Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Recently translated into English, Marina Yuszczuk’s queer vampire novel, Thirst (Dutton, March 5, 2024), is partly what I’d hoped for in a vampire fiction, and at the same time, it was nothing like what I’d expected. Although it’s a Gothic, vampire novel on the surface, ThirstRead More
Decadence and Decay: Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, translated by Heather Cleary
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, translated by Heather Cleary (March 5, 2024) is a considered, sorrowful, masterfully atmospheric story about mourning and the costs of surviving outside of society’s protective frameworks. It is also the story of two women in conflict with their inherited and inherentRead More
A House Haunted by Fascism: Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! I feel so conflicted about Tell Me I’m Worthless, because it’s one the most thought-provoking and memorable horror books I’ve ever read. The sections I liked were captivating, and in the first chapter, this felt like a new favourite book. But there were alsoRead More
Misogyny and Murder: Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link In her most ambitious novel yet, crime writer Jessica Knoll—author of Luckiest Girl Alive (2015)—blends fact and fiction as she adapts the events surrounding a series of killings committed in Tallahassee, Florida in 1978. Bright Young Women (2023) begins in January 1978. Patricia Schumacher is president of her sorority at Florida State University. She takesRead More
A Dramatic Supernatural YA Horror Read: Here Lies Olive by Kate Anderson
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Here Lies Olive by Kate Anderson is a young adult fiction novel that follows sixteen-year-old Olive as she navigates unwitting friendships to save a ghost that she accidentally-on-purpose brings into the material plane in order to find out if the Nothing that she saw when she “died” after an allergic reaction is reallyRead More
A Brutal and Beautiful Chinese Epic: She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link If you have even a passing interest in sapphic fantasy, you have almost certainly heard about She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan. A reimagining of the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty’s rise to power, it begins with a young boy who is destined for greatness and a young girlRead More
Meagan Kimberly reviews White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link It’s hard to summarize Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching, as this is a novel less with plot and more with vibes. But to the best of my ability, a young girl, Miranda, develops an eating disorder called pica, where she eats and hungers for things that areRead More
Danika reviews The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link This dark fairy tale dances on the line between fantasy and horror. It follows Devon, a book eater, who is part of one of the aristocratic houses of book eaters (think vampires, but they eat books instead of drinking blood). She is one of very few women bookRead More
Danika reviews The Dawnhounds (Against the Quiet #1) by Sascha Stronach
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link This is a queer, Maori-inspired, pirate, biopunk fantasy with worldbuilding so intense that I will be honest, I often was not following it all. It takes place mid-war, during a tense stalemate, in a city that’s bio-engineered plants to be buildings, weapons, and almost everything else. Metal isRead More
Danika reviews Bad Things Happen Here by Rebecca Barrow
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link One of my favourite YA books is This is What it Feels Like by Rebecca Barrow, so when I saw Barrow was coming out with another sapphic YA title, I knew I had to pick it up. But while This Is What It Feels Like is a heartwarmingRead More