Jackie

The Maiden and Her Monster is an incredible, vibrant adventure that explores timely resistance against theocracy and fascism through love; familiar, communal, platonic, and romantic. Maddie Martinez has created a beautiful world and fascinating magic system inspired by Jewish folklore and mysticism. Malka is a fantastic main character, flawed but still likable, and Nimrah makes a compelling broody enemies-to-lovers romantic interest. While the focus of the novel is more on the political drama and magic system, the slow-burn romance is still threaded skillfully throughout with a pay-off that's worth the wait.

This Vicious Hunger is a mysterious and enchanting gothic tale with flavors of dark academia and the Secret Garden. After the deaths of her father and new husband, Thora Grieve is sent away by her disdainful mother-in-law. She is sent to university to study botany under the tutelage of an old colleague of her father's, where she finds herself to be the only female scholar. In spite of the ongoing and all-too-familiar theme of misogyny and disregard for female contributions to academia, Thora does befriend a young man called Leo, and is apprenticed to the only female teacher at the university. She also discovers a garden of unfamiliar and poisonous plants locked behind a rusted old gate and tended by a mysterious woman who only appears at night.

This book has great mouth-feel. The university has a visceral atmosphere of heat and oppression; sweltering humidity, terra-cotta and plaster spires, and the green bittersweet smell of rotting plant matter. It brings the Mediterranean to mind, but also reminds me of the summers of my childhood in the Los Angeles area, so hot and damp it makes you feel sick. This feeling mingles with Thora's mental and physical degradation throughout the novel and serves to explain some of the more irrational responses she has to various events. 

My primary criticism is that while the world this book takes place it has the potential to be fascinating, there's just not enough of it that made it onto the page. The mourning rituals described by Thora are interesting, and seem to reference various in-universe legends, however those legends are barely mentioned and not expanded on nearly enough to satisfy my thirst for lore-dumping. This story could just as easily be set in a fictional 1800s Italian university as opposed to a completely fictional world, so I wish there was more to set it apart.

Another reviewer put it very well: it was difficult to assign a star rating to this because it was very much not what I expected. I was expecting a lot more personal essays about being queer in Appalachia. The essays in Y'all Means All are far more high-academic than I was ready for, full of unfamiliar and mostly unexplained jargon that made it difficult to follow. This certainly isn't Queer Theory 101.

Caitlin Starling is an instant-pre-order author for me. Her books are always the perfect blend of creepy, fascinating, and weirdly sexy without being romance-focused. She creates lush, enthralling worlds contained perfectly in single stories. I always want to know more about the worlds they're set in, but never ever feel like they're lacking, and that's such a difficult balance to strike.

Now, was it a good idea to start reading this while in the hospital for 24 hours straight without sleep while my girlfriend waited to have her gallbladder out? No, probably not the best time to read a story about an extreme experimental pharmaceutical trial set in a hospital with a fleshy Silent Hill-ass alternate dimension. 

But anyway. Starling has knocked it out of the park again. This was creepy, unsettling, and disturbing in all the right ways, with a conclusion that felt like watching a really good episode of the Twilight Zone. Obviously, this book is not for the faint of heart. I had to take a break every once in a while to rub my wrists because the descriptions of the IV procedures made them ache. But if you love some good medical horror or feel nostalgic for Silent Hill 2, this is a real treat.

A creepy one.

Earlier this spring, I read a very queer, very Jewish, very cute short story in the 2022 We're Here anthology by indie publisher, Neon Hemlock. The author was one Y. M. Resnik, and the story was The Chavrusah Worlds of Possibility. When I saw that her debut novel was up for grabs on NetGalley, I instantly smashed the “Request” button.

The Elysium Heist is a delightful, queer, clever sci-fi casino heist that has been accurately described as a “Sapphic Ocean's Eleven in space” (Eli Snow). There really is no better way to describe it, and I can't begin to recommend it enough. Resnik's prose is witty and hilarious while addressing topics like sobriety, bodily autonomy, faith, and ace-spectrum sexuality with frank gravity. 

There is also an extremely spicy sex scene that. Wow. All my thumbs up.

Resnik is definitely an author I'm going to be following very closely. Her stories check all my boxes, and I'm excited to see what else she has in store for us.