• All Reviews,  Literature

    Blog Tour: This is How You Lose the Time War

    18 July, 2019

    We’re so excited to be part of a blog tour for This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone! This beautiful little epistolary novel is out today, and is definitely one you’re going to want to pick up (like, now, please pick it up right now). If you’ve been looking for an f/f book with that kind of intense and all-consuming romance you only ever see with m/m or m/f couples? Well, how can you say no to this?

    So, scroll down, read my review, and then head on over to the other blogs to see how they felt.

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    Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

    And thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more.

    Except discovery of their bond would be death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?

    This is How You Lose the Time War

    Amal el-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

    Rating: 5/5 🌈
    Published: 18th July 2019
    Goodreads
    Rep: wlw mcs

    But hunger is a many-splendoured thing: it needn’t be conceived in limbic terms, in biology. Hunger, Red – to sate a hunger or to stoke it, to feel hunger as a furnace, to trace its edges like teeth – is this a thing you, singly, know? Have you ever had a hunger that whetted itself on what you fed it, sharpened so keen and bright that it might split you open, break a new thing out?

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: LGBT Retellings (Fairy Tales)

    11 July, 2019

    I mentioned on twitter the other day that I was thinking of making a post like this and everyone was very into the idea. I mean, what’s better than taking a classic story we all know & putting a gay spin on it, right?

    I put a parenthesis in the title of this rec list and there’s a very simple reason for it: there are going to be two more in the “series”! One for classic books (think Peter Pan or Sherlock Holmes) and one for mythologies (in a very broad meaning of the word). So look out for those!

    Before we start, let me make an honorary mention of Ash by Malinda Lo, the lesbian retelling of Cinderella. It’s not on the list itself because I can’t rec you a book you all already know, can I? But just in case you forgot for a second…

    And now, let’s go boldly into the world of LGBT fairy tales!

    See also: LGBT retellings of folklore, fairy tales, classic books & books about historical figures
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  • All Reviews,  Book Club,  Literature

    Buddy Read: Girl Made of Stars

    22 June, 2019

    Week three of our little, proud project is upon us and this time we were reading a book with a bisexual protagonist. Cool fact about this book is that the MC actually uses the label, it shows up multiple times and there’s actual on page representation. Feels good, feels organic. (It’s also another book by Ashley Herring Blake where that happens!)

    That being said, if you count me and Anna individually, we’re currently going 1 in 4 for how good our buddy reads are. So, to say we’re really hoping the last book improves on that is an understatement…

    Read on to find out which one of us actually enjoyed this week’s book!

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  • All Reviews,  Book Club,  Literature

    Buddy Read: Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

    16 June, 2019

    After the disaster that was our first buddy read, we are back again for take two! It was, you might say, an inauspicious start. Anna didn’t even pick up this book until Saturday morning (hence why the post is delayed until Sunday. Thanks for ruining my carefully organised schedule for this month, Anna). But now, we’re sorted, and ready to review!

    So, read on to find out if this week was better than the last!

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  • All Reviews,  Book Club,  Literature

    Buddy Read: Of Fire and Stars

    8 June, 2019

    We start off our buddy reads with Of Fire and Stars, and the L of LGBT in the form of a lesbian mc. This book has been on both our TBRs for a while, for a number of reasons. (By which I mean reasons we wanted to read it, not reasons why we waited until now. That’s just called having a way too long TBR.)

    It’s a fantasy! With an f/f romance! It’s ownvoices! Given our taste in books, we honestly thought we couldn’t ask for more!

    Read on to see if we were right.

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Superheroes

    26 May, 2019

    Look me in the eyes and answer one single question: is there anything better than gay superheroes?

    No! The correct answer is no & I’m glad we all agree on that. It also means that I compiled a list of ten books with LGBT superheroes just for you guys. And a quick note – only two of those are comics! This is not to say that comics are anything less than, which is an absurd notion & one I absolutely do not want associated with me or this blog. But I wanted to showcase that superheroes are more than beautiful comics and can have their stories told through novels as well!

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Adult Lit (II)

    12 May, 2019

    This is part two of that really long adult lit rec list I promised you. Part one can be found here, and all the parts will be in this tag (eventually).

    You might notice as this list goes on, some genres will have fewer recs. That’s just because there’s not a lot in those genres that I’ve been able to find (as of yet!).

    Key:

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

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Adult Lit (I)

    4 May, 2019

    The other day I was scrolling through twitter and I saw someone make a comment that they didn’t see any rec lists of adult LGBT books. Which. Once you say it, becomes obvious, really. There are a lot of lists of YA LGBT books. In fact, those are the ones me and Anna find easiest to confirm the rep in for you. Adult books? That’s hard. Often, those are the ones where we find ourselves spending 10 minutes just trying to find a confirmation that it is LGBT, let alone how.

    So this is (probably only part one of) a list of all the adult LGBT lit we can find (read, unread, and pre-release). Where possible, we’ve added in rep as usual, but for that we’re mostly reliant on Goodreads reviewers (and you know how vague they can be). But. These are 50 confirmed LGBT novels. Sorted by genre (10 of each).

    Enjoy!

    Key:

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

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Lesbian Authors

    26 April, 2019

    April 26th is the International Lesbian Visibility Day! And what’s a better way to celebrate that than having a lesbian talk about other lesbians? (Possibly getting said lesbian a girlfriend but shh…)

    I was actually talking with Charlotte about what we should post for this occasion and at first we just wanted to go with books with lesbian protags. But then we realised… As many sapphic books as we’re getting lately, still not a lot of them uses the word “lesbian” on page. And I’m not gonna lie, I would really love for us to finally get over that and stop treating lesbian as a dirty word or whatever is happening here.

    But yes, this is why y’all are getting a rec list of books written by lesbians. We gotta stick together, right? I’m also changing the format of our rec lists for this one, because I want to highlight authors more than anything else. I’ll be putting one book per a lesbian here, but that’s not to say I think it’s the only one you should read!

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  • All Reviews,  Literature

    ARC Review: I Knew Him

    24 April, 2019
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    In his senior year of high school, Julian has one goal: be invisible. All he wants is to study hard, play basketball, and pretend he’s straight for one more year. Then, he can run away to university and finally tell the world he’s bisexual. And by “the world,” he means everyone but his mom and best friend. That’s two conversations he never wants to have.

    When he’s talked into auditioning for the school’s production of Hamlet, Julian fears that veering off course will lead to assumptions he’s not ready to face. Despite that, he can’t help but feel a connection to this play. His absent father haunts him like a ghost, his ex is being difficult, and he’s overthinking everything. It’s driving him crazy.

    The decision to audition leads Julian on an entirely different path. He’s cast as Hamlet, and the boy playing Horatio is unlike anyone Julian has met before. Mysterious and flirtatious, Sky draws Julian in, even though he fears his feelings at the same time. As the two grow closer, Julian begins to let out the secrets he’s never told—the ones that have paralyzed him for years. But what will he do if Sky feels the same way?

    I Knew Him

    Abigail de Niverville

    Rating: 4/5 🌈
    Published: 15th April 2019
    Goodreads
    Rep: bi mc, gay half-Filipino li, lesbian side character, gay side characters (bi author)

    And it didn’t matter to me who knew and didn’t. If people asked questions, I’d answer. I’d let them come to their own conclusions otherwise. I owed this world nothing. The only person I owed anything to was myself.

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Upcoming Releases with Excellent Tropes

    18 April, 2019

    You know how there are some big tropes that are just autoread for you? But then it turns out that 9 times out of 10 that trope is just done with a heterosexual couple and you’re like please for once will someone make this trope gay (because we all know even the best tropes become a thousand times better when they’re gay).

    Well then, you’re in luck! Because this list is ten upcoming (gay) releases that use all the best tropes. Here we have fake dating, hate to love, found family, second chance romance, friends to lovers, and that one where they’re project partners.

    But, yes, they’re all as-of-yet-unreleased. Sorry.

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Historical

    11 April, 2019

    Hello from Cornwall! Or not really, because this is a scheduled post and I am currently probably dragging my family around yet another castle (they should never have let me plan the trip, is all I’m saying). It’s probably apt, then, that my rec list is going to be full of history!

    Historical LGBT books are a bit of a minefield, I think we can all agree. You think you’ll have come across a good one, and then all of a sudden, it’s either a) tragic, b) buries its gays (because no gay people ever had a happy ending in the past, did they?), or c) does both. So, of the utmost importance on this list, is that the book isn’t overly tragic all the way through, and it absolutely does not bury its gays.

    So, with that in mind, here are ten historical LGBT books for you!

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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: High Fantasy

    4 April, 2019

    Have you ever noticed how a lot of fantasy with LGBT characters tends to be urban fantasy? Obviously, that’s no bad thing, but sometimes you just want to read about LGBT characters in high fantasy settings. (Or, let’s be real, you want to read high fantasy settings without the casual homophobia, but apparently that’s too hard for some people to write. Not that I’m bitter, but.) Because it’s fantasy, so why shouldn’t we be there too?

    So here are ten high fantasy books with LGBT mains. Brief disclaimer before I begin: there are three books on here I haven’t read, but people I trust have reviewed them highly (and also I plan to read them asap).

    Related: LGBT High Fantasy, part two
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  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Witches (And Other Magic-Doers)

    26 March, 2019

    LGBT people are magic, so obviously I had to do a rec list of LGBT books with witches (and various other magic-doers). Shamefully, I haven’t read all that many (that I’m willing to rec. There is that One Series We Don’t Talk About as well, but it’ll be a cold day in hell when I rec that), so some of the ones on here are ones people I trust have loved, or ones that aren’t yet published.

    But, because they’re about witches (and other magic-doers), and they’re LGBT, I can guarantee* that they’ll be amazing.

    *Please don’t actually hold me to this, thanks.

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