Gothic literature is having a moment and I, for one, am loving it. The houses are creepy, the family vibes are rancid, and because this is 2026, the queerness no longer has to be subtextual. Cynthia Gómez delivers a wonderful gothic debut work in Muñeca, out June 2. This novella is about a Latine working classRead More
An Atmospheric, Otherworldly, and Sinister Experience: The Salvage by Anbara Salam Review
Courtesy notice to readers: Anbara Salam’s 2025 The Salvage is a haunted novel. Read with care. All playful warnings aside, I hope you’re into slow, creeping dread, because this book is absolutely dripping with it. Set in the early 1960s, on the isolated, insular Scottish island of Cairnroch, The Salvage immediately plunges readers into the icy, freezing waters ofRead More
Love and Rocket Science: To the Moon and Back by Eve Noble
Finally, someone taps the vast romantic potential of mathematics and physics. To The Moon is a historical fiction novel set during the Space Race following two NASA employees: Katrina Ivanova, a mathematician and Soviet turncoat, and Gloria Johnson, a brilliant Black physicist stuck working as a secretary for her white peers. Katrina fled from the SovietRead More
A Claustrophobic Sapphic Gothic: The Salvage by Anbara Salam Review
Before I get into it, I will say that my favourite part of this book was how information was slowly revealed, so I recommend going into this without knowing much about it. If you’re in the mood for a claustrophobic gothic novel set on a small, frozen-over island, pick this one up and skip overRead More
An Instant Classic of Sapphic Historical Fiction: The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Admittedly, I am extremely late to the game when it comes to Yael van der Wouden’s 2024 debut novel The Safekeep (Simon & Schuster); however, I now regret not picking this one up sooner. The Safekeep has the lasting impact of an instant classic alongside the gripping and propulsive plot of any good story. Set in 1961 inRead More
The Fight Isn’t Over: Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel Review
Ten Incarnations of Rebellion takes place in an alternate version of 1960s India, where British colonists’ brutal crackdown successfully quashed earlier attempts at independence. We meet Kalki as a teenager. Her father’s fight for freedom forced him to flee their home, and Kalki hasn’t heard from him since. Despite his rebellion liking costing his life,Read More
All of the Sapphic Vampires, None of the Victorian Homophobic Overtones: An Education in Malice by S. T. Gibson
Like many queer women, I’m sure, I have a strange relationship with the original Carmilla. On the one hand, sapphic vampires are objectively sexy. On the other hand, the way the danger she poses is framed as inextricably linked to her queerness (and her foreignness) is, well, unpleasant, to say the least. I always say thatRead 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
Marieke reviews Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link This book has been on the edges of my radar for a long time, and I’m not sure why I never got to it before now. Luckily I picked it when I was browsing through my ereader for something that might help to break my reading slump, withRead More
Tierney reviews Who Is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht
Who Is Vera Kelly? is a thoughtful, twisty spy thriller, whose eponymous protagonist is a queer American spy in 1960s Argentina. Vera’s life unfolds in fragments through the novel: passages in her present day, in which she is working for the CIA to monitor the unstable Argentinian government and suppress communist interests, are interspersed with passagesRead More