Run Away With Me by J.L. Simmonds is a realistic YA novel about two teenage girls, classmates but not friends, who end up together on a desperate road trip filled with secrets and hidden dangers. The main character, Jessie, is quiet, uncertain, and on the run from her abusive stepfather’s corpse. Brooke is self-assured, outgoing, andRead More
Shakespeare, Study Hall, and Secrets Worth Killing Over: This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki and Nicole Goux
Wilberton Academy takes its theater seriously. Members of the elite Wilberton Theatrical Society are revered by the student body, and beautiful, talented Elizabeth Woodward is a shining star among them. The whole school is abuzz over the production of Romeo and Juliet that Elizabeth is starring in as the tragic leading lady—until she’s found dead the morningRead More
A Deliciously Toxic Sapphic Gothic Thriller: A Slow and Secret Poison by Carmella Lowkis
You know when a bunch of factors work together in your favour to make a book particularly immersive for you? This was my experience, earlier during a holiday weekend (late October), when I read Carmella Lowkis’s sophomore novel A Slow and Secret Poison (February 10, 2026). A wonderfully atmospheric and twisty, somewhat slow-burn sapphic horror thrillerRead More
A Revolutionary Tale: The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai
The Daughters of Izdihar is Hadeer Elsbai’s debut novel. It’s the first in The Alamaxa Duology, and I raced to the second book the moment I finished this one (tune in next month for that review). It’s always a thrill to read a fantasy novel that’s not set in the Western tradition, and with aRead More
A Masterpiece of Lesbian Historical Fiction: The Original by Nell Stevens
As someone who read and loved Nell Stevens’s previous historical novel, Briefly, a Delicious Life (2022), I was eagerly anticipating her latest release, The Original (Norton, 2025), and it did not disappoint! Set primarily in England in 1899, Grace is the longtime ward of her uncle’s family on their once-grand estate. After her parents were sent to mental institutions,Read More
Curses, Forgeries, and Family Secrets: The Original by Nell Stevens Review
When Grace’s parents are institutionalized, she’s sent to live with her uncle’s family, where she’s looked at with suspicion. The family considers her an inconvenience at best: they think she’s strange and destined to go “mad,” like her parents. She mostly tries to stay out of the way. It doesn’t help that she has faceRead More
A Worthy Sequel to Shirley Jackson’s Classic: A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand
From award-winning author Elizabeth Hand comes the first ever authorized retelling of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959). A Haunting on the Hill (Mulholland Books, 2023) is a startlingly contemporary and frighteningly vivid take on one of the most well-known haunted house novels of the twentieth century. A Haunting on the Hill follows Holly, a playwright turnedRead More
Queer, Revelatory Joy in The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag
Already a fan of Molly Knox Ostertag’s The Girl from the Sea, I had a good feeling about the weighty tome that is The Deep Dark. Friends, this poignant graphic novel delivered and then some. It’s like someone translated the sensation of waiting for the other shoe to drop and described the steps someone would take toRead More
The Ghosts and Secrets of Suburbia: The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste
If I had a nickel for every book I’ve read recently about a suddenly haunted suburb, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but I guess authors are stepping up to throw those sorts of neighborhood into the ghost void. The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste is a great little horror romp about a disappearing neighborhood,Read More
An Obsessive Female Friendship Turns Dark: Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Two teen girls, Hannah Dexter and Lacey Champlain, become obsessively attached to each other in their rebellion and vengeful agenda against Nikki Drummond. Then dark secrets about what happened to Craig, the boy found dead at the beginning of the novel, begin to unravel,Read More