9 Kilometers by Claudio Aguilera
I remember as a kid not wanting to get up and go to school. It was a chore and all I had to do was get up, eat a prepared breakfast, and get dressed. The sun (and my mom) was already up for at least an hour or two. I had to wait for the bus to drive oh five-ten minutes down the road. When they switched the route when I was older, it took 15-20 minutes. The only real struggle was rainy days or […]
Tell Me Everything by Laura Kay
Natasha is a mess. A very specific type of queer mess. She’s a therapist, and if she’s being honest, she would have a lot to say to herself if she was one of her own clients. As is, she’s finally moving out of the place she’s been sharing with her ex even since they broke up, continuing to be flatmates in the time since, moving out as Georgia wants to move her current girlfriend in instead. Then she meets a girl at work, kind of. […]
No Rings Attached by Rachel Lacey
Honestly, I have read fics with basically this premise a lot over the years. Someone needs a date to a wedding to avoid awkward family reactions and questions. Someone is asked by a mutual friend to fake it, as a favour. Romance ensues. Fortunately for everyone involved (me, you, other readers, the author), No Rings Attached has way more nuance and way less badly written gender identities than those examples. No Rings Attached is Rachel Lacey’s follow up to Read Between the Lines focusing on […]
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Everyone’s heard of Agatha Christie, and I like mysteries, so I wasn’t disappointed when our book club selected: And Then There Were None (1939). I’d read only one other Christie mystery, so I was googling it to figure out if I’d read it before when I came across some troubling information. The original British title of this book is horrendously offensive, and the original American title is only a little bit better. The premise of this murder mystery is that ten people are invited to a large […]
Verity by Colleen Hoover
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
This book brings to mind the concept of “trash relativism” – the idea that while some books have greater literary merit (better writing, depth of themes, strong character development, etc) not everyone reads books for those literary reasons. A lot of people read just to escape, or share in a minor distraction with mild entertainment, and the quality of the writing just isn’t that important. And those are really valuable reasons to read a book. It feels relevant to bring this up in a discussion […]
Season of Love by Helena Greer
Season of Love would not have made its way to my holiday season reading if not for emmalita’s lovely gifting of it to me, but it does check several boxes for my recent reading input: it is a queer romance which unpacks big emotions, specifically grief and trauma responses. Season of Love is also a very Jewish story told around several holidays, including Christmas. It also made Buzzfeed’s list of most anticipated LGBTQ romances of 2022 and the books I’ve read from that list (Love […]
