This novel follows generations of Cole women who maintain a lighthouse on a small island off of New Hampshire. Their family line comes with a curse. There are always two Cole women on Juniper island, and every birth comes with a death: the older Cole woman will walk into the ocean, joining the ghosts ofRead More
It’s All in the Cards: Saturn Returning by Kim Narby
Saturn Returning centres around three friends (Trace, Silvia, and Jordan) who we follow in two timelines, past and present. In the past, we see how they first meet at college, how Jordan begins to come out of her shell and explores her sexuality; how Trace is a sucker for girls and falls hard when she fallsRead More
Vampires, Murder Mysteries, and Loneliness: The Midnight Shift by Seon-Ran Cheon, Translated by Gene Png
At its core, this is a book about the kind of loneliness that persists even in a life filled with relationships. I read it on honeymoon—almost a year late because of a cancer treatments—and understood immediately what Seon-Ran Cheon’s vampires were hunting. Cancer ghosting taught me: you can be most alone with a contact listRead More
Toxic Lesbian Vampires: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab Review
This was my first V.E. Schwab book, and I picked it up solely because she described it as “toxic lesbian vampires.” Luckily, it lived up to that promise, and it’s a welcome addition to my collection of favourite sapphic vampire novels. I appreciate a vampire novel that really digs into what it would feel likeRead More
Sapphic Love in Defiance of Dictatorship: Cantoras by Caro de Robertis
The Atlantic—salt-bitten and memory-laden—beats beneath every clause of Cantoras, and Caro De Robertis (they/them) times their prose to that tidal metronome, letting sentences drift eastward onto Uruguay’s raw ocean edge. Some clauses stretch out like the low-tide flats while others are cast out to sea, where they leave periods bobbing like bottle-caps. Reading it, I heardRead More
A TBR Shame Spiral in Six Titles
As a librarian, my TBR (to-be-read) shelf is never ending. Every time I think I am going to crack down on my whole bookshelf of unread books, something amazing comes through the returns chute, or my VERY well-meaning coworkers share something that they think I will love (most times they are right on the money)Read More
An Open Wound of a Novel: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Review
This is a book I respect, and it’s one I struggled to get through. The subject matter is difficult—not only is it set in a near-future dystopia where prisoners fight each other to the death for a chance at freedom, but it also includes footnotes about the real-life atrocities of the prison-industrial complex. I canRead More
The Three Queer Books That Broke My Reading Slump
I will be completely honest—I have been burnt out, to the point where I have been struggling to find joy in reading and even finding reading books for my job a burden. I am sure a lot of you have been feeling the same way. But as I went searching for ways to engage withRead More
Separated Sisters and Warring Gods: The Gods Below by Andrea Stewart Review
Andrea Stewart’s The Gods Below is the start to her new Hollow Covenant trilogy, which follows two sisters in the aftermath of a war between gods. The sisters are not gods—they are ordinary people, forced to flee their home before the prevailing god could change it, and them, into something unrecognizable. While Hakara, the oldest, makes it intoRead More
A Wicked Wonderland: Off With Their Heads by Zoe Hana Mikuta Review
It’s been five years since young witches and lovers Caro Rabbit and Iccadora Alice Sickle were both sentenced to Wonderland, the dark forest where monsters called Saints lurk, for a crime they didn’t commit. In the process of escaping, they break one another’s hearts. Now Icca will stop at nothing to exact her revenge onRead More