Poornima and Savitha are young girls living in poverty in India who strike up a fast, intense friendship. Through a series of horrific events, Savitha flees and Poornima abandons her life to find her friend again. Across oceans and continents, they fight the darkest elements of humanity, never losing the drive to find each other again.

I am still trying to decide what to make of GIRLS BURN BRIGHTER. The stark writing mirrors the harsh reality of the girls’ lives and only barely shields the reader from the things they endure. It is a tough, tough read.

This book shows all the ways the women’s bodies are used to make money for men at every stage of their lives. They work the looms with their hands. Their marriages come with dowries. Their bodies are maimed and sold, all for the profit of men who otherwise find them useless. I couldn’t stop thinking about how these women are always the source of the men’s income and yet the men think of them as less than dirt. It’s crushing, and so sadly, real.

I really loved the characterizations of Savitha and Poornima. They and their bond felt real. However, I had a hard time buying a lot of the plot machinations. It was too many coincidences, too much getting the right information with no one catching on to what they were doing. It took me out of the story every time.

Celie is born into poverty and suffers abuse from her father and then her husband and is separated from her children and then her sister. Over the course of many years and a relationship with the glamorous Shug Avery, Celie discovers love, joy, and how to take control of her own life.

I’ll be honest here, I went into this book almost totally blind. I’ve never read it or seen the movie or the play. Basically all I knew was it was about a Black woman named Celie. And wow, was I floored by this book.

I was totally engrossed right from the start - I barely took any notes in my reading journal, I was turning the pages so fast. I did worry that I was in for another tale of endless woe, and was pleasantly surprised by the hope this book offers. Celie spent so much of her life - knowingly or not - pushing the other women to empower themselves, I nearly cheered when she finally began to see the joy and worth in living the life she wanted, too.

I loved that everyone, even the men who were ugly caricatures at the start, learned and grew and found the humanity in others.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster for the free advance copy of this book.

Nalah lives in Mega City, in a world ruled by competing crews of girls and where men are second class citizens. As Chief Rocka of the Las Mal Criadas crew, when she ventures outside the city on a quest for Mega’s ruling queen, she begins to discover that all is not the girl power utopia it seems to be.

DEALING IN DREAMS has one of the coolest gender reversals I’ve seen in awhile. Literal girl gangs rule the streets while men exist only for entertainment in this world. And then, just as I’m thinking to myself “seems like gender and sexuality are still just as rigid in this world” we are taken outside a Mega City and outside the grip ruler Déesse has on her citizens.

I really enjoyed the world of this novel, which felt somewhere between THE THOUSANDTH FLOOR and READY PLAYER ONE. I also loved the central role the bonds of the crew members played. Romantic relationships are just on the edges in this novel - commitment to your crew is paramount (though the problems that can bring are also exposed).

I did feel like it took Nalah a long time to catch on to the idea that Déesse was not a benevolent ruler. You could see every plot development coming a mile away (maybe not unsurprising for a YA novel) but it was also interesting to watch Nalah’s internal conflict as the world she knew, loved, and profited from crumbled.

Despite me saying that, I’m eager for the sequel - there are a lot of plot threads teased at the end, and I’m here for any story that’s about how love and empathy are stronger than hate.

On the surface, the narrator of MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION has everything - looks, money, a boyfriend, a best friend. But none of it is as good as it looks from the outside, and unable to cope, she decides to spend a year under the influence of heavy narcotics, sleeping her way through the pain.

I wasn’t sure if I’d like this book. Satire usually misses the mark for me, and I didn’t see how a book about sleeping could be interesting. I’m glad I went for though, because this is maybe one of the best books I’ve ever read.

The skewering of the art world is perfect. The depiction of what it feels like to be depressed is perfect. The suburban ennui moved to the city is perfect. I loved our narrator, even when she was a bad friend and a bad person.

As someone who has had bad bouts of depression, the talk of seeking oblivion and hating everyone for their crime of being alive was exactly right. I might even say avoid this book if you feel you’re on the edge of it - it’s that intense.

The endless rounds of suicide and rebirth could be heavy handed from a lesser writer, but Moshfegh lays all the groundwork seamlessly, all while keeping it darkly funny.

Alternating between the 1980s and 2015, THE GREAT BELIEVERS is a story of Chicago’s gay community at the height of the AIDS crisis and interlocking stories of love, despair, family, and friendships that echo through the years.

I put off reading this book for a long time because, to be honest, I didn’t like the idea of a straight woman telling this story. And at the beginning, I found it strange that straight woman Fiona was a central, point of view character. But this book is incredible. Makkai did her research, and thoroughly. I kept forgetting these men weren’t real, that I couldn’t look up Richard’s art or Charlie’s newspaper. And stories like Fiona’s do exist and should be told. I know those women, and the lingering trauma is real.

The way the chapters alternated decades kept the fear and devastation of the ‘80s as fresh for the reader as it felt for Fiona even decades later. This book does a masterful job of illustrating generational trauma and how it affects those who experienced it and those around them for their entire lives.

Yale’s chapters were just as hard. It’s a story we’ve all heard before but it never gets less horrible. It also showed that awful way that your life and your world can be crumbling, but you still have to carry on with your life - go to work, pay rent - for what? For how long? Even after your friends are all gone?

The parallels with Nora’s life in WWI are stark. I’ve heard gay men describe the ‘80s as like living through a war, and here that comparison is made explicit, in both the deaths and lasting effects. No one who survived either era ever really got over it.

I’m glad I read this book, even if I say all the time how much I’m over stories of queer pain. THE GREAT BELIEVERS, however, makes clear how much of that pain was born out of our love for each other.

TEMPEST is the third and final book in Beverly Jenkins’ Old West series. Regan is a mail order bride off to meet her husband Dr. Colton Lee for the first time. She must find her place in this new frontier town as the new wife of the beloved widower doctor, and in turn, Colt must find a way to reconcile the bold, independent Regan with his notions of what a woman and wife should be.

First of all, best meet cute or best meet cute? Mistaking your new husband for a marauder and shooting him is one for the ages.

One of the best things about this series is how quickly and thoroughly Jenkins can populate a whole town with a variety of folks and an intricate social web. And yet, it was never confusing or overwhelming.

Regan and Colt’s relationship walks that fine line of being both romantic and urgent. I loved seeing them discover who each other was. I also liked that Colt was willing to accept who Regan was without trying to change her and it never felt like he was being forced to be feminist for the sake of plot.

On the downside, I felt like this book could have been shorter, even though it was never lacking for action. And speaking of action, the last 20 pages or so was jam packed, making the ending feel a little rushed.

Tracker, usually a lone hunter for hire, finds himself with a band of mercenaries and the task of finding a lost boy. He chases the scent of the boy across cities, past monsters, and through lies, fighting and loving and killing his way there.

BLACK LEOPARD RED WOLF is an epic in the classic sense of the word. A quest, a band of adventurers, and deep passion fill these pages. The repetition of the story of the boy, growing and changing through the novel, reads like you’re watching an oral tradition being born in real time. However, to say the text is dense is to put it gently. Each sentence matters - no skimming paragraphs here, or you’ll be lost in no time. Additionally, the main plot doesn’t even begin until about 200 pages in. But, stick with it long enough to find the flow of the writing and you’ll get swept up in this intricate world.

Intricate is maybe even an understatement. This book has stories within stories, digressions within those, and layers of lies and deceptions. No one is to be trusted in this world, not for a second.

I must also touch on the pervasive queerness of this book. I’ve never seen an old fashioned saga like this where queerness is just a fact of being, let alone for multiple characters in multiple levels of love with each other. It’s intense and glorious - joy amid the violence.

Now, give me Sogolon’s version of the tale! Now!

Thanks to Little Brown and Jimmy Patterson Books for the free advance copy of this book.

Ari Helix is an interplanetary refugee fleeing the tyrannical Mercer Corporation when, upon crash landing on Old Earth, she pulls an ancient sword from a tree, revealing that she is the 42nd reincarnation of King Arthur, her friends are the knights of the round table, and Merlin is here to train her to be the conquering king she was born to be.

ONCE AND FUTURE is billed as “gay King Arthur in space,” and that’s simultaneously exactly right and an understatement. This book is the Wayfarers trilogy crossed with Doctor Who and sprinkled with Hitchhiker’s Guide (she’s Arthur 42, for crying out loud) and every character resides somewhere unique on the gender and sexuality spectrum.

This book is funny and clever while also tackling many timely issues ranging from capitalism to immigration and more. I flipped between righteous fury and a broken heart several times. Yes, this book contains several real, painful heartbreaks, and is more moving than a YA novel has any right to be.

Some knowledge of Arthurian legend is useful in reading this book, but not necessary. The characters are all explained well within the universe of this story, and their relationships veer just enough from the standard legend that there’s no need to know the details.

There’s a lot jammed into this novel, and it’s maybe a little overstuffed - there are a few themes I’d liked to have seen explored in greater depth. Luckily for us, it’s a series! I am counting down to book two eagerly!

In THE BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE, a fever has wiped out most of humanity, killing virtually all women and children and making childbirth impossible to survive. A midwife miraculously survives and must make her way in this new world, making and breaking alliances while dressing as a man to protect herself from slavers and others who may harm her. She never gives her real name, and the eventually reborn society knows her from her journals as the Unnamed Midwife.

Dystopia from a feminist perspective is rather surprisingly uncommon. Note though that I did not say this book envisions a feminist utopia - rather, it envisions a world where gangs of men keep the few remaining women as toys, where birth control is a top commodity and dressing as a man keeps you safe. I don’t think I’ve ever read a post-apocalypse book where the protagonist ensures she’s carrying enough tampons, and it’s weirdly refreshing.

The regular novelistic narrative is interspersed with excerpts from the midwife’s journals, which are choppy and brief. I found the entries kind of annoying to read, but I also appreciate that we’re not pretending our non-writer barely surviving protagonist is able to capture full conversations verbatim or make beautiful analogies and metaphors. However, I do think the book would have worked just fine without the actual journal entries.

Due to the inclusion of these entries, the book was a bit meandering and repetitive at times. Probably true to how post-apocalypse life would be like, but not particularly gripping. I did appreciate the low key way her bisexuality was slipped in there, and how so many people became more fluid after the plague.

I think if you liked SEVERANCE but wished it was grittier, this is the book for you. I don’t think I’ll seek out the sequels, but maybe I’d read them if I come across them.

PRIDE is a retelling of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE set in modern day, gentrifying Bushwick. The Benitez girls are taken by surprise when the wealthy Darcy family and their two boys move in across the street, changing the neighborhood and their lives permanently.

This book feels like a summer block party. The love Zuri has for her neighborhood pours out of the book, and you love it too within a few pages. And replacing Austen’s original social structure and arcane etiquette rules with the strata of gentrification and the nuances of teen slang is basically genius. It all works seamlessly, a testament to the timelessness of Austen’s characters and themes.

Layered under all that is an additional conversation about what it means to be black and who is black enough. I felt so strongly for Zuri and Darius, caught up in these societal structures, each just wanting to claim their own place in the world.

I did feel like the pace of the story was a bit off. It began as a slow burn and then accelerated too quickly near the end, I think. Still, one of the most unique retellings of a favorite story of mine that I’ve ever seen.