Gravitation was one of my early queer “firsts” and it falls into the same vein as many of the pieces of media I worshiped as a baby queer. Like Queer as Folk and Interview with the Vampire, Gravitation was an incredibly problematic piece of media that, on some level, shaped how I viewed queerness. (Which kind of explains a lot of my earlier understanding of what it meant to be queer…)
Watching Gravitation now is… a little bit painful.
Read More »Pretend this review went up uh… yesterday as I lost track of days again… Please and thank you.
Em Ali’s Graham’s Delicacies is a super cute follow-up to her previous book Soft on Soft. This collection is home to a trio of interconnected stories about the various intimate relationships between the people work at the titular bakery.
I got a copy of the collection from the author in exchange for an honest review and the chance to read a book about non-binary cuties, so let’s get started by diving into the stories!Read More »
Originally posted on Patreon at the $1 tier back on October 6, 2018.
Red walks into her grandmother’s kitchen to find a werewolf at work cooking dinner. It’s not what she’d been expecting to happen during her vacation from work.
Red isn’t expecting the wolf that she finds in her grandmother’s sunny kitchen. It’s not like she’s never seen a werewolf before, this part of the country is lousy with them. However, Red has never seen a werewolf in her grandmother’s house before. Not with how… complicated the relationships are between her grandmother and the local packs.
Hell, Red has even worked with a few werewolves at the zoos she’s been working at across the years. They’re the best people to have at your side when dealing with the natural wolves that many zoos have, and they can handle the heavier predators.
The werewolf bending down in front of the oven doesn’t look like any of the werewolves that Red has worked with before. For one thing, Red thinks to herself as she watches the werewolf straighten up to a not-so intimidating height, this is the shortest werewolf Red has ever seen. She barely comes up to Red’s shoulders and she seems like such a tiny little thing. Read More »
Title: Let’s Talk About Love
Author: Claire Kann (Twitter)
Genre: Contemporary, Queer Fiction, Queer Romance, Ace/Aro Representation
Rating: Highly Freaking Recommended
Publisher: Swoon Reads/Macmillan
Publishing Date: January 23, 2018
LINKS: AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE
Alice had her whole summer planned. Non-stop all-you-can-eat buffets while marathoning her favorite TV shows (best friends totally included) with the smallest dash of adulting—working at the library to pay her share of the rent. The only thing missing from her plan? Her girlfriend (who ended things when Alice told her she’s asexual). Alice is done with dating—no thank you, do not pass go, stick a fork in her, done.
But then Alice meets Takumi and she can’t stop thinking about him or the rom com-grade romance feels she did not ask for (uncertainty, butterflies, and swoons, oh my!).
When her blissful summer takes an unexpected turn and Takumi becomes her knight with a shiny library employee badge (close enough), Alice has to decide if she’s willing to risk their friendship for a love that might not be reciprocated—or understood.
Straight up, I wish that I’d had Claire Kann’s Let’s Talk About Love back when I was a teenager trying to figure out who I was and what the heck I was doing. Like me, Alice is the baby of her family. She’s the youngest daughter and a surprise baby to her parents who have to be in their mid to late fifties in Let’s Talk About Love.
This book seriously matches so much of my experience as a queer, Black, lady-oriented person that’s on the ace-spectrum that I kept having to put the book down in order to squish my own face.
(In case you didn’t know, face squishes are the HIGHEST sign of my pleasure when reading.)Read More »
Title: Bingo Love
Creators: Tee Franklin (writer), Jenn St-Onge and Joy San (Art), Genevieve FT (Cover)
Genre: Slice of Life, Queer Romance
Rating: Highly Recommended
Publisher: Image Comics
Publishing Date: February 14, 2018
I can’t settle on just one adjective to describe Tee Franklin’s Bingo Love.
Beautiful.
Sweet.
Heart-breaking.
So many different words apply because in many ways, Bingo Love is the queer comic of my dreams! I signed up to support Tee on Kickstarter the moment that the comic project was announced and I finally got the chance to sit down and read my copy today.
Bingo Love is so good. It’s incredibly powerful to see a story of Black queer love told across decades and you can see just how much work Tee, Jenn, and Joy put into this book. This slice of life graphic novel holds nothing back as it focuses on Mari and Hazel’s relationship with one another across their lives (including both internalized and external societal homophobia). It made me tear up MULTIPLE times because it just hit all of the right emotional notes and that ending — oh!
Seriously, if you haven’t pre-ordered Bingo Love yet, you need get on that right now! Because Bingo Love is one of the best comics I’ve ever read and we should all be excited to see where Tee goes from here!
Title: Meet Cute
Authors: Jennifer L. Armentrout; Dhonielle Clayton; Katie Cotugno; Jocelyn Davies; Huntley Fitzpatrick; Nina LaCour; Emery Lord; Katharine McGee; Kass Morgan; Julie Murphy; Meredith Russo; Sara Shepard; Nicola Yoon; Ibi Zoboi
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Anthology, Queer Fiction, Queer Romance
Rating: Highly Recommended
Release Date: January 2, 2018
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Buy Links: AMAZON (KINDLE) | AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE
Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.
Whether or not you believe in fate, or luck, or love at first sight, every romance has to start somewhere. MEET CUTE is an anthology of original short stories featuring tales of “how they first met” from some of today’s most popular YA authors.
Readers will experience Nina LaCour’s beautifully written piece about two Bay Area girls meeting via a cranky customer service Tweet, Sara Shepard’s glossy tale about a magazine intern and a young rock star, Nicola Yoon’s imaginative take on break-ups and make-ups, Katie Cotugno’s story of two teens hiding out from the police at a house party, and Huntley Fitzpatrick’s charming love story that begins over iced teas at a diner. There’s futuristic flirting from Kass Morgan and Katharine McGee, a riveting transgender heroine from Meredith Russo, a subway missed connection moment from Jocelyn Davies, and a girl determined to get out of her small town from Ibi Zoboi. Jennifer Armentrout writes a sweet story about finding love from a missing library book, Emery Lord has a heartwarming and funny tale of two girls stuck in an airport, Dhonielle Clayton takes a thoughtful, speculate approach to pre-destined love, and Julie Murphy dreams up a fun twist on reality dating show contestants.
This incredibly talented group of authors brings us a collection of stories that are at turns romantic and witty, epic and everyday, heartbreaking and real.
I just love a good meet-cute, so it sure is convenient (and awesome) that I was approved for a book all about meet-cutes by some of the best authors currently writing Young Adult fiction!
Meet Cute is a delightful anthology full of well-written and frequently complex short stories. I think, honestly, that there might be something in this story for everyone. If you’re as big a fan of meet-cutes as I am, that is! Many of the stories aren’t necessarily “Happily Ever Afters”, they’re snapshots of a happy (or bittersweet) moment in a complicated life, but that’s definitely a good thing to read! Many of the stories center characters that are queer and/or characters of color and that’s awesome!Read More »
You can purchase Citywide from Amazon or directly from Riptide Publishing.
Santino Hassell’s Citywide is basically EVERYTHING to me.
From the second that he announced the title, I was prepared to go into full-squee mode. I love Hassell’s Five Buroughs series to the point where I wrote a grad seminar paper on Sunset Boulevard because I loved the way the narrative used “space” in the text.
I fan-Stitch over him on the regular.
And Citywide continues to validate my love of his writing thanks to three fantastic stories and the way that he fleshes out Queens crew (characters that are friends with the Rodriguez brothers from the first two books of the series) on their way to Happily Ever Afters.Read More »
Title: Sightlines (The Community #3)
Author: Santino Hassell (Twitter)
Rating: Super Highly Recommended
Genre/Category: Urban Fantasy, Queer Fiction/Romance, Psychics
Release Date: October 9, 2017
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Order Here: RIPTIDE PUBLSHING
Note: I received a free copy of this novella from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All of the views in this review are my own. There are mild spoilers in this review.
Content Notes: Sightlines has scenes of torture, child/spouse abuse, implicit and explicit hints to eugenics and “breeding” psychics, and threats of sexual assault (but also most people aren’t consenting to the program for creating more psychics…)
Chase Payne is a walking contradiction. He’s the most powerful psychic in the Community, but the least respected. He’s the son of the Community’s founder, but with his tattoo sleeves and abrasive attitude, he’s nothing like his charismatic family. No one knows what to make of him, which is how he wound up locked in a cell on the Farm yet again. But this time, the only man he’s ever loved is there too.
Elijah Estrella was used to being the sassy sidekick who fooled around with Chase for fun. But that was before he realized the Community wasn’t the haven he’d believed in and Chase was the only person who’d ever truly tried to protect him. Now they’re surrounded by people who want to turn them against their friends, and the only way out is to pretend the brainwashing works.
With Chase playing the role of a tyrant’s second-in-command, and Elijah acting like Chase’s mindless sex toy, they risk everything by plotting a daring escape. In the end, it’s only their psychic abilities, fueled by their growing love for each other, that will allow them to take the Community down once and for all.
Seriously, I have yet to find a Santino Hassell book that I didn’t devour within hours.
There’s something about his prose…
He stitches his characters’ lives so seamlessly into worlds that seem so much like our own that I half imagine that if I went to New York, I could find myself bumping into them just on my way to buy a beer.
Reading Sightlines is a lot like riding a rollercoaster in the middle of the night. In the dark. While you know that there’ll be twists and turns and some drops, there’s no way to tell when they’re coming until you’re on them. It’s one hell of a thrilling book and Hassell is excellent at balancing the darker aspects of the unfolding world with making you care about the characters that live in it.Read More »
Title: Oversight (The Community #2)
Author: Santino Hassell (Twitter)
Rating: Highly Recommended
Genre/Category: Urban Fantasy, Queer Fiction/Romance, Psychics
Release Date: June 26, 2017
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Order Here: RIPTIDE PUBLSHING | AMAZON
Note: I received a free copy of this novella from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All of the views in this review are my own. There are mild spoilers in this review, but for the most part I leave the big stuff a mystery. Additionally, if you haven’t read the first book in the series, go do that now!
Holden Payne has it all . . . or so he thinks. As heir to the founder of the Community—an organization that finds, protects, and manages psychics—he’s rich, powerful, and treated like royalty. But after a series of disappearances and murders rock the Community, he’s branded the fall guy for the scandal and saddled with a babysitter.
Sixtus Rossi is a broad-shouldered, tattooed lumbersexual with a man-bun and a steely gaze. He’s also an Invulnerable—supposedly impervious to both psychic abilities and Holden’s charms. It’s a claim Holden takes as a challenge. Especially if sleeping with Six may help him learn whether the Community had more to do with the disappearances than they claimed.
As Holden uncovers the truth, he also finds himself getting in deep with the man sent to watch him. His plan to seduce Six for information leads to a connection so intense that some of Six’s shields come crashing down. And with that comes a frightening realization: Holden has to either stand by the Community that has given him everything, or abandon his old life to protect the people he loves.
Let’s start this review off with how I didn’t expect to like Holden Payne as much as I did by the end of Oversight.
Back in Insight (Community #1) Holden is introduced as the owner of the nightclub Evolution, the setting for some of the book’s biggest scenes. He’s not a bad character at all, but it was hard to get a bead on him because none of the characters really knew him beyond “wealthy and spoiled son of Community’s founder”. I didn’t hate Holden, but then, I didn’t really care about him. But Oversight fleshes Holden out to the point where I not only found myself caring about the character’s survival, but about his happiness.Read More »
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