“I was a cog in a terrible machine for years, and now I’m honored to be the monkey wrench dismantling it.” Rose grew up in the extremely religious town of Neverton, Montana, where the biggest industry is a gay conversion camp that boasts a 100% effectiveness rate. She’s just about to graduate high school, andRead More
Pick Up These Sapphic YA Graphic Novels for a Halloween Romp
Last weekend was Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, and every October readathon, I pack my TBR full of short Halloween-themed reads. Naturally, those are usually queer. This year, I’ve discovered a couple of sapphic YA graphic novels that are perfect Halloween romps. They give Halloween vibes—one even has a talking Jack o’Lantern!—but aren’t too scary. They’reRead More
The Successor to House of Leaves: We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
If you’re looking for a haunted house story to really get under your skin, We Used to Live Here is for you. It’s a slow build, but by the end, it was the kind of story that had me seeing things in the shadows of my room at night. We follow Eve, who has justRead More
Feral Eldritch Ballerinas: I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea
Laure is a ballet dancer who has devoted herself entirely to her profession. She spends every waking moment honing her skill. And she is perfect. But as she soon learns, perfect is not enough. It doesn’t matter that she’s the best, because she’s fighting to rise up in an institution that sees her working classRead More
If Shirley Jackson Wrote Severance: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling
The first thing you’ll notice when reading the blurbs for Last to Leave the Room is that every reader seems to think it’s a different genre. Isaac Fellman says it “reads like Shirley Jackson writing an episode of Severance.” Apparently, this is a technothriller sci-fi speculative gothic horror novel, which I can’t say I’ve ever seenRead More
Blood, Sex, and Poetry: An Education in Malice by S. T. Gibson
“She kissed me with a martyr’s agonized desperation, like I was the only sword she ever wanted to fall on.” I’ve been eagerly anticipating this book since it was announced: I loved Gibson’s queer polyamorous take on Dracula’s wives in A Dowry of Blood, and I have written several times about my complicated relationship withRead More
Grief and the Gay Supernatural Alliance: Jasmine is Haunted by Mark Oshiro
Jasmine Garza is tired of moving, she’s tired of switching schools, and she’s tired of her Mami not believing her. Ever since her father died, she’s been haunted—but not by him. By a ghost who wants to ruin her life, apparently, because it keeps getting her into trouble. She’s tried to talk to her MamiRead More
This Queer Horror Book Will Haunt You: Model Home by Rivers Solomon
This was my first Rivers Solomon book, and from the first page, I understood why I’d heard such good things about them. Here are the opening lines: “Maybe my mother is God, and that’s why nothing I do pleases her. Maybe my mother is God, and that’s why even though she’s never once saved me,Read More
A Hardboiled Lesbian Detective Comic: Deprog by Tina Horn, Lisa Sterle, Gab Contreras, and DaNi
If a gritty noir graphic novel with a “hardboiled hard drinking leather loving dyke detective” sounds up your alley, pick Deprog up—though you might want to give the content warnings a glance first. I thought that was what I wanted, but I quickly realized this was a darker read than I’m currently in the headspaceRead More
A Disabled Jewish Lesbian Time Loop Story: Time and Time Again by Chatham Greenfield
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 sheRead More