As I wrote in my previous review, my reading list for September was chosen by my Instagram and Threads followers. Meeting Millie by Clare Ashton was their first pick. After that came Chef’s Kiss by Stephanie Shea. The last one I got to in the month was The Memories of Marlie Rose by Morgan Lee Miller. While I loved all three,Read More
A Heartbreaking Love Letter to Hawai’i: Extinction Capital of the World: Stories by Mariah Rigg Review
This collection of short stories traces generations of characters living in Hawai’i, beginning with “Target Island”, which starts in 1948, when Harrison in his crib is covered in broken glass (but miraculously unharmed) when the window shatters from the shockwave of a bomb dropped by US government. When he’s seven years old, he proudly showsRead More
A Book for the Emo Romance Girlies: Afterlove by Tanya Byrne
Maybe it’s the emo kid in me, but my favorite sapphic romances are the ones that break my heart and make me cry before putting me back together with a well-earned happily ever after. One such book that I recently enjoyed is Afterlove by Tanya Byrne. This story about the enduring power of love played with myRead More
The Heights and Depths of Queer Trans Nostalgia: A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton Review
When Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa were teenagers in the late 90s, they ran a video game corporation together. They never actually sold a video game, but they worked on an incredibly ambitious text-based (ASCII) game together. Sash was the leader, the idea person who held everyone else to exacting standards. Lilith struggled to design gameRead More
Love, Grief, and the Abyssal Depths of the Ocean: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
There is a peculiar kind of sadness in telling a love story backwards, starting with its end. There’s the tenderness and domesticity of an established relationship, and the inevitable fact of its eventual nonexistence. This love story captures a relationship by chronicling its end. Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield’s debut novel, is a captivating tale told in alternating perspectives about a couple, Miri and Leah, the latter of whom goes out on a deep-sea exploration and comes back irrevocably changed. The book weaves Miri’s struggle to reconcile the slow slipping away of her wife, Leah, with Leah’s recounting of the events of the deep-sea submersible dive.
A Palestinian Family’s Story Shows History Repeats: The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher
Far from the Rummani’s ancestral home of Palestine, Betty Rummani is born a striking, permanent shade of cobalt blue. That same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory is destroyed in an air strike in Nablus. The family matriarch and keeper of all Rummani lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history,Read More
The Queer Graphic Novel That Had Me Sobbing at 3 A.M.: The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! You’re all fired for not tell me how good this is. I liked The Girl From the Sea, so I put a hold on Ostertag’s newest sapphic graphic novel, but I hadn’t heard anything about it, so I my expectations were pretty grounded. IRead More
A Devastating Story of Grief: We Are Okay by Nina LaCour
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! When I first picked up Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay and read the blurbs on the cover, I knew that it was going to be a sad one. After all, the noun “grief” appears multiple times alongside adjectives such as “devastating”, “raw”, and “lonely”. Still, IRead More
Traumatized, Angsty Bisexuals: 6 Times We Almost Kissed (and One Time We Did) by Tess Sharpe
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Penny and Tate’s mothers have always been best friends—but the same cannot be said about the daughters’ relationship. Having clashed their entire lives, they must now put aside their bickering when Penny’s mom agrees to become a liver donor to Tate’s mother, as bothRead 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