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HOW did a book by an author I love where I was promised deals with the devil and a poly relationship turn out to be one where the relationship between the straight woman and the bisexual man has absolutely nothing going on, the woman is a cardboard cutout of a black woman caregiver/mammy stereotype, the gay man is a recovering alcoholic who is constantly blamed for it to the point that when he relapses after the ONLY TWO PEOPLE he has ever been vulnerable with blindside him with something life changing but the bisexual man who cheats on his wife by making out with him then becomes violent and victim blaming when he realizes he relapsed and was drinking, NOT to mention the plot of the only bisexual character cheating on his wife - who is only in the book because she has to insert herself into it - and yet somehow the most believable relationship connection was between the gay man and the straight woman -

AND the entire time the deal with the devil coming to take the one character's soul from an ancient bargain is BARELY IN THE PLOT

Also I'm only 60% through and I don't think I can take any more, I thought surely I could trust an author who I gave two of her books 5 phenomenal stars when THOSE relationships also had poly rep, but no. I have special editions of this and the sequel. The punishment of my hubris.

I saw someone describe this book as "no plot only vibes, except the vibes are rancid" and I couldn't agree more.

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I decided to go even more obscure, so! How many of these 2025 releases I either have, or am currently, ARC reading for are on your TBR?

Not all of these are endorsements - some I rated very low, some I DNF'd, and a few I'm still currently reading. (If you have a particular question or wanna know my thoughts on any of these feel free to ask, tho!)

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I did this instead of sleeping so if you take this quiz let me know how many you've read! 🫶

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how do you become so well read?

by reading

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I have 5 reviews I need to write, and another book almost 50% through that I'll need to review too.

I absolutely have to stop putting these off 😭

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I have 5 reviews I need to write, and another book almost 50% through that I'll need to review too.

I absolutely have to stop putting these off 😭

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Tom Gauld for The Guardian's Autumn Reading Special.

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okay so I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, and here are my takeaways, because it was AMAZING and I can't believe all US students aren't required to read it in school:

shows how slavery actually worked in nuanced ways i'd never thought much about

example: Jacobs's grandmother would work making goods like crackers and preserves after she was done with her work day (so imagine boiling jars at like 3 a.m.) so that she could sell them in the local market

through this her grandmother actually earned enough money, over many years, to buy herself and earn her freedom

BUT her "mistress" needed to borrow money from her. :)))) Yeah. Seriously. And never paid her back, and there was obviously no legal recourse for your "owner" stealing your life's savings, so all those years of laboring to buy her freedom were just ****ing wasted. like.

But also! Her grandmother met a lot of white women by selling them her homemade goods, and she cultivated so much good will in the community that she was able to essentially peer pressure the family that "owned" her into freeing her when she was elderly (because otherwise her so-called owners' white neighbors would have judged them for being total assholes, which they were)

She was free and lived in her own home, but she had to watch her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all continue to be enslaved. She tried to buy her family but their "owners" wouldn't allow it.

Enslaved people celebrated Christmas. they feasted, and men went around caroling as a way to ask white people in the community for money.

But Christmas made enslaved people incredibly anxious because New Years was a common time for them to be sold, so mothers giving their children homemade dolls on Christmas might, in just a few days' time, be separated from their children forever

over and over again, families were deliberately ripped apart in just the one community that Harriet Jacobs lived in. so many parents kept from their children. just insane to think of that happening everywhere across the slave states for almost 200 years

Harriet Jacobs was kept from marrying a free Black man she loved because her "owner" wouldn't let her

Jacobs also shows numerous ways slavery made white people powerless

for example: a white politician had some kind of relationship with her outside of marriage, obviously very questionably consensual (she didn't hate him but couldn't have safely said no), and she had 2 children by him--but he wasn't her "master," so her "master" was allowed to legally "own" his children, even though he was an influential and wealthy man and tried for years to buy his children's freedom

she also gives examples of white men raping Black women and, when the Black women gave birth to children who resembled their "masters," the wives of those "masters" would be devastated--like, their husbands were (from their POV) cheating on them, committing violent sexual acts in their own house, and the wives couldn't do anything about it (except take out their anger on the enslaved women who were already rape victims)

just to emphasize: rape was LEGALLY INCENTIVIZED BY US LAW LESS THAN 200 YEARS AGO. It was a legal decision that made children slaves like their mothers were, meaning that a slaveowner who was a serial rapist would "own" more "property" and be better off financially than a man who would not commit rape.

also so many examples of white people promising to free the enslaved but then dying too soon, or marrying a spouse who wouldn't allow it, or going bankrupt and deciding to sell the enslaved person as a last resort instead

A lot of white people who seemed to feel that they would make morally better decisions if not for the fact that they were suffering financially and needed the enslaved to give them some kind of net worth; reminds me of people who buy Shein and other slave-made products because they just "can"t" afford fairly traded stuff

but also there were white people who helped Harriet Jacobs, including a ship captain whose brother was a slavetrader, but he himself felt slavery was wrong, so he agreed to sail Harriet to a free state; later, her white employer did everything she could to help Harriet when Harriet was being hunted by her "owner"

^so clearly the excuse that "people were just racist back then" doesn't hold any water; there were plenty of folks who found it just as insane and wrongminded as we do now

Harriet Jacobs making it to the "free" north and being surprised that she wasn't legally entitled to sit first-class on the train. Again: segregation wasn't this natural thing that seemed normal to people in the 1800s. it was weird and fucked up and it felt weird and fucked up!

Also how valued literacy skills were for the enslaved! Just one example: Harriet Jacobs at one point needed to trick the "slaveowner" who was hunting her into thinking she was in New York, and she used an NYC newspaper to research the names of streets and avenues so that she could send him a letter from a fake New York address

I don't wanna give away the book, because even though it's an autobiography, it has a strangely thrilling plot. But these were some of the points that made a big impression on me.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also inspired the first novel written by a Black American woman, Frances Harper, who penned Iola Leroy. And Iola Leroy, in turn, helped inspire books by writers like Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Harriet Jacob is also credited in Colson Whitehead's acknowledgments page for informing the plot of The Underground Railroad. so this book is a pivotal work in the US literary canon and, again, it's weird that we don't all read it as a matter of course.

(also P.S. it's free on project gutenberg and i personally read it [also free] on the app Serial Reader)

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JOMP day 2

Currently reading

Starting off kinda slow this month 😅 but also starting with back to back buddy reads

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Kiersten White is an author whose works are like a roulette wheel for if I'll like them. Like, I like her writing fine but I cannot figure out at any given point if I'll like a book of hers.

Hide: No

Mister Magic: Decent

Lucy Undying: LOVED

The House Of Quiet: No

Part of me wonders if I loved Lucy Undying so much is because it was basically a book made specifically for me, like Gothic horror romance with lesbians involving Dracula, and Mister Magic felt like re-reading the Candle Cove creepypasta.

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fuck those billion unread books I own imma keep buying more

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𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘶𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢 𝘥𝘢𝘦𝘺𝘢𝘳𝘪.

A dystopian fantasy with a romance that literally bites back - Vᴏɪᴅᴡᴀʟᴋᴇʀ is for anyone looking for a perfect blend of enemies-to-reluctant allies-to-lovers amidst an unstable political landscape.

When Fi - a smuggler - accidentally sets off a political plot to overthrow Antal - the immortal who runs the territory she lives in - they’re forced together to uncover the plot at the heart of the conspiracy. But when working with the monsters that’s haunted her people’s nightmares for centuries, Fi discovers there’s more to these man-eating creatures than she ever realized. 

With natural chemistry flowing from the banter between Fi and Antal, realistic character motivations, and fascinating worldbuilding - despite the intimidating page count I felt like I flew through reading this book.

Releasing August 19th, Vᴏɪᴅᴡᴀʟᴋᴇʀ by SA Maclean is the perfect fit for anyone looking for a romance tinged with danger - and deadly fangs. 

Thank you to Orbit for providing me with a review copy!

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I absolutely ran to Titan to request this!

I’ve gone insane and started writing a cliche fantasy novel

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A dark academia sapphic gothic fantasy that blurs the line between seeking knowledge - and complete obsession.

Given the opportunity to study botany at the same university as her father, Thora Grieve discovers a mystery in a garden that soon eclipses everything else in her life.

While the writing in this novel was phenomenal and entranced me from the very first page, in many ways I felt like this book was almost a first draft rather than a finished piece. Feeling almost like two separate novels stapled together, plot threads and characterization fall to the wayside once the romance begins - until finally, we reach an ending that feels both anticlimactic and sudden.

As someone who loves gothic novels, no one was more devastated than me upon realizing the most enjoyment I got from reading this book was near the beginning - before the sudden shift in narrative. While this book does deliver a delicious dark sapphic tale of obsession, the minimal and confusing worldbuilding and the complete halt of a coherent plot greatly diminished the story, in my opinion.

However, 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘝𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘏𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 is available August 26th, and I encourage everyone who loves dark academia and sapphic romance to check this out and form their own opinions.

Thank you to Orbit for providing me a copy for review.