francesmthompson's Reviews (976)

My Sexual Orientation is Spring by Kyla Jamieson

We change time,
make the days longer.
I start to forget
the pact I made
with unhappiness,
take myself
to the ocean,
say I just need
to catch the last
few minutes
of light. This is
how spring is love,
the way it pulls us
towards pleasure.

This is just one of many poems I highlighted, re-read and re-read and adored in this collection of queer poetry. There was such a gentle and loving energy sewn in and out of each poem, despite the works being about so many different things from intimacy to loss to hope to pain. While I read the ebook - thank you NetGalley for the early ARC - the illustrations were still charming to see and I can imagine a hard copy of this book being something I'd display proudly on my coffee table, or maybe selfishly keep on my bedside table so I can revisit the poems again and again.

I ADORED THIS!
Such an important book that highlights the depth, importance and urgency of sex work and body work in many people's lives and how far we still have to go to make such work a safe and destigmatised and valued profession. I ended up finishing this collection of essays regarding sex/body/intimacy work as healing, as therapy and as potentially essential in all our lives. Highly recommend and I am so pleased a book like this exists. I hope many more follow it. 

First read in 2020 and re-read again in 2025 and I think I can say with some confidence that Inventory is my favourite bisexual short story ever written.

What an important, ground-breaking and comfortingly defiant book. You could feel the author's vulnerability on every page and that was both endearing and upsetting, especially when he acknowledges that he finds it hard to talk about the intersection of his sexuality and disability. And yet, he does. He does so with humility, grace, honesty, self-love and hope. There is so much hope in this book. I literally didn't stop smiling when he wrote the section about his vision for a fully accessible club (sign me up! Heck, let me invest!) and his ideas for TV shows that offered accurate and much needed representation of queer disabled people made me emotional. As a queer cripple myself, there was so much in this book - validation, compassion, and again - necessarily - hope! - but I really hope non-disabled queers read it because then it will be a world-changing book. 

I admit I wanted and half-expected this to be more bisexual than what it actually was but there's no denying there are very queer vibes and indeed the "awakening" in question was absolutely against the (hetero)normativity of the day. Content warning for racism throughout as was no doubt typical of the day but still upsetting to read. 

Gah, if only there hadn't been HP references :-(

Still enjoyed this YA exploration of transness, queerness, gender and identity. 

Can't go wrong with a Talia Hibbert romance, especially one with a man obsessed. Which, I believe, is all of them.