Happy Pride Month, Lesbrarians! I am swooping in from the ether to volunteer this review of Aminah Mae Safi’s much anticipated Tell Me How You Really Feel on this most auspicious month. It’s a charming read, a very well-executed story, and has been on my pre-order list for months. Safi starts us off with a fact thatRead More
Mars reviews Hocus Pocus and The All-New Sequel by A. W. Jantha
All her life, Poppy Dennison has known the story of the frightening and magical events that took place in Salem on Halloween night back in 1993. It’s otherwise known as the day her parents really met, or alternatively as the one time her cool Aunt Dani got kidnapped and almost eaten by witches. To beRead More
Mars Reviews Stray: Memoir of a Runaway by Tanya Marquardt
Content warning for child abuse, alcoholism, incest, domestic violence, dissociation. This review does contain spoilers. Tanya Marquardt was sixteen years old when she ran away from the home she shared with her mother, stepfather, and assorted siblings in the small Canadian town of Port Alberni. Her flight was strategic, timed right for when Tanya becameRead More
Mars reviews Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel by Jaqueline Koyanagi
Please be aware that although I’ve tried to keep it minimal, this review contains spoilers. Alana Quick is one of the best starship surgeons the non-gentrified City of Heliodor has to offer, or she would be if only someone gave her the chance to prove herself on a real starship. Unhappily trapped in the dustyRead More
Mars Reviews “My Mother Says Drums Are For Boys: True Stories for Gender Rebels” by Rae Theodore
In this short autobiographical essay and poetry collection, Rae Theodore offers a frank and panoramic perspective on growing up butch. The titular term “gender rebel” is entirely accurate here as Theodore recalls a childhood and young adulthood where classic femininity chafed. All the outer accoutrements of fashion and stature were as complicated to her asRead More
Mars reviews Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
It’s hard to boil this one down. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a complex portrait of a complex family. Let no one tell you that graphic novels cannot be intense reckonings of literature, especially not when they have become staples of the modern lesbian literary canon and have been reproduced as a very successful Tony-awardRead More
Mars reviews We Are Okay by Nina LaCour
Not to be dramatic, but we need to start this review with a common understanding stated outright: this novel is beautiful. The prose, the imagery, the point. All of it, beautiful. I found this short novel by completely ignoring the adage about books and their covers, and I am so glad for it. The gorgeous coverRead More
Mars reviews Seeing Red by Cara Malone
Cara Malone’s Seeing Red is like that daytime soap opera that you can’t help but watch, no matter how much the characters have you clutching your pearls and loudly shouting about foreshadowing. Everyday heroes, villains, and questionable moral situations abound in this entertaining and somehow heartwarming story. Our main hero here is Hunter Ross, completely exhausted lovingRead More
Mars reviews Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen
It’s her last year of high school and Hannah Eaden is just trying to finish up her senior year with a smile before she and her tight-knit group of friends scatter across the country to go to college. While she’ll miss her little sister and her goofy boyfriend, the shy nerd with the kind smile,Read More