Kathryn Hoss Recommends Lesbian Beach Reads

Every summer my entire obnoxious/lovable extended family rents a beach house in the Carolinas for a week, and every summer I end up scouring Goodreads, Amazon, and the Lesbrary for “lesbian beach reads.” Usually, that phrase yields zero-to-few results.

I’m here to change that.

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Looking for a juicy tell-all for the drive down?
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is one of my all-time favorites. The graphic memoir explores Bechdel’s fraught relationship with her closeted gay, perfectionist father and his unexpected suicide. Despite the subject matter, Bechdel’s tone is more thoughtful than ruminating, probing for the truth in a situation with many sides. As someone who was a baby butch at one time, it was a breath of fresh air to see myself reflected in child- and college-Alison. This read can be accomplished in a few hours.
Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi is another quick read, but it is not light. The memoir recounts de Rossi’s lengthy struggle with bulimia and anorexia, her journey from rock bottom, when her organs nearly shut down, to a very nice life with Ellen Degeneres and their horses. I will say it brought back eating-disordered feelings from adolescence that I didn’t know I still had– de Rossi’s devastating internal monologues can be triggering– but it’s an important story and an engrossing read.

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith might be the perfect road-trip story, straddling the line between pulp novel and classic literature. You’ve probably already seen the 2015 movie, Carol, but I’m gonna say the book is worth reading too. Highsmith’s prose tends to maunder in details that I thought not at all necessary to plot or characterization, but I found it interesting on an anthropological level to see Therese and Carol’s relationship unfold in 1952. Elements of the story are lifted straight out of Highsmith and her friends’ lives, adding to the realism. For the romance crowd, if you like the “Oh no, there’s only one bed and we have to share it!” trope, you’re gonna love this.

Looking for something profound so that when your relatives ask what you’re reading, you don’t have to feel ashamed?
I actually haven’t finished Fried Green Tomatoes by Fanny Flagg, only because the prose lends itself to be read slow as molasses. There is definitely a lot in this book that would not be considered politically correct. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought, “Is this a White Savior narrative?” The romance is also only one thread in a rich tapestry of family and food. But Fried Green Tomatoes feeds my soul because it depicts a lesbian-headed family living in the south, in the 20s and 30s, and no one ever says a word about them being different or wrong. I actually tried fried green tomatoes (the food) the other day. Spoiler alert: They were delicious.

I was going to do a separate YA section, but then I was like, nah. The Miseducation of Cameron Post by emily m. danforth is Literature. Set in small-town Montana in a fully-fleshed out fictional city, The Miseducation is so hyperreal, I kept thinking, “This has to be autobiographical, right? No way someone could make up that much detail.” And yet, danforth did. Right down to watching the girl you like skid her flip flop a little too far away and lunge to pick it up with her toes. A bittersweet story of parental mortality, thwarted teenage love, and coming of age, I couldn’t bring myself to read this one on the beach because it made me feel like my heart was in my throat.

secondmangocover   LoveDevoursbySarahDiemer   ClimbingtheDatePalm-200x300   BrandedAnn   olive conspiracy

Looking for adventure, romance, and fantasy all rolled into one beautiful escapist mess?

Not gonna lie– this is what I consider a Certified Lesbian Beach Read. Sitting ankle-deep in the surf with wind sand-blasting my face and the sun encroaching ever-closer to my beergarita, I’m not exactly looking to think too hard. I want to see some salty pirate pansexuals, some transcendentally beautiful trans mermaids, and some lesbian ladies in full 16th-century attire making out on a tropical island.

First off, I can recommend Love Devours: Tales of Monstrous Adoration by Sarah Diemer. You can download “The Witch Sea” for free on Amazon separately, but my favorite story in this collection is “Seek.” I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ll say this: Mysterious sea woman. Girl-knight seeking to win the hand of a beautiful princess. Sultry enchantress. Intrigue! Also check out The Monstrous Sea by Sarah and Jennifer Diemer for its trans girl YA mermaid story, “True if By Sea.”

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention The Second Mango by our own Shira Glassman for its lesbian princess, her woman-knight BFF, her bisexual long-lost love, and the tropical, vaguely Floridian setting in which they frolic.

Finally, Branded Ann by Merry Shannon was a recent standout, well-plotted with a careful balance of romance and adventure. This is the lesbian Pirates of the Caribbean– a search for lost treasure, threats of mutiny, mayyyyybe some kind of supernatural being?? I also came away feeling like I learned something about 16th century piracy, all while enjoying sizzling hot sexual tension. My only gripe is the character description. I felt like had no idea what most of the characters looked like, except the two main characters, who were described in frequent and florid detail. Still, this was all I ever wanted, all I ever needed in a pirate romance novel. (This one comes with a trigger warning for sexual assault mentions.)

What are your favorite LBT beach reads? Let me know on the Goodreads list! (https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/100656.Lesbian_Beach_Reads)

Kathryn Hoss is an aspiring author and singer-songwriter from Ohio. She can be found at kathrynhoss.tumblr.com.

Marcia reviews Love Devours: Tales of Monstrous Adoration by Sarah Diemer

I really wanted to like Love Devours: Tales of Monstrous Adoration, a short collection of short stories with a dark fantasy/sci-fi theme by Sarah Diemer. That isn’t to say that the collection is wholly without merit, but some combination of the stories themselves and how they were organized seemed determined to hit me somewhere around “pretty good, I guess?” despite lots of pretty words and pretty girls kissing.

I don’t read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy in my free time, but I’m not averse to the genre when writing is strong, world-building is interesting, and characters are fleshed out. At 192 pages with six stories, Diemer frankly doesn’t have a lot of room to do all of these. Love Devours tends to feel more like a thesis than a story collection – the constant repetition of the monster in literal and allegorical form, the similar story framework, and the study of worlds (with the exception of “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”) where lesbianism is celebrated and accepted without question or sideways glance. In theory, this works. It is refreshing to read a collection of stories without awkward coming-outs, without the danger of being cast out, bullied, or worse because of a word, an identity. Six stories featuring alternate, female-centered mythologies? Yes! Sign me up!

Unfortunately, in practice this collection was far from what it set out to be.

The stories range from actually quite good with the exception of a few details (“The Witch Sea”; “Our Lady of Wolves”) to poorly edited and poorly planned (“Far”, which opens the collection and sets the tone for huge aspirations with little delivery; “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”). Diemer’s world building is, for the most part, interesting but rushed. Some basic details are in place, but I got the feeling that each setting is far more intricate in Diemer’s head than she communicates on the page. Characterization is lacking across the board – “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” is the first and only story in the collection to actually use the first person narration to give the character a unique voice. And worst of all (at least for me) is the almost de facto lesbianism. I have little to no idea what brings these characters together, what draws them close, what urges them to kiss or to go on these epic quests. If Love Devours is intended to be a set of replacement myths, similar in blank form and grand adventure to the stories adopted from ancient civilizations into the Western canon I might be able to excuse the places where the collection fails. But style, narration, and story choices lead me to believe that Love Devours is simply failed in its execution, a rushed effort that doesn’t do justice to the ideas it wants to express.