If you are truly very desperate for a queer/trans play, I guess you might want to read this one. But it's not good. I don't think the text of it is actively super transphobic, but it's definitely a little transphobic, and it's made much worse by the fact that I'm pretty sure the trans man character has been exclusively played by cis women on stage. Also, this play completely refuses to acknowledge that bi people exist. It's exhausting. No thank you.

Only Taylor Jenkins Reid could make me care this much about straight surfers.

This book is a gorgeous and often heartbreaking picture of one celebrity family's experiences over the course of twenty-four hours, with flashbacks added in to explain their past, including the story of their parents.

The Rivas are very much stuck repeating family patterns and turning into their parents, and I think this book asks whether it's possible to escape that. It's a study in cycles of toxicity and grief and duty and the ways that gendered behavior perpetuates through generations of a family. And yet I felt good at the end of it.

TJR once again tricked me into briefly thinking that fictional celebrities are real people—and yes, the Rivas' father is Mick Riva, who was briefly married to Evelyn Hugo. From what I've gathered, he also appears in Daisy Jones and the Six, which I am intending to read sometime in the next couple weeks.

I related to this book in ways that I'm not comfortable admitting, so instead of talking about that, I'm going to leave you with some favorite quotes:

"The unique combination of audacity and spinelessness."

"She'd never once looked at a man and desired him."

"They were not haunted by the same demons. They were not fighting for the same things."

"Men were bullshit. People were bullshit. And Nina was not going to live through bullshit while wearing high heels a single second longer."
"Hud can fuck all my ex-girlfriends ten times in front of me and I'd still like him more than I like you."

"Rich white people get the benefit of the doubt and all its many benefits."

This is one of the best books I've ever read, but the author's transphobia has very much soured it for me, and so for now, I will not be giving a star rating or a real review to this book or to the sequel if and when I end up reading it.

Raybearer is my favorite read of 2021 so far BY FAR. I loved this book SO MUCH. The worldbuilding is top tier. The magic system is fantastic. The international found family is lovely. Tarisai is a great protagonist and narrator. Sanjeet deserves the world. Dayo also deserves the world.

Miscellaneous notes (minor spoilers):

There are no queer relationships in this book, but I still consider it queer because of the explicitly biromantic asexual character. So that's another big selling point!

There are so many plot points that this book dealt with in the best way I could have hoped for. The love triangle and the chosen one thing and the villain all turned out different than expected in the best ways possible.

Can't wait for the sequel!

This book is SO IMPORTANT. I think that's the best way to describe it. If you're a bisexual teenager struggling with any sort of internalized biphobia, this is the book for you. I didn't need it, but someone out there really does.

The subtle Jane Austen references were great, too! If you like antagonists to friends to lovers, you'll like this book for sure.

Minor spoilers:

I'm fascinated by the choice to make the love interest the only cishet man in the entire book (other than random adults I guess). It works well with the whole biphobia discussion, but I find it hard to believe that this man, whose best friend is gay, isn't just a little bi.

This book was super enjoyable. I liked that the characters weren't teens. I had fun with the approach to magic. I loved the author's take on heteronormativity. And the ending was WILD. Excited to read the sequel!

This was a super sweet coming-of-age book that hit all the tropes in exactly the right ways. I loved the characters. I loved the focus on family. I loved how realistically messy the teen friendships were. The romance also felt very natural and realistic. There were a few inconsistencies that kind of bugged me, and the audiobook was not the ideal way to read it (the characters live in Dublin but the narrator had a very distracting American accent), but it was overall very good and cute! I'm super excited to read Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating now cause a lot of people like that one even more! 

Did the plot of this book move slowly? Yes. Is it probably slightly more niche than a lot of books? Also yes. But I absolutely loved it.

Latin-American-inspired fantasy? Sapphic romance? FORBIDDEN romance? RIVALS-TO-LOVERS romance? Political intrigue? This book has it all.

Like most books I love, it's hard to talk about this one. I just want to yell at people to read it.

Dani and Carmen are fantastic characters. I love their relationship. I HATE Mateo. He's the WORST. I can't wait to read the sequel once I finally get my hands on it.