J.C: should I be concerned that the nurse, and the aide, both told me to check myself into the ER if I thought of hurting myself or somebody else? Multiple times. In the thirty minutes I had to be meeting with both of them? And separately?
Blurb: When a threat no one could have expected bears down on the Marvel Universe, a ragtag, untrained band of teens has no choice but to rise together and prove to the world that sometimes, the difference between a hero and a misfit is just in the name.
Oh GOD I just finished Soul of Stars by Ashley Poston after DEVOURING it's precursor Heart of Iron after i got that book from my cousin back in like. 2018. And a little bit of scrolling in the tags on tumblr showed that it was a completely nonexistent fandom on here- but then I tentatively went to AO3 because I'm desperate. And there are THREE works. THREE. I'm gonna cry.
What are some of your favorite retellings? Bonus points if they're queer.
February's trad pub pick from @rainbowcratebookbox was My Dear Henry by Kalynn Bayron—a queer Jekyll & Hyde retelling.
Some of my favorite retellings are The Once Upon a Con series by Ashley Poston, Heart of Iron/Soul of Stars by Ashley Poston, You're a Mean one, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky, and The Bone Spindle by Leslie Vedder.
Synopsis:
London, 1885. Gabriel Utterson, a 17-year-old law clerk, has returned to London for the first time since his life— and that of his dearest friend, Henry Jekyll—was derailed by a scandal that led to his and Henry's expulsion from the London Medical School. Whispers about the true nature of Gabriel and Henry's relationship have followed the boys for two years, and now Gabriel has a chance to start again.
But Gabriel doesn't want to move on, not without Henry. His friend has become distant and cold since the disastrous events of the prior spring, and now his letters have stopped altogether. Desperate to discover what's become of him, Gabriel takes to watching the Jekyll house.
In doing so, Gabriel meets Hyde, a a strangely familiar young man with white hair and a magnetic charisma. He claims to be friends with Henry, and Gabriel can't help but begin to grow jealous at their apparent closeness, especially as Henry continues to act like Gabriel means nothing to him.
But the secret behind Henry's apathy is only the first part of a deeper mystery that has begun to coalesce. Monsters of all kinds prowl within the London fog—and not all of them are out for blood...
Seventeen-year-old Ana is a scoundrel by nurture and an outlaw by nature. Found as a child drifting through space with a sentient android called D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the grizzled crew she now calls family. But D09—one of the last remaining illegal Metals—has been glitching, and Ana will stop at nothing to find a way to fix him.
Ana’s desperate effort to save D09 leads her on a quest to steal the coordinates to a lost ship that could offer all the answers. But at the last moment, a spoiled Ironblood boy beats Ana to her prize. He has his own reasons for taking the coordinates, and he doesn’t care what he’ll sacrifice to keep them.
When everything goes wrong, she and the Ironblood end up as fugitives on the run. Now their entire kingdom is after them—and the coordinates—and not everyone wants them captured alive.
What they find in a lost corner of the universe will change all their lives—and unearth dangerous secrets. But when a darkness from Ana’s past returns, she must face an impossible choice: does she protect a kingdom that wants her dead or save the Metal boy she loves?
book 2 in a fun YA space opera Anastasia-retelling duology
a dark AI program has taken over the androids and kingdom, and the crew have to travel to the edges of the kingdom to find a way to save everyone from its clutches
found family space pirates, m/m, m/f, side sapphics
Nicole: What kinds of sounds annoy you?
JC: Are we talking real sounds or imaginary ones?
Nicole, now interested: Lets say imaginary.
JC: Spiders wearing flip flops.