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
Nat reviews How To Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Sweet yet angsty. Coming of age and coming out stories. A meet cute that’s…not so cute. Jewish holiday rom com. All the big, tender feels of young love. Non-stop cackling, except when you take a break to have a good cry. A prominently featured corgi. These are aRead More
Til reviews Séance Tea Party by Reimena Yee
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Séance Tea Party begins with Lora, a lost young person somewhere between girlhood and womanhood. Growing up looms large throughout the graphic novel… as much as anything looms in this gentle, joyful, sometimes heartbreaking story. Lora feels alone with her friends moving on to things like slick magazinesRead More
Maggie reviews A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link I was ecstatic when I heard that Malinda Lo was writing a loosely connected follow up to Last Night at the Telegraph Cub because Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a hugely important lesbian coming of age novel set in 1950s San Francisco Chinatown that A) I wish I had hadRead More
Nat reviews Black Water Sister by Zen Cho
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link A suspenseful tale of vengeful ghosts, family secrets, and self discovery – it’s funny, it’s creepy, there are twists and turns, gods and spirits, and a queer main character who’s just trying to get her shit together. What more can you ask for? Jessamyn Teoh is the daughterRead More
Books for Baby Gays
I have personally identified as bi since I was about 22, and 5 years on, I’ve now started thinking about what might have been different if I’d realised that any earlier, if my personal queer revelation had arrived during uni or high school. In this alternate imagined past, are there any books that could haveRead More
Carolina reviews Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
It seems apt to begin 2021, a time of reflection and introspection for many, with a YA novel that feels fresh and timeless at the same time. Malinda Lo’s new novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club echoes with the same beats as my favorite “baby gay” first lesbian novels (e.g. Annie on My MindRead More
Carmella reviews All Men Want to Know by Nina Bouraoui
Content warning: this review references sexual assault In the first chapter of her auto-fictional novel All Men Want to Know, Nina Bouraoui (translated from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins) writes: “I want to know who I am, what I am made of, what I can hope for; I trace the thread of my past backRead More
Carmella reviews Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin
Trigger warning: this review discusses suicide. What do crocodiles and lesbians have in common? Plenty of things, as I learned from Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile. The novel, first published in Chinese in 1994, is a fragmented, broody, and often puzzling coming-of-age tale. The main story is told through journal entries by our narrator,Read More
Mallory Lass reviews Floodtide by Heather Rose Jones
When I heard another book in Jones’ Alpennia Series was to come out this year, I was both excited and sad because I knew I would read it in a day or two and then the window into Alpennia would be closed again until the next in her series was released. I never dreamed IRead More