Beautiful and harrowing, this novel absolutely lives up to the brilliance of Emezi's other novels, while being completely unique. It was intense and incredible. I have so many thoughts on the characters and themes, but most of them would spoil the story. Over all, this is an amazing book -- certainly one of the best that I've read this year.

Over all, I really enjoyed this book. I grew very attached to some of the characters and I liked the plot (as a Night Vale fan, I appreciated the focus on weird fiction podcasts). I would give this 4 stars for enjoyment, however, there were a number of technical issues with the book. Some of it was errors that should have been caught in editing -- like inconsistencies in certain scenes. Pacing was also strange in a place or two in the book. I did think that pieces of the book were overly dramatic and a bit predictable. Despite its flaws, I had a really good time with this story.

This is definitely a dense read and an emotional one, but it is well worth it. This book goes through so many aspects of activism around the AIDS epidemic and discusses the rise and fall of ACT UP. There is a clear focus on emotional framework, which is something often left untouched when looking at social movements (but so important). But in order to discuss the emotional framework, she has to discuss many other things going on. So, there is a really clear picture of the movement and many of the sides to the story (particularly as she describes ACT UP's decline). I would not recommend it to people who are unfamiliar with academic texts, but if you are looking for social science/social movement/political science texts, I would definitely recommend this. 

This is my favorite book of the year so far. it is a character-driven scifi about grief, humanity and much more. I adore the writing style and the story as a whole. 

I really enjoyed this poetry collection. There was a lot on love: missed and lost, but also the internal struggle around self-love. One big emotion that I held onto through this was the melancholy (the yearning), and definitely found myself relating to it.

 It was quite short but covered many topics. I am looking forward to finding more pieces by many of the women in this anthology.

There are a lot of things that do make this stand out from other YA dystopians. I appreciated that it went away from some of the (overdone imo) conventions. Additionally, the focus on environment was realistic and timely. I really enjoyed the elements of the dystopia/setting. I also enjoyed the themes, world-building, & frequent story-within-a-story format. But, I found the main romance unnecessary/forced & had some smaller issues.

This was a cute and fast slice-of-life romance. Maybe a bit cheesey, but I enjoyed it. It is great to see queer people just living. While there is mention of typical hurdles that exist for many LGBT folks, the story was focused on family. Simple and wholesome. 

Gender Outlaw is a reflection that is part gender studies, part memoir. This book takes on many topics related to gender and even sexuality, many of which are controversial even within the trans community. This text is very queer -- not just queer as in "gay" but queer as in "radical" queer as in "fuck your black-and-white". LGBTQ+ framework is constantly in flux, so as time goes on, the definitions that it covers might change -- framework, much like gender that Borntein describes, is constantly in flux. But the core of queerness will stand strong as a queer classic.