The Salvage by Anbara Salam is a gothic literary thriller set on a small Scottish island in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The protagonist is Marta, a trailblazing marine archaeologist sent to investigate a Victorian shipwreck on behalf of a local wealthy family descended from the ship’s captain. On her first dive, she seesRead More
Old Gods, New Cities, and An Arsonist’s Lullaby: When They Burned the Butterfly by Wen-Yi Lee
One of my favorite tropes in fantasy is magic linked to body horror. Especially more so when it is treated as a volatile resource, calling into question the price of chasing power. Naturally, I had a fantastic time with Wen-Yi Lee’s When They Burned the Butterfly (October 21, 2025): a bloody, fiery saga about the horror andRead More
Curl Up With a Magical Read: Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne
There’s just something about a cozy fantasy tale. Some worldbuilding, a little bit of peril, and a lot of slice-of-life moments in which you get to know the characters: it’s just a good combination. Throw in a sapphic couple, and you’ve got me locked in. Rebecca Thorne’s first Tomes & Tea book, then, had meRead More
A Swoony, Sexy Sports Romance: Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner
Anyone who knows me knows that there are three things I love most in the world: lesbians, books, and sports. If you put the three together, I’ll be sat every time. It was that premise that led me to pick up Meryl Wilsners rivals-to-lovers sapphic novel, Cleat Cute. Equal parts swoony and sexy, Cleat Cute follows the growingRead More
A (Christmas) Light in the Darkness: All is Bright by Llinos Cathryn Thomas
Full disclosure: the author is a friend and provided me with an eARC of this novella in exchange for an honest review. Thankfully, I tend to enjoy everything she writes, so this is neither a hardship nor a friendship-ending challenge! It was actually a humid, sunny, 31-degree late summer Toronto day when I wrote thisRead More
A Wild Dystopian Ride: Road to Ruin by Hana Lee
This is a post-apocalyptic ride of a novel with many a comparison to the Mad Max movies. Desert wastelands, thrilling motorcycle rides, and dinosaur-like creatures await in these pages! Jin-Lu, our main character, is a mage-bike courier, which means she has an aesthetically cool and extremely dangerous job taking messages and cargo across the wastelandsRead More
An Utterly Strange and Utterly Beautiful Murder Ballad Retold: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar’s highly anticipated solo debut novella, was released in March 2025. Like a ravening beast, I fell upon my preorder package and tore through the novella in a single sitting. It’s 100 pages exactly, from the very first beautiful linocut print to the last, so it isn’t a Commitment. I’llRead More
A Novel for Mere Mortals: Woodworking by Emily St. James Review
Woodworking by Emily St. James is a novel for mere mortals. It takes place in the shadow of the 2016 presidential election, and of all the goings-on of those few months, of all the things said and seen; Woodworking is set in rural South Dakota, against a backdrop of bad community theatre and doomed local progressiveRead More
The Redemption of Daya Keane by Gia Gordon Review
This book is so delightfully, perfectly messy. Titular character Daya lives in a small, conservative town in Arizona, surrounded by small-minded, conservative classmates and a small-minded, conservative mom. It’s a tough place to be queer. When Daya begins a friendship that turns to something more with megachurch poster-girl Beckett Wild, she might be making moreRead More
Haunted in Every Sense: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence highlights the power of words. As it is set in a bookstore and the author herself owns Birchbark Books, I anticipated a richly detailed sense of place and community as well as a clear love of books. The Sentence delivers those things along with a complex look at what it means to be haunted. (ContentRead More
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