What a book to be the first (published) erotica I’ve read in full, LMAO! Thank you to my Instagram mutual (and fiend), finding.of.the.book.fae, for recommending this. It was a wild ride.

(Sidenote: I love that this is inspired by a drag performance the author did?!?! But also that makes so much sense in retrospect!)

“Blackjack + Moonshine” is as sexy as it’s advertised to be, but it’s dark and tense in equal measure. The unabashedly Southern setting is stuffy in several ways, from the unrelenting heat, to Jesse’s inability to be himself in an unkind environment. (It’s surprisingly character-focused, but maybe I should’ve expected that from a novella with a smaller cast, and following a “descent into the river of oblivion”.) And despite the story’s focus on debauchery and devils, religious trauma isn’t a massive focus of the book? Not to say it doesn’t exist, though. It’s just reserved for the underlying discomfort beneath the constant references to Christianity throughout. (Maybe if I give this a reread I’ll look those over and revise my review.)

Bee, what a bastard. I enjoyed his devilish charm (haha) and suaveness, usually I find characters of his nature to be annoying, but it sells how he was able to con Jesse. (Bee definitely has a (kinda) hidden attachment to him, their relationship is a little too mutually codependent for that to not be the case…) While I don’t think it was surprising the lengths he’d go to ensnare him, I was surprised at how the story continued to roll with the gradually escalating violence and horror. It was definitely merciless. I feel like the story started ending just when things were taking a turn for the seriously bleak and bizarre, though, but hey—the author said there’s more to Bee and Jesse’s story, and I’m definitely going to read it all.

(

still can’t get over how Jesse got ofmd s1 ep10 izzy hands’d except he wasn’t the one doing the cannibalizing

)

Jesse, on the other hand, while I could empathize with his desperation, I think he frustrated me too much for me to be able to latch onto him as much? Though, maybe that comes from him also being a pawn in his own story. (I feel like I enjoyed the other characters and how their relationships/dynamics fucked with him more than Jesse himself.) (

fly high, Leslie

) However! I was also pleasantly surprised at the author’s dedication to writing Jesse as physically disabled for the last third of the book after That Incident. It seemed written from experience. (His disability, not the cannibalism(?), for context.)

Only other thing I was bummed by was that the plot wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be. Jesse’s strange transition itself wasn’t really talked about in more specific terms until the 70% mark, for instance. Though, that’s on me for going into literal erotica for the plot. (And also not knowing there wouldn’t really be body horror, at least with the MC. Not much of his body is talked about in detail.)

This definitely isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But! I still enjoyed it a lot. Glad to read some messed up trans stories like this. I will be looking forward to the rest of the Dread South novellas.