#emery lee

[transbookoftheday]

🍂 Trans Books To Read If You Love "Heartstopper" 🍂

Here are some trans books you should read if you love "Heartstopper":

Book titles:

Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms by Crystal Frasier

Always the Almost by Edward Underhill

The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimons

The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta

Out of the Blue by Jason June

Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

Beating Heart Baby by Lio Min

The Borrow a Boyfriend Club by Page Powars (comes out September 14, 2023)

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: Fiction with Trans M/NB Pairings

A Hundred Vicious Turns by Lee Paige O’Brien (YA Fantasy) The Feeling of Falling in Love by Mason Deaver (YA Romance) Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee (YA Romance) Long Macchiatos and Monsters by Alison Evans (Contemporary Romance) Documenting Light by EE Ottoman (Contemporary Romance)

[lucky-numberme]

They're scheming :3

12/20 Queer Book Draw Challenge: Café con Lychee by @emeryleewho

[ID: a drawing of Gabi and Theo in pastels surrounded by a deep purple frame. One of Gabi's arms is around Theo's shoulder while he gestures enthusiastically. His face is open and excited. Theo smiles back at him, an eyebrow lifted slightly. Around them, a cup with a "Café con Lychee" logo pours a stylized wave of coffee with lychee jelly. End ID]

ko-fi | commissions

[iitsfantastiical]

just some new books to add to my collection. 😌👉🏻👈🏻

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

goodreads

Noah Ramirez thinks he’s an expert on romance. He has to be for his popular blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem—all the stories are fake. What started as the fantasies of a trans boy afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe. When a troll exposes the blog as fiction, Noah’s world unravels. The only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. Then Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place: Drew is willing to fake-date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realizes that dating in real life isn’t quite the same as finding love on the page.

Mod opinion: I haven't read this one yet and as it's not from a genre I normally enjoy I probably won't, but it does sound super cute.

[queerbookmasterlist]

(Review - Meet Cute Diary)

Representation: Achillean trans MC who is attracted to multiple genders, Achillean LI, nonbinary/GNC LI who uses neopronouns & is an androphile.

Noah Ramirez thinks he’s an expert on romance. He has to be for his popular blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem—all the stories are fake. What started as the fantasies of a trans boy afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe.

When a troll exposes the blog as fiction, Noah’s world unravels. The only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. Then Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place: Drew is willing to fake-date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realizes that dating in real life isn’t quite the same as finding love on the page.

In this charming novel by Emery Lee, Noah will have to choose between following his own rules for love or discovering that the most romantic endings are the ones that go off script

I am genuinely surprised that Drew asking Noah about if he ran the Tumblr blog didn’t go like this: Drew: “I like your shoelaces” Noah: “Thanks, I stole them from the president.”

[norius-here-to-sips-tea]

I just read "Café con Lychee" a few hours ago and I just can't get over it yet. It's simply a beautiful book that deserves a lot of love. AND @emeryleewho TOO! they are so talented, I haven't felt in the shoes of the characters reading a book in a REALLY REALLY long time so for me it was double the emotion (I cried a lot, laughed a lot)

Thank you very much for sharing Theo and Gabi's story with us, I thank my past self for choosing this book among so many others, it is a 100/10 without a shadow of a doubt.

I'll soon be after "meet cute diary" and I hope they're books get the love and recognition they deserve.

here's a sketchy fanart ^^

"Theo's hair is shorter"

I only saw it after finishing because it was completely based on this image:

but hope you guys liked it!! and, again, if you've never heard of it or if you want to read it but don't know if it's any good, just jump. It's spectacular.

[bi4bihankking]

Café Con Lychee Summary:

Theo Mori and Gabriel Moreno have always been at odds. Their parents own rival businesses—an Asian American café and a Puerto Rican bakery—and Gabi’s lack of coordination has cost their soccer team too many games to count.

Stuck in the closet and scared to pursue his own dreams, Gabi sees his family’s shop as his future. Stuck under the weight of his parents’ expectations, Theo’s best shot at leaving Vermont means first ensuring his parents’ livelihood is secure. 

So when a new fusion café threatens both shops, Theo and Gabi realize an unfortunate truth—they can only achieve their goals by working together to cook up an underground snack operation and win back their customers. But can they put aside their differences long enough to save their parents’ shops, or will the new feelings between them boil over?

The Half Bad Trilogy Summary:

A boy has a mother who is a ‘good magic’ user and a father who is an ‘evil magic’ user and the government goes ‘hmmmm he’ll probably be evil then!’ And proceeds to just generally be awful. The finale of the third book made me cry so hard i still felt sick two days later. The fact that this isn’t talked about more means Big Yaoi failed me. It’s gonna lose but I need more people to read it.

[hobbieswithhobbit]

Hi! So, after looking at Spotify Wrapped and getting the notification for my Goodreads' Year in Books, I decided to create some graphics looking back at my Year in Books. Here they are!

What do we think?

(Info: The only app I've used to create these graphics is Canva, with data taken from my Goodreads and Storygraph. This work is original.)

[queer-books-bracket]

[the-final-sentence]

Three.

Emery Lee, from “The Door to the Other Side”

[transbookoftheday]

Transmogrify! by g. haron davis

Transness is as varied and colorful as magic can be. In Transmogrify!, you’ll embark on fourteen different adventures alongside unforgettable characters who embody many different genders and expressions and experiences—because magic is for everyone, and that is cause for celebration.

Featuring stories from:

AR Capetta and Cory McCarthy

g. haron davis

Mason Deaver

Jonathan Lenore Kastin

Emery Lee

Saundra Mitchell

Cam Montgomery

Ash Nouveau

Sonora Reyes

Renee Reynolds

Dove Salvatierra

Ayida Shonibar

Francesca Tacchi

Nik Traxler

[lgbtqreads]

Happy AAPI Heritage Month!

Happy AAPI Heritage Month!

Happy Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month! May is a fabulous month to celebrate all these books and authors, so if there are any missing from your bookshelf, please use the links below to rectify that! (They are indeed affiliate links, so a percentage of your purchase goes to supporting LGBTQReads.) See a fave of yours that is or isn’t mentioned here? Please recommend it in the…

[jaanusbooktalk]

Café con Lychee by Emery Lee - Book Review

6/10 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW: homophobia, racism, cultural appropriation, fear of being outed, toxic friendships, bullying

(TWs are ranked in order of severity, please take them seriously!)

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while! I just started senior year and everything’s been moving kinda fast, but I have gotten the chance to read a lot!

Most recently, I’ve read:

On a Sunbeam (graphic novel by Tillie Walden)

Rainbow in the Dark by Sean McGinty

Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by Jonny Garza Villa

Love from A to Z by S.K. Ali

Lobizona by Romina Garber

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

My So-Called Bollywood Life by Nisha Sharma

I’m currently reading Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner 🍜

^me and my college applications rn😭

Summary:

“Sometimes bitter rivalries can brew something sweet.

Theo Mori wants to escape. Leaving Vermont for college means getting away from working at his parents’ Asian American café and dealing with their archrivals’ hopeless son Gabi who’s lost the soccer team more games than Theo can count.

Gabi Moreno is miserably stuck in the closet. Forced to play soccer to hide his love for dance and iced out by Theo, the only openly gay guy at school, Gabi’s only reprieve is his parents’ Puerto Rican bakery and his plans to take over after graduation.

But the town’s new fusion café changes everything. Between the Mori’s struggling shop and the Moreno’s plan to sell their bakery in the face of the competition, both boys find their dreams in jeopardy. Then Theo has an idea—sell photo-worthy food covertly at school to offset their losses. When he sprains his wrist and Gabi gets roped in to help, they realize they need to work together to save their parents’ shops but will the new feelings rising between them be enough to send their future plans up in smoke?”

Representation:

This will be an own voices review since I’m coming from an Asian American & queer perspective, but we are not a monolith and not everyone will agree with my interpretation.

To be honest, I had really high expectations for this book. It had been in my TBR ever since I heard it was coming out, and I was super excited to read about two queer PoC falling in love (not to mention the enemies to lovers and food!!) but it ended up falling short in a lot of ways.

For representation, Theo Mori is Japanese and Chinese (if I remember correctly) and Gabi Moreno is Puerto Rican. While Theo is gay and out, Gabi is very much in the closet and struggles with his father’s machismo expectations.

I will say that while this is the author’s own experience growing up in these cultures, the book’s impact depended on the readers. For white readers, the book would appear to reinforce negative stereotypes like Asian parents pushing for perfect grades, and Latinx parents being machismo and sexist.

It’s one of those things that for Asian kids, we know that sometimes our parents can be strict, but it’s not something that applies to all Asian parents. I would have liked to see some of those stereotypes challenged in this book instead of reinforced.

That being said, the book did a really good job of showing the struggles of being in the closet, especially with a homophobic family.

What I Liked:

I liked the plot and how it flowed - nothing seemed choppy or didn’t make sense. There was always a reason the characters were doing what they did, and even if you didn’t agree with it you understood their motivations.

I needed a good beach read when I picked this up, and it did not disappoint. I also love love love when romance books have switching perspectives - it adds a lot of dimension to the characters.

Why I couldn’t give it a 10:

Sadly, this book ended up falling into a lot of unfortunate stereotypes that I felt readers from other backgrounds wouldn’t recognize as such. I discussed this a bit already, but it was to the extent that I had to put the book down at times. I also didn’t really like how the “enemies to lovers” aspect was basic - they genuinely had little reason to hate each other and it was mostly one sided. This is later acknowledged so that they can have a romance, but it fell flat for me. I prefer when characters have complex motivations, especially for a plot line that propels so much of the book.

Ultimately, I’m grateful for the representation this book brings to the table and I hope it can make people feel seen, I just didn’t enjoy the writing as much as I wanted to. For a debut novel, it’s not bad!

I can’t think of any recommendations like this book at the moment (because this is a months-old draft) but I’ll keep an eye out!

Thanks for reading!

[stardustandrockets]

Hi, Barbie! What's your favorite pink book?

I haven't seen the Barbie movie yet, but I wanted to contribute to the stacks of pink books in its honor. I have more, but these were the books with pink spines without taking off a dust jacket. My favorite of this stack is The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen.

Books from top to bottom:

• Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert

• Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

• Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

• Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

• Never Ever Getting Back Together by Sophie Gonzales

• It Devours by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor

• The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen

• Happy Place by Emily Henry

If you swipe, you'll see two of my childhood Barbies I found while at my parents' last week. The one on the left I redressed, but the one on the right is still in the last outfit I put her in 20 years ago before they had to be packed away after our house flooded. I decided not to keep them, as they'd only continue to be packed away, but it was cool getting to dress them up again for a little bit.

[the-liliger]

Review and Spoiler - #25

Café Con Lychee by Emery Lee

Theo wants to escape Vermont and leave for college. Gabi wants to dance freely and safely come out of the closet. And Meli just wants the homecoming to be perfect. All reasonable desires, but how reasonably will they go about them?

Emery Lee, the author of Meet Cute Diary, returns with a sweet rom-com brew, with characters Gabi Moreno and Theo Mori. Two queer, soccer-playing, bakery-working, high schoolers, who have gained a shared common enemy: Their town's new Fusion Café.

(LGBTQIA+ 🏳‍🌈)

Spoiler: These two enemies will have to work together to save their families' bakery/café.