IRIS KELLY DOESN’T DATE - ASHLEY HERRING BLAKE Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ashley Herring Blake has written another sapphic romance that I was barely able to out down until it was finished. Iris and Stevie are incredibly cute. The book is really successful take on fake dating that actually seems like a plausible reason two people could fake date!
I loved seeing Bright Falls one last time, although I do wish there was two epilogues one for the Iris/Stevie and one for the whole cast!
Based on this trilogy, any sapphic story Ashley Herring Blake writes will be an auto-buy for me.
Many thanks to Berkley Publishing Group for an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. Iris Kelly is released today (Oct 24th) in the US!
❝ That each person could choose what brought them closest to belonging, the power in that. Knowing that one day, people might discover even better words for it. That there was only ever freedom in continuing to find new names for who we were, who we could be. ❞
She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott & Alyson Derrick
❝ It’s all the things I never knew an “I love you” could be, meeting me exactly as I am, without a single condition. It’s coming home instead of running away. ❞
GWEN AND ART ARE NOT IN LOVE - LEX CROUCHER Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Gwen and Art Are Not In Love tells a tale as old as time - boy meets girl, both are gay, and a little queer clique is formed.
The writing is funny, and all the characters are loveable. It features a lesbian knight! Watching the friendships and romances develop with a backdrop of court intrigue and knight tourneys was perfect.
I assumed this was going to be a King Arthur retelling, it’s not at all. But it is set at Camelot a few hundred years from the actual events. Although it is an alternative history, social pushback still exists against defying gender norms (i.e., being a lady knight) and same-sex relationships.
I will re-read this when I get my hands on a physical copy in November (for UK people, I think it came out in May, go read it now!!)
Thanks to Wednesday Books for the eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
“Greta blinked and rolled onto her back. It dawned on her slowly, a little painfully, that what she’d been looking for inside the dream house, and what she’d found, was her own appetite. She’d been famished all these years without knowing it,” (pg. 174).
In short, this is a book about a woman (Greta) who transcribes therapy sessions for her small town’s local sex therapist, and who becomes obsessed with one of the patients (Big Swiss, AKA Flavia). Greta doesn’t know what Big Swiss looks like, or even her real name, but she has a version of Big Swiss in her head, and she likes to listen to her voice like a podcast. When they cross paths at the dog park and Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice, she starts to spin a web of self-preserving lies just so she can hang on a little longer.
***
There’s something feral about the way this book is written, and it wouldn’t work any other way. It’s honest, and it’s FUNNY, and a little bit absurd. It’s just Big Swiss and Greta and Big Swiss and Greta and Big Swiss and Greta and Greta’s mother’s suicide note. It’s tens of thousands of bees in the kitchen, and just deciding to live with that.
I really don’t know what to say, other than that this is my new favorite book, because there’s something refreshingly real about it. I’d read it again and again and again and again.
“You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”
🔮 Good afternoon, my bookish bats. I hope you've had an enchanting, spell-binding October so far. If you want to add a little more magic to your TBR, consider these witchlit books featuring sapphic witches and other mystical beings!
🔮 The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke 🪄 Payback's a Witch by Lana Harper 🔮 These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling 🪄 Sweet & Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley 🔮 The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska 🪄 Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft
🔮 Now She Is Witch by Kirsty Logan 🪄 The Dark Tide by Alicia Jasinska 🔮 The Circle by M. Strandberg & S.B. Elfgren 🪄 The Witch and the Vampire by Francesca Flores 🔮 The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson 🪄 Elysium Girls by Kate Pentecost
🔮 Edie in Between by Laura Sibson 🪄 When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey 🔮 Marvel's The Runaways 🪄 Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson 🔮 Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall 🪄 Buffy the Vampire Slayer Willow & Tara
🔮 All the Bad Apples by Moïra Fowley-Doyle 🪄 The Severed Thread by Leslie Vedder 🔮 The Lost Coast by A.R. Capetta 🪄 Romancing a Gorgon by Tallie Rose 🔮 Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches by Kate Scelsa 🪄 The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
🔮 Not Your Average Love Spell by Barbara Ann Wright 🪄 The Sting of Victory by S.D. Simper 🔮 Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno 🪄 The Reluctant Witch by Kristen S. Walker 🔮 Witching Moon by Poppy Woods 🪄 Keep Your Witches Close by Colette Rivera
🔮 Walking Through Shadows by Sheri Lewis Wohl 🪄 Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moïra Fowley-Doyle 🔮 Out of Salem by Hal Schrieve 🪄 Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker & Wendy Xu
