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Where do I even begin? Oh, right. Thank you NetGalley for providing the opportunity to read and review You've Found Oliver.

I will say that I did go into this with an expectation from reading the author’s previous books. I was somewhat afraid that this was going to be a weird, cookie-cutter book that would ride the coattail of its predecessor. That quickly changed a few pages into the book.

It was very nostalgic to read about some of the characters from You’ve Reached Sam; however, the previous MC of the book had space and never fought the new MC, Oliver, for any of the spotlight. I enjoyed their contribution to the storyline, but even more that they did not overshadow the new main character. It brought fresh air to the storyline with a hint of history to bring the characters even more alive.

The pacing of the book was overall normal with its moments of speeding up. The world-building was enough to where you could separate locations without it being overdone and over-explained. That being said, due to the theme of the book, I did have some concerns as to if it would become blended and lost. However, I do believe Dustin Thao did an amazing job at keeping everything moving forward with everything where it should be, and the execution of the theme was grand.

Ben and Oliver had the cutest and most heartwarming adventure together, and you could feel the emotions they felt. Their different personalities complemented each other well without them becoming one. They had their individualism, which helped in being empathetic towards them  and making their feelings more realistic than fictional.

Overall, I am giving the book 4.5 out of 5 as it did not leave me with any questions but wanting more of their stories.

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i love when you read/watch an influential piece of storytelling and you're like ohhhhhh ok i see. so everyone else was copying this guy's homework

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⭐️ The Forbidden Book by Sacha Lamb - 4 / 5 stars ⭐️

Themes: Fantasy, Jewish folklore, Gender switching/Cross dressing

Overall, I thought the book was well paced, told an interesting story and featured interesting characters. I quite enjoyed reading it, especially as it was about Jewish characters and culture, which are topics I have not read much about, and thus know far less about than I really should. The setting was described in such lovely detail that I always felt myself transported into the story after only a few words.

One part that felt off to me was the end, where everything just happened too fast. The revelation of who Sam is came out of nowhere and could've been set up better. As is, he was just set up to maybe be a bit weird, but hardly any hints at his supernatural nature.

Another part that struck me as odd was the times where Sorel, in her disguise, interacted with people she knew from before her escape. While for some, the reasoning that people don't recognise her because it doesn't even enter their minds to think that Sorel could be cross-dressing and living like a homeless person holds, for others it became a bit unbelievable that they would notice absolutely nothing. I think it would've also helped believability if Sorel had been at all nervous in these situations, but I didn't really notice anything like that, which kind of took me out of the story.

Lastly, as someone who isn't Jewish and doesn't know much about Jewish culture, I found myself struggling with some of the terms used. Oftentimes I could kinda work out what a word meant from the context, or, in the case of Yiddish words, from being a native German speaker, but I think it could be helpful to have a short glossary of the Jewish cultural and religious terms used.

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Thank you to Levine Querido for the ARC

Release date: 1. October 2024 (Review originally published 18. August 2024)

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🍉 Books for Read Palestine Week 2024 [ Nov 29 - Dec 5 ]

✨ This guide will no doubt get hidden, given the topic, so please help me by sharing this!

❓What are you reading this week?

🍉 Educate and empathize! Here are 82 books you can read for Read Palestine Week! I've included 26 queer books for those of you who #readqueerallyear as well. Please read these books to learn more about the Palestinian experience. Shukran (thank you)!

✨ Poetry 🍉 Enemy of the Sun - (ed) Edmund Ghareeb and Naseer Aruri 🍉 A Mountainous Journey - Fadwa Tuqan 🍉 So What - Taha Muhammad Ali 🍉 Affiliation - Mira Mattar 🍉 The Butterfly's Burden - Mahmoud Darwish 🍉 Born Palestinian, Born Black & The Gaza Suite - Suheir Hammad 🍉 Breaking Poems - Suheir Hammad 🍉 In the Presence of Absence - Mahmoud Darwish 🍉 Rifqa - Mohammed el-Kurd 🍉 My Voice Sought the Wind - Susan Abulhawa 🍉 Blood Orange - Yaffa 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 To All the Yellow Flowers - Raya Tuffaha 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Before the Next Bomb Drops - Remi Kanazi 🍉 Birthright - George Abraham 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Tent Generations - Various 🍉 Who is Owed Springtime - Rasha Abdulhadi 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Twenty-Ninth Year - Hala Alyan 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Some Things Never Leave You - Zeina Azzam 🍉 I Saw Ramallah - Mourid Barghouti 🍉 Nothing More To Lose - Najwan Darwish 🍉 The Specimen's Apology - George Abraham & Leila Abdelrazaq 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Shell Houses - Rasha Abdulhadi 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Moon That Turns You Back - Hala Alyan 🍉 Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear - Mosab Abu Toha 🍉 Halal If You Hear Me - (ed) Fatimah Asghar & Safia Elhillo 🍉 Water & Salt -Lena Khalaf Tuffaha 🍉 Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. - Noor Hindi 🏳️‍🌈

✨ Non-Fiction/Memoirs 🍉 Are You This? Or Are You This? - Madian Al Jazerah 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 This Arab is Queer - (ed) Elias Jahshan 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Love is an Ex-Country - Randa Jarrar 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Decolonial Queering in Palestine - Walaa Alqaisiya 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Namesake: Reflections on A Warrior Woman - N.S. Nuseibeh 🍉 The Trinity of Fundamentals - Wisam Rafeedie 🍉 Between Banat - Mejdulene Bernard Shomali 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique - Sa'ed Atshan 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom - Ahed Tamimi & Dena Takruri 🍉 Fashioning the Modern Middle East: Gender, Body, and Nation - Reina Lewis and Yasmine Nachabe Taan 🍉 Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine - Ibtisam Barakat 🍉 We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance - Linda Sarsour 🍉 Palestine: A Socialist Introduction - Sumaya Awad & Brian Bean 🍉 Voices of the Nakba - Diana Allan 🍉 Tracing Homelands - Linda Dittmar 🍉 Black Power & Palestine - Michael R. Fischbach 🍉 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappé 🍉 A Day in the Life of Abed Salama - Nathan Thrall 🍉 A Land with a People - Esther Farmer, Rosalind Petchesky, & Sarah Sills 🍉 Inara by Mx. Yaffa AS 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Mural - Mahmoud Darwish 🍉 Light in Gaza - Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, & Michael Merryman lotze 🍉 The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein 🍉 Gaza - Norman Finkelstein

✨ Fiction 🍉 A Map of Home - Randa Jarrar 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Skin and Its Girl - Sarah Cypher 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Minor Detail - Adania Shibli 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Philistine - Leila Marshy 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Muneera and the Moon - Sonia Sulaiman 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Belladonna - Anbara Salam 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Behind You Is The Sea - Susan Muaddi Darraj 🍉 The Coin - Yasmin Zaher 🍉 Guapa - Saleem Haddad 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Parisian - Isabella Hammad 🍉 Salt Houses - Hala Alyan 🍉 The Ordeal of Being Known - Malia Rose 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 From Whole Cloth - Sonia Sulaiman 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Against the Loveless World - Susan Abulhawa 🍉 The Beauty of Your Face - Sahar Mustafah 🍉 Mornings in Jenin - Susan Abulhawa 🍉 My First and Only Love - Sahar Khalifeh 🍉 They Fell Like Stars From the Sky & Other Stories - Sheikha Helawy 🍉 Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad 🍉 Wild Thorns - Sahar Khalifeh 🍉 A Woman is No Man - Etaf Rum 🍉 Mother of Strangers - Suad Amiry 🍉 Hazardous Spirits - Anbara Salam 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Book of Ramallah - Maya Abu Al-Hayat

🏳️‍🌈 Graphic Novels 🍉 Mis(h)adra - Iasmin Omar Ata 🍉 Confetti Realms - Nadia Shammas 🍉 Where Black Stars Rise - Nadia Shammas & Marie Enger 🍉 Nayra and the Djinn - Iasmin Omar Ata 🍉 Squire - Nadia Shammas & Sara Alfageeh 🍉 My Mama's Magic - Amina Awad

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Celebrate Jewish Heritage Month with Queer Jewish Reads!

Shalom Aleichem! May is Jewish Heritage Month, and to celebrate, we asked our contributors for their recommendations of queer books with Jewish characters or/and written by Jewish authors. I (Nina Waters), the owner of Duck Prints Press, am Jewish, so it’s a pleasure to finally be celebrating my own heritage with a themed list. The contributors to the list are: Tris Lawrence, Shea Sullivan, Nina Waters, Adrian Harley, Meera S., Linnea Peterson, and hullosweetpea.

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman

Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao

Lady Eve’s Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow

Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker

DeadEndia by Hamish Steele

Add Magic to Taste Anthology, edited by Nina Waters

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb

Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon

Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert

Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

Season of Love by Helena Greer

For Never & Always by Helena Greer

Flying Without a Net by E.M. Ben Shaul

Body, Remember: A Memoir by Kenny Fries

Yudah Cohen Short Story Series by Rebecca Fraimow

“Further Arguments In Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman”

“Shaina Rubin Keeps Her Head Under Circumstances Nobody Could Have Expected”

“Gitl Schneiderman Learns to Live With Her In-Laws”

What awesome queer Jewish books did we miss? Let us know!

Find these books on our Goodreads bookshelves, and/or visit the recommendation list in our affiliate shop on Bookshop.org and buy them for yourself!

Join our Book Lover’s Discord server to chat with us about books, fandom and more!

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And we're live! If you've enjoyed watching me read all these fantastic books by black transfemmes over the last few days, then definitely check up this write-up of all the black transfeminine novelists on my radar and their work ❤️

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Aromantic Fantasy Book Recs!

It's Aro Week, so here are a few of my favourites!

List:

The Bruising of Qilwa by Jamnia

Fire Becomes Her by Thor

Elatsoe by Little Badger

Kaikeyi by Patel

Tarnished are the Stars by Thor

The Once and Future Witches by Harrow

A Crown of Hopes and Sorrows by Bailey

Natural Outlaws and Fractured Sovereignty by Pearce (hiya, yours truly)

Also a couple more recent reads (I made the graphics a while ago):

City of Strife by Arseneault : a super epic fantasy series with great political drama & intricate worldbuilding

The Last Girls on Earth by Anderton : YA dystopian books that, although super short and exciting, have amazing character development

Pillow Forts and Hurricanes by Scialla : a short, fluffy NA book with a QPR

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The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling

This book was so good! Unlike some of the previous books I have read by this author, this was such and interesting premise and took me on a wild ride from start to finish. The story follows Meg, who has a rare autoimmune disease, and is chosen to take part in a paid trial in order to better treat her illness. The book was at time compelling, exciting, scary, and engrossing. I absolutely tore my way through this book and highly recommend this to anyone who loves a good horror/thriller book and is looking for something interest and new that you haven't seen anything like before.

This ebook was provided by NetGalley and the author in exchange for an honest review.

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Ngl, I wanted to post this ages ago but unfortunately I spent the last weeks severely losing the plot. But Pride month isn't over yet so here we go! I really wanted to recommend a few queer books that I personally love. I tried to find a healthy balance of kinda popular but maybe not very known that it is queer and maybe not promoted as often. So... some recs from my personal bookshelf that feature queer characters :)

In order:

Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb series) by Tamsyn Muir

The Jasmine Throne (Burning Kingdoms Trilogy) by Tasha Suri

The Guy she was interested in (aka the Green Yuri) by Sumiko Arai

The Foxhole Court (All for the Game series) by Nora Sakavic

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Boris: Blutlinie by I.B. Zimmermann (sadly only German so far)

Six of Crows (Grishaverse) by Leigh Bardugo

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard by Rick Riordan

Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White

The Spirit bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

If you want a little plot summary or anything else on one of these books, feel free to let me know :3 Happy Pride, be proud, love yourselves and remember Stonewall.

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"As soon as I discovered that comics were made by people, I wanted to be one of those people, even if I didn't have anywhere near their skill set. And I still don't think I have that skill set. But the language of comics is exciting to me... Comics are a very democratic medium, and you don't need much more than a pencil and paper, as a minimum." —Art Spiegelman speaking to Hyperallergic Discover the Pulitzer Prize–winning classic that is as as relevant and impactful today as it was forty years ago.

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Happy book birthday to this week’s new releases! 📚

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Review: The Dragon wakes with Thunder - 4 / 5 stars

The Dragon Wakes With Thunder is the second book in a historical fantasy duology inspired by the Chinese folktale of Hua Mulan. 

I read the first book in this duology earlier this year, and while I ‘only’ rated that book 3.5 stars, I was still incredibly excited to get to read the sequel once it comes out. So, when I got the ARC I was beyond excited to read it. I was initially scared that I went into the book with my expectations set too high, but  I quickly found I had nothing to worry about. I really loved reading this, and actually enjoyed it more than the previous book, which is rare as I’ve far too often read great first books with very mediocre sequels. 

One aspect of the sequel I was rather nervous about was the love triangle between Meilin, Sky and Lei. My issue was that I felt 0 chemistry between Meilin and Lei, even though it was pretty clear that this was the direction the story would go in. I did feel the chemistry between Meilin and Sky, but it was also very clear that they would never be able to have a healthy relationship. So I’m very happy that this book expanded that dynamics between these three, but especially between Meilin and Lei. I’m not generally a fan of love triangles, but this one, I felt, was genuinely well written and ends on a satisfying note.

I’m still not a big fan of the random-English-nouns-as-first-names thing that is obviously in this book as well, but I did notice it less and less as the book went on. 

My biggest gripe - and if I’m being honest also the main reason why I’m not rating it 5 stars - is the fact that there is that there is exactly one queer character in the book that is more than just a name, and he dies at the end. Now, having a queer character die in your story isn’t automatically a bad thing, there are plenty of instances of this where the death feels ‘good’, for lack of a better term. Another book I read recently also had the gay characters die at the end, but in that case it felt almost cathartic, because it was clear that their deaths, specifically, were necessary, and there was no other way to resolve the story. That was not the case here. If you’re going to have your one and only queer character die at the end, I’d honestly prefer you didn’t include a queer character at all. 

So, yes I loved this book. It was wonderful to read and I finished it in 2 days, which is very unusually fast for me. But that ending just left a bad after taste in my mouth that I can’t quite get rid of.

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Release Date: 21. August 2025

Thank you so much to Hodder & Stoughton for the ARC!

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The first two books of my original series are now up on Amazon for anyone who wants to pick them up. If you want sapphic fiction that doesn't shy back from things like trauma and being a survivor of abuse, all against the backdrop of modern magic, take a look!

Seriously, though. this story means so much to me, and not just because I want to make my living as a writer one day. This is a story that I think pretty much every queer person will see a part of themselves in somewhere, but especially queer women of all kinds. I hope all of you love my girls as much as I do.

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A DEMON'S NAME UPON YOUR LIPS

It is the curse of ADHD that, at least for me, I'm always running to the next project, and then the next, chasing the new shiny thing. And that has served me well in my creative endeavors, as much as it has stymied me. But I really do think that I caught something special in my first novel, A DEMON'S NAME UPON YOUR LIPS. And thanks to how my brain works, I rarely ever promote it! Which seems unfair for how much effort I put in, alongside my friends who patiently helped me edit it.

It's a sapphic romance between a (newly minted) Duke and the demon she summons. It's a fantasy which takes place in a secondary world loosely based on Victorian-era Europe, though without any of the queerphobic, or even sexist, hatred endemic to its real-world counterpart (or even to our modern day). It's fast paced, gay as fuck, and I poured my heart and soul into it.

I'd be honored if you picked it up; it's only $5.99. About the price of a Latte.

Grab it at the following places:

itch.io (PDF, ePub, and mobi all included!)

Kobo link (ePub version)

Apple Books, Smashwords, and a few others (ePub version)

Amazon (Kindle version)

Barnes and Noble (ePub)

Synopsis below the cut:

Lucia is a succubus, a demon with the power to shape the emotions and passions of mortals. Summoned often into the world of Melodia, she takes pride in upholding her demonic contracts to the best of her abilities. She likes to think she does her job well … though a string of recent failures say otherwise.

Talia, the recently elevated Duke of Fallmire, summons Lucia for a simple reason: to pose as her wife and fulfill marital obligations to the satisfaction of Parliament. All to say, just a few weeks of walking around the estate and playing nice with the neighbors before a conveniently tragic death. Quick and easy.

But immediately, Lucia smells blood in the water. Behind closed doors, the Duke plots vengeance upon those who killed her father—and the demon wants in. Revenge, after all, is much more fun … and more lucrative, to boot.

But can Lucia predict how hard she’d fall for the Duke? (Not a chance). And can the Duke find it in her vengeful heart to love?

Spice Level: lightly described nudity, fade-to-black sex.

64,000 words.

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Review: The Last Soldier of Nava by Yejin Suh - 2 / 5 stars

I am very sad to say that I cannot rate this any higher than a 2 / 5 stars. When I originally came across this book on goodreads and saw «Korean mythology inspired sapphic fantasy», I was sold already. I love stories inspired by real-world mythologies, and having it also be sapphic is nothing short of a dream come true. So, you can imagine my excitement when I saw this book up on Netgalley, requested it, and got approved.

Let’s start with the two selling points that first got me interested in this book; I don’t know anything about Korean mythology, so I won’t comment on that, but I will talk about the sapphic aspect of the book. ‘The Last Soldier of Nava’ is essentially an enemies-to-lovers romance between Shadow, who is also the protagonist and POV character, and Scarlet. Shadow kinda accidentally killed Scarlet’s sister - Scarlet knows it was ‘the soldier’ who killed her sister, but does nit know that the soldier and Shadow are the same person. But even without that knowledge, Scarlet spends the first half of the book hating Shadow. 

The issue with this romance storyline, however, is that there is almost 0 indication that any kind of attraction between these two characters exists. I get that with an enemies-to-lovers setup you have to slowly build up that relationship for either end of the trope to be believable. And while the enemies part was fine, the lovers aspect never really reached that believability threshold. It is around 55% through the book, when Shadow first begins to show signs of any kind of romantic interest in Scarlet. I mean, it was clear from the beginning that Scarlet was going to be the love interest, based on the blurb and the simple fact that this is not the first romance story I’ve read, but that was the first instance where the text itself indicated that this was in fact the case. Only introducing the romantic attraction halfway through the book on its own is not an issue though. The issue is that it was combined with a very slow and clumsy build-up that never once felt organic or believable, and never managed to get me emotionally invested in the story. There is a big love confession moment at one point, where Scarlet tells Shadow «I’ve never met anyone else like you, in all my life», and it left me completely cold. 

This is part of a larger issue of unearned moments that show up time and again throughout this book. Repeatedly, the reader is told things about a character, a setting, a relationship, etc. that was in no way set up by the writing up until that point. In one instance Scarlet is told by a side character that she is «incapable of love» and «a weak imitation of [her sister]» whose memory she dishonours every day. The way it is written makes it clear that this moment is supposed to have an emotional impact on the reader, but it doesn’t because up til that point we were never shown that this is even remotely true or something Scarlet struggles with. 

In another instance Scarlet describes the landscape around them as choking and suffocating everything underneath, and gardens as «bare imitations of real nature». And again, if this was in anyway implied or shown previously, it might have hit emotionally. But none of the previous descriptions of the cities and countryside around them ever evoked a picture like that, so it just ends up feeling hollow.

There’s also the fact that Shadow originally lived in a city called Nava that was destroyed a long time ago, which is kinda implied to have been almost a utopian society. Shadow repeatedly mentions Nava, and that it was somehow better than what the present-day can offer, and yet we never actually learn much of anything about the place. Nostalgia, especially the kind that ignores all of the bad things about the past so that you can enjoy thinking of ‘the good old times’, is a great topic to include in a fantasy book. But the readers actually needs to know stuff - however distorted by time it may be - about the place in order for this to work. Just saying ‘this place used to exist and it was better than now’ doesn’t cut it.

Additionally, there are a bunch of weird style choices that didn’t much help improve the story either. There are so many instances of direct speech being interrupted by non-speech halfway through for no apparent reason. I’m not doing a good job of describing this so I’ll just insert an example: «‘Then what do you want? I had thought you came here,’ the Emperor said, ‘to ask about your sister.’» Why is «the Emperor said» inserted in the middle of the speech bubble, completely disrupting the flow of the text?

I was also frequently re-reading paragraphs because I thought I’d missed a sentence, only to realise that no, the passage was just written really weirdly, so that it felt as if a sentence was missing. 

There’s more I could talk about, from the final battle being so low-key and underwhelming that I didn’t even realise it had happened until like 2 pages later, to the incredibly weirdly pace at which essential world-building elements were introduced, but this review is already way too long.

There are interesting elements in this book, and theoretically the story sounds really interesting, but the execution is just… not great. I will be keeping my eyes open for future works from this author, because this is her debut novel and I have high hopes that she will improve, given time. 

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Thank you HarperCollins UK for the ARC