With only a few weeks left in the year, 2025 still managed to thrill me with a brilliantly strange and unexpected sapphic sci fi novella: Landlocked in Foreign Skin by Drew Huff. Thus, my novella kick continues. What can I say? Things have been hard lately and sometimes you just need a confection, oozing and tentacled asRead More
Conversion Camp is Hell: Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Cuckoo opens in 1995 with a true-to-life horror situation: seven queer kids being sent to a conversion camp in the middle of the desert. The camp is your classic nightmare: brutal labor conditions under the supervision of uber-religious and questionable leadership. Physical punishment from both counsellors and fellow campers. Truly mystifying lessons that are both boringRead 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
Love and Monsters: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
Shapeshifting monster Shesheshen just wants to be left alone in her lair, but the land’s royal family is determined to kill the worm that cursed them. When one of these royals brings a hunting party to her lair as she hibernates, she must fight to defend herself and kill them. She sets out on aRead More
Monsters Above and Below the Waves: They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran Review
After a banger debut with She is a Haunting, I was eager to get my hands on Trang Tranh Tran’s sophomore novel They Bloom at Night. Tran delivers another gripping story, with atmospheric tension intertwined with the struggle to fit in to your own body and community. This book dragged me in as relentless the tides, and thenRead More
Chronic Illness in Dark Academia Fantasy: A Sharper, More Lasting Pain by Alex Harvey-Rivas Review
I feel like I need to start this review of A Sharper, More Lasting Pain by Alex Harvey-Rivas (they/them) with an unusual amount of personal context, stemming from this quoted passage: “Nine months is a long time,” she echoes. And, in this moment, it feels like a lifetime. The line stopped me short because I’m just overRead More
Ghosts or Post-Partum Depression? Graveyard of Lost Children by Katrina Monroe
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! After giving birth to her daughter, Olivia is struggling—not just with being a first-time mother, but mostly from being haunted. She hears voices whispering terrible things to her, a black-haired ghost is following her in her nightmares, and her body is deteriorating rapidly fromRead More
Teen Witches Cover Up a Murder: When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Alexis and her five friends share a secret—they all have magic powers. On prom night, Alexis’s magic goes wrong and a boy ends up dead. Now, the six teens have to keep this a secret as they try to make things right. Bonds areRead More
Gory Bisexual Horror/Fantasy: The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! One thing about a Cassandra Khaw book: I never know what I’m getting into. Even two-thirds of the way through this, completely invested in the story, I still kept thinking, “What genre is this? And also, what’s the plot?” Julie is a 30-year-old exorcistRead More
Mermaid Obsession Story Treads Water: Chlorine by Jade Song
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link In their debut novel Chlorine, Jade Song (she/they) draws upon her twelve years of lived experience as a competitive swimmer to craft the dark and complex inner world of Ren Yu, a Chinese American teenager coming of age in Pennsylvania and stepping—or rather, swimming—into her true destiny: becoming a mermaid. While Song is clearlyRead More