Oof I forgot how real Zoe Whittall's descriptions of anxiety are, so real it is hard to read sometimes as someone with anxiety. You can tell she is so familiar with it.

A bath, a book, and some wine!

My first Jackie Lau book, but it certainly won't be my last! Such a lovely contemporary romance with a time loop twist: straight-laced engineer Noelle ends up reliving June 20th for 100+ days after eating dumplings at a night market sold by a mysterious older woman. In the process, she learns to take risks, make a good friend, be a better sister and put herself out there to find love. Very Toronto, and full of delicious food and drinks! 😋

How is she going to get out of the time loop?? Will Cam ever remember her??

I paused this book in January to focus on reading the titles on the list for a literary award I was on a judges panel for, and I'm not sure if I want to finish it, even though I'm 279 pages in. It's so long that I'm only a third of the way through. Should I keep at it??

"I might as well have never learned a single English word for all that were available to me. How do you beg when you don't even know the words to beg with?"

#LGBTQ #TransBooks

Cindy Kay is becoming one of my favourite #audiobook voice actors! She performs this contemporary time loop romance set in Toronto, the Singing Hills Cycle fantasy series by Nghi Vo, and Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, a queer thriller translated from Japanese, all of them terrific. What a range!

Interesting fantasy murder premise, killed by tree erupting from a body! The first half is a little slow, but once I got invested in the mystery and characters I really enjoyed this. I loved Din's romance with Strovey but wished it had more page time. But I loved the plot and its twists, the unique world-building, and Ana and Din as a Sherlock and Holmes team. If you're looking for a smart queernormative fantasy mystery, this is a great choice!

Had a couple hours to myself yesterday while my mom watched the kids, and I read the first story in this book at a bar while I had a whiskey sour and calamari. Nice mother's day present! *chef's kiss*

A bit late, but my favourite book from April was The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo, the latest fantasy novella about a nonbinary, story-collectimg monk who travels to an ancient estate for a wedding. There are shades of Bluebeard here, but not all is as it seems! I loved this horror-tinged story, but I think We Are Okay by Nina LaCour was more emotionally resonant for me, so that's the winner in that bracket. #ReadingBracket2025

A late 20s coming of age with a romance subplot. Emily is figuring out her "dream job", where she wants to live, and adult friendship. I loved how Canadian this was, until Emily got accepted as an NYU grad student and intern at the Met. I'm usually quite generous in suspending my disbelief, but ... Anyway A+ on small town PEI vibes, laid-back stoic John, delightful elderly people, Wordle, Anne of GG, and Emily as an endearing flawed protagonist.

A lovely queer Canadian historical novel with just a touch of magical realism! Set just before, during, and after WW2, this book made the extremely overdone time period fresh and interesting. I loved how it centred a #nonbinary bi character and a sapphic woman, straddling a difficult line between celebrating them and being realistic about homo/transphobia / misogyny in the 30s and 40s. Queer historical happy ending!! Fuck that Landon guy though.

A mouth-watering and twisty mystery! The no-nonsense protagonist is Sagarine, a passionate chef whose love of food permeates most of the book's pages, when she isn't lamenting her attraction to a gorgeous Russian gangster for whom she finds herself working after the head chef of the restaurant where she works is found murdered. Fast-paced and compelling! I found Sagarine's truly terrible life decisions believable and the twists very well done.

Bath time treats and trying to decide which print book to start next! (The other two I'm currently reading are ebook and audiobook). Has anyone read either of these? A Wordle inspired contemporary romance set on Prince Edward Island (Canadian romances are so rare!) and a queer Chinese American rock climbing themed coming of age graphic novel!

An incredibly unique thriller! Set in an old island castle, it features a fascinating protagonist, Ken(etria) who has dissociative identity disorder. She arrives at this creepy castle, to work with the enigmatic Celeste; then her ex and his dad show up with other white dudes to continue a "tradition" Ken and Celeste - two Black women - did not sign up for. Interesting queer and mental health representation with great tension and plot twists!

Not my favourite Nghi Vo, but it might have been more the audiobook narrator‘s voice that had me drifting off more often than not. Dreamy beautiful writing, but I didn't feel attached to the characters. If you like classical mythology and immortal, larger than life characters, you'll probably enjoy this more than I did.

I absolutely love this series of fantasy novellas following nonbinary Cleric Chih and their quest for stories. This installment was a bit spooky, and a great twist on Bluebeard. Chih actually finds themself right in the middle of the action this time when they accompany a young woman to her wedding at an old estate. I love how old fashioned these magical tales feel and how much they are about story itself. Beautifully narrated by Cindy Kay!

I am intrigued by the premise of this book (a main character with dissociative identity disorder who has to solve a murder in a castle on an isolated island in a storm??) but can anyone else who's read this confirm (or not) if there are LGBTQ characters? I saw it tagged as a queer mystery but no signs yet 50 pages in. #QueerBooks

I had high hopes for this: a Black lesbian solving crimes in 1920s Paris! But the writing is repetitive and the characterization is really lacking. I can't even tell the potential suspects apart and Louise, the detective, is supposedly this fascinating, smart person according to the letters her friends, but she shows none of that in her actions. So far most of what she's figured out in relation to the crime has fallen into her lap. Disappointing!

Daisy has a special kind of magic she bakes into her pies, one kind of which targets abusers/other irredeemable men if requested by the people they've hurt. This murder pie business gets her involved in mysteries, like when a cop kidnaps his gf. I love how this takes traditional cozy mystery tropes and mixes it with a feminist vigilante serial killer amateur sleuth and progressive politics. I wanted a bit more from the rep of Daisy's bisexuality.

I read a lot of four stars books this month, good but not great books, but We Are Okay by Nina LaCour is the one standout. I thought this quiet queer YA story about grief, friendship, and leaving home to start again at university was absolutely stunning. Beautiful, perfect, couldn't be better. #ReadingBracket2025

What if you woke up to your last night's date dead, and a mistake you made might have killed them? This book dips in and out of being a thriller, also giving time to self-discovery/relationships. The genre mashup works for an entertaining and suspenseful read, poignant and full of insight. Incredibly funny, if you find bad gay sex and a 20s author and his 60s literary agent lugging around a dead body in NYC trying to get rid of it funny (I do).

While it was lovely to hear the Cree in this book spoken aloud, I don't think audiobook was the best choice for this, as the print copy is full of art! The book traces the literal beginning of time to 19th cent. from the perspective of a queer Cree shape-shifting immortal being. Often funny, very sexy, and scathing. Europeans come out looking, rightly so, as heartless idiots. I would have liked more content that didn't focus on colonization.

Beautiful picture book that captures a wild, nature-filled, imaginative childhood, of Tove Jansson, iconic Swedish author of the Moomins comics. It's inspired by Jansson's writing about her youth, and includes a short bio at the back, which I'm happy to say mentions her longtime woman partner and how unusual it was for her to be out at that time.

Absolutely gorgeous picture about colour and nature, wouldn't expect anything less from Jillian Tamaki. I love how she draws movement.

A page-turning mystery about five queer characters (plus token straight guy) taking part in a reality TV show. Often quite funny, it's sort of part of the reality TV genre but also laughing at it. Lots of #bisexual chaos! Feminist critique of "nice guys" is spot on as is interrogation of the controlling abusive guy who claims to just be setting boundaries. They are all terrible people, but which one killed the guy who died in the last episode?

The #bisexual choas in this reality TV crime thriller is delightfully ridiculous #QueerBooks

An atmospheric, tense historical mystery set in 1950s DC featuring queer and/or Black characters and investigating the complexities of passing. The setting is vivid, and there is an excellent twist (and a twist on the twist!). It opens with the aftermath of an apparent suicide (?) of one half of the novel‘s gay couple - or is it linked to the work of a serial killer the lesbian couple have been chasing? DEFINITELY read book one before this!

Fast-paced, very readable with an unpredictable plot, this book set in Ghana's capital Accra tackles the incredibly important topic of far-right American groups' involvement anti-LGBTQ bills/laws there. P.I. Emma is quite badass and tenacious in her undercover work looking for the murderers of two gay men and two trans women (violent, gruesome deaths, read with caution). Is this a bit melodramatic? Yeah. Is it also kind of devastating? Yeah.

A devastatingly sad but fiercely life-affirming book about an 18-year-old whose only family, the grandpa who raised her, dies the summer before she goes away to university. It takes place alternately in that summer and the Christmas after, where Marin's best friend/ex-girlfriend travels to her dorm to try to reconnect after Marin's grief has wrenched them apart. Absolutely beautiful, no notes. #QueerBooks #LesbianBooks

This incredibly atmospheric, historical setting (Tacoma / the Pacific NorthWest in 1880s) is really brought to life. The morally grey characters are a bit hard for me to root for and it is slow paced until the last quarter, where it really picks up. It's got a very interesting and nuanced take on gender fluidity and queer identity in a working class historical setting.

"I fall so deep into Camp, the Alma part of me feels far away"

Great ending!

Not my fav Lex Croucher, (I like their adult stuff better and am not really into YA books generally these days) but this continuation of the Robin Hood story featuring his granddaughter was a lovely adventure fantasy romance. The premise is the Merry Men have lost their way and are a bit too much like the bad guys. It has awesome found family vibes, as well as a great blend of humour and seriousness. The sapphic romance is very grumpy / sunshine!

Robin Hood doesn't figure very much in this book, as the main character is his granddaughter, but whenever he is mentioned, I have a hard time picturing him as a human, and not the sexy fox from the old Disney movie 😂

February was a pretty bad reading month for me, as I had the stomach flu and could barely watch TV, let alone read. Earlier in the month I did read this awesome queer feminist Japanese thriller though. It has an incredible twist as well as a great open-ended ending. Still though, my heart is with Murderbot, so my January pick goes on to the next bracket. #BookBracket2025 #Murderbot

In unsentimental, spare prose, Coetzee tells the story of two murders in a Cape Town neighbourhood called The Shadows. Coetzee is great at getting the distinct POV of each character from the friend group. The passages from Carl's perspective were particularly gutting: "I always wondered why grownups drank the way they did, until I became a grownup the day mom died." Coetzee originally wrote this novel in Kaaps, a spoken language in South Africa.

Armfield's writing is beautiful, but this is too sad and slow-moving for me right now. I'd say I'll try to return to it, but tbh I probably won't! The #audiobook narrator has a very sexy voice, so it does have that going for it.

This was a welcome change from Cleric Chih's wandering adventures, as this time the adventure comes home with them as they return to Singing Hills abbey. A lot here about memory, story, and grief. Beautiful and oddly soothing, for a book about returning home to find your mentor has died and their grandkids are beating down the gates with mammoths.

Great #audiobook performance by Cindy Kay!

A intense ride of a thriller with cinematic fight scenes. Full of striking images: Shoko is "like a crane in a landfill". Full of female rage and pulpy in vibes a la martial arts movies, this is violent, as you'd expect from a story about a young woman fighter being kidnapped and forced to work for the Japanese mafia, but not gratuitously so. Otani pulls off an incredibly well done twist and excellent character development. Unconventionally queer.

Not my favourite in the Singing Hills Cycle fantasy series, but I still thought it was beautiful and smart, with eloquently crafted characters and world-building, a big feat for a novella. I love how much these books are about story itself as much as they are full of tall tales themselves. Chih, the nonbinary cleric / historian / storykeeper, is a subdued delight as usual, especially in their relationship with the parrot who remembers everything.

Beautiful and gripping writing, the kind that makes me interested in topics I thought I wasn't interested in or had never heard about. I did get a bit lost in the nitty gritty of basketball stuff sometimes, but that also might be because Hanif Abdurraqib has a soothing voice that lulled me into losing focus. I do wish he'd discussed *my* favourite 90s (okay technically 2000) basketball movie, Love & Basketball though! 🏀 ❤️

These brackets always look so fun, so I'm joining in this year! Thanks @CSeydel for this cute graphic for #BookBracket2025. I loved all three of the #Murderbot books I read in January, but decided on Network Effect as my favourite. It really put Murderbot through the wringer, being kidnapped by its old friend ART who had been infiltrated by an alien remnant virus and needed its SecUnit expertise to get its crew back. As you do with old friends.

A wholesome, funny, lighthearted, and nostalgic cozy mystery starring a Gen Z (25-year-old) bi protagonist who's a former famous child detective a la Nancy Drew but not quite sure how to be an adult and still indulge her investigative tendencies. I think this book is doing a great job at what it's trying to do. Also: entertaining banter with friend group! New adult representation! Funny in queer specific ways!Cheeky old fashioned chapter titles!

The incredible art in this lesbian graphic memoir -- comics, painting, collage -- is arranged non-linearly and tells the stories of Spector's attempts to get pregnant, miscarriages, eventual kid, wedding, femme stuff, and death of her dad. It's challenging to follow sometimes, but always beautiful to look at, moving, and rewarding. "Death is coming but so is life...It's coming fast! It's already here! ...Hold open your ordinary arms and catch it."

A strange tale of a queer mountain lion living under the Hollywood sign and pondering the foibles of humans and its own personhood. Written in deceptively simple language that often hides profound insights and heartbreak. The kill sharer! The long death!

I wasn't in the right head space to make myself read this slowly and savour it; it's prose that should be read like poetry.

I'm looking forward to talking about this at an IRL queer book club!

Murderbot, you've grown so much! All the accolades to Kevin R Free, whose majestic #audiobook performance is absolutely perfect. He IS Murderbot, as far as I'm concerned. Can't wait til the next one!

Well I'm going to give an in-person queer book club a try, and this one is the read for February's meeting. I'm always a bit contrary with traditional style book clubs where everyone reads the same book, I don't know why, I just don't want to be told what to read at any specific time? Anyway, this book (told from the perspective of a queer mountain lion) is very weird so far, which is up my alley.
#QueerBooks

I gave this one a good go and read over a quarter of it. I'd heard it was a bit slow to start but had lots of positive reviews. Alas, my mind keeps wandering off while listening so I'm taking that as a sign I should bail. I absolutely loved The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and I see the comparisons, but these characters are not grabbing me like Evelyn and her people did. I find Cate Kay kind of passive and opaque.

Looking at the art in this book feels more like going to an art gallery than reading a graphic memoir!

#QueerBooks

What's not to love with a closed room murder mystery for Murderbot? I will say reading somewhere before I started this that it's set before Book 5 helped me not be confused about timelines, which I think I would have been otherwise.

I can't believe I only have one Murderbot book left! 😭

A surreal, cerebral, and lush collection. Using an unusual overarching conceit, Kwan‘s poetry debut fully commits, taking readers on a tour of motel‘s rooms, bar, back alleys, fire escape. It also investigates ghosts. The poems explore migration and placelessness, queer love and desire, music, and family. “That summer the knife slid so sweetly / into the navel orange on the chopping board / and our lips were so sticky / we kissed and they bled.”