Very cute and fun but what makes it for me is the notes that came with it! So much care was put into the details and I loved having the extra context

I love this! I need more

This was hard to rate so the star rating is sort of subject to change. The writing style is cheesy and simple but the story is interesting and darker than I expected. Definitely going to check out book 2. I would probably have been into them if I'd read any as a kid. The descriptions of being in an animal's head, I would have loved

An epistolary novel told in verse, Dear Mothman follows Noah, a closed trans, autistic sixth-grader after the death of his best friend, Lewis. Noah decides to write to Monthman, a cryptid that Lewis loved, and find proof that he exists. More than that, this is a story about greiving, friendship, queerness, and growing up.

We watch as Noah makes friends and grows, even while still remembering and greiving. There is so much about finding your people, understanding and being understood - but also the struggle of communicating and opening up enough to let people understand you. 

So much about this book was incredible and touching, it's hard to put it into words. It takes some unexpected turns and was healing and cathartic in a way that only queer middle grade/YA lit can be. 

This was a cute romance with some really great representation of mental illness. There was also some really neat discussion about reality TV and representation at large. 

If I wanted to nitpick, I could find things that weren't believable about parts of this, but I was so engrossed with the story and characters that I didn't want to - any of it didn't break my reading experience (and certainly any gripes that I could search for to have are well within the norm for this genre anyways). I stayed up way too late reading this because I was so invested. I'm excited to read more from this author! 

This is a memoir of a trans man who decides to enter into amateur boxing for more perspective into traditional masculinity and to understand parts of himself. Boxing is pretty far outside of my typical wheelhouse, even if queer books and gender studies is right in the middle of it. So this was quite an interesting look into the inside of that as someone with very little knowledge of that component going in. 

There is a lot in here obviously about masculinity at large but even more compelling to me was how it all (masculinity as well as the experience of boxing) tied into the author's life. As McBee is unpacking masculinity and his relationship to it, he's also analyzing relationships past and present, working though grief, and processing his childhood abuse. This was really well put together and had a lot of great insight. 

This book does focus on a limited scope of masculinity, but the author clearly states his position socially (as white and cis-passing) and acknowledges how it's a different experience from others. He doesn't go far into detail on a lot of these points nor does he dig far into the class differences that he describes in the boxing gyms. This is a memoir - it makes sense that the scope would be limited, but it would have been interesting to see a bit more about this especially since he did pull from academic sources at other points in the book (and I enjoyed the discussion that he had in those sections).

Overall, I had a good time with this. It was well-written, interesting, and insightful. It grapples with a lot of big questions about masculinity, identity, and personal history in a really compelling way.

The Batchelor meets slasher film with Big Foot and her lesbian following. Completely wild and I want more! 

Overall, this was a neat memoir about her experience becoming paralyzed and how it impacted her writing. It was beautifully written. However, some parts were a bit rushed. In particular, I would have loved to see more of the last part expanded, when she was talking about African futurism and how going to Nigeria impacted her writing. But I'm glad I picked it up and hearing about her background makes me more excited to read more of her books!

So many great stories in here! I'm used to anthologies having a mix of hits and misses, but this one was really great all the way through. Even the intro alone had me wanting to go buy the editor's nonfiction! I'm looking forward to finding work from a lot of the authors featured in here.