• All Reviews,  Literature

    ARC Review: Red, White & Royal Blue

    22 January, 2019
    41150487

    A big-hearted romantic comedy in which the First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales after an incident of international proportions forces them to pretend to be best friends…

    First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations.

    The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. Alex is busy enough handling his mother’s bloodthirsty opponents and his own political ambitions without an uptight royal slowing him down. But beneath Henry’s Prince Charming veneer, there’s a soft-hearted eccentric with a dry sense of humor and more than one ghost haunting him.

    As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. And Henry throws everything into question for Alex, an impulsive, charming guy who thought he knew everything: What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?

    Red, White & Royal Blue

    Casey McQuiston

    Rating: 4.5/5 🌈
    Published: 14th May 2019
    Goodreads
    Rep: Mexican-American bi mc, gay li with depression, female bi side characters, non-white side characters, trans lesbian side character

    Give yourself away sometimes, sweetheart. There’s so much of you.

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Gay Spanish Poets

    15 January, 2019

    If there’s one thing me and Anna want to do with this blog, it’s expand your horizons when it comes to LGBT lit. So, in that vein, we also want to review and recommend some literature that you might not have thought about reading before, namely literature in languages other than English. And to kick this off, I decided to write a post about some gay Spanish poets.

    I know, I know. Your first thought may be something along the lines of woah, this is pretty niche, I don’t know if I’m interested in this. But. Bear with me here (and also with the length of this post, my slightly rusty/clunky translating skills, etc, etc). I spent an afternoon down a rabbit hole (aka Wikipedia) just to find some gay Spanish poets (it’s a procrastination technique). Most of them don’t have English translations, so it’s gonna go like this: a little bio about the author, and then one of my favourite poems of theirs, which I’ll attempt to translate (or, where possible, provide a translation from the internet). Hence why I’m apologising for the length of this post and my translating skills before we even get started.

    I really hope you enjoy reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it (and staring at the cost of actually reading some of these authors’ collections. No one should be charging upwards of even £20, not including shipping, for a poetry collection. No one), and let me know if this is something you would like to see more of!

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: The Great Big LGBT Rec List (IV)

    10 January, 2019

    Today is the day (for better or for worse). We’ve reached the last part of our recs list (sad face). You can find the rest of the list here. I’m really not sure what to say here, because it’s all been said, and I just feel like saying more would mean talking out my arse, so like. On to the books!

    A brief reminder of the key:

    lesbians & wlw relationships: ☀️
    gays & mlm relationships: 🌿
    bisexual characters: 💎
    trans, genderqueer, non-binary, gnc characters: 🌷
    LGBT authors: 🌈
    poetry: 🌉

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: The Great Big LGBT Rec List (III)

    7 January, 2019

    I really hope I can say “here comes the post you’ve all been waiting for!!” and be right… Well, the post does come, so I’m already halfway there… In any case! Like the title says, this is part 3 of our very big and very great, and very much made up of books by & for the LGBT community recommendations list!

    Today I give you books number 51 all the way to 75. There’s only one post in this series left! (So far. Charlotte & I hope you guys would be interested in more posts like this when we hit our next followers milestone!)

    Question we already asked on twitter (here): would you be interested in a Q&A, to get to know Charlotte and me better? Let us know in the comments!

    Before you dive in, make sure you read part one and part two of our Great Big LGBT Rec List! And take one more look at how we mark the rep in this series:

    lesbians & wlw relationships: ☀️
    gays & mlm relationships: 🌿
    bisexual characters: 💎
    trans, genderqueer, non-binary, gnc characters: 🌷
    LGBT authors: 🌈
    poetry: 🌉

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: The Great Big LGBT Rec List (II)

    4 January, 2019

    It’s Friday, which means (you guessed it!) Anna is finally letting me post the second part of the Great Big Rec List! (I’m kidding, kind of. Anna keeps the posts on this blog regular.) Anna posted her first 25 here, and you can find all of the parts of this list here or by the link in the menu up top.

    So, here is a list of 25 of my favourite LGBT books. I say of my favourite because, not unexpectedly, when I tried to write down only 50 books, the list kept spilling over (so did Anna’s, which is good news for you guys because it means there might be more than 4 parts to this series). The books on here are all ones I’ve loved, and they’re also all ones which end on a, if not always outright happy, then hopeful note. (You can always trust me and Anna not to rec you tragic gay stories, or ones which end up burying their gays, just fyi.) There are some books that need trigger warnings on this list, so if you’re wondering, just drop us a comment and we can answer any questions!

    Once again, the key to the rep is:

    lesbians & wlw relationships: ☀️
    gays & mlm relationships: 🌿
    bisexual characters: 💎
    trans, genderqueer, non-binary, gnc characters: 🌷
    LGBT authors: 🌈
    poetry: 🌉

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: The Great Big LGBT Rec List (I)

    1 January, 2019

    We talked about this giant rec list on twitter before & if anyone thought we’re only joking… well, you guys just don’t know how serious we are about LGBT literature yet.

    100 LGBT books. Fifty from me & fifty from Charlotte. Our favourite titles that we think everyone should read. Posted in four neat parts over the first two weeks of the year, so we can start off 2019 properly.

    Of course, for this list to make sense, you have to know what rep you can expect from each book. And this time, to make things obvious right away (and also to make everything cuter), we chose to use various emojis. And so it goes:

    lesbians & wlw relationships: ☀️
    gays & mlm relationships: 🌿
    bisexual characters: 💎
    trans, genderqueer, non-binary, gnc characters: 🌷
    LGBT authors: 🌈

    And because most of the list is composed of novels and short stories, we decided to mark poetry as well: 🌉

    Let’s go!

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Graphic Novels

    24 December, 2018

    Let’s be real, what’s better than some graphic novels. I mean, you get a great story and great artwork! (Also, you get a nice boost to your reading challenge, if you’re a bit behind at times like me…)

    So today I’m here with ten titles, all of them featuring LGBT leads, most of them actually having way more than one character who’s not cishet. A Christmas gift for you all, if you will. :>>

    Enjoy!

    And if you need more, here’s a post about LGBT graphic novels, part II.

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  • All Reviews,  Literature

    Book Review: True Letters from a Fictional Life

    22 December, 2018
    24485772

    If you asked anyone in his small Vermont town, they’d tell you the facts: James Liddell, star athlete, decent student and sort-of boyfriend to cute, peppy Theresa, is a happy, funny, carefree guy.

    But whenever James sits down at his desk to write, he tells a different story. As he fills his drawers with letters to the people in his world—letters he never intends to send—he spills the truth: he’s trying hard, but he just isn’t into Theresa. It’s a boy who lingers in his thoughts.

    He feels trapped by his parents, his teammates, and the lies they’ve helped him tell, and he has no idea how to escape. Is he destined to live a life of fiction?

    True Letters from a Fictional Life

    Kenneth Logan

    Rating: 4/5 🌈
    Published: 7th June 2016
    Goodreads
    Rep: gay mc

    I didn’t come up with the lie. It wasn’t mine. They handed the lie to me, and I tried like hell to make it work for a while.

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: NA Romances

    14 December, 2018

    If you’re like me, then you’ll understand that sometimes, you really have to read a romance novel. And, of course, 99% of the time, you just can’t find a decent LGBT one – it’s all either sex-filled and lacking tension, or straight-up awful. So, the point of this list is to rec you ten of the best LGBT NA romances I’ve read (hopefully, to be the first part of many).

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  • All Reviews,  Literature

    Book Review: The Pursuit Of…

    12 December, 2018
    39962903

    What do a Black American soldier, invalided out at Yorktown, and a white British officer who deserted his post have in common? Quite a bit, actually. 

    • They attempted to kill each other the first time they met. 
    • They’re liable to try again at some point in the five-hundred mile journey that they’re inexplicably sharing. 
    • They are not falling in love with each other. 
    • They are not falling in love with each other. 
    • They are… Oh, no. 

    The Pursuit Of… is about a love affair between two men and the Declaration of Independence. It’s a novella of around 38,000 words.

    The Pursuit Of…

    Courtney Milan

    Rating: 4/5 🌈
    Published: 26th June 2018
    Goodreads
    Rep: gay mcs (lgbt author), black mc

    Henry held John’s hand throughout, clutching it as if it were the lowest rung on the ladder to heaven.

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  • All Reviews,  Literature

    ARC Review: Jack of Hearts (And Other Parts)

    5 October, 2018
    40609443

    Meet Jack Rothman. He’s seventeen and loves partying, makeup and boys – sometimes all at the same time. His sex life makes him the hot topic for the high school gossip machine. But who cares? Like Jack always says, ‘it could be worse’.

    He doesn’t actually expect that to come true.

    But after Jack starts writing an online sex advice column, the mysterious love letters he’s been getting take a turn for the creepy. Jack’s secret admirer knows everything: where he’s hanging out, who he’s sleeping with, who his mum is dating. They claim they love Jack, but not his unashamedly queer lifestyle. They need him to curb his sexuality, or they’ll force him.

    As the pressure mounts, Jack must unmask his stalker before their obsession becomes genuinely dangerous…

    Jack of Hearts (And Other Parts)

    Lev A. C. Rosen

    Rating: 3/5 🌈
    Published: 30th October 2018
    Goodreads
    Rep: gay mc and side character (ownvoices), black side characters (not ownvoices), two sapphic side characters (one bi, one not stated)

    My first time getting it in the butt was kind of weird. I think it’s going to be weird for everyone’s first time, though.

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  • All Reviews,  Literature

    ARC Review: What If It’s Us

    2 October, 2018
    39704614

    Arthur is only in New York for the summer, but if Broadway has taught him anything, it’s that the universe can deliver a showstopping romance when you least expect it.

    Ben thinks the universe needs to mind its business. If the universe had his back, he wouldn’t be on his way to the post office carrying a box of his ex-boyfriend’s things.

    But when Arthur and Ben meet-cute at the post office, what exactly does the universe have in store for them?

    Maybe nothing. After all, they get separated.

    Maybe everything. After all, they get reunited.

    But what if they can’t quite nail a first date . . . or a second first date . . . or a third?

    What if Arthur tries too hard to make it work . . . and Ben doesn’t try hard enough?

    What if life really isn’t like a Broadway play?

    But what if it is?

    What If It’s Us

    Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

    Rating: 1/5 🌈
    Published: 9th October 2018
    Goodreads
    Rep: gay mcs (one ownvoices, one not), Puerto Rican mc (ownvoices), Jewish mc (ownvoices), mc with ADHD, side character with anxiety, side non-white characters

    I don’t know if we’re in a love story or a story about love.

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  • All Reviews,  Literature

    Book Review: Almost Like Being in Love

    30 September, 2018
    239092

    A high school jock and nerd fall in love senior year, only to part after an amazing summer of discovery to attend their respective colleges. They keep in touch at first, but then slowly drift apart.

    Flash forward twenty years.

    Travis and Craig both have great lives, careers, and loves. But something is missing …. Travis is the first to figure it out. He’s still in love with Craig, and come what may, he’s going after the boy who captured his heart, even if it means forsaking his job, making a fool of himself, and entering the great unknown. 

    Told in narrative, letters, checklists, and more, this is the must-read novel for anyone who’s wondered what ever happened to that first great love.

    Almost Like Being in Love

    Steve Kluger

    Rating: 4/5 🌈
    Published: 11th May 2004
    Goodreads
    Rep: gay mc and li (ownvoices)

    And as long as I’m being brutally candid, I only wound up teaching American History because I followed a cute ass into the country-and-western section at Barnes & Noble (…).

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