Tag Archives: small town

How Much Would You Sacrifice for Fame?: Every Time You Hear That Song by Jenna Voris

Posted on by — Leave a reply
Every Time You Hear That Song by Jenna Voris cover

Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary!

I won’t be able to get through this review without mentioning The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, so let me get the comparison out of the way now. Like Evelyn Hugo, this cover likely doesn’t scream “queer story,” but it is—twice over, actually. Like Evelyn Hugo, we’re alternating between two stories, one of which is an ambitious queer woman trying to make it in an industry and time period that required being closeted. I’m definitely tempted to recommend this one to fans of Evelyn Hugo, but it has some big differences, not least of which is that this is a young adult novel.

Our main character is Darren, a seventeen-year-old aspiring journalist who can’t wait to get out of her hometown of Mayberry, Arkansas. The only thing Mayberry ever produced to put it on the map is country music legend Decklee Castle—and Decklee left as soon as she could. Darren and her mother are big fans; her music helped the two of them get through her mother’s cancer treatment. When they watch Decklee’s televised funeral, they learn that she put together a treasure hunt to begin after her death. The prize at the end is three million dollars and a new album of Decklee’s music—enough money to pay off Darren’s mother’s medical debt and get her into a good university. So she convinces her coworker with a car, Kendall, to come with her to decipher the clues hidden in Decklee’s lyrics. Meanwhile, we flash back to Decklee’s life, beginning with her running away from her childhood home in Mayberry in the middle of the night.

Last time, I promise: like Evelyn Hugo, Decklee Castle is a fascinating character. She’s ruthlessly ambitious and loves nothing more than to be on stage. She’s willing to sacrifice a lot—almost everything—for fame. When she and songwriter Mickenlee Hooper fall for each other, she goes to great lengths to conceal their relationship from the press. Decklee isn’t a likable character. She’s believable, but she’s not exactly sympathetic. To be honest, I find that refreshing in a queer character. Decklee is talented and hardworking, but she is also callous and selfish. Darren considers her a role model because she got out of Mayberry and also because Dareen suspects Decklee was queer and Darren is trying to come to grips with her own bisexuality. The more she learns about her, though, the more she begins to realize that her image of Decklee isn’t true to life.

While we alternate between Decklee and Darren’s perspectives, this is Darren’s story. As Kendall and Darren spend more time together, Darren begins to see him in a different light—and she’s surprised that he sees the good in Mayberry. In fact, he’s offended that she seems to hate it so much. He points out that she’s buying into racist and classist narratives about the South and argues that she loves Mayberry, that you can see her passion for their hometown in her writing about it. As they fall for each other, this tension between his commitment to stay and her determination to leave simmers underneath the surface.

I could easily pitch this as a road trip story, a scavenger hunt, a tell-all about a fictional celebrity, but that doesn’t really match the vibes. Above all, this is about relationships, ambition, and what you’re willing to sacrifice to get what you want. While both Decklee and Dareen have love stories, this isn’t a romance. It’s bittersweet, and Decklee’s story is a warning for Darren.

I think the way these stories play out together is really well done, and I liked Dareen’s subplot of coming out as bisexual. Both couples in the alternating timelines have interesting dynamics, and Decklee’s friend Marquel1 was a breakout character, especially as he shows an alternate approach to being queer in an industry that does not accept that. I listened the audiobook, and I think it works well that way: there are two different narrators, so it’s easy to keep the stories separate. I highly recommend this one.

  1. I listened to the audiobook, so I’m not sure if that’s how you spell it. ↩︎

A Sapphic Nova Scotia Gothic: A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland

Posted on by — Leave a reply
A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland cover

Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary!

I couldn’t tell you why, but I am obsessed with sapphic selkie stories. There are very few of them out there, but I leap on the chance to read any that I stumble upon. Don’t get me wrong: I like sapphic mermaids, too, but there’s something about a sapphic selkie story that hooks me like no other. So it’s not surprise that A Sweet Sting of Salt was one of my most anticipated releases of the year.

This is such an immersive story. It’s a Nova Scotia gothic, and I could feel the spray of waves crashing against rocks as I read it. Sutherland describes this seaside town in loving detail, even as the main character has a less rosy view of it. Jean has been an outsider since she was caught with another woman when she was younger. Her girlfriend was sent away to marry a French man—despite not being able to speak French—to Jean’s heartbreak. Luckily, Jean was taken in by the local midwife, and now she has earned the town’s begrudging respect as an extremely skilled midwife herself.

Helping someone give birth is an everyday occurrence for Jean, but not the way it happens this night. She wakes up to the sound of a woman screaming outside and finds a stranger in labour outdoors in the middle of a storm. She brings Muirin inside and helps her, though Muirin doesn’t speak any English. Jean finds out that Muirin is the wife of her neighbour Tobias, but it’s very strange that Tobias didn’t let her know about the pregnancy, and Muirin is reluctant to go home.

As you’d expect from a gothic, the tension and danger slowly ratchets up over the course of the story. First, we get to see Muirin and Jean become friends as Jean teaches her English and assists with the baby. Jean’s mother committed suicide shortly after she was born, so she’s attentive to new mothers’ mental states, determined to prevent that from happening to any of her charges. Soon, though, she finds herself falling for Muirin in spite of her best efforts not to.

Maybe it’s inevitable in this sort of story, but I was surprised that the main character doesn’t find out that Muirin is a selkie until well into the book. It’s in the marketing, so the reader knows right away. I don’t love having information the main character doesn’t for that long, but that’s a personal preference.

By the end of A Sweet Sting of Salt, I was reminded of Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch.” “The Girl With the Green Ribbon” and “The Selkie Wife” share a similar premise, a women’s horror story: the idea of sacrificing everything for your husband/children and it not being enough. Women are so often expected to be completely subsumed by the role of wife and mother until there’s nothing left that’s just theirs. These feminist retellings make that message shine through, and they show that a truly loving and equitable relationship means being able to keep something for yourself.

I liked the dynamic between the practical to a fault Jean and mysterious, passionate Muirin. Muirin picks up language at an unnatural rate, so they are able to communicate even when they don’t completely share a language. I also appreciated the side characters, including Jean’s mentor midwife and mother figure, who is Indigenous, and a character who is coded autistic. I always appreciate when historical fiction has a diverse cast. We also get to see how Jean’s former girlfriend’s life turned out, which was a pleasant subversion of my expectations.

While I didn’t like knowing the reveal hundreds of pages before the main character did, that was a pretty minor complaint. A Sweet Sting of Salt was an immersive read perfect for fans of queer retellings, folklore, gothics, and seaside settings.

A Painfully Oblivious Lesbian Love Story: Cash Delgado Is Living the Dream by Tehlor Kay Mejia

Posted on by
Cash Delgado Is Living the Dream audiobook cover

Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary!

Your enjoyment of Cash Delgado Is Living the Dream will depend heavily on how you feel about reading hundreds of pages of a truly oblivious queer main character. The kind of character who googles, “Can you be straight and have a sex dream about your female best friend?” “Can you be straight and have sex dreams about a woman every night?” “Can you be straight and want to kiss a woman?” Personally, I had a lot of sympathy for Cash’s heteronormativity-poisoned brain, so I had a great time listening to the audiobook narrated by E. A. Castillo.

This is set in the same small town as Mejia’s 2023 bisexual F/M romance Sammy Espinoza’s Last Review and has some cameos of characters from that book, but I didn’t read the first book and didn’t feel like I was missing anything major, so you can definitely start with this one.

At 17, Cash Delgado shaved her head and joined a punk band, and then her controlling parents kicked her out. She thought she had a found family in the punk scene, but when she got pregnant, her support system (and the father) disappeared. She was on her own.

Since then, she’s built a life for herself by running Joyce’s Bar, a rundown bar that nevertheless is a community hub, especially on Karaoke Night. It isn’t glamorous, but the job comes with major perks, like free housing and health benefits. The hours are also flexible so that she can drop off and pick up her daughter Parker. (Parker also plays a fairly significant role in the book, and she’s an adorable six year old with a big personality.) Another big advantage of Joyce’s is working with her best friend, Inez.

Inez is the closest thing Cash has to family now, other than her daughter. She helps out with laundry and dishes when Cash falls behind. Parker adores her. Cash is so grateful for Inez’s support. Sometimes she worries that Inez is going to get a serious girlfriend one day and they won’t be as close, but she tries not to dwell on that.

We meet Cash as she faces two major shake-ups to her life. The last guy she slept with visits town, and when she goes on a date with him, he casually reveals he’s there to open a bar that will almost certainly drive Joyce’s out of business. After ditching him, she begins frantically trying to hatch a plan to save the bar, including trying to convince the out-of-town owners to pay to renovate. Of course, she and Inez work closely together to plan, which leads to the next shake-up: Cash has a… steamy dream about her best friend.

Cash reassures herself that this doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but she continues to have these dreams every night, and soon she can’t look at Inez without picturing them playing out. Even as her attraction to Inez becomes harder and harder to explain away, Cash worries about endangering their relationship. As you can imagine, this denial combines with miscommunication between Inez and Cash, causing the tension to just keep ratcheting up until the final chapters.

There were some aspects of this that didn’t land with me. For example, the ex turns out to be such a mustache-twirling homophobic villain that he felt cartoonish—though of course people like that do exist. On the other hand, Inez sometimes felt too good to be true, but she feels more realistic later in the novel. It was also hard for me personally to be too invested in fighting for a bar. Still, I found Cash’s obliviousness to her own queerness charming, and I felt for her, so I was invested in seeing how her and Inez’s story wrapped up.

If you’re a fan of friends-to-lovers romances, useless lesbians (affectionate), small town romances, single mom main characters, and coming out to yourself stories, I recommend this one, which comes out on July 2nd.

Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date Is a Satisfying End to Ashley Herring Blake’s Bright Falls Series

Posted on by
the cover of iris kelly doesn’t date

Buy this from Bookshop.org with a Lesbrary affiliate link!

First, a confession: I never liked romance novel covers. For the first thirty-five years of my reading life, I had no idea what went on between the covers of romance novels (well, okay, I had some idea), but if it had anything to do with what was on the cover—hard pass. Now, I am aware that some genre purists detest the illustrated cover trend, and I get that. For how many readers, though, has the illustrated cover been a gateway drug to the romance novel? It was for me. And that brings us to Delilah Green, the town of Bright Falls, and their creator, Ashley Herring Blake.  

From the very first chapter of Delilah Green Doesn’t Care (2022), I wanted to spend as much time as possible with Delilah Green, Claire Sutherland, Iris Kelly, Astrid Parker, and anyone else to whom Blake would introduce me. Yes, even Astrid—who, by the way, gives off such extreme Lemon Breeland vibes that I’ve since had to go back and rewatch a few episodes of Hart of Dixie. Blake balances the sibling tension between Delilah and Astrid with the main romance plot between Delilah and Claire, all the while developing the setting of Bright Falls, Oregon. Another confession: I have been trying to escape from coastal Georgia for a while now, hoping to end up in Oregon. If the Bright Falls that Blake wrote about was real, I would have moved there immediately. Delilah needs a GenX friend who can go toe-to-toe with her sarcasm and eyerolls, right?

Imagine my surprise when I discovered what was waiting for me in the sequel, Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail (2022). Blake introduces her readers to a new character, Jordan Everwood, who has arrived from—yes, serendipity and irony are real things, folks—coastal Georgia. (It is less surprising if you know that Herring lives in coastal Georgia. But no less serendipitous.) After a crushing breakup that challenged her sense of self, Jordan finds herself an unlikely match for Astrid. Astrid learns to loosen up (sort of), and everyone in Bright Falls is happy. Almost everyone. Something truly unfortunate happens to Iris Kelly in Astrid Parker, which serves as the setup for the third Bright Falls novel. 

Oh, and the plot of Astrid Parker revolves around an HGTV-esque renovation reality show. If that sort of thing matters to you.

Blake is not the first person to create a charming small town in which romance and hijinks occur. I know I said that I didn’t know what went on within the pages of romance novels, but I’ve seen Hart of Dixie, remember? For what it’s worth, though, I’d take Bright Falls over Bluebell, Virgin River, or even Stars Hollow (yes, Stars Hollow) any day. The best feature of Blake’s Bright Falls series is the way that she examines the trauma that her characters have had to face. Whether it’s the death of a parent, an overbearing mother, a devastating breakup, or a bad reputation, Blake takes her readers through what it means to be wounded by life and by the people in it. Trauma doesn’t just “scar” us; it lives on, at least until it is dealt with. Nothing, and I mean nothing—not even the illustrated covers—gets me more in a romance novel than one character telling another that their trauma is real and then helping them deal with it. 

Iris Kelly doesn’t date because anyone she dates will inevitably let her down. Blake provides us with a catastrophic example of this maxim in Astrid Parker. When we meet up with Iris at the beginning of Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date (2023), she’s done with it all: cheaters and liars, people who think being bisexual means being greedy or hypersexual, and people who are convinced that Iris does not have her life priorities straight. And that is how Iris ends up at Lush, a club in Portland, where she spots her next one-night stand. All is going to plan until the stranger responds to Iris’s seduction technique by vomiting all over her. 

I wonder sometimes if there are people out there who are as forgiving as the characters in romance novels. I’m sure there are, but I have no interest in the world of people who are securely attached. Another thing I’ve learned about what goes on between the covers of romance novels: no one seems to have a secure attachment style. And I am here for it. Because the fantasy (or heightened reality) of people helping each other process their traumas while finding love is one I can wholeheartedly support. 

I almost didn’t write this review because, as I suspected, it was too easy to discuss what has resonated with me in the Bright Falls series rather than actually review Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date. I would argue, though, that those are not two separate things. I felt a lot of sympathy for Iris, but Stevie’s anxiety is something that I have actually felt. (Not in the way that she felt it during her first interaction with Iris, I should clarify.) Stevie is a fawner who is still friends with her ex. She also lets people tell her what she thinks (or should think), and she struggles with who she is on multiple levels. I am much more interested in those issues than I am with the fake dating plot of the novel. As far as fake dating plots go, this one’s pretty good—it involves an extremely queer production of Much Ado about Nothing.

If that sort of thing matters to you.

What I am going to remember about the Bright Falls series is thinking about how it must have felt for Delilah, Jordan, and Stevie to (re)discover a magical place that is a thousand times better than Narnia. (There is a White Witch—it’s Astrid. And Delilah and Iris have some fierce manes. Also, Astrid makes a caramel dark chocolate seven-layer cake, so those Narnia kids can just keep their Turkish Delight to themselves.) I don’t want to leave Bright Falls, and Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date certainly lives up to the first two novels in the series. As a standalone novel, Iris Kelly would still merit a solid four stars. The Bright Falls series, however, is greater than the sum of its parts. Five stars for six people who I would be glad to know in real life.

If I have to, though, I’ll settle for Delilah Green cameos in every single one of Blake’s future novels.

Content warning: manipulation, panic attacks

Liv (she/her) is a trans woman, a professor of English, and a reluctant Southerner. Described (charitably) as passionate and strong-willed, she loves to talk (and talk) about popular culture, queer theory, utopias, time travel, and any other topic that she has magpied over the years. You can find her on storygraph and letterboxd @livvalentine.

Folk Horror Misogyny: The Low, Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado and DaNi

Posted on by
the cover of The Low, Low Woods

Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

I read this during Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon in the last hour before I went to sleep, and I think this is a perfect choice for a horror graphic novel to read on an October night.

El and Vee are two queer teens living in the small town of Shudder-To-Think. As they get close to graduation, Vee can’t wait to get out, but El feels unable to escape: there are no universities she could apply to that she could afford. On the first page, they wake up together in a movie theater missing their memories of the last few hours. Vee wants to let it go, but El is determined to figure out the truth.

This isn’t the only weird thing about Shudder-To-Think, though. It is a dying ex-mining town with an underground fire that won’t go out. Flayed bodies appear and attack people. There are strange, mutated deer lurking in the woods. There’s a girl who is a sinkhole. They have a town witch that hasn’t aged since she was a child. At first, these feel like disparate atmospheric horror elements, until everything starts coming together.

I loved the atmosphere of this creepy town, and I think the artwork captures it perfectly. It’s such a claustrophobic feeling, and monstrous elements really just underscore the inherent horror of being a young queer woman of color stuck in a town that is indifferent to them at best and deadly at worst.

I’m also always a fan of queer friendship in books: El and Vee have been connected at the hip since they were kids, and although they have fights and serious disagreements, they love each other deeply and always circle back to each other. I love seeing friendships that are central to characters’ lives.

The plot is hard to discuss without spoiling anything, but I was really satisfied with how it all came together in the end. It’s hard to say I liked the plot, because it is upsetting, but it’s very well done. This is a feminist horror story that gave me folk horror vibes, though admittedly I’m new to that subgenre. It’s more psychological horror than outright scary, so if you’re looking for an October read that has dark themes and is more on the sinister than terrifying side, I highly recommend this one. I will continue to pick up anything Carmen Maria Machado writes; she’s never steered me wrong.

Content warnings (includes spoilers): Sexual assault as a major theme, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, violence, death

The Claustrophobia of Grief: Where Echoes Die by Courtney Gould

Posted on by
the cover of Where Echoes Die by Courtney Gould

Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

Grief is one of the most popular themes explored within the horror genre. From TV, to film, to literature, death is one of the human experiences that vexes us the most, and people use art and media to grapple with the aspects of our existence that are completely out of our control. I have watched a ton of movies and read a lot of books that were either centered around or touched upon the experience of grief, and it remains one of my favourite topics to explore within the horror genre. However, considering how outstanding so many of these have been, I have also come to develop very high expectations for works of art that tackle grief, and an author really has to address the topic creatively to pique my interest.

Courtney Gould’s debut novel, The Dead and the Dark, has been, for a couple of years now, one of my favourite books. I have recommended it every chance I have had, and I will always hold it very dear to my heart. So, I was incredibly nervous about picking up her second release, Where Echoes Die. Not only did it seem impossible for another story to affect me quite as much as The Dead and the Dark, but I also knew it would, to a certain extent, discuss the experience of grief and death. There was so much that could go wrong, and I was fully expecting myself to be, at least somewhat, disappointed. Thankfully, Gould not only met but surpassed those expectations, and her talent grew so exponentially from one book to another, my jaw was on the floor by the end of the novel.

Where Echoes Die is the story of Beck, who travels to a small town in Arizona with her younger sister to investigate its connection to their mother’s death. She’s been adrift since her mother’s passing, unable to stop herself from slipping into memories of happier times. In the isolated community of Backravel, Beck tries to understand what drew her mother to this place, all while desperately trying to hold onto the way things used to be. She soon discovers, however, that there is something off about the town and its people. And while she finds herself getting closer to the daughter of the community’s leader, Avery, Beck must uncover the town’s secrets before her or her sister get hurt… or before she loses herself completely.

This was such a fascinating and interesting take on grief. Gould breaks it down and explores every single facet of dealing with death: what it means to feel unable to move on, to always hold onto the past, the way your grief can affect those around you, and the way it can affect you in ways you don’t even realize. The relationships in this story are so interesting, and the book really explores not only those specific dynamics, but also the way they shift other relationships, and how that shift changes over time—either for better or for worse. Complex family dynamics in fiction will always make me emotional, and the mother-daughter relationship was particularly well-executed here. That balance between making your reader understand the love that a child has for a parent, while also empathizing with the trauma to which they’ve been victim and conceptualizing the extent to which it affected them is something that takes real talent to be able to execute correctly, and Gould does exactly that. The relationship between the sisters was also so well woven into the plot and the main character’s journey, and it added such an impressive extra layer to the overall family dynamic.

Grief is all-encompassing and can make a person suffer through feelings of anxiety, claustrophobia, loss of control, desperation. This novel forces you to experience every single one of those emotions, and more. It is so affective, and in such a masterfully subtle way, you don’t even realize how tense it makes you feel until you take a break or set the book down.

To say that this made me cry would be a terrible understatement. I sobbed. I was distraught. I think that my neighbours were concerned about the wails floating through the walls of my building as I, myself, grieved with all the characters in the story, and I would give the world to be able to relive those last few chapters for the first time all over again.

Although this may seem counterintuitive to some people, whether or not a horror novel actually terrified me is not a main criterion in the scale I use to rate a book. It’s always a fun bonus, but I’ve developed some pretty thick skin and the genre is so much more complex than just pure fear factor. That being said, this was truly unnerving. The unsettling feeling that persisted throughout the whole story was a pleasant surprise and an improvement, I believe, from The Dead and the Dark, which was maybe not quite as frightening. Gould really captured the terror of not being in control of yourself or your environment and feeling unsure about everything happening around you.

Finally, I want to thank Gould for consistently using the world “lesbian” in the text of all of her novels. Authors regularly opt for other terms such as “sapphic” or “queer” or “gay”, even when referring to a character that is clearly and specifically a lesbian. And while there are a ton of reasons for an author to utilize different terminology, as a lesbian reader and book reviewer, it is such a wonderful feeling to see the word actually used on-page. While queerness isn’t quite as central in Where Echoes Die as it was in The Dead and the Dark, there is a sapphic romance that is significant to the plot itself, and the main character does openly specify that she is a lesbian—which was once again such a validating moment.

Even if you have no personal relationship with grief, you will be fully enthralled by this story and it will take you through a cathartic, emotional rollercoaster like never before. I wholeheartedly recommend it; it is an amazing example of the depth of the horror genre and just how much substance an author can include within one singular storyline.

Representation: lesbian main character, sapphic love interest

Content warnings: death of a parent/death of a loved one, emotional abuse, gaslighting, emetophobia/vomiting

A Quiet & Queer YA Horror Story: A Guide to the Dark by Meriam Metoui

Posted on by
the cover of A Guide to the Dark

Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

Mira and Layla are trying to make their way to Chicago for the last leg of their college tour road trip when they’re stranded in a small town and forced to stay at the Wildwood Motel. To Layla, this is a minor setback while she’s more focused on figuring out her confusing feelings for Mira. But though Layla doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss, Mira senses something dark and wrong about their room and increasingly can’t seem to escape visions of her dead brother. With several days left until their car is fixed, Mira and Layla need to figure out what exactly is happening in Room 9 and how they can survive until the final night.

Parts of this book worked so well. I loved the diverse cast of characters and liked how well-rounded they felt for a book that takes place over just a handful of days. The slow escalation of suffocation from being trapped in a small room in a small town felt tangible. Part of this dread came from the inclusion of real photographs taken by the author interspersed throughout—fitting, since one of the characters is a photographer. I thought it was a wonderful way to convey how things were just a little off even as they weren’t yet noticed by the characters. I think the atmospheric set-up and the use of the haunting of the room as a metaphor for grief are the strongest parts of the book and deeply engrossing.

That said, for a YA horror this book moved a lot slower than I expected. It alternates between three perspectives: Layla, Mira, and the room itself. The result is that the four days spent with these characters takes its sweet time. I found it difficult to keep switching between the Mira and Layla perspectives because tonally they sounded so alike. It also meant that sometimes the same event is described twice over in a way that became a little repetitive. I was caught by surprise when the ending picked up so quickly considering how much it lingered in the set-up and was left a bit unsatisfied by the resolution. I think that if readers go in knowing that this is not going to be an action-packed horror, they’ll have a better time. For those looking to linger for a bit in an atmospheric creepy book exploring grief, I think it’s worth a read.

Trigger warnings: violence, suicidal ideation, drowning, grief, child death, fire, car accident, homophobia

A Cult in the Woods—Or Worse? The Wicked Unseen by Gigi Griffis

Posted on by
the cover of The Wicked Unseen by Gigi Griffis

Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

Audre doesn’t fit well in the conservative small town to which she’s moved. She’s from New York City. She’s a lesbian. She’s a determined skeptic. And she’s the daughter of an occult researcher and a mortician. So when the preacher’s daughter, Elle, disappears, suspicion falls on Audre’s family. She works to find Elle, not only to rescue her crush, but to clear her father’s name.

For a quick read, this has a surprising depth of character. Audre is in some ways a typical heroine for a YA novel: loud, determined, most always right. But added characteristics like her affinity for horror movies make her feel more fleshed out. Similarly, her friend David is a typical sidekick character, made more developed thanks to his interest in journalism. Love interest and missing girl Elle features in flashbacks, making her not just a damsel in distress but a girl grappling with larger questions of faith and belonging.

The queer content is realistic. Audre is the new girl with a crush. Elle is a local who seems to reciprocate. It’s not magical instalove, which in my opinion makes for a more satisfying story. Amid a community that sees them as evil and aberrant, these two are just normal teenagers.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this. It balances the creepy, cultish small town with the just-this-side-of-too-much sweetness of Audre’s family. (Her parents dress as Gomez and Morticia Addams for Halloween and it’s almost too adorable!) Audre and David are actually pretty terrible investigators, but the fast pace and forays into Elle’s point of view keep the book from ever feeling dull. In some ways, I wish it had engaged with its more serious themes, but overall that’s just not what this is. It’s a quick YA mystery about a girl’s disappearance and the validity of a queer teen.

Trigger warnings: homophobia, religious trauma, racism

The Aftermath of Gay Conversion Camp: Tell the Rest by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Posted on by
the cover of Tell the Rest

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

In 2014, I read The Big Bang Symphony by Lucy Jane Bledsoe based solely on the fact that it was included on a book list called “Lesbians In Cold Places.” And you know what? That was a great decision, because I really enjoyed it. It was a slow-building character study set in Antarctica, with a queer main character, of course. So when I saw that she had a new sapphic book out today, I had to pick it up.

I have to start this with some heavy content warnings, because this is a book about conversion therapy and its aftermath. This review will discuss conversion camp and homophobia, and the book includes homophobia, abuse, rape, religious trauma, and suicide.

The book starts with two kids, a thirteen-year-old white girl and a sixteen-year-old Black teenage boy, running through the woods, trying to escape conversion camp. Then we flash forward to 25 years later.

Delia is fresh from a divorce and has just gotten fired as a college basketball coach. She’s also struggling with uncontrollable attacks of anger. She’s never felt so lost or out of control. So reluctantly, unbelievably, she drives across the country to her hometown in rural Oregon to move in with her brother and coach her old high school’s girls’ basketball team.

Her coach in high school was her hero. She gave Delia a path to follow, skills to develop, and a passion to nurture. Since then, basketball and the discipline she has around it has been her guiding light in her life. Maybe she’s hoping that by confronting her past, she can address the anger issues she’s having. Maybe she wants to step into her old coach’s shoes and inspire a new generation of kids. Maybe she just has nowhere else to go. Whatever the reason, she’s determined to take this team to victory, and she demands the best.

While I think this is Delia’s story, we do also get some point of view chapters from Earnest—the boy she escaped with. They never saw each other again after that night, but they both are still grappling with it and their experience at Celebration Camp. While Delia is at a difficult time in her life, though, grappling with her past, her personality, her anger, her family, her career, and more, Earnest seems more settled.
He has a job teaching poetry and a boyfriend he loves. The central tension in his story is struggling to write a poem about his experience at camp and their escape—something he’s been trying and failing to do for years.

As both of them find themselves needing to confront the past, it seems inevitable they will meet again. As we follow along with Delia and Earnest now, we also get chapters of their time at Celebration Camp, revealing more about the experience that had such an impact on them. Still, this is more about the ongoing effects of that experience than the camp itself.

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t a light read. It feels like an open wound: Delia especially is still hurting so much and hasn’t gotten closure on it. Eventually, though, we do see her begin to work through it, accompanied by the glimpses of the lives of the teenage girls she’s coaching.

If you like to read character studies and quiet stories about working through trauma—and trying to lead a high school girls’ basketball team to glory, because that really is a big focus—I highly recommend this one. It’s a thoughtful, sometimes painful, but effective narrative, and it’s one that’s interesting to read after books like The Miseducation of Cameron Post, because this looks at not just the immediate horror, but the aftermath of being taught to hate yourself as a young person.

Girl Meets Girl, Girls Fall In Love, Girl Gets Amnesia: Forget Me Not by Alyson Derrick

Posted on by
the cover of Forget Me Not

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

Last year, I reviewed She Gets the Girl written by Alyson Derrick and her wife, Rachael Lippincott, and really enjoyed it. So when I saw that Derrick had a new sapphic YA book coming out just in time for the April 4th episode of All the Books, I had to read it. This is an amnesia romance, but while that can sound like a soap opera premise—girl meets girl, girls fall in love, girl gets amnesia and forgets girl, girl tries to win her back—there’s an undercurrent of sadness here that keeps it feeling more grounded than that suggests.

In the first chapter, we meet Stevie. She just graduated high school and has big plans for what comes next… but almost no one in her life knows about them. She has secretly been dating Nora for years, but in their small conservative town, being out isn’t an option. Stevie’s mother is deeply involved in the Catholic church, and her father watches Fox News almost every waking hour. So Nora and Stevie see each other in private, with dates in the woods. When Stevie can’t sleep, she silently calls Nora and just listens to her voice, not wanting to wake up her parents in the next room by speaking herself.

It’s been difficult keeping this private, including having to fake a better relationship with her parents than she believes and even maintaining friendships with people she no longer gets along with, but it will be worth it. They just need to get through the summer before they’re both off to California–Stevie secretly applied to UCLA and got in—and then they can start their life together. They’ve been saving up for an apartment by saving their paychecks, plus Stevie’s job at a coffee shop two towns away is the perfect cover for the time she spends with Nora.

After all that meticulous planning, though, one moment erases everything they’ve worked for. During a date in the woods, Stevie falls. She’s put into a medically induced coma. When she wakes up, she’s forgotten the last two years. She still thinks she’s 15. And she doesn’t remember ever meeting Nora.

Stevie is left trying to piece together the time she’s lost. She’s distant with her parents, and she doesn’t know why. She can’t understand why she was alone in the woods when Nora saw her and rescued her. Any evidence of her relationship with Nora was deleted or hidden, so there’s nothing to stumble on.

Interspersed with these chapters are unsent letters from Nora, explaining her heartbreak and confusion. This version of Stevie doesn’t have any idea that she’s gay, never mind that she’s in a relationship with a girl. She’s worried that telling her will scare her off, but she also feels terrible about lying to her. Stevie thinks Nora is a new friend, someone to hang out with that doesn’t have memories of her that she doesn’t have. Both of them hope that Stevie can recover her memories by retracing familiar things, but there’s no guarantee.

There’s an interesting balance happening here between Nora and Stevie’s perfect relationship (pre-coma) and their hateful surroundings. Stevie is half Korean, and she is startled to find her best friends when she was 15 have grown up to make racist jokes. Her dad has also become obsessed with Fox News in recent years. The threat to her relationship does feel real: both Nora and Stevie’s parents are conservative, so it makes sense that they would stay in the closet until they have somewhere else to live.

There is a heartwarming romance at the heart of this, including that Stevie feels drawn to Nora even without her memories, and it’s adorable to watch her fall for Nora all over again. But the amnesia trope and almost-too-perfect relationship is tempered by the more serious context of the story, including Stevie’s internalized homophobia.

I meant to just read the first few chapters of this and found myself instead reading it in one day. Even though we know the answers, it was compelling to watch Stevie try to piece together what happened in the time she lost and consider whether she really needs to recover it or whether she should embrace the opportunity to start fresh. After all, in this missing time she apparently became more distant from her friends and family and also applied to the local community college when she’s been waiting her whole life to go somewhere new. Does she really want to be that person?

This is a very readable, engaging novel, and though I’ve mentioned that their relationship was almost too perfect, that’s helped by Nora’s characterization. She’s not on the page that much, considering this is mostly a romance, but what we do see of her is charming without being one-dimensional. You can see why Stevie falls for her (twice).