Tag Archives: grief

A Paranormal Romance Novella with Teeth: A Wolf Steps in Blood by Tamara Jerée

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A Wolf Steps in Blood cover

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“We are the figures of each other’s fairytales made flesh.”
– A Wolf Steps in Blood, page 22

Last October, I reviewed Tamara Jerée’s debut novel, The Fall That Saved Us, a romance between a former demon hunter and a succubus. As that was a favorite of the year, I couldn’t wait until Halloween to read their latest paranormal romance, A Wolf Steps in Blood. 

Over a century ago, a witch’s blessing—seen by the protagonist as a curse—gave werewolves their power. That spell is dying with time, but Yasmine and her sister both have strong abilities despite their mother lacking the ability to shift. None of them have ever met a witch, until Kalta, a blood witch who is on the run from her coven, crashes into Yasmine’s life. Though Yasmine isn’t sure if she can trust Kalta, it becomes clear that Kalta is her fated mate. While it’s expected for wolves to have soulmates, she was never expecting hers to be a witch, prompting the idea that the burgeoning couple could usher in a new age for werewolves.

As a Black lesbian werewolf in a rural town, Yasmine has been ostracized on multiple levels. After watching how her sister has been treated, she has internalized the idea that she needs to minimize herself rather than embrace her instincts, to the extent that she treats her inner wolf as a separate entity to be resented and feared. Additionally, she struggles with an eating disorder, and she generally feels stuck in a life where she tries to live on the down low. 

Meeting Kalta is a catalyst for her to finally explore her identity and embrace her own hunger. For her part, Kalta struggles with how her coven has treated her and her brother. While this book is more focused on the wolves, the glimpses we got into witch society and how it has impacted Kalta, and her arc in relation to this and her grief, were some of my favorite parts of the book. I enjoyed her whimsical, impulsive attitude, which made her a fun foil for the more reserved protagonist. 

As with the author’s past work, the writing manages to be both concise and atmospheric, raw and sentimental, bloody and healing. The intensity suits a whirlwind paranormal romance, drawing the reader into the character’s emotions while allowing for more quiet, intimate moments as well. I also continue to appreciate the way the author writes about darker topics, with a focus on characters healing from trauma. Their romances are as much about the characters learning to care for themselves as each other, with these concepts very much intertwined. 

Despite knowing that this would be a novella with a fast burn fated mates romance, I still struggled a bit at the beginning with how fast the characters and relationship were introduced. Even a little bit more development in the beginning would have helped me get invested sooner in the characters and their bond. Additionally, some of the setup made me wonder how wide in scope the story would be, with the talk about the communal fate of werewolves; with shorter works, I generally anticipate a narrow scope. By the end, I was satisfied with where things ended up, and I also grew invested in the characters and story as it developed, especially in the second half. 

If the idea of a fast burn paranormal romance novella about feral women appeals to you, especially if you like themes of family, grief, and community, then I recommend this book. If you’re more interested in a longer novel with more breathing room, then I recommend checking out the The Fall That Saved Us first, and coming back to this one for more of Tamara Jerée’s writing. 

Content notes taken from the book: This book contains depictions of an eating disorder, vomiting (blood, food), self-harm (blood magic), gore, animal death, grief, and sexual content.

A Curveball Romance: Playing for Keeps by Jennifer Dugan

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Playing for Keeps cover

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A baseball pitcher and umpire definitely aren’t supposed to fall for each other, right? Especially not when star pitcher June and officiate-to-be Ivy are trying to go pro. Sometimes, life throws you a curveball, though. When Ivy is assigned as an umpire for June’s elite club baseball team, they instantly clash on the field, only to find they have something in common: grief. Soon, they become enemies to friends to far more, despite the rules that prohibit them from dating each other. Will romance get in the way of them following their dreams?

On the surface, Playing for Keeps seems like a fun, sweet young adult sapphic romance. The initial set-up gives us sharp, bittersweet enemies to lovers potential between a pitch and an umpire. Seems cute and fluffy, right? No one is that one-dimensional, though. Both Ivy and June are struggling with the loss of a loved one, balancing that on top of unrealistic expectations from their parents and the pressures they put on themselves to succeed. Add in the pressure you get from sports alone and it’s enough to make anyone crumble. Ivy and June find happiness in each other, through stolen moments as they date in secret, wary that the conflict of interest between them will tear them apart. There’s a potential for them to heal through one another, alongside one another, while learning how to navigate the external forces of loss while growing up.

I loved that both Ivy and June were pursuing career paths that don’t often make space for women. I would have liked to see more focus on that, though. It was sweet to see how the male players on the baseball team were quick to support June, but I expected to see more pushback (either from her team or other teams) to show (not tell us) how she struggled and still persevered.

Unfortunately, the story is so rushed, so many scenes time-jumped, emotions mentioned but not illustrated, that I didn’t FEEL anything while reading this story. With the topic of grief, whether a character is processing it or trying to avoid it, readers should have an easy time sympathizing with the characters. Instead, the grief feels like a plot point, a reason for potential enemies to connect and eventually become more.

Even with little jumps, the story lagged. Dugan has a tendency to pair selfless characters with less reasonable counterparts, which we certainly see between Ivy and June. Given that, it’s difficult to root for both girls. Yes, they’re both grieving, and yes, they both deserve happiness, but their actions are exhausting and (yes, I know it’s YA) juvenile at times. Though the two girls had so much in common, the miscommunication trope constantly tugged them in opposite directions.

Recommended for fans of Some Girls Do, Home Field Advantage, and Cool for the Summer.

The Vibes
⚾ Enemies to Lovers
⚾ Young Adult Romance
⚾ Sapphic Romance
⚾ Forbidden Love
⚾ Lesbian & Bi FMCs
⚾ Sports Romance
⚾ Grief
⚾ Pressure From Parents
⚾ Miscommunication

Quotes

“Expecting it means I can prepare for it, plan for it, and figure out a way to keep my cool in its face. What I didn’t expect, though, was for there to be an extremely attractive girl throwing balls at about seventy-five billion miles per hour, striking out dumb boys left and right, like some kind of varsity, all-star Black Widow.”

“There’s a lot of pressure on girls to conform, to become nice women, to do what’s expected. Smile more, whiten your teeth, lose the weight, don’t be too loud or too funny or too much. Make yourself less so the boys can feel like more. Don’t wear spaghetti straps or you might tempt them. Hold yourself accountable for the both of you, so they don’t have to.”

Meet Your New Favorite Sapphic Sci-Fi Book: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson 

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The Space Between Worlds is one of the best stories I have ever read, and I’m not even exaggerating. This novel follows Cara, a poor girl from Ashtown who is trying to make it in rich Wiley City long enough to become a permanent citizen. Her job? To traverse through different worlds like her own, snagging information that the higher ups at Eldridge need to anticipate the disasters that happened on those worlds before they can happen on Earth 0. Cara is one of a select few who is able to traverse these different realities—because she is dead on most of them. Out of all the worlds open to traversing, Cara is only alive on eight, and if you’re alive on a world you jump to, you usually die because the world cannot handle it. Being alive on only eight worlds makes her a great asset. 

This is revealed pretty soon into the novel, so I’ll just say it: the Cara who narrates the novel is not actually the Cara that came from Earth 0. Caramenta, the original Cara, landed on a world where she thought she had died only for Caralee, that Earth’s Cara, to still be alive: close to dead, but not actually dead. Caralee took the chance when she saw Caramenta’s mangled corpse and assumed Caramenta’s identity, and she’s been the one traversing ever since. 

Johnson does a great job with the pacing of this novel. Every new bit of information came at the right time and with just the right amount of foreshadowing. Even when I knew what was coming next, Johnson still surprised me, because it happened so much faster than I expected it to. Reading this book was like getting punched in the gut over and over and over again in such a good way. There was never a moment or a plot point that I thought should have been cut or changed. Johnson never shied away from a surprise twist; instead, she went full throttle into it and simply expected the reader to catch up. The novel kept its pace until it ended, and I had to sit there for a moment after I was done and just figure out how to breathe again. 

As someone who loves stories with alternate timelines and dimensions, this is such a unique and refreshing way to read it. On Caralee’s Earth, she knew Emperor Nik Nik, and she was his plaything to do with as he pleased. She has seen the Emperor across different worlds, and he is the same on all of them…except for Earth 175, the newest Earth Caralee is tasked with traversing. Johnson did such a good job showing how different this Nik Nik is from the rest of them. Cara’s trauma follows her, and she assumes that this Nik Nik is the same as all the others, only for him to be likeable, and funny, and kind. Going with Caralee through that emotional minefield kept the pages turning, and I cared so deeply about Cara’s relationship with that Nik Nik that I wound up crying when he added her picture to a necklace that held pictures of his dead loved ones. He’s so different from the Nik Nik that Caralee remembers, and I don’t know that I’ve read a story that skips around timelines before this one that lets a character be that different from the other versions of himself. Earth 175 Nik Nik helps heal Caralee’s trauma, and it was so cathartic to read as she started to believe he really could be that much better than the one she left behind. The world of the story is also so large and detailed. Ashtown and Wiley City come to life on the page, no matter what timeline or Earth we are on. 

I’m not usually a slow burn kind of person, but Johnson might have changed my tune. The romance between Cara and Dell, the coworker who sends her to the other Earths, was a delightful mix of yearning and miscommunication that I found myself enjoying! Cara is head over heels for Dell from the start of the book, and she flirts with her every moment she can because she thinks Dell will never like her back. When the details of their relationship that Carelee has been missing finally come out, it hits like a train, and every interaction at the beginning of the book makes that much more sense. Cara never shies away from her feelings for Dell. Even when she spends time with Earth 175 Nik Nik, she always makes sure to separate her feelings for Nik Nik from her feelings for Dell. Nik Nik is her ex, but Dell is the love of her life. 

I am also a big fan of stories that explore relationships between siblings, and Johnson also did a great job with that. Caralee cares so much about Caramenta’s little sister Esther and about the other members of a family Caralee never got to have, and it is one of the best relationships in the entire novel. The relationship between Nik Nik and a brother who died in most worlds is also something Johnson explores more than once, and I found myself caring about them all so, so much. Johnson’s characters are so rich, no matter what Earth they are on, and I can see myself rereading this book soon just to get a glimpse of them again. 

Trigger warnings for: death, gore, domestic abuse, traumatic experiences/memories, and violence. 

A Lush Bisexual Vampire Gothic: Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk

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the cover of Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk

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Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, originally published in 2020 and translated this year by Heather Cleary, is a dramatic and lushly gothic novel about two women who a string of circumstances going back over a century bring together in modern day Buenos Aires. Yuszczuk revels in sensual, physical details as she describes how a vampire from Europe emigrates to Buenos Aires when she realizes she can no longer remain undetected in Europe. Decades later, a modern woman struggling with the realities of her mother’s terminal illness and the ongoing effects of grief inherits a key and sets off a collision of destinies. Thirst is a fairly short read (or compact audiobook in my case), and I had a great time because Thirst is a vampire book that revels in being a vampire book. There’s blood and violence and obsession, and at one point a priest is defiled purely out of spite. It’s a sensuous romp, and perfect for heating up an already hot summer.

Thirst, as the title states, is concerned with thirst, both the physical and sexual.  The vampire narrator is constantly concerned with her physical thirst for blood and with avoiding vampire hunters that are trying to stop her from satisfying that thirst. It’s interesting to me that she both acknowledges that it’s natural for humans to want to stop her from feeding on them and also asserts that she did not ask to be made into a vampire and that it’s natural for her to want to sustain herself, acknowledging the eternal competition between the two. There’s also tension as she is first forced to flee vampire hunters in Europe and then contend with the developing world of forensic science linking her to her victims. Thirst asks, how do you satisfy your thirst in a world increasingly capable of stopping you? 

At the same time, the vampire narrator is also concerned with her more metaphorical thirst.  Living outside of society, and thus societal strictures, she revels in her sexuality, taking what she wants whenever she has the whim. While several of her early encounters are with men—who see her as a helpless lone woman they are taking advantage of even as she uses them—she does not shy away from her physical attraction towards women. Even before she meets the modern narrator, she enjoys an interlude with a washer woman who shows her where she can wash her clothes in private. As they undressed together, I enjoyed that the vampire’s physical appreciation of Justine was untainted with any internal hesitation or regrets—as someone who fed intimately on people’s final moments, the vampire felt free to enjoy any physical pleasure she wanted without bias.

The modern narrator she eventually meets up with, on the other hand, is wracked with grief, indecision, and the expectations of others. Her mother is in the final stages of a horrible, untreatable terminal illness that slowly leaves her more and more paralyzed. As her mother disappears bit by bit under medical paraphernalia and pain, she has to grapple with her day to day life and her young son on top of grief and emotionally-draining caregiving. And as she watches her mother’s choices disappear to be made for her by others, the intensity with which the vampire exists attracts her, even as she is startled and alarmed by the violence. Their immediate attraction to each other is electric and visceral—almost feral. Although most of the book was concerned with their individual journeys, I found the chemistry of their meeting compelling, and the ending satisfying. 

In conclusion, Thirst is a lush gothic vampire novel that takes lingers on the physical realities of being a vampire, the clash between the vitality of life as an individual and the grind of the realities of existence, and the sensuality that is there for the taking if one dares. Yuszczuk keys into a rich gothic and vampiric tradition without overly lingering on logistics or greater vampire lore. This is a book about the journey and the moment. If you love vampires, Latin American gothic, or just some hot summer defiling of norms, Thirst would be a perfect add to your to-read list. It’s a quick but hot read and a great time. 

A Celebration of Sapphic Love & Loss: Something, Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt

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Something, Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt cover

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Something, Not Nothing (September 24, 2024) is a stunning graphic memoir by cartoonist and educator Sarah Leavitt (she/her). In April 2020, Leavitt’s partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years battling chronic pain. After Donimo’s death, Leavitt turned her immense grief and loss into incredible art.

Through impressionistic imagery and poetic prose, Leavitt takes readers through her deeply personal and painful experience of Donimo’s suffering and death. In bleak black and white panels, she explains how Donimo came to make the “terrible and courageous decision” to end her life. As I read, I could feel Leavitt wrangling with the reality of Donimo’s “grievous and irremediable medical condition”—Canada’s criteria for someone to be eligible for medical assistance in dying. I could see her struggling to witness the love of her life in pain, but also terrified to let her go. My heart ached as I imagined her standing alongside the rushing river where Donimo took her last breaths and wondering how she could possibly go on.

But Leavitt’s story did not end there. 

Something, Not Nothing traverses the unpredictable terrain of Leavitt’s profound grief after Donimo’s death, but also her tremendous resilience. Leavitt’s transformative journey is palpable, brought to life by her brilliant use of color and vignettes, which give readers a glimpse into her and Donimo’s beautiful relationship. Her memoir demonstrates that grief is non-linear. In one frame, she is reminiscing about the night she and Donimo first met. In the next, she is angry at Donimo for letting her fall in love with her and then leaving her.  It is raw and devastating, heart-wrenching and hopeful, all at the same time.

This memoir is a treasure worth your time and your tears.  I am no art aficionada, but Leavitt’s work made me feel something. I was blown away by her generosity of spirit in sharing the tenderest parts of her life and her love with the world. Something, Not Nothing is truly a gift.

Leavitt lives in Vancouver, BC. She is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she has developed and taught undergraduate and graduate comics classes since 2012. While you wait for Something, Not Nothing to come out this fall, check out her other graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me. You can also find Leavitt on Instagram at @sarah_leav.

Trigger warnings for chronic pain, medically assisted death, loss of a loved one, and grief.

Raquel R. Rivera (she/her/ella) is a Latina lawyer and lady lover from New Jersey.  She is in a lifelong love affair with books and earned countless free personal pan pizzas from the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! program as a kid to prove it.

Grief in Utopia: The Seep by Chana Porter

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This review contains spoilers.

The Seep might be one of the most refreshing takes on alien invasion I’ve ever read. This novel follows Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka, a middle-aged trans woman, as she and her wife Deeba, along with almost everyone else in the world, are forced to live with something called the Seep. The Seep is an alien unattached to concepts like linear time and physicality that invades humanity and simply… makes life perfect. People can alter their appearances at will, ingesting the Seep feels like getting high, and there are restaurants that only give you good-tasting food that will help your body out, along with a bunch of other seemingly-awesome changes. After a few years of living under its power, Trina doesn’t love the Seep as much as her friends do anymore—and then her wife Deeba decides she wants to be turned back into a baby and give up the life they’ve built together.

Trina does what I think any of us would be tempted to do in that situation: she drinks herself half to death. Living under the Seep, though, means that her actions don’t go unnoticed, and what really kicks the story off is someone coming to Trina’s place and telling her that she’s hurting the entire community by not taking care of herself or her house. This sends her on a mission to hunt down an old friend of hers and to save a boy she meets along the way who comes from the Compound, one of the only places untouched by the Seep.

What I really liked about this story is how deep Trina is in her grief. It’s been about five years since Deeba left, but the way Porter writes Trina is like it happened yesterday. Deeba isn’t dead, not really; she is a small child being raised by a lovely couple far away from Trina. However, to Trina, it’s like she is, and that comes through spectacularly through Porter’s writing. Trina hasn’t moved on at all in those years after Deeba’s departure. She could move on: she could let the Seep erase her memory of Deeba, or she could let it change her feelings into something more manageable. But Trina is all about the old days and the old ways. She misses what art was back when humans still routinely felt things like pain and sadness, and she doesn’t get the appeal of having an all-knowing alien rooting around in her skull and changing her brain chemistry every second of every day of every week.

So when she meets this kid from the Compound who wants to know about the world outside and wants to join with the Seep, it’s like her brain finally has something to focus on that isn’t Deeba. It’s never really about the kid; in the end, Trina doesn’t really care about him, not like she tries to convince herself that she does. It’s a distraction from the pain she has carried with her since Deeba’s departure. All of it leads her to a friend (ex-friend) who goes around wearing his dead boyfriend’s face and pretending that he is a different race than he actually is. It takes Trina finding him again and confronting him for any real change to happen within her, and Porter goes exactly where you want her to go when Trina is shoved back into the past for a little while. She watches her wife from the same place she watches her in a scene from the beginning, caught in a memory, and the pain of losing that part of her wife hits Trina all over again. She’s been lost in her grief, and she has been for a while now. This is simply when she finally realizes it.

Trina’s conversations with the Seep are also a high point of the book. The Seep talks to Trina by changing the writing on a pamphlet she is given, then by changing the writing on a pamphlet that the boy drops, and then it actually speaks to her from the pamphlet cover and heats up in her hands when it wants to tell her something. Trina tries to get the Seep to understand that sometimes humans need to be able to choose bad things or things that hurt, but it takes the Seep a long time to grasp that point. If the Seep isn’t there to make life perfect and wonderful, then what is it for? The relationship between Trina and the entity known as the Seep is the thing that drives the story onward when Trina’s previous excuses and distractions run a little thin. In one of the most moving scenes of the book, Trina and the Seep talk to each other in a sort of talk show style set-up where every person in the audience is a different iteration of Deeba. Deeba left her because of the Seep; we know that, the story literally begins with that. Seeing it laid out so viscerally, though, with the Seep wearing somebody’s face and talking to Trina while every version of Deeba she ever knew laughs out at her from the background really made it hit home. That’s what this sort of grief is like, and Porter captures it so perfectly. I’ve been thinking about that scene for days since I put the book down. It takes having this conversation with the Seep for Trina to decide to try to move past everything with Deeba, and the story ends optimistically with Trina beginning to take care of herself and the house she used to share.

I know I’m a little late at finding this story (it was published in 2020), but I’m just glad I found it when I did. It’s moving, thought-provoking, and exactly the sort of thing I’m into. The only reason I’m not giving it five stars is because there are a couple plot issues it took me a minute to get past (she’s on a Do Not Admit list to her ex-friend’s shows, but she’s able to go in anyway?), but other than that, I really liked it. The way that the novel is bookended by “Tips for Throwing a Dinner Party at the End of the World” is really cool too and ties the story together. I would absolutely recommend this.

Triggers warnings for: death, slight suicidal ideation, loss of bodily autonomy, and drug use (kind of).

A Blossoming, Neurodiverse Love: Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings

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After winning the lottery, Opal Devlin puts all her money in a failing flower farm, only to find an angry (albeit gorgeous) Pepper Boden already living there. Though she’s unable to find her grandmother’s will, Pepper claims she’s the rightful owner of Thistle and Bloom Farms. While they agree to cohabitate, Opal and Pepper clash at every turn. Can something softer blossom between these polar opposites, allowing a new dream to take root and grow?

Oh. My. (Sappho.) Goddess. You may think you know Mazey Eddings’ writing style, but I assure you, you do not. Many of us read The Plus One and/or Tily in Technicolor last year, but Eddings has far exceeded herself with this one. As a neurodivergent author, Eddings’ stories often have some element of neurodiversity/mental health, shining a light on the different ways people’s brains work while embracing those differences through beautiful, realistic characters. Opal and Pepper are no different, both on the spectrum yet unique in their behaviors and view of the world. These women are not predictable, pre-programmed components of a story; they are ever-blooming, learning how to plant roots alongside one another, share sunlight, and rise despite being different species. Both plants, growing and adapting to different elements, yet very much the same. While Opal and Pepper have always struggled to fit in with the world around them, they manage to cultivate a safe, healthy garden for one another.

This is one of those overwhelming, layered, awe-inspiring sapphic stories that will tug at your heartstrings long after you read it. Eddings’ language leaps off the page, making it a little reminiscent of One Last Stop (be still, my little sapphic heart). I’ve beyond annotated Late Bloomer, when I’m usually selective about choosing quotes. You don’t just see love blossom between these two women; you feel it. It made me smile, laugh, get all messy and misty-eyed. As I said, neither woman is predictable. Opal feels directionless at the story’s start, allowing her (fake) best friend and (on/off) ex to step all over her. I expected her to be the wallflower, especially with the BITE we see from Pepper (pun unintended) in her first chapter, but the two balance each other out. When Pepper feels uncertain or anxious, Opal steps forward, bold and unwavering. When Opal begins to crumble, Pepper holds her up. They support each other, never allowing the other to wilt.

Unfortunately, this book relies heavily on miscommunication. Both women are eager to hide their real feelings at the risk of scaring the other. That lack of communication continues until almost the last chapter.

Recommended for fans of One Last Stop and Imogen, Obviously. Side note: please, please read the author’s note. Good goddess.

✨ The Vibes ✨

❀ Neurodivergency/Autism Spectrum
❀ Sapphic Romance
❀ Grief/Healing
❀ Forced Proximity
❀ Spicy/First Time
❀ Cottagecore Vibes
❀ One Bed
❀ Touch Her and You Die
❀ Dual POV
❀ Miscommunication
❀ Flower Competition
❀ Grumpy/Sunshine

 Quotes

❝Slowly, she leans toward me, and my heart pounds so violently in my chest that my head swims. Is she . . . It almost seems like she’s going to press that smile to my mouth. Teach me how it tastes.❞

❝Ah. There’s the you I missed.❞

❝I used to stress over finding a label that fit me. Lesbian. Bisexual. Pan. Demi . . . I’ve filtered through them all many times over, none ever feeling quite right. Just say queer and move on with your life, Diksha finally told me late one night after what was probably my sixth sexual identity crisis of my early twenties. But what does that mean? I’d wailed, draining more boxed wine into my plastic cup. My brain loves order and labels and concise frameworks to understand things, and not knowing where I fit feels unbearable. It means you’re you, and only you get to decide who you like and when you like them, Tal had said from their chair in the corner. The name of your feelings isn’t anyone’s business but yours.❞

❝But instead, she reaches out to me—opening her hand like a flower unfurling its petals to the sun. I stare at it. The ink stains and calluses and chipped nails and bitten cuticles. For a moment, that hand looks like a second chance.❞

❝Her poems spoke softly—as intimately as confessions between lovers—about the terrible, wonderful ache of being in love.❞

A Southern Gothic Coming of Age: Something Kindred by Ciera Burch

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Something Kindred by Ciera Burch cover

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When I picked this up, I was expecting a horror novel. And that makes sense, because it does have a lot of ghosts in it. But the ghosts are more a part of the setting than the plot; while they’re literally present in the town, their significance in the story is on the metaphorical side. I think “Gothic” is more fitting as a genre categorization.

We’re following Jericka, who has been bouncing from place to place her whole life as her mom kept uprooting the two of them. Now, she’s spending the summer helping to take care of her grandmother as she dies of cancer. What makes this a lot more complicated is that Gram walked out on Jericka’s mother and uncle when they were children — leaving them alone with their abusive father.

One thing I appreciated about Jericka is that she doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations. When she meets her Gram, she asks her directly why she left her kids and why she reached out when she got sick. This is not one of those books where you wish the characters would just talk to each other — if anything, there are times when it would benefit Jericka to stop and think about what she’s going to say for a minute before lashing out.

This is a quick read, and the writing can feel a little… sparse at times. Like Jericka, the author gets directly to the point in a way that can feel abrupt. But the strength of this story is in its characterization and relationships. The three generations of women in that house all have complicated relationships to each other—Jericka soon finds out some secrets about her own childhood that are hard to grapple with. There are no easy answers here. Jericka begins to build a relationship with her grandmother even knowing that there is no way for Gram to make up for the damage she’s done to her children. She also starts to see her father and his wife, who she’s only communicated with through the occasional phone call and birthday card.

Then there’s Jericka’s complicated romantic life. She has a boyfriend back home, James, and their relationship is… comfortable. She loves him, but she doesn’t know if she wants to try to continue their relationship long distance when they go to university. Meanwhile, she’s falling for a girl in Clearwater: Kat. Kat is the only one who talks about the ghosts in town. She’s not popular, but she has a fiercely loyal best friend who will defend her at all costs. She talks a mile a minute and makes a terrible iced hot chocolate. I appreciated that Kat was multifaceted and flawed, not just a perfect love interest. Jericka has been out as bisexual for years, so her struggle choosing between James and Kat has more to do with her fears about the future than any worry about what it means for her identity.

I suppose I should actually talk about the ghosts, but it doesn’t surprise me that it took me this long to get to them. The characters and their complex relationships — especially family relationships — are the stars here. The ghosts, usually called echoes, are the manifestation of a central tension in Jericka’s story: the choice between putting down roots and always being on the run. The people in Coldwater seem unable to leave this town, but Jericka is tired of constantly moving. The echoes are the ghosts of the women who died when the old schoolhouse burned down, and they implore residents to never leave.

Of course, this is also a story about grief and loss. Jericka is building a relationship with her grandmother knowing that soon Gram will be dead. Jericka decides that although this is extremely painful, and although she can’t forgive Gram for what she did, she doesn’t want to continue the family tradition of silence and disconnection. She’d rather reach out even with all of that history between them.

I wouldn’t recommend this for readers looking for a terrifying horror read, but if you are a fan of family sagas and coming of age stories set against a gothic backdrop—with a few creepy scenes—I think you’ll enjoy this one.

A Lesbian Road Trip Romcom About Death: Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun

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I read Alison Cochrun’s previous book, Kiss Her Once for Me, and liked it, but I was not expecting to love this one quite as much as I did. Some of that is for reasons that will translate to many other readers, and some of my enjoyment comes from it combining my own random interests. Either way, I highly recommend this one, even if you have no experience teaching high school English and aren’t also contemplating getting assessed for ADHD.

Just as high school is such a pivotal time of life despite being only four years, my three years teaching and learning to teach had a permanent impact on me. I may not have been a high school English teacher for long, but I think some part of me always will be—and it’s still my back-up career. During those years, it completely consumed me. I would lay awake at night trying to figure out how to be a better teacher. My practicums were the most stressful times of my life. So it won’t come as a shock that I deeply related to this story about three high school English teachers. Unsurprisingly, Cochrun used to be a high school English teacher herself. (It’s also dedicated to teachers: “For all the queer educators out there. You save lives simply by showing up. Thank you. And for every queer teenager who became a little too attached to their English teacher. I see you. I love you.”)

Logan and Rosemary are rival English teachers at the same high school, but once, they were best friends. Then one kiss ruined their relationship, and now they can’t stand each other. It doesn’t help that they are classic Type A (Rosemary) and Type B (Logan) teachers, each judging the other for their opposing styles. How did they end up in the same profession? When they were teens, the only person who saw and accepted these two struggling queer and neurodivergent teachers was Joe, their Mexican American, openly gay English teacher. In their conservative small town, Joe was a life-saving presence for them, and they both followed in his footsteps.

Joe isn’t teaching anymore, though. He’s only 64, but years battling pancreatic cancer has ended with him being recommended hospice care. Both Rosemary and Logan have been helping take care of him, but he has a deathbed request that will be a lot more challenging to fulfill. He wants to die in his cabin in Maine, and he wants Logan and Rosemary to drive him there. Together.

Because the two of them can hardly be in the same room together, the idea of being in the same car for almost a week seems impossible, but they can’t ignore Joe’s pleas for them to make up and help go out the way he wants to. Besides, Rosemary has—unbelievably—just been laid off and doesn’t have a guaranteed job to go back to after the summer, so she needs something to keep her anxious brain occupied. So, she makes a giant binder of travel plans and convinces Logan to get on board, and off they set: a dying man, two mortal enemies, and a dog, all crammed in a van together.

I love a road trip story, and just as you’d expect, being in a confined space together forces Logan and Rosemary to communicate. There has been a lot of miscommunication between the two of them over the years, including Logan believing that Rosemary is a tight-laced, high-achieving, heterosexual neurotypical person with everything under control. In reality, they’re both neurodivergent lesbians, and Rosemary manages her anxiety with a desperate need to try to be in control, with a plan for everything.

The two of them haven’t been friend since they were 14, but neither of them moved on in the nearly two decades since. Rosemary keeps so busy with teaching that it allows no time in her life for dating, while Logan keeps her relationships to casual hookups only.

Logan planned to graduate and travel the world, having big adventures. But when her mother left her dad, she was determined not to do the same thing, so she’s been living with him ever since. This road trip is the first time she’s really left their small town.

As they travel, the two of them continue to butt heads, but they also reluctantly reconnect as adults—and finally address what actually happened the day they kissed. Logan’s instincts to run away from conflict mean that it’s not so easy to repair their relationship, though, especially when Logan refuses to grapple with Joe’s imminent death.

In the acknowledgements, Cochrun calls this a romcom about death, and that is accurate. I appreciated that it doesn’t have a particularly romantic view of death. Rosemary and Logan have to change Joe’s diapers as he howls at the indignity. Death is not a quiet, noble affair. It’s prolonged and painful—both for the person dying and their loved ones. There is a little bit of “Tuesdays with Morrie shit,” as Joe refers to it, but it’s not cloying.

(Spoilers, highlight to read) I also thought the first sex scene—Rosemary’s first time having sex—was especially well done. They both go very slowly, with clear consent at all times. It’s sweet, and since I’ve had some sex scenes completely turn me off of the book recently, I was glad to see it treated with such care.(End of spoilers)

A lesbian road trip romance + ruminating on death + both characters having ADHD + all the main characters being high school English teachers made this a home run for me, but you don’t have to have my exact configuration of interests to enjoy this friends to almost lovers to enemies to lovers romance. And yes, I cried.

Official content warnings: This book contains references to an off-page death of a parent due to overdose, and it includes the on-page death of a parental figure.

A Muffin Baking- and Hijinx-Filled Romantic Comedy: Vengeance Planning for Amateurs by Lee Winter

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Vengeance Planning for Amateurs by Lee Winter was published February 2024 and is Lee’s first intentional romantic comedy. The book follows muffin baker Olivia Roberts, her beloved stuffed penguin Trip, and her band of book club misfits that meet at the local crime bookstore. When one of her exes steals Trip, Olivia sees red and has decided enough is enough. She has had a terrible string of relationships with people who have been varying levels of awful, and she decides it’s time to take her life back in the form of revenge against every ex that has hurt her. She posts an ad for a henchperson at the bookstore, and she is truly shocked when the person who sits across from her is none other than the owner of said bookstore: Margaret Blackwood. Margaret keeps to herself and is rarely seen. Olivia’s only real interaction with Margaret has been Margaret’s commentary from her office during Olivia’s book club. When the stoic and beautiful Margaret signs up to be her henchperson, Oliva isn’t sure why this brilliant, mysterious, woman would want to help her. However, Olivia’s other candidates are less than stellar, so Margaret gets the job. What ensues is an absolutely beautiful, chaotic, and laugh-out-loud story about two people that offer the other a chance to start over. 

I am a huge fan of Lee Winter. I have read every book she has written, some multiple times. I was excited to see how she would handle a romantic comedy, a different flavor from her usual books (though almost every one of her others also made me laugh out loud at times). I was not disappointed. Nor was I surprised that even though it had that romantic comedy feel throughout, it still packed an emotional punch. There is a cleverness that is always present in Lee’s books, and this book was no different. While the baking puns are plentiful (and I enjoyed every one), there is also not a wasted word or character. Every plot point is well thought out, every person has a purpose. A romantic comedy follows a certain formulaic path, but even so there needs to be something new, and Olivia hiring a henchperson certainly adds something fresh. Every visit upon one of Olivia’s exes provides not only an opportunity for hijinks, but a moment for Olivia and Margaret to learn more about each other and grow as individuals.

As I said, there is an emotional component to this story that I felt was incredibly well written. While I won’t give spoilers, Lee handled Margaret’s backstory in a beautiful way that was written with immense care. The way she chose to give us insight into Margaret, through diary entries, offers an intimate look at her thoughts and emotions. Without those entries, I think it would have been difficult to understand someone that keeps her cards so incredibly close to her chest. But it allows you to see who Margaret truly is, and it provides context to her other actions throughout the book. (Some of those entries made me cry, but we are going to forgive Lee for that.) In a scene towards the end, I Lee captures an emotion in the best way I have seen in a novel dealing with this particular topic. It is a sentiment I will be thinking about for a long time. 

Margaret and Olivia are two very different people, but I loved them together. In any pairing, there needs to be a balance, and as a reader you want to be able to understand why these people are drawn to each other. Margaret and Olivia each offer the other something that has been missing in their lives. Olivia has only ever been treated as expendable, as someone people use to get what they want and leave when they don’t find her useful any more. She has never been put first and has been with some truly terrible people. She has rarely experienced loyalty or someone asking: what do you want? What can I do for you? Other than her sister, she has never had someone who had her best interest in mind. With Margaret, she has found someone loyal and who not only has her best interest in mind, but that actively goes out of her comfort zone to help her. Margaret’s life in many ways has been closed off and has been dark for many years. Olivia is the opposite of that, and offers Margaret light in a way she has been desperately needing. Even more, despite all the things that have been thrown at her, Olivia continues to shine that light, and I do think that is part of why Margaret is so drawn to her. I loved these two together. I loved how they each showed through actions how they felt about the other, even before any words of that nature had been uttered. 

I will also always go a little feral for a character that goes into protective mode, and this story has that in spades. I think Lee is one of the best at writing that dynamic, and I adored those scenes. I also happen to think that she is the best at writing two oblivious people who clearly like each other, but are so lesbian that the thought never occurs to them that the other might like them back. That scenario is top tier in this novel, and I loved every moment. 

If you’re in the mood for a romance with unhinged chaos, laugh out loud moments, character growth, a cast of hilarious side characters, and beautiful moments of communication and vulnerability, this is your book. I can’t recommend it enough.