first chapters paint a picture of Carmen and Dani’s tumultuous relationship as girls who were almost friends until Carmen chose to be her bully instead, and I read that and immediately thought, Yep, that’s the love interest. I couldn’t wait to see how things would change for them, and Mejia did not disappoint. There’s a sweet quote later in the book from Carmen to Dani that had me texting my friend because it hit so well. They are two girls in a bad situation finding comfort in each other. Even when Dani isn’t sure who she can trust or who knows the truth about her, she decides to trust Carmen. Anyone who reads sapphic literature would be able to see Dani’s repressed feelings miles before she figures them out herself. Carmen knows she likes girls and tells Dani a whole story about how she figured it out in her youth, but liking anybody is new for Dani, since Primeras aren’t supposed to care about things like love or lust. Those emotions are saved for the Segundas, so even kissing is new for Dani. She waxes poetic several times about Carmen’s kisses, and it’s so sweet every time.

My only real criticism of the book is with their husband, Mateo. He is very one-dimensional. There’s no such thing as a redeeming quality to be found in the guy. He’s controlling, he doesn’t believe in letting his Primera do what she spent her teen years perfecting for the day she would become a wife, and he plays a central role in getting Dani’s ex-roommate arrested as a sympathizer to the resistance. You’re not supposed to like him, not even for a second. From his first entrance in the book, Dani dislikes how he treats her, and it just gets worse from there. This fell flat for me a couple times, simply because he’s supposed to be this suave rich boy intent on becoming president someday. A man trying to reach that level and be elected by his people would probably have a few qualities worth voting for, but Mateo simply doesn’t. He’s a villain, and that’s all he is. I wish he’d been given the opportunity to grow a little bit as a character, even if that growth was backwards, but he’s the same at the start of the book as he is at the end of it. Carmen and Dani both change so much, but Mateo is static. I guess it makes the decision Dani comes to about officially joining the rebellion more black and white, but I would have loved to see Mateo slowly slip into the person Dani knows him to be instead of Mateo being insufferable and awful from the jump.

Despite that, I’m really glad I read this book again. I remembered liking it a lot the first time I read it years ago but had forgotten too much to jump into the sequel. Everything I did remember still hit, and everything I didn’t made me love the book more and more. Mejia captured me from the first page, and I read the entire novel in a day. Her world is so vivid, and I cared about Dani and Carmen almost immediately. I have the sequel, We Unleash the Merciless Storm, on my desk right now and am looking forward to diving headlong into it. I’m desperate to know how things turn out for Dani and Carmen after the heart wrenching reveal at the end of We Set the Dark on Fire, and I’m so excited to see where Mejia takes them.

Trigger warnings for: death, a graphic depiction of Dani getting burned, and violence.

Breaking Away from Religious Abuse: Gay the Pray Away by Natalie Naudus

Posted on by — Leave a reply
Gay the Pray Away cover

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

Natalie Naudus’s debut novel Gay the Pray Away is a young adult romance set in present day, centered around 17 year old Valerie, who is closeted in a very strict religious upbringing (*cough cough* a cult), so if you have childhood religious trauma, mega trigger warnings here.

Valerie Danners—homeschooled since the 3rd grade, when her parents joined “the Institute”—has a love of reading books that aren’t the Bible (discouraged but allowed in moderation) and a serious lack of interest in marriage prospects, much to the dismay of her parents, who believe a woman’s role is to be a wife and mother. Her family’s values are shaped by the “Institute”—essentially a Christian nationalist megachurch whose values are so extreme, they consider even the hardcore Evangelical Christians to be “not Christian enough.”

After stumbling on a queer library book that she just can’t put down, Valerie’s already wavering feelings about her religion are challenged further. Suddenly she’s learning new words like “pansexual,” and reading about characters who express their love without judgment or criticism.

When so-called “troubled teen” Riley, who blasphemously wears pants, has short hair and plans to go to community college, is placed under Valerie’s wing for some ministry and mentorship, Valerie finds her world completely turned upside down. It’s Riley who ends up being the guiding light for Valerie as she comes to terms with her identity. 

Valerie is struggling with a lot of issues, not just her sexuality. Religion has been such a huge part of her life, she’s at odds with how to approach her spirituality outside of her strict upbringing—is there any part worth salvaging? And while at times it seemed Valerie was adapting to her moments of self-discovery and coming to terms with her newly discovered queerness far too quickly, I kept reminding myself that she was already questioning her family’s beliefs and how she fit into their world as the story opened. 

The book includes many heavy themes, and physical and emotional abuse occur both on and off the page, though Naudus softens the edges of this narrative with humor throughout. Tension is high, and I was wringing my hands anxiously during Valerie’s uncomfortable and toxic interactions with both her family and her supposed best friend, a friend who has her own serious issues. As Valerie works through her plan for the future, she remains at odds with wanting her parents’ love and acceptance, despite how they treat her, and that constant questioning makes each decision all the more difficult.  

I found it interesting that there is no exact geographic location mentioned until the end of the story (we only learn the state), which feels intentional on the author’s part. The detail both drives home the point that location is irrelevant, the story could take place anywhere, but it also introduces a sort of underlying feeling of isolation. I especially loved all the wholesome moments spent in the library and its portrayal as a safe space and refuge, not to mention one of the most important characters in the book who never even gets a name: the librarian who looks out for Valerie. 

In the author’s forward, Naudus, who’s also a prolific audiobook narrator, lets us know that she’s writing from experience, and this is exactly the kind of book she would have loved to have found when she was younger.

Content Warnings: Physical and emotional abuse, childhood trauma, religious trauma, homophobia, misogyny, racism, arranged marriage, child abuse

Secrets, Sororities, and Sobriety: Thirsty by Jas Hammonds

Posted on by — Leave a reply
Thirsty cover

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

What would you be willing to do if it meant finding your flock? Jas Hammonds explores this age-old question in their young adult novel Thirsty. Incoming college freshmen Blake Brenner has been with her girlfriend, Ella, since freshman year; they are voted “The Couple Most Likely To Still Be Together In Ten Years” and are desperately in love. The duo is planning to go to Jameswell University and to join the exclusive Serena Society, along with their best friend, Annetta. As the summer begins, so does the Serena Society’s pledging process, which includes a fair amount of hazing. Blake is determined to prove herself—unlike Ella, who is a legacy pledge, Blake is the first in her family to go to college and has no connections or money to boost her status. However, in proving herself, Blake begins to develop an unhealthy relationship with both alcohol and partying, and she must decide what parts of herself to keep and which ones to banish.

This may be stating the obvious, but Thirsty is such a hard book to read, especially if you are an alcoholic or have dealt with alcoholics previously. I did cry at least twice and had to take self-mandated breaks while reading, so be prepared to do the same. But as hard and scary as reading Thirsty was, it also is incredibly healing, powerful, and such an important book to have out there. Narratives about alcoholism in teens/new adults feel rare, and I think that if I had read this in my early 20s, this book would have helped me curb some bad habits and/or thought patterns that existed at the time. 

The characterization in Thirsty is realistic, to the point where I sometimes felt uncomfortable with how much I identified with some of the characters and their choices. Blake’s desires of solidarity and feelings of loneliness are heartbreaking to read, all while her euphoria acts as a sort of bandage to the reader’s emotions. I also heartily enjoyed Annetta’s role in Thirsty—in a book that is dominated by Blake’s relationship with Ella, Annetta’s scenes acted as a palate cleanser and a place to emotionally recuperate. Annetta’s relationship with Blake shows how friendships should be about support, even when it may be initially unwanted.

If you enjoy Elizabeth Acevedo, emotionally complex stories, and solidarity narratives, you can order your copy of Thirsty through Bookshop, your local indie bookstore, or your library.

Comp titles: Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Saenz, Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie, You’d Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow, and Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett.

Content warnings include: alcoholism, hazing, accidentally outing, transphobia, intentional outing, cheating, vomiting, and vandalism.