Queer Book Recommendations

Every once in a while I like sharing some queer book recommendations on here as I read a lot and I get requests to share some of the books I love, so here we go! 

Tell Me I'm Worthless: Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends Ila and Hannah. Since then, things have not been going well. Alice is living a haunted existence, selling videos of herself cleaning for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep. She hasn’t spoken to Ila since they went into the House. She hasn’t seen Hannah either.

Our Wives Under The Sea: Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. 

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty: Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.

Silver Under Nightfall: Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.

Disintegrate/Dissociate: In her powerful debut collection of poetry, Arielle Twist unravels the complexities of human relationships after death and metamorphosis. In these spare yet powerful poems, she explores, with both rage and tenderness, the parameters of grief, trauma, displacement, and identity. Weaving together a past made murky by uncertainty and a present which exists in multitudes, Arielle Twist poetically navigates through what it means to be an Indigenous trans woman, discovering the possibilities of a hopeful future and a transcendent, beautiful path to regaining softness. 

The Perks of Loving a Wallflower: As a master of disguise, Thomasina Wynchester can be a polite young lady—or a bawdy old man. She’ll do whatever it takes to solve the cases her family takes on. But when Tommy’s beautiful new client turns out to be the highborn lady she’s secretly smitten with, more than her mission is at stake . . . 

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror: Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes—such as the circumspect and resilient “final girl,” body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet—spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world. 

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture: Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong. The notion that everyone wants sex–and that we all have to have it–is false. It’s intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that’s not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack: lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity.

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

goodreads

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, Alice’s life has spiraled. She lives a haunted existence, selling videos of herself for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep.

Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go.

Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own.

Mod opinion: I read it and loved it, it's very dark and deals with very triggering topics, but I enjoyed reading it a lot.

finished reading "tell me I'm worthless," which was an interesting experience. I think there's something really good for you in your soul to be able to understand the genre conventions you're in and the kinds of structures and language and character that can be explored in these genres. I think about how people tend to -- with fiction about marginalisation and/or about people who are marginalised as a blanket whole, regardless of the story -- operate on a checklist of dos and donts, but mainly donts: don't ever tell us a deadname, don't ever use these "problematic" words to describe them/or have them describe themselves in this way, don't ever describe negative emotions or "problematic" emotions, don't let the characters have harmful traits (either towards themselves or others), don't hurt your characters at all actually, don't make your characters politically uncomfortable or "problematically" complicated in their political outlook and/or journey, don't make your characters be assholes ever, certainly don't traumatise your characters, and under no circumstance do you kill your characters!

which of course, this book does praaaactically every one of these things, thank goodness

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, things have not been going well.  

Tell Me I’m Worthless is Alison Rumfitt’s debut horror, and it has wicked teeth. So does The House. This is a story about trans people, the internecine legacies of trauma, the brain-breaking poison of supremacist ideology, and a hungry, hungry House haunted by fascism. 

Check out this spine-tingling cover, and keep your eyes on that release date: January 17, 2023 from Tor Nightfire 😈

Pre-orders are, of course, available now for those misguided souls who would dare to encounter Albion as soon as they possibly can, for some reason. 

“Ambitious, brutal, and brilliant.” — Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt

"Sometimes, at the end of everything, the only option you have is to make it worse."

Tell Me I'm Worthless, Alison Rumfitt

Current spooky read 💁🏼‍♀️

idk if it was the venus retrograde or what, but july 2023 was quite literally the worst month i've ever experienced in my life like.....every single day? awful? worse than the last? it's more likely than u think

i love you actors that just get their characters like ta does macau.

Elle Greenaway <3

i would take a bullet for her i’m so serious

people want the hs epilougues/hs^2 to be "canon" SO BAD, it makes them look stupid.

I don't know how to put it into words but, From Eden - Hozier, is such team green song.

are you telling me "chivalry died on his sword" isn't about Cole? even if I don't know why it feels like it is, you want to tell me I'm wrong about it?

"innocence died screaming" like... they all died screaming, literally and figuratively. their innocence and their lives all ended in terror in one way or another.

I don't have the brain cells to explain this at the moment, but I feel it in my chest.

(this is a plea for help. People who are actually good at music analysis, I beg, make the thoughts in my head make sense)

isnt this so absurd and surreal??? i feel like im losing my mind. wdym a veto against……..saving lives?? its so unreal to me that there needs to be a voting in the first place. theres a literal massacre going on and youre telling me there needs to be a decision made to stop a whole genocide, to stop warcrimes in real time even though youre perfectly capable and have the power to put an end to this? and instead you support it, you fund it, you celebrate and applaud it, you willingly want more children to die than already have?? its insane. there is no justification no forgiving ever its so absurd and insane

"...my insides are all riddled with maggots..."

Tell Me I'm Worthless, Alison Rumfitt

YES

Normal things to say to your 24 year old daughter