Carry the One by Carol Anshaw received a ton of praise from the queer community last year, and it includes blurbs on its back cover from such heavy hitters as Emma Donoghue and Alison Bechdel, along with Publishers Weekly. And I agreed with everything they said–yet this was also a hard novel for me toRead More
Jill Guccini reviews Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies & Suicide by Stephanie Schroeder
Stephanie Schroeder is a triple suicide survivor. Read that sentence again: triple – suicide – survivor. That is three more than anybody should have to deal with. Her memoir, released last year, takes us through the times that led to those attempts, taking place mainly in and around New York City from the late ‘90sRead More
Jill Guccini reviews If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
Sara Farizan’s If You Could Be Mine tells a story that I don’t think has ever been told in Young Adult fiction before, and it’s an important one. Set in contemporary Iran, it’s told from the point of view of 17-year-old Sahar, who has been in love with her best friend Nasrin for almost asRead More
Jill reviews Empress of the World by Sara Ryan
There’s something special about a good teenaged summer story, which is why human beings keep making movies and writing books about them. And Sara Ryan’s Empress of the World is our very own classic summer teen story, with the added bonus of queer sexual awakening. Published in 2001, it came out long before the apparentRead More
Jill Guccini reviews My Awesome Place by Cheryl Burke
Reading My Awesome Place felt like a bittersweet experience from the start, a fact that has nothing to do with the writing itself, and everything to do with the story behind it. It’s a series of autobiographical tales written by New York City performance artist/poet/playwright/overall writer and liver of life Cheryl B, mostly covering timesRead More
Jill Guccini reviews The Narrows by M. Craig
The world of the M. Craig’s The Narrows (http://narrowsthenovel.com/) contains a lot of elements you’ll recognize: full of bicycles and outcasts, skinny jeans and crowded cafes, and of course, a healthy dose of beer, its streets very much resemble a Portland or a Brooklyn of today. Yet then there’s the Other Stuff. There’s dragons andRead More
Jill Guccini reviews Girl from Mars by Tamara Bach
Miriam is a 15-year-old girl living in a small town in Germany, and like a lot of 15-year-old girls in small towns, she spends her life waiting for something to happen. She fights with her mom; passes her schooldays in boredom. She goes to parties and drinks when she has the opportunity yet never reallyRead More