Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link This is not a happy book. It tells you that in the title already: the ‘confessions’ refer to Frannie’s written musings that she notes down while she is on trial for the murder of her employer and his wife–the latter of whom she happened to be in aRead More
Rachel reviews The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Emma Donoghue is one of my favourite lesbian writers, and one of my favourite genres is historical biographical fiction. Donoghue’s The Sealed Letter (2009) is a masterfully paced, well-plotted literary novel with a lesbian twist. And it’s based on real events! The Sealed Letter is told from three perspectives. The firstRead More
Rachel reviews Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link A dark, haunting, gothic novel, Emily M. Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines (2020) is a delightfully dark queer book with a complex and fun premise that was right up my alley. Set across two separate timelines, the first begins in 1902 Rhode Island at the Brookhants School for Girls. Two students,Read More
Maggie reviews The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link I have been so excited by all the f/f fantasy coming out lately, and The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry is an excellent addition to the genre. It’s a fast-paced adventure story laced with a sweet romance, set in a sort of Victorian-inspired society with the addition ofRead More
Danika reviews The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh by Molly Greeley
I’m not a big Pride and Prejudice fan, but for some reason, I’m drawn to P&P retellings–especially queer ones. The Heiress is a Pride and Prejudice novel: not exactly a retelling, a prequel, or a sequel, it fills in the story from one of the minor characters of the book: Anne de Bourgh. In case you forgot, AnneRead More
Where to Start Reading Lesbian Gothic
Haunted mansions! Thunder and lightning! Brooding antiheroes! Women running down corridors wearing long white gowns! I love the tropes of Gothic literature: they’re campy, they’re spooky, they’re sexy. What more could you possibly want from a genre? Well, sapphic romance, obviously. As it happens, the Gothic is a pretty gay genre to begin with. ItsRead More
Sash S reviews Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
It’s a new year and a new decade, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate an old classic. For that reason, I’m starting the year by revisiting Tipping the Velvet, which was published in 1998 and is set in Victorian England. ‘Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster?’ isn’t an especially striking opening line onRead More
Danika reviews That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston
Let me start this review at the end: The Author’s Note, which cleared up some things that I had been processing arguing with myself about the entire time I read reading it: That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a smallish story that takes place in a very big world. I wanted to be sure to include that world,Read More
Megan G reviews Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Sue Trinder has been brought up to be a fingersmith – a petty thief. She lives with a baby “farmer” named Mrs. Sucksby, who has raised her as her own. One day, a man known to Sue as Gentleman arrives at Mrs. Sucksby’s house to enlist Sue’s help in a plot to gain the fortuneRead More
Holly reviews Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
When I was just 30 pages in, this is the review I was considering writing for Tipping the Velvet: This book is so sweet I can barely stand it. The end. At this point I had hoped that the entire book would be a drawn out tale of Nancy and Kitty falling in love, staying inRead More