In The Jellyfish Problem, Tessa Yang explores grief, community, and human connection in a story about a small island in Maine being menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish the local schoolchildren have dubbed Clementine. Dr. Jo Ness is a jellyfish scientist trying to finish her book and raise jellyfish sprouts at the small aquarium she worksRead More
A Disappointing Folk Horror Story: Hollow by Taylor Grothe Review
Hollow by Taylor Grothe is a book with a lot of potential. The main character, Cassie, has recently moved back to her home town and reconnected with her childhood best friends—but the past few years have been tough for all of them, and they just don’t fit the way they used to. When they go onRead More
A Messy Love Story in Verse: Couplets by Maggie Millner
Maggie Millner’s Couplets is a novel-in-verse that explores the fierce intensity of falling in love and how it affects one’s expression, especially when the initial excitement begins to falter and fail. This debut reads like a challenge to form itself: can desire, betrayal, and queer longing be woven into the rigid dance of couplets without dulling theirRead More
A Quietly Mythic Coming-of-Age Novel: The Archer by Shruti Swamy Review
The Archer moves with the methodical, recurring, and emotionally controlled intensity of mastered movement. In this debut novel, Shruti Swamy resists spectacle in favour of scrutiny—of the body, of memory, and of the hidden labour of becoming someone you were assured you couldn’t be. Set in mid-century Bombay, The Archer follows Vidya, a girl drawn to kathak dancingRead More
A Queer Diasporic Matrilineal Epic: Amma by Saraid de Silva Review
Some silences are so profound that they become part of the landscape, not just heard but inhabited. Amma knows that terrain—how silence gets passed down not just through forgetting but through a caring that has been cornered. In this debut novel from Saraid de Silva, the unspoken doesn’t just haunt the margins of the characters’Read More
An Introspective Bisexual Romance: On Her Terms by Amy Spalding
Immediately after recognizing her bisexuality, Clementine gets swept up in a (somewhat boring) long-term relationship with a boyfriend who wants a conventional, white-picket-fence-and-a-baby ever after. After breaking up with him, she’s ready to dive into her “baby gay” era—if only her friends and family would stop looking at her with pity. After meeting Chloe LeeRead More
A Feminist, Latin American Vampire Gothic: Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, translated by Heather Cleary
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
Young Adult Breakthroughs in the Florida Bayou: The Immeasurable Depth of You by Maria Ingrande Mora
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Thank you to Peachtree/Peachtree Teen and Netgalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. (Published March 7, 2023) I adored this YA coming of age gem! The book follows Brynn, a young bisexual teen struggling with severe anxiety, as she’s forced to spend her summer away from her home inRead More