Briefly, A Delicious Life has been on my radar for years—a literary novel with a sapphic ghost main character? I’m listening. But it made its way to the top of my TBR after I read and loved Nell Stevens’s 2025 release, The Original. This one follows Blanca, who died when she was 14 years oldRead More
A Disappointing Carmilla Retelling: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn Review
Hungerstone was one of my most-anticipated books of 2025, but it ended up being a disappointment. I love Carmilla and queer Carmilla retellings, not to mention sapphic vampire stories in general, so I thought this would be an easy win. Instead, I ended up feeling like this was a novel split in two, where theRead More
A Sapphic Hunt for Legacy: The Guest Book by Mae Marvel
First and foremost, The Guest Book (June 2, 2026) gets a special mention as my very first NetGalley eARC. I feel like a proper book reviewer now! I was immediately drawn in by the synopsis: a whirlwind vacation to a cozy English inn for two young Americans in need of an escape from Hard Things, with aRead More
Social Bureaucracy as Utopia Building: Quill & Still by Aaron Sofaer Review
To read Quill & Still by Aaron Sofaer (she/her) is to discover a revolution fought not with swords or spells, but with intake forms and breakfast routines—a village where every stone house stands by mutual agreement (and where the enchanted toilets probably have union representation). Whatever Sophie expected, what she gets is smaller and stranger:Read More
Love in the Times of Seaside Horror: Providence Girls by Morgan Dante Review
In the past couple of years, I have discovered some real gems of independent and self-published sapphic literature. Last May, I read Morgan Dante’s stunning Providence Girls, which won Best Historical Fiction at the 2023 Indie Ink awards. The author pitches it as “a seaside sapphic cosmic horror romance” in the vein of The Handmaiden and The Shape ofRead More
A Haunting Gothic About Family in (Climate) Crisis: Private Rites by Julia Armfield Review
As an avid reader of all of Julia Armfield’s fiction, I was eager to pick up her newest novel. From the author of Our Wives Under the Sea (2022), Private Rites (Fourth Estate, 2024) promised to be poignant, haunting, and literary. Set in a future world where environmental disaster has flooded much of the world with ceaseless rains, threeRead More