#Queer YA

[therefugeofbooks]

Hell Followed With Us by Joseph Andrew White mini review

What I liked:

Complex relationships

Fast-paced

It's gory

What I didn’t like

Repetitive inner monologues

Weak side characters

Overall, it was one of the best ya books I read in a while. It’s violent and cruel, and it doesn’t shy away from difficult topics. Recommending for anyone looking for a horror book!

[reedreadsbooks]

Book Review: Dreadnought by April Daniels ✨🏙️⚡️

rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

(5/5)

After Dreadnought, the world’s greatest superhero, is killed in combat, closeted trans girl Danny Tozer inherits his powers and is transformed to have the body she’s always wanted to have. Now she has to deal with having superpowers and being an out trans woman, all the while hunting down the supervillain who murdered her predecessor.

This book was phenomenal, and I’m kind of at a loss for words to describe how much I liked it.

To start, I love the world of this book. This is such a classic superhero story. Daniels uses the conventions of the genre without making things feel like a parody and subverts tropes just enough to make the story distinct.

I also really love Dreadnought as a trans narrative. This book doesn’t shy away from transphobia. Between Danny’s parents, kids at her school, and other heroes she meets, we get a pretty broad and realistic representation of the types of abuse a young trans woman might face. There’s also so much trans joy in this book. It was really nice to see Danny come into herself, and it was cathartic to watch her realize that no one could take her transition away from her. This is the type of story that will give trans kids hope for the future.

I would recommend this book to literally everyone. In fact, I plan on recommending this book to literally everyone. But because that’s not helpful, I’ll be more specific and say I highly recommend this book to fans of Andrew Joseph White. Obviously, it’s very different from his work, genre-wise, but I think the themes are really similar. If you like Hell Followed with Us and The Spirit Bares It’s Teeth, I can definitely see you liking Dreadnought.

[ireadyabooks]

Run Away with Me: Read an Excerpt

From #1 New York Times bestselling author/illustrator Brian Selznick, a profoundly romantic YA novel about two boys finding each other and falling in love over one summer in Rome.

"I'm going to call you Danny. What are you going to name me?"

"Angelo."

Danny is spending his sixteenth summer in Rome. As his mother spends the day at work in a mysterious museum, he wanders the ancient sites and streets. Soon after his arrival, he encounters a shadow... who becomes a voice... who becomes a boy his age. Angelo.

Soon Danny and Angelo are spending as much time as they can together, piecing together stories of the city while only gradually letting their own histories be shared. Attraction leads to affection, and affection leads to both an intimate closeness and a profound fear of what happens next. Danny has never really had a home, or known the love of another boy. Angelo seems to have more experience... but he also has secrets just out of Danny’s reach.

Run Away With Me is a stunning creation, weaving words and illustration to tell the story of a transformative love over the course of one Roman summer.

READ AN EXCERPT

Run Away with Me Excerpt by I Read YA on Scribd

GET YOUR COPY

Amazon

Apple Books

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Bookshop.org

Google Play

[intersexbookclub]

A lot of thoughts on Just Ash (contains spoilers)

Our book pick for November 2024 was the 2021 YA coming-of-age novel Just Ash by intersex author Sol Santana. We met on 2024-11-29, and it gave us a lot to talk about in terms of intersex representation!

The book features a main character, Ash, who has CAH and has been raised as a boy, and identifies as a boy. When Ash hits puberty and starts to physically become androgynous, he starts getting bullied at school. His mother, who always wanted a daughter, forcibly transitions Ash to live as a girl. Cue tons of gender dysphoria. 😭 Ash winds up in hospital due to all the stress, and runs away to live with his older sister. The sister affirms Ash’s masculinity and lets him retrotransition back to being a boy. 🥳 A custody battle ensues.

Upfront PSA: Santana’s definition of intersex (which she provides in the author notes) is exclusionist. 🚨 She does not include hormonal variations in her definition of intersex. It is effectively a dogwhistle that Santana does not accept PCOS hyperandrogenism as intersex. This goes against every major intersex organization’s understanding of what intersex is, and against the consensus of the community as a whole. While we thought the book has plenty of strengths, anybody picking it up should know that Santana’s definition of intersex is not representative of the intersex community. 👎️

Overall impressions

Michelle (@scifimagpie): This book was like really speedrunning the emotional processing of really intricate intersex issues. It was a rougher read but I couldn't put it down. It felt very authentic for a very young prickly teenage boy. Also, the adults sucked in this book and I was here for it. 👍️👍️

Elizabeth: Mixed feelings! This book needed so many CWs at the front, but I think it also handled the violence with care - it didn’t feel gratuitous, just unflinchingly realistic. Rough, but done on purpose, and it helped a lot that Ash was given so many other things to do than suffer. I felt like it did a good job of illustrating how gender is very complicated for many intersex people. But it also had an intermedicalist vibe that I didn’t appreciate. 🤨

Bnuuy: Overall positive impression! 👍️ Liked how Ash was a Ash as an example of positive masculinity. More cis guys should read this book. The book highlights a lot of intersections between queer & intersex issues. I only read half but agree that many things need CWs.

Rylee (@goingrampant): it was kind of intense, it was a thriller. I really want people on Tumblr to read this book. 🙌  "AFAB trans woman" has become a hot button phrase where perisex trans women have decided that it's not a valid term, and have gotten very intersexist dying on that hill. This book does a good job showing what it looks like to be an (intersex) AMAB trans man. 👍️

Feral: I’ve found a lot of perisex trans people don’t really get that we intersex folks can be assigned a gender at birth & still be denied actual access to that gender & can end up with both masculine and feminine gender expectations…. while also being denied genuinely being either gender. 🙃 So I think this would potentially be a good book for helping people understand some ways that this can happen without real people’s trauma having to be turned into a Teaching Moment™. 👍️

Remy: I cant believe they managed to misdirect me so that I didn’t predict that twist at the end! 👍️

The intersex representation: initial thoughts

Things that felt very real to us: the part where the intersex group were told they couldn’t participate in a parade. 😭 How Ash’s parents reacted to Ash’s intersexness. 😬

Remy praised how it acknowledges intersex kids oppression without being in conflict with (perisex) trans kids’ oppression! 🩷

Rylee thinks that this book should be read by perisex folks (both trans and cis) who are confused or resistant to the idea that intersex people can be both cisgender and transgender at the same time  should read this book. It’s good for building empathy with cistrans folks, and it illustrates how Ash is M-to-F-to-M. A lot of times when trans people run across that kind of language, they they think that it's some kind of abusive right wing distortion of trans identity (e.g. weaponizing detransitioning). The book shows how Ash was assigned male at birth and identified with that, and then being reassigned as female, and then pushing against that, and how it made him both cisgender and transgender.

Elizabeth agreed that this would be helpful for perisex allies to read, because too often the only times they talk about intersex is to demonstrate sex is socially constructed. This book illustrates how we have so many gender issues that are relevant to trans discussions that tend to be underappreciated by perisex trans folks, like mistransitioning and retransitioning, and how AGAB should not be confused for socially imposed gender.

However, Elizabeth also felt that anybody picking up the book should also know that the book is exclusionist about who is intersex, and that the intersex community is actually quite unanimous that hormonal variations belong in the community. Santana is unusual for being resistant to this inclusion, and it was a common gripe with the book. 👎️

We liked how matter-of-fact the discussion of genital difference was, but there were times it seemed to undercut the message about masculinity and gender.

The book had a happy ending. While it was outright wish fulfillment in many regards, it was hard to be mad about it, because we just need more queer joy in our lives.

The Forced Gender Transition

We all agreed it was painful watching Ash's gender be repeatedly denied. Bnuuy pointed out that even though physicians keep claiming to be The Ultimate Authority on how gender works, they actually can’t agree on which gender some people (like Ash) are.

We all agreed it also made for an effective illustration of how intersex gender issues are just different than perisex, trans issues. Intersex is messy, and oftentimes our genders don’t really fit with what perisex trans people are used to. Too many trans people expect trans people to be clearly either transmasculine or transfeminine (and maybe transneutral), and it’s important to have representation of people (intersex or perisex) who do not fit into these neat boxes. 🏳️‍⚧️

Even when the book highlights how intersex gender issues are different from perisex trans issues, it still also speaks to common ground experienced by both groups. Both groups are frequently forced to undergo a puberty that they don’t want, to have to live under a socially imposed gender they don’t want. The reasons or mechanisms may vary, but being forcefully kept in a gender you don’t want to be in is such an important common ground.

Bnuuy pointed out that often when intersex gender issues are contrasted with perisex trans issues, what actually happens is perisex transness is understood only as binary perisex transness.

Feral praised how the school requiring Ash to use the staff bathroom was presented as a bad thing. It also liked when Ash points out that state law would require the school to let him use the boy’s bathroom if he was a trans boy, and the principal dismisses that by saying that Ash isn’t trans. It was a good way to highlight that while intersex people pretty much always get harmed by anti-trans laws & policies whether we’re explicitly targeted or not, we don’t necessarily get protections just because of the experience overlap if we aren’t explicitly named in the laws protecting trans people.

Rylee felt more conflicted about this, pointing out that Ash seemed angry/bitter about the (perisex) trans community, and while that’s relatable to many intersex people, it could have been handled more deftly.

Salt Wasting for Plot Reasons

So, Ash winds up in the hospital after having to live as a girl for an extended period of time. The hospitalization is clearly a plot device to get Ash out of the forced gender situation. And what Santana does is give Ash a very rare version of salt-wasting CAH that has incredibly gone undetected until he is in high school. For us this felt improbable, and it also felt unnecessary, because…

Giving Ash an eating disorder would have been far more realistic, and would have accomplished the same plot device. 🫤

Eating disorders are unfortunately very common among intersex & trans folks and it would have been productive to see that representation (especially for a masculine character!). It felt extra frustrating that Santana chose one of the very few intersex variations that gives people health problems. Feelings about that were mixed: we don’t want intersex to be pathologized, but it is also useful for people to know that some intersex variations like salt-wasting CAH do come with health concerns to be aware of.

One of the reasons that a few of us expected an eating disorder plot was how Ash was fatphobic to one of his friends, and ED hospitalization would set up a discussion of that. Instead, the fatphobia was left unaddressed.

The Clinician Interactions

A few of us felt that the way the physicians in the book were presented came off more as intersex fantasy than intersex reality. Too many of the physicians knew too much about intersex for it to feel realistic to us. In general, physicians in the book were also very respecting of informed consent in a way that also did not line up with own experiences of intersex-related health care. Positioning clinicians as advocates/allies just didn’t really feel realistic to us. 🙃

The fact that the clinicians in the book used the word intersex, rather than the extremely pathologizing and reactionary term “DSD” was appreciated. 💜 But it also contributed to the sense the book was writing a fantasy of how the author wants intersex patients to be treated, rather than how we actually are.

But on the other side of things, there is value in fantasy. More physicians should know more about intersex, and treat their intersex patients better! Intersex folks should expect better of our physicians than abject abuse and violent gender policing (even if that expectation is earned).

Bnuuy pointed out that this book had so many other common forms of trauma (sexual violence, abusive parents, bullying) that maybe it’s good to not also add medical trauma on top of it all? 

To a few of us, the medical accuracy felt superficial. Bnuuy described it as “like reading Wikipedia” - like the author had only really read medical texts about this extremely specific variant of CAH, rather than talking to people with this variation.

There were a couple of experiential things that Santana nailed! Like the scene where Ash is in the hospital and the physician is talking to Ash’s parents as though Ash isn’t there. This felt real to us. 💜

There is a point in the book where Ash’s family doctor retires and he gets a new one, and the discontinuity in care is a tension for him. This also felt realistic. Feral in particular related to how to this doctor immediately going into talking about puberty & assuming that pregnancy is something that he’d want & that he’d want his penis removed.

The Intermedicalist Vibes 

We were kind of unimpressed by how the physicians were lionized both in the book and the acknowledgments. Again, we think there’s value in role modeling better care for clinician readers. But it was just a little too ego-fawning for our tastes. 🧐

A bunch of us felt the book had intermedicalist vibes not just because of how the clinicians were presented, but how the intersex community was represented. 🧐 The book has several intersex characters, that Ash meets through a local intersex support group. Rather than highlight the wide variety of intersex variations, Santana is extremely consistent about only ever representing intersex as involving genital differences. 🫤

Santana explicitly defines intersex as the following: ““Intersex” encompasses a broad spectrum of genital and chromosomal conditions that fall outside the accepted sex binary.” - it is important for readers to know this is an exclusionist definition of intersex. Santana is very tellingly omitting hormonal variations from her definition of intersex. This goes against how every major intersex organization defines intersex, and it goes against the norms of the intersex community. 😡

Variations like PCOS-hyperandrogenism are intersex, and Santana is undermining the intersex community by instead deferring to how physicians define intersex. We were unimpressed, and it is a reason some of us are hesitant to recommend the book.

This said, Feral felt that the twist at the end of the book helped reduced the intermedicalist vibe: it showed how when intersex people hold intermedicalist views, it can hurt them.

The Parental Abuse

The parental abuse in this book felt very real to us, and many of us related to one or more aspects of it. Ash’s father was physically abusive. Ash’s mother was emotionally immature and abusive. As one participant put it: “it was a a fork twist in my stomach because it was familiar.” 😭

Feral praised the parts about Ash’s father seeing Ash being intersex as a personal failing, and a reflection on him as a man & father. It was very relatable and Feral has noticed a lot of perisex people assume that parents are (more) accepting of intersex since it can’t be seen as a choice, and so “I liked seeing the portrayal of how toxic masculinity ties into how some fathers treat their intersex children.”

While Ash very quickly wrote off his father for being physically abusive, it took him longer to realize his mother was also abusive, and this felt realistic. Feral brought up: “There’s a part where [Ash’s sister] is talking about the difference between their parents & she says ‘I thought mom was the good parent’ because her abuse was more subtle & based in manipulation rather than physical & screaming like their father is, and I really enjoyed it showing how sometimes abuse that seems lesser on a surface level can end up doing just as much or more damage psychologically.” 

We appreciated how Ash coming to terms with what he experienced was abused was not drawn out. As Remy put it: “I've read a lot of books on trauma and convincing the reader that what they experienced was abuse, so just kind of gotten what I needed from those plots.”

We liked the parallel between Ash’s mother refusing to believe that Ash’s sister is a lesbian, and her refusing to believe that Ash knows his gender.

Rylee mused that if Ash hadn’t been abused at home, he might have stood up for himself more. 🤔

The Custody Fight

Given how much effort Santana appeared to put into trying to make the health stuff accurate, it was surprising to us how implausible the custody fight felt. Ash never meets with a lawyer. His sister’s lawyer never sits him down to talk about his options or to prepare him for court. 🧐

Emancipation is never even mentioned as an option. This felt like a lost opportunity: for any intersex teenager reading this book who is in a similar situation, they should know this is a path that exists. It may not be an easy or viable path, but it’s one they should talk to a lawyer about. Again, including a conversation with Ash’s sister’s lawyer - e.g. “I recommend we try for [sister] to have custody since emancipation has these hurdles….” would have both bolstered the plausibility of the custody fight and spread useful information.

Once again, the book’s acknowledgements were discussed: Santana sought advice from physicians on the medical accuracy, but no lawyers are acknowledged as such. 🙃

Remy brought up how this book illustrates how children’s rights are vital to intersex rights, highlighting this passage: "It doesn’t matter,” Miss Marbury said, “because we still live by a system that considers the convenience of the parents before the well-being of the child. Until that changes, kids in your position have to deal with a lot of hardships.” I appreciated this spelling out of the issue. 🩷

The fact that the custody battle is resolved by Ash extorting his mother got mixed reactions. Elizabeth felt it was not a great moral. In contrast, Remy cheered: Ash got himself out of an unsafe situation, and dirty tactics are sometimes needed for this. Feral and Rylee pointed out that Ash gave his mother a choice.

Miscellaneous thoughts

The repeated references to the Salem witch trials got mixed reactions. There’s an apoliticized history of the witch trials that conveniently leaves out how these were intentionally antifeminist, pro-capitalist, and anti-Indigenous, that this book definitely is steeped in this apoliticized history of them.

Michelle liked how the character Ariel wasn’t a “palatable” character, as xe feels like they know that person.

Rylee pointed out that the name Ash Bishop is probably an allusion to the Alien franchise.

Who should read this book?

We spent a bunch of time talking about what circumstances we would and would not recommend this book. Elizabeth said ze’d only recommend it to folks who already know Intersex 101 and would understand this book is exclusionist. Elizabeth wants intermedicalists to read this book, because intersex people who are very insistent that sex != gethinnder can be very invalidating to those of us who are intergender, and ze thinks the book meets these people where they are.

We generally agreed that Power to Yield and Cattywampus make for better “first” intersex books for people to read. Remy argued this book was more nuanced than Across the Green Grass Fields, and would put it roughly in that tier of book that help move the needle but maybe don’t do everything right.

Feral shared: “This is the first intersex focused fiction I’ve read so I can’t compare it, but while I definitely wouldn’t want this to be someone’s entire idea of intersex experience, I do think this would be good for giving people an idea of what intersexism can look like, especially for perisex trans people who don’t quite get the complicated issues with gender & identity that can happen when you’re intersex & that gender assignment & expectations aren’t clear cut.”

We talked about the pressure on intersex books to “do it all” - if a reader only reads one intersex book, to ensure that all of the important points are made and no mixed messages are sent. 😵‍💫 It also puts a pressure on authors to talk more about trauma, to ensure that people know the issues we face, but people always aren’t up for doing the literary equivalent of eating their vegetables. We want and deserve more fun intersex books. (This was definitely a “eat your vegetables” book.)

We talked about trauma porn, and how literary awards tend to reward the textual equivalent of Oscar Bait, and how too much intersex literature (especially by perisex authors) is just trauma porn.

Even though this book had a ton of trauma in it, this book didn’t feel like trauma porn to us. Ash was given so much stuff to do other than suffer. The plot was well paced, didn’t dwell any longer than needed on traumatic events. As Michelle put it: “it focuses on the trauma and not the sensationalization.” Bnuuy pointed out that unlike trauma porn, which isolates people from community and resources, this book illustrated how finding and going to intersex organizations can be a hugely positive impact on one’s life as an intersex person. 💜

The character Thomas is presented as a foil to Ash – he’s also intersex, yet has parents who are accepting and affirming. Feral pointed out that Thomas’ inclusion was another thing that kept the book from feeling like trauma porn. 💜

We all agreed this book makes for a very good example of how to cover a lot of trauma yet still be very caring of the reader! 👍️

Final thoughts

We noticed that the acknowledgments section only acknowledged intersex people that Santana seems to consume the content of (i.e. para-social relationships), rather than any bi-directional acknowledgements (i.e. thank you for your feedback on the draft). This is always a bit of a red flag for us, and we hope that Santana has since gotten more connected to the intersex community! Being an intersex author does not mean you should skip on having other intersex people read your drafts 💜

We all hoped that Santana gets/has gotten quality feedback about the exclusionist, intermedicalist vibes; and that this isn’t the last book she writes on intersex!

[aroaessidhe]

Demisexual YA Contemporary Books

Main characters

The Summer of Bitter and Sweet - demisexual girl, m/f

Two Can Play That Game - demisexual-coded girl, m/f

Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller - demisexual girl, m/f, novella

Technically You Started It - demisexual girl, m/f

Bad At Love - demisexual boy, m/f

Read With Pride - demisexual girl, f/f (younger-YA)

Side characters

The Summer Love Strategy - love interest is demi-aroace (f/f)

Radio Silence - major side character is demisexual (m/m, the MC has no romantic subplot)

Belly Up - love interest is a demisexual boy (also grey-ace best friend)

#aspec books / aspec database / tumblr masterpost

info included here is brief! please see my database for full details of the books

[augustyearroundprod]

A little over a year ago, my friends and I got to start this incredible, amazing, fulfilling audiodrama journey called MOONBURN. It's a celebration of queerness and Chosen Family and growing up and the power of love, friendship and joy.

And now, I feel so endlessly lucky to be working with all of them again to CONTINUE this story, this world, this journey with SEASON TWO!

If you haven't already, check out SEASON ONE of MOONBURN wherever you get your podcasts-- catch up, reach out, and help us get ready for a brand new season of love and joy!

[grizzcore]

Just My butch husband and his familiar being nosy neighbors

We’re working on the final edits and some promo material for my partners debut novel, The Heretic Prince!

If you want to read queer fantasy written by a queer author, please check out @thehereticprinceseries , my beautiful butch has written a captivating high fantasy following the interwoven fates of three queer main characters, with an incredible journey of transmasculine chivalry, a pining sapphic romance, and a gay coming of age against a backdrop of magic, espionage, and a budding conspiracy to undermine the false-prophets of an oppressive theocracy

[b0rtney]

you want homosexuals in every conceivable scenario?

Boy oh boy do i have the substack for u: mine!

NO PLEASE LEMME TELL U THE STORIES BEFORE U LEAVE--

Current is Cinnamon Muffins. TLDR: Six queer boys in a homophobic tiny town in Iowa are trying to survive winter break dodging awful parents, social stigma, and mental health crises.

Next up is How to Get Away with Marriage. TLDR: Guy with awful, religious parents marries guy who is living paycheck to paycheck so they can both get all their younger sisters out of their shitty situations (but they fall in love ofc).

Longer desc of these plus the stories coming in the next months are below the cut! (Genres include fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, mystery/thriller, coming-of-age)

Cinnamon Muffins centers on Taylor Macready, a homeless senior in high school holed up in a sleeping bag under a bridge after his parents kicked him out. He's fully ready to just accept death when it starts snowing on him while he's stargazing, but social outcast Wes Post is taking his nightly walk in a new direction and stumbles (literally) on his longtime crush, Taylor. Dragging Taylor home, Wes's parents prove themselves the only reasonable parents in this book by setting Taylor up on their pullout couch and nursing him back to health. Then Wes, whose closest school relationships include the kids who bully him for his anxiety-related speech impediment, has to get in touch with Taylor's friends to let them know the situation. Meanwhile, the mean girls of Swisher High School are starting a campaign to get homosexuality banned at school. Administratively, it gets nowhere, but it inspires several small-minded shitwads to take matters into their own hands. While Taylor is used to getting into fights, Wes isn't, but he'll have to sink or swim, because the teachers are not paid enough to care what happens in the hallways during lunchtime.

How to Get Away with Marriage opens with Luke Providence, son of a devoutly Baptist family in Nebraska, proposing to Patrick Demden, son of a recently-deceased alcoholic mechanic. The wealthy Providence parents have a longstanding agreement that once their children get married, they will receive a trust of $100,000 to use on the down-payment of a house and to start a life with their spouse. Patrick's younger sister tutors Luke's younger sister, but Patrick's sister is 16. This age gap doesn't matter much to the Providence parents, but it matters a lot to Luke, so he strikes a deal with Patrick: tell the parents he'll marry the sister, legally marry the brother, everyone gets to move to Colorado and escape abusive religious parents and crushing poverty. He needn't have done something so elaborate, Patrick would have married him for any reason at all. But the secret doesn't stay secret forever, and the Providence parents eventually come knocking, trying to recollect their children and their money.

Future stories I'll keep shorter, but feel free to ask about them either in the replies or my askbox and I'll elaborate!

Assassin x Demon King will be getting books 2 and 3! ADK is about an assassin and the king he was supposed to kill, both of whom have quit their jobs and started trying to save as many people as the assassin killed before he dies of a slow-acting poison in twelve months. Books 2 and 3 will have things getting awfully tragic and somewhat more horny than before! (No smut will make it into the print versions of these, that will remain on my substack alone)

How to Find Your Friends After the End of the World is a fantasy inspired by the isekai anime genre. Five friends in their 20s are on earth as it is wracked by a violent battle between the Heroine of the Gods and her Nemesis, and then, suddenly, they aren't. Earth has been destroyed and they are now on a new planet, in new (non-human) bodies, strewn across continents! On their new wrists, they have tattoos with each others' names, plus one (or two) new ones: their soulmates. Court politics and wastelands of monsters await them as they try desperately to reach each other, and their soulmates try desperately to reach them.

HtFYF will also have a prequel, focusing on the events that led to earth's destruction, and the battle between the Heroine of the Gods, a young woman, and her Nemesis, who seems to know more about the gods than she says. Why do the gods keep choosing such young heroes? What has the Nemesis done to put the world in such peril? Will the Heroine get to graduate on time despite the sleep she's been missing!?

The following do not yet have titles, but are fully fleshed out works ready to be thrown onto Substack:

A trilogy of eleven teens assisting in the fight against an agency that traffics, tortures, and then sells children with preternatural powers and abilities, and an exploration of the trauma those kids emerge with.

A murder mystery where a woman's sister dies, the police rule it suicide, and the woman enlists the help of a rumored contract killer to help her solve the murder-- but why does this rumored murderer-for-hire seem to know so much about her sister's death? And who was truly responsible?

A campy novel about a woman who graduates college, goes back to her hometown, and finds her highschool crush is still there, still single, and has since come out as gay. Of course, the only solution is to co-adopt an at-risk child from a neighbor.

This post will remain pinned on my profile, but for the next few days I'm having a sale on my substack tiers-- 20% off! That makes the cost to you just $8 per month to get a chapter every other day. 15 chapters for $8; that's a steal!

[auslgbtqya]

They Them Wolf by Jaydell

(2024) About the Book:

They Them Wolf is an LGBTQIA+ urban fantasy YA novel for readers 13+.

In a town where shadows hide secrets, Fred must unravel the truth before they become prey to something far more sinister than they could have ever imagined.

Seventeen-year-old Fred McTire is counting down the days until freedom. The foster system has dealt them a hand of hardship, but one more year stands between Fred and escape from their nightmarish existence.

That is until Genevieve 'Ginny' Chase, all blue eyes and freckles, sashays into Fred's life, unexpectedly brightening their bleak world. Yet, as Fred grapples with the complexities of adolescence - as if being queer in a rural town wasn’t hard enough - an unsettling force within them begins to stir, marked by violent outbursts and dreams of wolves with amber eyes.

The arrival of Mathusi Manebarn, a new student with familiar amber eyes, coincides with the discovery of a mutilated body on the outskirts of town, exposing a sinister supernatural cover-up.

The truth is elusive, and Fred must navigate a treacherous path of betrayal and familial ties as they unravel the secrets of their past.

They Them Wolf is a tale of self-discovery, identity, and the courage to confront the unknown, resonating with the howl of the wolves within.

[fullibooked]

I was absolutely screaming for Godslayers after I finished reading Gearbreakers. And now that I've finished Godslayers, I have to say, I was right. This duology is awesome. And surprisingly bloody. And soft. And sweet. And scary. Zoe Hana Mikuta is bringing the girls back. Into even more chaos.

In the aftermath of Heavensday, there are so many broken minds, and broken hearts. The Gearbreakers fractioned into factions, their hopes tied to their leaders, who are squabbling siblings pushed to the extreme. And all fighting for kids rights to just be kids, and not have to fight in this bloody war. Sona and Eris have an even greater struggle, trying to cross the barrier of mind altering control.

I will continue to scream about these books for so long. They're just so good. The love, the faulty humanity, the confused politics, and the crazy mecha technology. Ooooo it's delicious. For a YA book, this certainly holds nothing back. And I so, so, so recommend it. It may make you want to pluck your red eyes right out… which I promise makes more sense (and is less threatening) if you've read it.

[layaart]

Here's the cover I designed/illustrated for Sweethearts, 3rd in the Babylove trilogy!

[bookshelvesandtealeaves]

✨ BOOK REVIEW ✨

Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

QOTD: What are your last, now and/or next reads?

[instagram]

I really enjoyed this one. I love that I can see how much Sophie Gonzales has grown as an author from when she wrote this. It’s a still a great debut, but she’s come so far.

I adored the Grease vibes in this. I honestly need more queer versions of my old faves because this was great. It’s very much its own story, too. Will acting like a jerk makes way more sense than Danny ever did. I love that no one really “changed” for each other, either. They met each other halfway, in the end.

I loved the friendships in this so much. Ollie and Lara in particular were so much fun. The progression of their friendship made me so happy.

This book also deals with death of a family member to cancer, and it doesn’t shy away from being heavy. I genuinely teared up multiple times reading this. It was so well done.

[the-dust-jacket]

Queer YA for spooky season!

Pictured: A Vile Season, Everything Glittered, Spells to Forget Us, Compound Fracture, A Darker Mischief, Beholder, Better Left Buried

[whilereadingandwalking]

First, a quick spoiler: this book is groundbreaking because it was a YA novel featuring two queer girls who get a happy ending. I know, I'm sorry to spoil it, but it's vital. In our age of blossoming queer YA contemporary, it's important to see why Annie on My Mind was so important, and so controversial, given a past where the only gay books permitted were those with unhappy endings.

In this book by Nancy Garden, two girls from across New York City meet at the Met and begin to have feelings that they don't, at first, understand. And when they are caught, their academic careers, friendships, and family relationships are all put at stake. This novel is simple, and to those who grew up with all kinds of queer novels around, it might feel outdated. It reads as historical fiction, with the sheer shockwave the adults in the book feel at finding lesbianism in their elite school. But there's nothing wrong with that, and it's a great book about a time when queerness was ok if it was just experimenting, or secret, or hidden, and where two girls are determined not to let go of each other, no matter the cost. A really good, quick read about coming-of-age queer and finding acceptance within yourself.

Content warnings for outing, homophobia, lesbophobia, ableism.

[intersexbookclub]

November read: Just Ash

Our book pick for November 2024 is Jush Ash by intersex author Bogi Takács. This is a YA coming-of-age novel featuring an intersex main character.

It's a fairly short book that I personally found to be a fast read 💜

Content warnings: Please note this is a book that portrays some pretty serious intersexism. Ash, the main character, experiences bullying, multiple sexual assaults, a forced gender transition, parental abuse. IGM is discussed when Ash visits an intersex support group and some IGM survivors tell their stories to Ash.

While there is a fair bit of violence in this book, I (personally) did not find it gratuitous, and Santana doesn't linger on it: it's there to provide an unflinching portrayal of what it is like for too many intersex youths growing up in small towns and rural areas.

If it helps to decide whether it's too much for you: Ash is given plenty of things to do in the book that are not just suffer constantly. I can answer questions about the book on Discord if you're on the fence about picking it up. 💜

As usual, we meet on the last Friday of the month: November 29. We’re meeting at 16:00 Eastern (20:00 UTC) on Microsoft Teams (see discord for the link).

The MS Teams meeting is configured to provide live captions in English. Participants are welcome to contribute non-verbally through the text chat in the meeting. If you have other access needs please let us know 💜.

Discord link: https://discord.gg/V3mrcjakGQ Also see: our code of conduct

How much of the book do you need to read? You don’t need to finish it participate! You are welcome to skim and/or skip chapters as desired.

Current & future book picks We'll be reading some selected chapters from Malatino's Queer Embodiment: Monstrosity, Medical Violence, and Intersex Experience. This is an academic text and the relevant chapters will be shared on the discord for anybody who doesn't have university library access. 💜

[shazleen]

My favourite book covers that I've worked on :)