✨MINI REVIEW✨ [ @harpercollins #partner ]
Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. While the world knows him as Aeneas, the star of the biggest show on TV, Gods of the Gates, he's known to fanfiction readers as Book!AeneasWouldNever, an anonymous and popular poster. April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s hidden her fanfiction and cosplay hobby from her “real life” for years—but not anymore. (via Goodreads) 📚
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What I liked:
📚 Marcus and April felt like real people with real lives and traumas and insecurities.
📚 Watching April set her own boundaries was a joy.
📚 I loved that April would have been perfectly fine living her life without Marcus - having a great relationship with him was just the cherry on top of a fulfilling life.
📚 Felt like the author really knows and loves fanfiction culture.
📚 I've never watched Game of Thrones (I KNOW, SORRY) but it was still a treat to see this book take the final seasons of that show to task through Gods of the Gates.
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What I didn't like:
📚 I'm usually pretty good at accepting unrealistic situations in romance novels, but it was often hard to suspend my disbelief here.
📚 This is completely a personal preference, but I really dislike when the plot hinges on one big secret the hero or heroine is keeping from the other.
📚 Some of the sexytimes moves read awkwardly or painfully when they clearly weren't meant to (that last bit in the epilogue, augh no why!).
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Content warnings: fatphobia, fat shaming, dyslexia, parental estrangement. 

 📚Noemi is a fantastic protagonist - she knows what she likes and wants and won't let patriarchy stand in her way
📚 The imagery in this book is chilling and beautiful
📚 Didn’t really buy the romance plot
📚 It started off slow but THOSE LAST 100 PAGES OMG 

✨MINI REVIEW✨

While working as an intern in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center, Jenn Shapland encounters the love letters of Carson McCullers and a woman named Annemarie―letters are that are tender, intimate, and unabashed in their feelings. Shapland recognizes herself in the letters’ language―but does not see Carson as history has portrayed her. (via Goodreads) 📚

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What I liked:

📚 Genre-bending memoir is one of my favorite types of book

📚 Thoughtful examination of how we make women prove they're gay in a way we don't make men

📚 Looks at McCullers’ chronic pain and illness and how that intersected with her relationships

📚 How many queer women of history might be hiding in plain sight and we refuse to see them?

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What I didn't like:

📚 The author seemed unable or unwilling to identify McCullers' husband as an abuser. There's a lot of pained ruminating on why she didn't leave him when she was clearly uninterested in him romantically, but frames his repeated threats of murder-suicide as "a cloud over her life" rather than "emotional abuse."

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Content warnings: homophobia, domestic abuse, attempted suicide, suicide, institutionalization, chronic illness. 📚

Thanks to Hachette Books for the free advance copy of this book. 

✨MINI REVIEW✨ 

New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West was once the in-house movie critic for Seattle's alternative newsweekly The Stranger, where she covered film with brutal honesty and giddy irreverence. In Shit, Actually, Lindy West returns to those roots, re-examining beloved and iconic movies from the past 40 years. (via Goodreads) 📚

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Things I liked:

📚 I haven't thought about some of these movies in a long time and it was fun to revisit them as an adult with critical thinking skills

📚 This book is great for getting out of your brain for 20 minutes at a time as you read each essay

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Things I didn't like:

📚 Not a ton of new insights about many of the movies

📚 The essays about movies I hadn't seen were kind of hard to follow

📚 I hope there are some additional notes or something around the Harry Potter essay by the time this publishes

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Content warnings: mentions of COVID-19 and Harry Potter, all the various examples of misogyny, racism, etc. in movies from 10-30 years ago. 

Thanks to Saga Press for the free advance copy of this book. 

✨MINI REVIEW✨ 
A ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. (via Goodreads) 📚
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Things I liked:
📚 Casual queerness - pansexuality, gender neutral pronouns, trans characters, and none of it even factors into the main plot
📚 A big, sprawling world with intricate tribal history and relations
📚 Political intrigue, but not too much
📚 Visceral images - I could feel and smell and taste this world
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Things I didn't like:
📚 THAT CLIFFHANGER, I NEED BOOK 2 NOW!
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Content warnings: suicide, sexual harassment, substance abuse, gambling, murder, death.