yourbookishbff's Reviews (650)

This was a really enjoyable read and my first by Mimi Matthews! The historical touches (the pretty horse-breakers, the Victorian spiritualism, etc.) added a lot to the story, and I loved our two main characters. The male main character is biracial and Indian, and the female main character is white, and Matthews navigates the difficulties of interracial marriages at this time - as well as the difficulty in simply existing in the kingdom of your colonizer as an Indian person in the late 1800s (particularly after the uprising of 1857). Matthews is also biracial and Indian and notes in the author's note how Ahmad's story reflects her own feelings of being caught between worlds and cultures. This is slower-paced and a felt a little too long for the central conflict to support, but I'll likely continue the series! This is closed-door, with lots of pining and slow-building tension that is truly delicious. 

This is CL Polk's debut work - historical fantasy set in a magical WWI-era alt-England with a murder mystery and closed-door MM romance. It starts the Kingston cycle, a trilogy of interconnected fantasies that each have a central romance with a different set of main characters, but one overarching class/political conflict. I really enjoyed this, though I would say the romance felt like it took more of a backseat than I had hoped and the world-building leaned info-dumpy at times. That said, this is a really concrete magic system and an intricately imagined world and Polk did a LOT of work creating the foundation for us in this book, so I look forward to seeing how this lends itself to compelling mysteries and adventures in books two and three (if I can manage to forgive our side character from book one who becomes a main character in book two - looking forward to this redemption arc, because I'm still pretty rage-y!). 

Also just have to give a shout-out to the on-page bicycle race with the villains - this was SO FUN and really memorable. 

I loved every single thing about this book. This is childhood friends to rivals to lovers, with a prickly bisexual female main character and her opal-obsessed childhood best friend and former lover back from the (penal) colonies and wanted for murder. K.J. Charles bridges moments of authentic reflection and moments of absolute absurdity so well, and our jewel-heist-gone-awry creates a compelling (and delightfully stressy) premise. I appreciate the attention to character development here, as both main characters are forced to confront their own insecurities and mistakes, and love witnessing the new and sustainable bond they forge. The character work makes this HEA feel rock-solid. This series is FUN and hot and queer and I just love it. Also - the on-page discussions of pregnancy prevention, miscarriage, and sexual health are so well done. 

This is my first by Tommy Orange, and based on reviews from other readers, I do wish I had read There, There first, as it would likely have helped orient me within the family and the timeline. This is an unflinching look at the multigenerational trauma experienced by Indigenous families who survived European colonization and genocide. Wandering Stars picks up in the wake up the Sand Creek Massacre and then explores each following generation in episodic, character-driven chapters that jump between third, second and first-person. At about the halfway point, we jump ahead to 2018 and our story begins to circle two primary characters - both Indigenous high-school boys living in Oakland with their complicated families and nascent addictions to painkillers. There is a throughline in school trauma across generations - from the violent imprisonment and forced assimilation of boarding schools like Carlisle to today's schools rocked by gun violence and inequity. 

This read was ultimately not for me. It didn't stand alone easily, and I felt I was missing too much of There, There to really understand these big character jumps (requesting this ARC when I hadn't read There, There is ENTIRELY on me - I truly thought this would stand alone). I also don't love overwrought prose - sentences that are routinely paragraph-length run-ons remind me why I don't read as much lit fiction anymore. These are my own preferences, though, and I would still say this is an important and propulsive read that will likely be appreciated by those who loved There, There. 

This is a fascinating collection of short stories, all inspired by Palestinian folklore but playing with very different speculative styles. Where stories like Muneera and the Moon and Autumn Child feel like queer and gender-bent fairytale retellings, stories like What the Ghouleh Said on Thursday of the Dead and The Birds Who Turned to Stone feel more like prophetic horror. My favorites of the collection are Muneera and the Moon, From Whole Cloth, Handala: The Olive, the Storm, and the Sea, and Autumn Child. Sulaiman's voice comes through clearly throughout - lyrical, pensive, gripping - and the political and historical commentary on Palestinian trauma, diaspora and colonization are naturally woven into these stories without feeling too heavy handed. 

I would note, though, that the stories feel really different in scope and style, making this feel a bit disconnected as a collection. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed each story and would recommend this to fantasy and speculative fiction readers interested in Palestinian folklore.

In this installment in the Singing Hills Cycle, we explore grief, platonic love and devotion, and memory. Chih has returned to the abbey to discover their mentor has died, and that their warrior granddaughters have arrived with their mammoths (!) to claim the body. Chih and their fellow clerics learn more about memory and friendship from the neixin, and we learn more about Almost Brilliant and their lineage. This was such a moving reflection on grief, and is one of my favorites in the cycle so far. 

EE Ottoman delivers on a really rich setting and sense of place in a heavily plot-driven and STRESSY story that had me genuinely on edge at several points. I really appreciated the reflection on healthcare during the Yellow Fever epidemic, the strong focus on medical history (and how it intersects with anti-trans violence in horrific ways), the political intrigue, and our characters' intersectional identities and experiences. A hard-won romance between a Black, cisgender man and a white, trans man working as physicians in New York City in the 1830s. 

This is a deeply personal collection of poems reflecting on the various intersections of identity. As a trans Palestinian living in diaspora, Mx. Yaffa addresses the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and its impact on Palestinians worldwide. 

I LOVED this series set-up for the Lilywhite Boys, and I'm kicking myself for not reading it before Any Old Diamonds. I adored Stan and Christiana's sweet love story and the blend of realism and absurdity in how it unfolds. Stan is a cisgender man and Christiana is a trans woman, and both identify as asexual. Their navigation of gender, sexuality and romance is so tender and respectful, even against a backdrop of violence and organized crime. 

Only Milan can wind stinky cheese into a Revolutionary War love story. In all seriousness, though, I loved her take on a war story, where both characters are rightfully nonplussed by the patriotic lies they're sold by those in power, and where both find war to be an exercise in gruesome futility. This is a grumpy x sunshine story, with a Black American soldier who fought in the war solely to earn freedom for his brother-in-law and a white British soldier who has committed treason from day one and is now defecting from the military. Henry and John each carry their own deep-seated insecurities, and their road-trip love story is slow and gentle and deeply reflective and sweet. I was grateful for the direct confrontation with Henry's privilege and their navigation of power imbalance. A lovely addition to the Worth Saga!