JUNE 2023

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado | 5 out of 5

"In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.

And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope--the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman--through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.

Machado's dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be."

An Unauthorised Fan Treatise by Lauren James | 4.5 out of 5

"Gottie is a fangirl for Loch & Ness, a TV show about paranormal detectives. She’s convinced that two of the male actors are secretly dating, and she’ll stop at nothing to prove it. When her online investigations accidentally uncover far more than she expects, she becomes complicit in secrets beyond just a romantic conspiracy theory.

An internet thriller told in a ‘true crime’ style recollection of events, the novel includes social media extracts such as modern Tumblr posts and early-noughties LiveJournal blog entries."

I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom | 5 out of 5

"What can we hope for at the end of the world? What can we trust in when community has broken our hearts? What would it mean to pursue justice without violence? How can we love in the absence of faith?

In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, acclaimed poet and essayist Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today. With the author's characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness. Taking its cues from contemporary thought leaders in the transformative justice movement such as adrienne maree brown and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, this provocative book is a call for nuance in a time of political polarization, for healing in a time of justice, and for love in an apocalypse."

Corrupted Vessels by Briar Ripley Page | 5 out of 5

"Southern Gothic meets surrealism, Corrupted Vessels is a story about terrifying angels, messy realities, and queer life on the margins"

Bowser + Luigi Are In Love by Ariel Slamet Ries | 4 out of 5

"In 2015 Ariel Slamet Ries made a joke tweet about Bowser and Luigi falling in love. Luigi hides his sinful relationship with the Koopa King from his brother, Mario, or risks bringing shame upon his family. That launched a series of Bowser/Luigi fanart that makes up this tender, cute, saucy fanzine."

I See A Knight by Xulia Vicente | 3.5 out of 5

"Since childhood, Olivia has been able to see a headless knight invisible to everyone else- is it an omen, a ghost, or something much more real? As she grows older, Olivia becomes accustomed to the knight's presence in her life but knows, too, she must one day finally confront it."

dis/connected by Ell | 5 out of 5

"dis/connected was originally uploaded to a now-defunct forum. It was soon taken down and many attempts by corporate entities have been made to erase its existence from the internet. This version of dis/connected has been compiled from partial copies and screenshots which have been spread around (thank you to the dis/connected book club for generously allowing me access to the parts of this book they had) and images (generated by seeded consciousness Ink Snails) have been added.

dis/connected is a book of poetry set in the near future and written from the perspective of an AI. It reflects many of my experiences as someone who is non-binary, neurodivergent, and disabled."

SUPERPOSE by Seosamh and Anka | 5 out of 5

"While a tourist destination boasting a popular beach and boardwalk,Port City is also home to ROMAN LABS, an aerospace-turned-tech company now floundering in the tech boom of the early 1980s.

Rafael and Royal are longtime locals, and Kas is recently beached here. Each of the three are struggling and desperate for some kind of change, and they seize a brief opportunity to alter their future, finally shaking the town, and their lives, from standstill..."

On Sundays, She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield | 4.5 out of 5

"When Judith Rice killed her mother, she thought she put an end to the woman's hold on her. Seventeen years later, secluded deep in the woods of northern Georgia, Jude knows that the past isn't all that easy to discard.

Alone with her strange house and even stranger woods, Jude must grapple with ghosts, haints, beasts, and an enigmatic woman who threatens to undo the tentative peace Jude's built for herself by fanning the violence that lives just underneath her skin."

O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti | 5 out of 5

"Alastair Sterling was the inventor who sparked the robot revolution. And because of his sudden death, he didn’t see any of it. That is, until he wakes up 16 years later in a robot body that matches his old one exactly. Until he steps outside and finds a world utterly unlike the one he left behind – a world where robots live alongside their human neighbors and coexist in their cities. A world he helped create. Now Al must track down his old partner Brendan to find out who is responsible for Al’s unexpected resurrection, but their reunion raises even more questions.Like who the robot living with Brendan is. And why she looks like Al. And how much of the past should stay in the past..."

Girl Juice by Benji Nate | 4 out of 5

"Welcome to the Girl Juice House, home of the hottest gang in town. Benji Nate’s stylish and rambunctious sense of humor lovingly takes digs at the young and tragically hip–reserved and introspective Nana, comically hypersexual Bunny, fledgling U-tuber Tula, and Designated Mom™ Sadie–as they navigate life, love, and the pursuit of a good time.

Girl Juice flaunts the gloriously messy and hilariously self-indulgent day-to-day hijinks of four young women doing the most. Watch them bicker over making rent and come up with creative solutions for getting there! Cringe as they attend an adult prom! Split your sides as they try their hand at camping! Cower as they confront their mommy issues, and cheer as they battle inner demons that feed off attention-seeking behavior!

Nate’s colorful attention to detail and gift balancing for graphic hyperbole with subtle comedy are a deep, much-needed breath of fresh air. With front-facing cameras ever at the ready, Girl Juice is a snappy reminder that the time of your life is always just a text away."

Day Ten Thousand by Isabel J. Kim | 3.8 out of 5

NOTE: this story doesn't have a description, so i'll write my own!

A speculative short story about several people named Dave who are all the same person who are all several people across thousands of years who all have to die or who all have died or who all will die. The wheel is always turning.

The Pill by Meg Elison | 5 out of 5

NOTE: this story doesn't have a description so i will write my own! also the link leads to part 1 and you should be able to navigate to part 2 from there.

A speculative short story about the not-so-distant future where they've finally invented a Pill that will make you thin. It follows our fat narrator and her fat family through a time where fat people are rapidly becoming an endangered species and the horrors that that brings.

Sestu Hunts the Last Deer in Heaven by M. H. Cheung | 3 out of 5

NOTE: this story doesn't come with a description, so i will write my own!

A post-apocalyptic fantasy short story about a society that killed all their gods and realized destroying divinity had unforseen consequences. It follows a hunter and a pregnant woman tracking one of the last traces of divinity in the world so that they can give its' soul to the woman's baby like they've had to do for every child born after the fall of the gods.