Adele

The unceasing references to Harry Potter got old fast. Also, the characters are too bland and simple to make the heterosexual lusting interesting. The disability representation was okay and much needed.

This has technically been on my to-read list at least since 2018/2019 when I heard of it through a queer romance podcast, but I forgot to add it here.

Anyway, this turned out to be quite the slog. The premise is promising if you ignore the ick factor of a middle-aged celebrity embarking on a relationship with an up-and-coming costar less than half his age. I was drawn in by the promise of a polyamorous romance that isn't written to titillate (there's very little on-page sex). Unfortunately, Jamie the youngster is unbearably immature compared to the established couple that decides to add him to their dynamic - and all three of them seem to believe this is a True Love Forever, closed triad. As this is Jamie's first serious relationship, let alone a polyamorous one, this just felt incredibly sad to me. Even more so because the individual relationships within the triad never felt deep or convincing. I believed in Callum and Nerea's established relationship but not in what either of them was supposedly trying to build with Jamie. It felt like he was starstruck and they were enchanted with him, but nothing made me believe that they wouldn't be two against one in any serious conflict, or that, if one of them were to break up with Jamie, it wouldn't also mean the end of his relationship with the other. They just don't get enough one on one time that isn't about sex, even if the sex is off page.

I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of some disability representation in the form of Jamie's sister with Down's syndrome, but less than charmed with the way that figures in the great drama of the last act which is a tired old surprise pregnancy plot twist. Nerea wants to terminate because she's already done her time raising three now adult children and doesn't want to risk having to spend her remaining years taking care of a high-needs kid while her men are off being famous actors. Jamie thinks this is ableism defined. (I don't agree.) The complicating factor of course is that this is “Jamie's only chance to have the child he so wants” since they all assume their triad is forever closed and unbreakable. Bleugh.

Oh also, they're all the most beautiful, talented people you've ever seen, and two of them are rich rich with the third being on the way there. There is this definite tinge of a middle-aged woman's fantasy to this whole thing: not only is she the most beautiful, thin(!!) talented, and wise of them all, she has two of the most desirable men dancing attendance to her and telling her how hot and wise she is. Written with more complexity, this might have been compelling, but as it stands it was just another snoozefest.

Holy hell is Austin immature. Which is quite generous considering he also turns into a stalker... Other than that, enjoyed. A unique premise, sweetly executed.

Preachy in places, and the relationship progresses in ways I find profoundly unrelatable, but this is where I find out I apparently have emotions after all. Includes a lot of elements that are delightful on their own even if it didn't fully come together for me.

I read this despite having taken it off my TBR years ago, because I happened to want a romance with depression rep. This came highly recommend.

And I... liked it more than I thought I would, but ultimately not as much as I might have. Ash is rude and immature and avoids introspection, which makes him an occasionally-frustrating main character. For the most part, I enjoyed the dynamic between him and Darian in that both of them did make me laugh. However, Ash consistently treats Darian poorly, which keeps the relationship fairly shallow.

I dislike it when the plot mainly progresses through things happening to the central couple instead of developing naturally between them. I felt like the two crucial plot points being driven by the actions of side characters kept Ash from growing. (The scene where his mental illness gets outed was properly upsetting. What an awful idea that people, let alone someone calling themselves your friend, sees you that way, gives you that little agency.) And so, when at the end they finally do decide to become an item, I didn't quite believe him even though he said all the right things. There was just a lot of character development I'd rather have seen on-page. A lot of hard moments that we all know are in the horizon, but that we never see the couple tackle together.

Those missing scenes were kind of why I read the book in the first place. I wanted to see someone actually living with their mental illness and fill their life with meaning again. What I got was yet another glittering tale of falling in love, but I wanted it to be so much more. It seemed to really get its characters and had all the ingredients to be more.

(two stars for “it was okay but didn't change my world in any way”)

More transfemme yearning after white boys, this time with full acknowledgement that it's not the answer, and searching for what might be. The most touching are the bits about cultural oblivion/the abyss in the wake of colonization.

i liked this more than holy wild! she articulates trans girl sadness as well as anyone. her insistence that 

to refuse joy is the braver act the only choice girls like us have left

loving a white man is to be a passenger in the wake of his wanting

I am what you made meevery day I tire of performance and apology

A Safe Girl to Love

I wear my body like the lakewears the shorerubbed at, worn away,eroded to a thin blue

we make peace with our exilesyour home in two placesmy body foreverin migration

I'm going to have to get a physical copy to fully let my feelings settle, but, excellent. There were only a couple of pieces that didn't quite hit for me. The everyday and the profound of surviving your own annihilation, gloriously written for an Indigenous audience first and foremost.

An interesting novel though clearly written for a primarily hearing audience. Has a lot of elements that don't fully come together, a lot of drama that serves no purpose. At first I thought it was just one of those affairs where the author wanted to cram everything about life, death, and everything in between into one story - but it just keeps ramping up. A lot of the parts that are not about deafness and Deaf culture lack interest and nuance (the tired love triangles, the treatment of anarchism). The ending didn't land for me either. Overall a worthwhile read from a social perspective, but a clumsy novel.

I liked the long poems but found much of the collection impenetrable. Either I suck at reading or this demands a cultural understanding I do not have.

Endless action is exhausting, and this one doesn't have robust character work or even a tight plot to support it. Things just keep happening to this handful of thinly sketched out tropes in human form as they slog their way through all the expected set pieces of YA high fantasy* - tiny backwater village to the court and back again. Though the author paints them in ever tighter corners, they always find a magical way out. The romance is objectively fairly grim but more to the point, it unfortunately adds nothing to the story. I loved Spinning Silver, but this one was a disappointment to say the least, especially considering how much I enjoyed the beginning. If only it'd have dared to stay “boring”!

*It hurts to call this YA because it wasn't written to be that, and female authors so often get unfairly branded that way. However, it reminds me nothing so much as the hundred other times I read this same story and these same characters growing up.

Beautiful, tragic yet kind of hopeful, but ultimately opaque. This is the ultimate form of “not for me”, which is not at all a fault; I'm just missing tons of context and metaphor by not being the intended audience.

Not bad, but not written for me.

Inoffensive, but didn't quite reach me. She's rude, he apologizes.

NTS: Needs to be read as well as listened to.

I found Jem more annoying than sympathetic in his obsession, and didn't quite buy this one, except literally.

Biphobia and -erasure is so tiresome. Fatphobia is not much better. This whole book is an exercise in self-hatred and the main character's internalized white supremacist ideals. All intentional and fitting the setting, but I am tired. I'm sad I did not enjoy my two-day stay in Shraya's work.

Had this been the book promised in the blurb, I would have rated it higher.

I can't help myself with this one. Spectred Isle is significantly darker than is typical of Charles, though not in the sense that it's tense and plotty: that Charles has done many a time. No, I mean dark in the sense that the world is in tatters here, the revebrations of the Great War everywhere, everyone scarred by it and facing long odds. It's saved from being overwhelming by the central character being remarkably resilient and optimistic even traumatized, but the possibility of an inward collapse is definitely more present here than in most of the genre. I think I understand why Charles is stuck with this series, the world being what it is; these books require strong optimism to offset the setting, and the plot requires solutions to overwhelming global issues. Band Sinister this is not - which is exactly why I love it. It feels nice to read something that is both relatably bleak and still guaranteed to end happily.

What's odder still than the tone is that the romance, which is usually the heart and soul of a KJC book, is a relatively minor part of the book and... doesn't work. These men are together because they're repeatedly in the wrong place at the wrong time together. There's plausible attraction but the relationship itself feels sudden and hollow, and I'm afraid the novel would be stronger without the explicit scenes or perhaps the romantic plot altogether. The middle part where the romantic development is supposed to happen just drags.

This quiet little story was exactly what my soul craved.

Points for realism, both emotional and practical - here we finally have an SM club for normal people (of all abilities!!!), emotionally present and aware leads, and realistic D/s that takes real concerns into account. However, I found the prose incredibly pedestrian, and the bi/panphobia one of the leads experiences (and the other kind of feeds) just made me sad. It's very much of its time, which means that while there's a marked effort at what I call sidekick diversity, a lot of it is kind of insensitive - for example, the black man we never actually see is ribbed on for being into “white” nerdy things like Star Wars, the pansexual hero has to explain himself several times and defend himself from phobic assumptions (and seems to make being into trans people too the difference between bi and pan, which, as a bisexual person, kind of smarts). The leads also move really fast, which is realistic for many people, but left the demi me a bit... confused aha. I do wonder what I'd have made of this ten years ago.

Sweet but not substantial enough to be memorable, and the conflict, while realistic in theory, feels trumped up and is dealt with quickly, without much character growth on either side. The mental illness rep is decent but the way that SI is handled is very superficial.

The first half is almost awkwardly relatable for a book that's mainly sex, the other half devolves into easy, overly beneficent fantasy polyamory complete with insta-love and endless affirmations, the only tension being “when will they tell each other they're star-crossed lovers”. Still, there were a couple of delightful moments in the beginning and middle sections of the book, and a few lines of wisdom anyone contemplating love would be well advised to consider.

Instead of being successful at one thing, this book is half successful at two things: as an erotic romance and as a police procedural. The main character is slightly annoying (“is she being cooperative because she's a submissive”) and absolutely willingly dense for plot convenience by the end, but there's also a lot to appreciate here - much more than I remembered from my first read-through.

Read because I also read Asking for It by Lilah Pace earlier this year and heard this was a better exploration of the topic. In some sense this is true: both the characters are regular people who just happen to share a darkish kink. They negotiate and take responsibility for each other in a way I really did appreciate. Unfortunately I found the book repetitive and boring, and it also had a number of unquestioned ableist and fat phobic lines that, while very much a part of the times, made it unpleasant to read. (Unsurprisingly, she drinks to deal with her depression.) It's also somewhat gender essentialist and keeps repeating how very masculine the fighter hero is and how the heroine yearns to femininely take care of him.