A love letter to romance novels:

Romance novels are such exquisite escapes. In them you can watch a piece of yourself, previously undiscovered or unappreciated, fall in love.

You can sit alone within your complex world and see a character, the very embodiment of your self doubt or lack of purpose or those weird acne scars or just your plain plainness, be loved by another character, one who also contains pieces of you and everyone who reads it.

But when you’re enveloped in the story you don’t care about everyone else who reads and empathizes with the characters because, within this highly marketable story which you have bought or borrowed (or ethically stolen), your pieces are unique. Your pieces fall and are fallen for with just the perfect amount of complications so that the story is interesting and dramatic but without the complications that the sum of your pieces bring. You are shown that those pieces of yourself that have been shoved deep inside, sometimes so far that even you can’t see them, can see the light of day. And when those pieces burst from their cocoon they might just be loved,

with the right person,

in just the right set of meet cutes and cosmic coincidences,

and maybe, just maybe the one who loves your pieces might be made of something greater than paper and ink.

I read a fan fiction that was the pairing Suez canal x the ever given and it has lived in my head rent free ever since

HAPPY APRIL 1st, i wrote a fic about the suez canal fiasco bc it's still the funniest thing that's ever happened. synopsis is "grumpy gods from different mythologies argue over whose job it is to unstick the goddamn boat"

Queer Books for 2023

🦇 Happy Sunday, my bookish bats, and welcome to Pride Month!

🏳️‍🌈 This week, I sat down and tried to plan content, only to feel delightfully overwhelmed by the many queer books coming out this year. With so many worlds to explore, genres to delve into, and characters to fall in love with, there's no end to all the ways we can celebrate diverse forms of love.

💙💜🩷 Growing up, I never saw myself reflected in media. Any representation of Muslim Americans had "terrorist" stamped alongside it. Until February 5, 2014, I never had a word for my sexuality, either; not until it was revealed that Sara Lance, played by @caitylotz, was bisexual. Even after having a word for it, I couldn't understand why accepting people for who they are was so difficult. Though I'm stunned by the number of queer characters we now have on TV (though they're often used to grab audiences before they're brutally killed off in the longstanding #BuryYourGays trope) and in books, there's still a stigma. Bisexuals are stereotyped as promiscuous or considered invalid, but regardless of the people we love or the pronouns we use, we're human. I think David Rose said it best: "I like the wine, not the label." Regardless of how you identify or whom you love, you're real. You're valid. I see you. 🩷💜💙

✨ If you stuck around long enough to get through my vulnerable, bisexual ramble, I'll stop boring you to get to the bookish bit. Here are a TON of queer books you can pick and choose from, not for pride month, but for the year. Let's read queer all year; let's make sure these voices are heard.

🏳️‍🌈 With so many queer books out and coming out, it's impossible to include them all. Share some of your favorite queer reads in the comments below. The more, the better!

Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Soloman

4.5/5

A love letter to romance novels, Seattle, and growing up. This book (and the authors note at the end) makes me not want to settle for anything less than loving where I live.

And god, the banter. It was immaculate. I listened to the audio book and I could hear the smirk in both of their voices whenever they were arguing. The substance of it was hilarious too; just a bunch of playful witticisms between two people who know they’re too smart for their own good. I think I would be excellent friends with both Rowan and Neil. Or I might hate them and their ridiculously obvious flirting, but it would definitely be a strong feeling either way.

I loved that their banter didn’t ebb in the slightest once they realized they didn’t hate each others guts. They kept bantering the entire book and it was amazing. Too many books have excellent banter in the beginning when the characters hate each other but then they just suddenly become boring card board hallmark stars without any personality the moment they kiss.

Recently when I’ve been reading romances I’ve thought that I would be absolutely ok if the two main characters just stayed friends at the end. This is a very new development and idk what it means but it’s there. It’s not like I’m disappointed when they do get together. It’s more so that I’m already satisfied with how their relationship has developed. Maybe that’s growth or something idk.

P.S.: “My saucy little minx of a backpack” will forever be ingrained into my vocabulary and I aspire to terrorise my friends with it. I quite literally guffawed and had to rewind the audio book a couple times just to let it sink in fully. 11/10.

Locked Tomb Meme Zine

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

5/5

Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series is my absolute favorite set of books and Uprooted is a similar, but shorter and more whimsical look at the worst parts of humanity and how we can heal from those. It is certainly a very distinct book with a diverse cast of characters and a unique setting, but there was the same underlying humanity that I so loved in Scholomance.

I really loved how many kinds of evil, human and inhuman, are portrayed in this book. It makes Angieszka’s triumph over them, first through violence and ultimately through compassion, far more nuanced and enjoyable.

The way Novik writes magic systems is absolutely masterful. She blends together metaphor and vivid description that make up for what would otherwise be an incredibly soft magic system that acts like a mcguffin and ruins the stakes of the novel. While I still like the Scholomance magic system more (not in the least part because it had a whole three books to develop and is a harder magic system), this one served the narrative well. I love the running narrative of roots in the valley and how little Agnieszka cares about the rules of magic as they exist to the Dragon.

Spoilers ahead:

Angieszka and the Dragon’s relationship is ✨a little creepy✨ because of the age gap and how young she is, but the Dragon feels so young and inexperienced with life that it’s not too bad. She also shows her ability to say no to any unwanted advances with Solya and the prince. That is all to say …. It’s still creepy lol.

This is how meat loves meat

Nona the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir

5/5

Tasmyn Muir continues to astound me with how many ways she can make a character just so confused. It redefines the puzzle of what in the hell is happening, which means I’ve been looking for clues in every thing any character does or says. And Muir is a good enough author that everything matters. Everything is on purpose. I love these books.

In many ways Nona is the most wholesome of the three title characters we’ve had so far, but in my opinion she’s also the most terrifying. Gideon treated her body like it was a temple in a gym bro way; Harrow treated it as a housing for the divine soul.

But to Nona, her body was just meat.

She felt joy but was incapable of seeing why the people around her living in a war zone, having their lives torn apart, weren’t also full of joy. She loved and was loved, but her love was so freely given that it did not speak to the virtues of the people she gave it to.

Despite Nona’s inhumanity, or perhaps because of it, this book (even more than the two previous ones) was about what it means to be human. The John story line was about the terrible consequences of a normal and flawed person having access to power. Nona’s inhuman love acted as a foil that highlighted what it means to love someone deeply and truly. The bounds of friendship and family were stretched with Nona and Pyrrha and Palemades and Camilla; Ianthe and Corona; and Gideon and Harrow and God. None of these relationships are perfect, most are so incredibly toxic, but they are all human.

Who knew a book about bones could tell so much about the heart (and not just anatomically, but it does that too).

Spoilers ahead:

Very early on in Harrow the Ninth, Jod was talking about the revenant beasts and how many had been defeated and the numbers weren’t adding up so I thought “woah it would be crazy if the Body was a revenant beast” and then promptly forgot about that because a bunch of crazy stuff went down.

I was right. I am so validated right now.

That is all.

Reading Nona the Ninth and going “who is she?” like I’m the antagonist of a teen movie from the 2000’s and Nona is the weird nerdy girl who got a dress and make up except the dress is a tshirt with a hamburger on it and the make up is being happy for once in Harrow’s life

Uh oh it’s the problem women!

Tasmyn Muir really out here giving all the terribly confused lesbians the representation they deserve.

We’ve got the lesbian with mommy issues who uses the gym to cope with her mom dying, the lesbian with both mommy and daddy issues who made up a whole girlfriend to cope with making her parents meat puppets, and the one with three great parents who is just confused why everyone else is so sad.

Every single one of them has no clue what is happening at any point in time and I love that for them.

Harrow the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir

5/5

Tasmyn Muir has given me Stockholm syndrome.

I was so incredibly, terribly confused the entire book and cried multiple times yet I still kept reading, and absolutely loving, this book.

Harrow the ninth was a massive departure from Gideon the ninth, and not just because it takes place some 50 billion light years away. In both books I was so terribly confused as to what was happening, but for completely different reasons. In the first book it was because Gideon is a buff swordswoman whose main goal in life is to kick ass, while in this one it was because Harrow was so incredibly, tragically broken. Until about halfway through, I didn’t understand anything other than that Harrow was a terribly neglected 17 year old who didn’t know how to process grief. That was enough for me to care about the what happened to her.

The way that Muir wrote mental illness in this book was real in a way that only somehow who has experienced it could write. But it didn’t feel like trauma porn like a lot of other books about mental illness have. I’ve read a lot of books featuring mental illness to understand myself and others better, but every other time I’ve read well portrayed mental illness it has undone me for just a little while. Harrow had lost her mind but throughout the book there was just a hint of hope for her that stopped me from becoming undone in the same way.

Spoilers ahead because I simply must talk about this:

God, the way Gideon was so ready to throw away her life again and again for Harrow without accepting any sacrifices in return was tragic. Gideon had never really been loved and so she didn’t know how to let herself be emotionally vulnerable.

“I died knowing you’d hate me for dying; but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I’d had your full attention.”

Both of them were terribly neglected as children and the only thing they had to hold on to was each other. And while that wasn’t remotely fair to either of them, they did make each other better.

Harrows personality entirely changes (in a believable way) between when she knows about Gideon and when she doesn’t. When she forgets Gideon she’s mean and vindictive and has no self worth, but through caring about Gideon she learned how to care about herself.

Their entire fucked up relationship made me cry more times than I can count while reading this book. I desperately want Gideon to understand how much Harrow cares for her (the part where Gideon says Harrow can’t love her. When I tell you I cried…). I just want them to be happy and not dead living in a delightfully dreary mausoleum somewhere with a bunch of bones and Harrows dead girlfriend. Why can’t they have nice things.

The Missing of Clairdelune by Christelle Dabos

5/5

It is very common that second installments in series do not live up to first, but that was absolutely not the case for this one. It took the fantastic world building from the first book and greatly expanded it (I especially loved the history we got on the family spirits and the little peaks into the powers of other arks from the carnival). The plot and character progressions that had just started to brew in the last book, expanded massively in this one.

Ophelia’s role in this book was much more active than in the first one and her hard fought battle for this agency shaped her into a strong and confident young woman. Throughout the first book and the first half of this one she is just constantly interrupted, but by solving the mystery of the missing people and figuring out Farouk and Thorn’s whole deal, she gains the respect of the important people in her life. While I found her relationships with people to be shallow before (not in a poorly written way), her gradual confidence boost allows her to connect with those in her life much more fully.

Her relationships with Thorn and her mother were especially impacted by their respect for her. Thorn eventually trusts her to be able to take care of herself and thus lets her into his confidence, making me actually root for their relationship for the first time. For her mother, it was simultaneously her figuring out just how dangerous the Pole is and how well Ophelia has managed to adapt to this danger. Her respect for Ophelia was really the last strand for Ophelia to realize her full potential and basically clean up everyone’s problems.

My library doesn’t have the 3rd and 4th books so I think I’m gonna have to buy them, because not reading them is not an option at this point. I’m way too invested in this story.

Spoilers ahead:

Holy balls, God is terrifying and awesome and the perfect villain (?) for this series. I was reading this book during my lunch break and had to go back to work fairly distracted because I paused in the middle of them literally trying to kill God.

Also, Thorn really did just dip at the end even though Ophelia went through all that work to save him. Ungrateful man smh.

I reread the “he doesn’t have the right” section at least 4 times because it was just so well written. The anaphora is just *chefs kiss*

She stood still in the cold darkness, lost inside her coat, her stomach so knotted she felt nauseous. From Thorn she’d been ready for anything. Brutality. Disdain. Indifference.

He didn’t have the right to fall in love with her.

- A WInter’s Promise, Christelle Dabos

A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos

5/5

I absolutely adored this book. It is reminiscent of the Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart (a book series I devoured as a child), but with a slightly more grown up main character and much heavier subject material. The world building is incredibly unique and every fact you learn about the world just opens up further lines of questioning. The story and plot is kind of convoluted and slightly confusing with how many different factions and motives there are, but it ties itself together nicely and makes sense. The characters are very exaggerated but as you learn more about them, they reveal hidden nuances that ground them in reality.

Throughout the book, it was very annoying how no one respected Ophelia and just kept talking over her, but (as I’ll talk about more in my review for the second book) her overcoming this was a really intriguing drive for her character. Ophelia in general is a nuanced narrator, who because of her newness to the Pole, is able to allow us to see the absurdity of it all far better than someone like Thorn would have been able to. Her ability to read objects and the way it’s written is a super unique narrative device that helped advance the plot and our understanding of the world, but wasn’t used as a get out of jail free card for giving Ophelia information. She was very active through her own merits and not just because of her magical powers, which was very fun.

I enjoy Thorn and Ophelia’s relationship (like Thorns an asshole the whole time in this book, but it’s well written) because it is explicitly not romantic on the part of Ophelia. She’s definitely somewhere on the ace spectrum and explicitly says that she is incapable of loving any man as a wife, which I think is dope. It’s incredibly rare to see ace characters in books, especially in books where said character is engaged and interacts with people who are romantically (Thorn) and sexually (Archibald) interested in her, while also doing loads of other stuff on her own completely unrelated to romance. She just kinda seems so confused and annoyed by the entire thing and I love that for her.

Her and Thorn’s relationship also is a lot more compelling as a friendship/mutual partnership than it would be as a romance, because it really allows Thorn’s controlling nature to be analyzed and criticized by Ophelia without any unearned romantic or sexual feelings complicating it. Any kind of trust (or distrust) that she has for Thorn is completely earned and really well explored in this first book. It sets up a lot of conflicts that will continue to be important and drive the character arcs of the two characters

One con of this book is that the translation is very apparent. There are a number of times (especially towards the end of the book) where the sentence structure is not changed from French (for example something along the lines of “I you like” instead of “I like you”). This didn’t negatively effect my ready experience but it might for other people. Also there are loads of words that I have to assume are just literally translated from French but would never be used in modern English. I had to look up definitions of words at a far higher rate than most other books, but imo that was a bonus because I got to learn a bunch of new words (like now I can say that I’m gonna perambulate to class like a cool kid)

Every time I think about Mary Shelley I think about the fact that she lost her virginity on her mothers grave and this specific joke was the moment I knew I was gonna love this book.

The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels, p.75

never have i ever snorted so loudly laughing at a book