This is a very interesting ya horror and I enjoyed reading it.
It follows Athan, a young man, who breaks his grandmother's rules by looking into a mirror during a party he was invited to. Then the screaming starts and when he finally leaves there's corpses everywhere. Now something is hunting him. (And he also faces the survailance horror of invasive landlords which is unfortunately way too relateable)!
The cover is eyecatching and one of the main reasons I picked this book up. Eldritch horror, spiders, mirrors. It definitely delivers these aspects and I adored it.
One thing I really enjoyed is the storytelling in the audiobook. Some chapters are told in you-form and the voice acting there sent shivers down my spine. It was really, really good and increased the terror of the story a lot! There's also great sound effects and that really enhanced my immersion. Another thing I liked was the horror and the exploration of art as something that can be impued with power. And the gore is gruesome and terrifying which was great.
Sadly I also found myself struggling with some aspects: There's a romance in there that's quite sweet, however it proceedes quite fast in a very short time and so becomes a bit unbelieveable at points. If insta love is a no go for you, then you might struggle with this. I mostly ignored it myself and instead focussed on the dread as romance is not really my thing, which made it bearable to me. In general the story moves rather fast and so it is sometimes hard to follow the plot as it jumps around a lot and sometimes I wish we had gotten more explanation for the horror aspects and character backstory. This is what kept the book from being fully enjoyable for me.
But if you're like me and enjoy eldritch beings, poisonous wallpapers, scary hallucinations and warped mirror images that reveal true horror you'll probably have a good time with this anyway. Definitely an interesting and spooky experience and absolutely a book where I can say the audiobook might be more fun (in my case it gained an extra star for how much I adored the concept!)
Tw for self harm, suicide (in the form of self sacrificial suicide), intrusive thoughts, compulsions, death by fire, mass death, child endangerment, mind control/puppetry, body horror.

A short graphic novel about growing up and understanding and embracing yourself.
It follows a young trans teen during his coming of age from before he understands himself to when he finally realizes it and is able to come out and transition. One thing I really enjoyed about this novel is that the author inserted his adult self to talk to his (for obvious reasons quite unhappy) teen self as well as interview his parents on what has changed since then. I really enjoyed these sequences because they beautifully show that growth is possible.
Despite the sometimes dark topics this book touches upon (especially regarding eating disorders and obsessions with work outs), the writing is touching and quite funny at most other points and I enjoyed it a lot.
All in all a sweet memoir with a really interesting gimmick of the present self commenting on the past self.
Also note that the character is not out for most of the book and his deadname and wrong pronouns are used for a big percentage of the story.

This is a really lovely graphic novel following a young witch and a young girl as they try to solve the mystery of why all kinds of magic critters are acting up in the town.
The artstyle is breathtaking and beautiful. It is really, really beautiful to look at, lively and idyllic and overall just stunning. I would already recommend this novel just on that alone, but then there is also a touching story, a wonderful friendship that blosoms into a lovely romance along the way and a really interesting magic system. I also found Orla's character arc to be amazing, especially in juxtaposition with Jo's own experiences. While Jo loves her town and wants to protect it, Orla's relationship to the town is a whole lot deeper and complicated. A major plotpoint of this story are also relationships in a variety of forms: romantic, familial, neighbourly, to a place and to animals, healing and abusive. I really adored the variety there and the story was told in a moving and really lovely way.
I would recommend this graphic novel to teens and adults, who like to dream a little bit.
TW for past child abuse & forced isolation.

This is a short and sometimes sweet, sometimes touching graphic memoir about accepting ones sexuality. It is a quite quick read, focussing on insecurity and ones own feelings, heavily focussed on relationships and prejudice. I especially enjoyed the use of colors and space in this, it was stunning. Tw for intrusive thoughts of suicide.

This is a really good finale to an already good sci-fi trilogy and I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it.
At first I took a while to remember who the side-characters are (both because it's been a while since I read the second book and because there's just so many characters!), but due to their often unique personalities I managed quite well a few chapters in. Just like the first and the second book this book quickly whisked me away on a tense and high-stakes mission through space and I could barely put it down.
This book is drenched in grief, as the crew and especially Rachael and Elza mourn Tina after her body was taken over by Captain Thaoh. Not only that, but the characters have been running for two books now, unable to deal with the terror of what the Makvarian death touch causes the survivors the feel about the desceased, unable to truly mourn the dead. How do you mourn somebody if their literally body is still walking beside you? How do you mourn somebody when disgust overcomes you any time you think of them? How do you overcome grief when you find yourself unable to connect to others because of it and the only thing that works is isolating yourself? These themes were beautifully and heartwrenchingly explored.
And as if all that wasn't enough to deal with there's still the issue of the genocidal intergalactic leader Marrant, who wants to kill them and cleanse the galaxy of the wrong kind of sentient life (i.e. anybody not bipedal), the fact that all the suns in the galaxy are slated to go out unless they can fix it and a new princess is trying to cut off Elza's connection to the Ardenii.
One of my absolute favorite things about this book is the incredible diversity. And I don't just mean the fact that we have trans and queer characters of a variety of races, but we also have interesting aliens with fascinating pronoun usage (fire, water, earth, but you gain the pronoun that fits with your profession), aliens with speech that does not simply work with the universal translator, aliens with all kinds of cultures and body types. I really liked seeing this varied and wonderful cast of characters.
The stakes are high and the resolutions satisfying and I can definitely say that this was a wonderful conclusion to a very good sci fi trilogy. If you like fun sci fi I would absolutely recommend this series.

I recently discovered the trans women writers collective patreon and after subscribing (because it sounds like they do amazing work in getting trans women's writing out there and making sure they are paid for their work!) I decided to start with their first published piece. (If you don't have the means to support them on patreon, some pieces are also free on their patreon).
I've been reading a few really good short story collections by trans women and I'm so happy to say that this trend has continued this year. The short stories here are slice of life that interweave delicately with each other. There's always some horror elements, sometimes literally, sometimes the constant dreadful horror of being trans (and especially a trans woman of color!) in a transphobic society. Family, both chosen and familial, also plays a huge role.
Most importantly Catherine Kim's writing style is incredible, beautiful and vivid and poetic, and I often found myself forcing myself to slow down to savor the writing.
I would absolutely recommend this book to anybody who wants to read more good short stories, enjoys horror and dread and wants to read more current literature by trans authors.
TW for child abuse and misgendering.

Unfortunately I found myself quite disappointed with this novel. It touches on important themes of bullying and how isolating it is, but the combination of gratuitous and sometimes excessive violence by the bullies (including attempted sexual assault!) with the extensive philosophical monologues of 14 year olds caused this book to be an utter miss for me. I also found myself unable to really connect to the characters (partially due to said extensive philosophical monologues), but especially due to the fact that the things that could be interesting about their lives are not explored or explored in such a weird detached way that I just couldn't connect with.
TW for bullying, physical and emotional abuse, violence, homophobia, self harm and suicide and sexual assault.

A short but really interesting book. It follows a young isolated university student studying biology abroad as she attempts to find housing and connection. The place she finally manages to find is weird and the connection she forms even weirder.
The story really delves into isolation, loneliness and the sadness caused by the first two. It is filled with rot and decay, the feeling of losing yourself, of disappearing due to loneliness and finding connection when you completely deprive yourself of privacy for it. Yes, there's also pee, but isn't it something personal and intimate when you can hear someone pee and know they're alive and close enough that you can hear that? To me it was part of the story and the complete lack of boundaries between people in it, the fusion of the self and the other, the human and the inhuman, the girl and the rot.
The writing is exquisite, dreamlike and dripping with grime. In the meantime the young woman's identity slooowly rises to the surface like bubbles in a bog and haunts her dreams. You will need to allow yourself to drift along and let the story ferment. I really enjoyed this story, particularly the weird and haunting queerness of it. If you've ever been incredibly lonely and isolated (like I was during my first year of university in a different town) and desperately grasping for connection you will enjoy this book.

A collection of short stories centering on the ace spectrum. Out of 14 I really enjoyed 9 stories, my absolute favorites being "How to love a side winder", "No Such Thing as Just" and "The third star" and even the 5 others I still enjoyed. We encounter a wide variety of ace people, some which consider their asexuality an important part of their identity and others were its more on the sidelines. I also liked the variety in genres from eldritch sci fi (that one reminded me a lot of The Outside by Ana Hoffmann, which I adored!), to a very Buffy-esque fantasy, fairytales with mermaid and some contemporary ones. The relationships are also varied, focussing on friends, family, romantic love and polyamory, good and bad ones. As is awknowledged in the foreword cis men don't feature in this anthology as authors except as the editor (there's some side characters that are ace men) and I really hope if we ever get more ace literature it will be easier to find these ace voices as well.
While some ace people are accepted and loved, many pieces in this anthology focus on a variety of prejudices faced by many asexual people everywhere (especially because of familial and romantic expectations of normative sexuality), so be prepared for that.
One think I think could have been done better is if the stories had been structured by genres instead of jumping around quite so much, as that sometimes threw me off.
All in all this is an interesting collection of speculative ace fiction and I would recommend it to people who crave more ace rep in these genres and teen readers.

A short but sweet graphic novel following a young outlaw and a young trans woman who ran away from home to be herself instead of being forced to join the confederate army. It's an incredibly sweet story, there's some cool action and there's a lot of interesting historical facts. If you want more queer western check this out.