Having reached my tolerance limit with two back-to-back romance reviews, I now return to home territory: all things gnarly and body horror-related. This time, we are dealing with rotting limbs, forest cryptids, blood magic, the horrors of pursuing a PhD, and one of the slimiest, grossest fictional billionaires I have had the misfortune of discoveringRead More
An Innovative Reincarnation Romance: The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri
Once upon a time, there was a witch and a knight. They loved each other, and that love led to their deaths. But that death was not permanent, because they were born again, loved again, and died again. And again. And again. And again. Because on the isle, stories are as real and as repetitiveRead More
Action, Twists, and Sapphic Yearning: No Body No Crime by Tess Sharpe
I’d been in a reading slump. Few things caught my interest, and an overwhelmingly churlish fog dissuaded me from the more enthusiastically underlined titles on my extensive TBR. (I didn’t get a literature degree just to pompously say “I was being too big of a jackass to read a book I might love”, but theRead More
Tender and Terrifying: Feast While You Can by Mikaella Clements and Onjulia Datta
Do you ever know that you’re going to enjoy a book so much that you just keep putting off reading it? That was me with Feast While You Can by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta. I’m a big fan of the married co-authors’s previous work, the celebrity romance The View Was Exhausting, and the promise of their secondRead More
Heartbreak and Growing Pains in Sarvat Hasin’s Strange Girls
Sarvat Hasin’s Strange Girls delves into the complexity and fervor of the codependent female friendships that bloom, burn, and scar in adolescence. Told in two perspectives and two timelines, the novel reveals the truths behind the stories each woman told themselves about a life-altering relationship. Aliya and Ava were once inseparable, but after a ten-year silence, theirRead More
7 Transfeminine Sapphic Books I Read In 2025
It’s a tough time to be trans, more so with the socio-cultural complicity and transmisogyny one witnesses even within supposedly progressive queer circles these days. However, as a trans masc author myself, I want to emphasize that while it is alright to call for the boycott of bigoted authors, it is equally—if not more—important toRead More
Mushrooms, Magic, Pirates, and More: The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach
The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach is a Maori-inspired, queer, biopunk fantasy novel. It’s pitched as Gideon the Ninth meets Black Sun, so be prepared for very expansive and detailed world-building that doesn’t really stop to explain as you dive into it. That world-building is incredibly unique. In the port city of Hainak, metal is taboo,Read More
A Tender Romance Between Roommates: Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao
I’m always looking for romances starring trans characters, and with Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao promising a slow-burn romance between roommates, I happily picked it up. That combination implies mutual pining at all hours between people gradually learning how to share their lives, and this book delivered on that premise. With Mira in need ofRead More
Sugar, Spice, and Suffragettes: When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill
I admit, I am tired of feminist retellings. Or rather, books marketed as powerful treatises on female rage, when in reality, they are often little more than palatable, watered-down morsels of women’s empowerment, lacking any nuance. Unfortunately, even fictional empowerment remains a privilege usually afforded to classically beautiful, relatively upper-class white women, who enjoy maximumRead More
A Sizzling Polyamorous Rom-Com: Triple Sec by TJ Alexander
A jaded bartender is wooed by a charmingly quirky couple in this fresh and sizzling polyamorous rom-com, set in the exclusive world of high-end cocktail bars. As a bartender at Terror & Virtue, a swanky New York City cocktail lounge known for its romantic atmosphere and Insta-worthy drinks, Mel has witnessed plenty of disastrous dates.Read More