Finished My Best Friend's Honeymoon this afternoon and started The Spirit Bares Its Teeth. I adored Andrew Joseph White's dystopian religious supernatural horror novel so I'm hoping this one will be just as good. Then I've got a historical fiction book queued up to start after that. #TransRightsReadathon
Apparently I am in the mood for soft and quiet right now…gentle does seem to fit spring, too.
so-soDarby returns to his small home town after losing his job. When he stumbles into the local bookstore & finds his younger self, he‘s forced to confront old choices & who he‘s become now.
I liked this liminal bookstore where Darby interacts w/ himself before he‘s come to terms w/ his identity, & “what would you tell your younger self”, but almost nothing else happens in this book.😅 Good characters, interesting relationships, but so slow.🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
pickA Sweet Sting of Salt, by Rose Sutherland (2024 🇨🇦)
Premise: A queer take on the Selkie Wife legend set in 19th C Nova Scotia
Review: This is a legend ripe for a postmodern retelling, and this works really well. I loved the main character and her found family, and the selkie wife herself more than holds her own in a frightening situation. It‘s not perfect but a great read nonetheless.
pickYou need to be prepped going into this, it is a Gay Horror Book, set in Hollywood. Our MC is a screenwriter who is mostly in the closet, but he has a boyfriend. Zeke, my boyfriend. The one thing I couldn't get past was how often his boyfriend was pointed out. The writing is not great, but the story is original and propulsive, I really grew to like and root for our MC. I thought the horror elements were brought in well, if a tiny predictable
4/5
Once again TJ Klune has pulled me into a world and characters that I do not want leave.
My only critic was the sex scene pulled me out of the story for a minute. I typically love some spicy moments and some hot sex in my reads but this just didn‘t add anything or move the story for me this time.
Didn't love the art style and *really* didn't love how relevant all the political content still or again is 😭 but this is a funny and warmhearted collection of comics. A group of queer friends, all with their own complicated identities or lack thereof, find their way through money problems, dating disasters, terrrible laws, and terrible decisions, with each other to lean on and learn from.
#TransRightsReadathon
pickRepresentation is so important. As is my continued education on diverse topics. This is a great intro graphic novel to genders and one person‘s journey and self-discovery.
pickThere, all finished! There are aspects of it that feel like they could be streamlined (a particular mystery feels like it takes forever to solve given it's only a stepping stone on the way, and I'd solved it before the narrative condescended to get there), but I found myself sad when it was over. I'm glad I have a copy of Confounding Oaths (a loose sequel) out of the library ready to follow this. I love the narrative voice.
