Samantha Allen’s Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States is a must-read for all LGBTQ Americans, regardless of whether they hail from or live in red states. Following the motto “Something gay every day,” Allen and her friend Billy took a road trip across the Midwest and South in summer 2017, visiting places likeRead More
Tierney reviews One True Way by Shannon Hitchcock
It is so exciting to experience the current burgeoning of middle LGBTQ fiction: it feels absolutely amazing (not to mention freeing) to have enough books out there to be able to pick and choose and categorize, and set aside what misses the mark in favor of reading the good stuff. Shannon Hitchcock’s One True WayRead More
Tierney reviews Who Is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht
Who Is Vera Kelly? is a thoughtful, twisty spy thriller, whose eponymous protagonist is a queer American spy in 1960s Argentina. Vera’s life unfolds in fragments through the novel: passages in her present day, in which she is working for the CIA to monitor the unstable Argentinian government and suppress communist interests, are interspersed with passagesRead More
Tierney reviews Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli
Leah Burke is spending her last year of high school trying to figure out where she fits in, and often feeling awkward about the fact that she marches to the beat of her own drum. She tells the story from her perspective in Leah on the Offbeat, Becky Albertalli’s not-quite-sequel to Simon vs. The HomoRead More
Tierney reviews My Lady Lipstick by Karin Kallmaker
Anita Topaz is a best-selling author of popular bodice rippers. But Anita doesn’t actually exist: she’s just a pen name. Paris Jackson uses a pseudonym to help her keep her distance from the world: after experiencing intense online harassment, she is trying to live off the grid and manage her anxiety. When Paris’s publishers decideRead More
Tierney reviews The Necessary Hunger by Nina Revoyr
Published in 1997, The Necessary Hunger is one of those novels that should be on the required reading list for queer women: it so perfectly depicts its protagonist’s emotional journey, impeccably capturing the essence of adolescent passion, basketball, unrequited love, and this particular moment in time in 1980s Los Angeles. The novel is told from Nancy’s pointRead More
Tierney reviews Can You Hear Me? by Geonn Cannon
Colonel Noa Laurie, sole survivor of the catastrophic failure of her space station, heads back into space once more on a mission to help eradicate space debris, on her own. She has volunteered to pilot the one-person Orbital Debris Independent Eradication (ODIE) engine, circling the Earth over the course of her two-year solo mission. SheRead More
Tierney reviews Heartsick by Tracey Richardson
Paramedic Angie Cullen and doctor Vic Turner work at the same hospital, but hardly know one another – until Angie’s lover and Vic’s wife are brought to the hospital together after a car crash, and it comes to light that they have been cheating with each other. After their respective relationships implode, Angie and VicRead More
Tierney reviews Turbulence by E. J. Noyes
Isabelle has smoking hot sex with a one-night stand she thinks she’ll never see again – and then promptly sees her again the next day, flying her private jet: it turns out Audrey is her new company pilot. The two continue their sexual relationship, claiming they want to keep things casual – but amidst allRead More
Tierney reviews Perfect Rhythm by Jae
[Trigger warning for the death of a parent.] When pop star Jenna Blake gets a call from her mom saying her dad has had a stroke, she returns home to her small hometown of Fair Oaks, Missouri for the first time in five years, and goes back to being Leontyne Blake once more. As sheRead More