🪻Just a book lover looking to discuss. I primarily read Queer YA of any genre, Manga, Graphic Novels, & Fanfiction.🪻 ✨currently trying to expand the types of books I read!✨Current Read: Icarus K. Ancrum (current pfp: https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/626197 )
New Releases: June 23, 2026
Today's post is sponsored by FlameCon! For more information and to get tickets, check out FlameCon.org…...
https://lgbtqreads.com/2026/06/23/new-releases-june-23-2026/
What a book. This book actually took me a really long time to read despite it being short, and it's not because I didn't like it, the plot was unfolding beautifully, and the different POVs were so interesting, but I think this was the first time I've read a book where a main character makes me so mad, upset and uncomfortable. It is very hard to read a particular POV because Purvis is just that good of a writer! While this book is about five sisters, it also is not. I believe this book is about the dangers of alcoholism and the delusions it can bring. I also think it's about the dangers of believing in a drunk man. It shouldn't matter if the girls are actually dogs or not, and that question barely gets answered in the book, but the one consistency is alcohol, the alehouse and violence. There's a lot of commentary on Men and their role in society. How being gentle is not allowed, and to be soft is to be weak. Overall I really enjoyed my read, I went through an entire colour wheel of emotions when reading this book. I felt both exposed and examined. The biggest emotion was being uncomfortable. If you are a fan of 'Angels Before Man' or 'I Who Have Never Known Men' I truly believe you'd enjoy this as well. Speculative Fiction is slowly becoming one of my favorite genres and I'm very much loving it!
Quote I've saved:
"If violence was their god, then the alehouse was their church" -pg 51 ARC
about an invisible girl who can only see and be seen by her mother, who has grown up traveling across the US in trains and squatting in houses
when her mother disappears fully, she doesnt know what to do, and ends up befriending some teens at a halloween party - friends of a girl she had a crush on after living in her house and exchanging secret notes with
What a book. When I told people I was finally reading Brokeback Mountain I got two responses. "It's a book!?" Or "oh it's so sad." This book absolutely lived up to the quintessential queer literature it has always been named as. And I hope that everyone who reacts to the fact that it's a book at all, will go out and read it. On a surface level this book IS sad. The circumstances, the ending and the arguing. However, I cannot help but also express just how much this book is deeply hopeful and largely powerful. Ennis and Jack have complicated lives and feelings, and both struggle with conformity, as well as what is meant to imply that you yourself are Gay. I found so much softness in the pages of this book. Two men in a world so against them, making it work, despite what ending befell them. It is a book of compromise. Promise. Hurt and joy. And it's one I love very deeply. The essays I could write on this. And maybe I will, just for fun. I hope you all read the book, it is worth it.
(also Annie is a direct and simple but strong writer. I couldn't not say something about her writing style. It's really good, not hard to get through at all)
QOTD: What’s your favourite book with a trans MC or by a trans author?
Transgender Day of Remembrance marks the end of Trans Awareness Week so today I’ve got another rec list.
We remember trans lives by celebrating trans lives and sharing trans stories
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Contemporary Romance:
- Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao
- Under the Mistletoe With You by Lizzie Huxley Jones
- Second Chances in New Port Stephen by TJ Alexander
- Love and Other Disasters by Anita Kelly
- Single Player by Tara Tai
- The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
- Pit Stop by Ellis Mae
- Graceless by Ruby Landers
- The Prospects by KT Hoffman
- Sing Anyway by Anita Kelly
Paranormal Romance:
- The Full Moon Problem by Kay Claire
- The (Most Unusual) Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish
- Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore
Historical Romance:
- A Gentleman’s Gentleman by TJ Alexander
- Something Spectacular by Alexis Hall
- A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall
Fantasy:
- The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
- Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson
- These Vengeful Gods by Gabe Cole Novoa
- The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy
- Dragonfall by LR Lam
- She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Sci-fi:
- Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
- Unexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher
Horror/Mystery:
- What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher
- The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall
Graphic Novels:
- Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe
- Strange Bedfellows by Ariel Slamet Ries
- Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu
- Ash’s Cabin by Jen Wang
- Evil-ish by Kennedy Tarrell
- I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Conner
- The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
- Stars in Their Eyes by Jessica Walton
- Paper Planes by Jennie Wood
- Lunar Boy by Jes and Cin Wibowow
- The Tea Dragon Festival by K O’Neill
- A Song for You and I by K O’Neill
YA Romance:
- Leaving the Station by Jake Maia Arlow
- The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimmons
- Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
- Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa
- Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
- Okay, Cupid by Mason Deaver
- Out of the Blue by Jason June
YA Fantasy:
- Witchlore by Emma Hinds
- Devil’s Like Us by Lin Thompson
- A Dark and Hollow Star by Ashley Shuttleworth
- This Fatal Kiss by Alicia Jasinska
- The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas
- The Wicked Bargain by Gabe Cole Novoa
- The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda Hall
- Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong
YA Horror:
- The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
- Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
- Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White
- The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
YA Contemporary:
- Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore
- The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester by Maya MacGregor
- Out of Blue Cones Green by ME Corey
- Honeybee by Craig Silvey
- The Evolving Truth of Ever-Stronger Will by Maya MacGregor
I'm thinking of doing series reviews for new manga coming out? Like manga I've been reading the chapters of and love a lot, this is my blog and I want to review more than just regular books! I love manga and graphic novels and so many go unnoticed or not reviewed at all. So expect some series review of a few manga that have been coming out the past two years that I really think are worth the read! And if you know of a good new manga or GN let me know! I'm always excited to read!
WHAT A BOOK! there is so much I love about this book that it is so hard to place and describe! I love the PTSD representation! Phaidros feels so raw and real, a man riddled with regret and sorrow from warz clearly repressing his sexuality and desperate for any way out, any way to end his life that isn't explicitly suicide. To do something, anything. And then meeting a witch, more than that, the god of parties, revelry, loving life and falling to complete and desperate madness. This book is woven so delicately like a complicated basket, it's narrative washes over you and guides you through smoothly, whether the waves are thrashing or the waters are calm. It is for sure one of my top 5 books of the year, and then once it's out in paperback I will most likely buy it again and read it again! If you are looking for a well researched Greek myth inspired book, with character writing as delicious as "The Song of Achilles" this book is for you!!
A whole bunch of books to get excited for this week.
Truth Is: A Novel in Verse by Hannah V. Sawyerr
Amulet
Seventeen-year-old Truth Bangura wants nothing more than to know a life beyond her hometown. Writing and performing is her only solace in a life overwhelmed by a drifting relationship with her best friend, an emotionally turbulent home environment, and the reality that her below average grades make her true dream—escaping her mother’s grasp after graduation—uncertain.
When Truth learns she’s pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, she makes one decision she’s finally sure about: an abortion.
Determined to move forward, Truth turns to the pages in her notebook with the support of her slam poetry team—including the poet with a voice smooth as summer jazz, who’s been catching her eye during practice.
At an open mic night, Truth finally gains the courage to perform a piece that dives into her rocky relationship with her mother–and reveals the choice she never told her. But when a video of Truth’s performance is posted online and starts going viral, her decision quickly becomes everyone’s business–including her mother’s.
Told through searing free-verse, journal entries, and interspersed fill-in-the-blank poetry prompts, Hannah V. Sawyerr’s Truth Is reminds us there is always a choice. There is always hope. And there is always a way forward.
A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2) by Hafsah Faizal
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Arthie Casimir has had her tea. Now she’s out for blood.
White Roaring is sharpening its fangs after the deadly night that left the city in shambles. The press are dead, the public is calling for justice, vampires are in danger, and amid the turmoil, the Ram announces a celebration.
Still reeling from the bloodshed, Arthie Casimir has no time to mourn the death of anyone, let alone her own. She has no time for love, either, even though it had saved her life. As Arthie navigates new emotions and new allies, she must reassemble her scrambled crew and scrape what little they have left to fight one last time―and she will need to face the ghosts of her past to do it.
In Ceylan.
My Mother the Mermaid Chaser by Jamie Jo Hoang
Crown Books for Young Readers
San Jose, 2008: Paul yearns to know more about the mother who abandoned his family, but she is the only topic no one discusses. Now’s he’s in Vietnam, feeling displaced and considered an outsider. Plus, a ghost is haunting him even though he doesn’t believe in ghosts. His cousin and the grandmother he’s never met before now keep telling him that he’ll get answers only if he’s willing to open his ears.
Vũng Tâu, 1975: Ngọc Lan is eleven when her family breaks apart: her brother is drafted into the army; her father leaves on the last helicopter to the US. She and her sister are sent from Vietnam on a harrowing journey by boat. Only Ngọc Lan will survive. But what is the American dream when you are haunted by the death of your sister, missing your homeland; seeing ghostly mermaid sightings; lost in an abusive marriage; struggling as a parent?
Told in the alternating perspectives of Paul and Ngọc Lan, My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser is a haunting story about the intergenerational effects of war, estranged family bonds, and how a teenager discovers a new connection to a lost part of himself.
Flip by Ngozi Ukazu
First Second
Chi-Chi Ekeh has one huge problem: She keeps having crushes on rich white boys who have no idea she exists. Enter Flip Henderson, the most popular boy at school, who receives Chi-Chi’s private video proposal to go to senior prom.
But when Flip rejects Chi-Chi in front of their entire class, what happens next is completely unexpected: Chi-Chi―shy nerd and scholarship student―switches bodies with Flip. Suddenly Chi-Chi is 6’1” and cool, while Flip gets a crash course on Chi-Chi’s life―that is, k-pop, hair-braiding, and being a poor kid of color at a rich white private school.
With graduation looming and their body swaps lasting longer and longer, Chi-Chi and Flip must form the most unlikely friendship their school has ever seen. But will they survive senior year? And, most importantly, can they find a way back to themselves?
From bestselling author of Check, Please! comes Flip, a thrilling and fantastical tale about self-acceptance, black girlhood, and how walking a mile in someone else’s shoes can teach you how to finally see yourself.
Everything But Typical: Influential Neurodivergent People Who Have Shaped the World written by Margeaux Weston, illustrated by Jessica Cruickshank
Bloomsbury
Neurodivergent people have unique brains. They defy norms in the way they think, learn, process information, and engage with others and the world around them. These differences may help them not only to see the world in uncommon ways, but to forge one-of-a-kind paths.
Get to know neurodivergent people making their mark in all kinds of careers: a record-breaking Olympic gymnast, a visionary science fiction writer, a resolute climate activist, an innovative trading card game creator, and many others.
Everything But Typical is a tribute to people who saw the world differently and conquered it in their own way-and an inspiration for young readers who will grow up to do the same.
Figures profiled in the book include Simone Biles, Satoshi Tajiri, Armani Williams, Billie Eilish, Greta Thunberg, Amanda Gorman, Jason Arday, Octavia Butler, Camonghne Felix, Barbara Corcoran, Atoosa Rubenstein, Selena Gomez, David Beckham, Pharrell Williams, Miles Chamley Watson, Jamie Grace Harper, Tony Snell, Daniel Radcliffe, Clay Marzo, Lisa Ling, Muhammad Ali, Zayn Malik, and Dav Pilkey.
Exquisite Things by Abdi Nazemian
HarperCollins
Shahriar believes he was born in the wrong time. All he’s ever wanted is to love and be loved, but 1895 London doesn’t offer him the freedom to be his true self, and Oscar Wilde’s trial for gross indecency has only reaffirmed that. But one night—and one writer—will grant Shahriar what he’s always wished for: the opportunity to live in a time and place where he can love freely. Rechristened as Shams and then as Bram, he finds what feels like eternal happiness. But can anything truly be eternal?
Oliver doesn’t feel that 1920s Boston gives him a lot of options to be his full self. He knows he could only ever love another boy, but that would break his beloved mother’s heart. Oliver finds freedom and acceptance in the secret queer community at Harvard that his cousin introduces him to. When he meets a mysterious boy with eyes as warm as a flame, his life is irrevocably changed, forever.
Spanning one hundred and thirty years of love and longing, this tale of immortal beloveds searching for their perfect place and time is a vibrant hymn to the beauty of being alive, a celebration of queer love and community, and a reminder that behind every tragic thing that ever existed, there is something exquisite.
One of my most anticipated books of 2026 is Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall and we just got the (US) cover reveal!
Gideon the Ninth meets Murderbot in USA Today bestselling author Alexis Hall's thrilling SF debut, Hell's Heart!
They are monsters, legends, gods.
They are our prey.
Earth is dead. Which leaves us stuck living in atmospheric domes on planets that will kill us if we blink wrong, or run out of fuel. And by “fuel” I mean “the cerebrospinal fluid of gargantuan, quasi-psychic space monsters”.
I joined the hunt hoping to get paid and maybe laid, but mostly paid. Instead, I followed a captain chasing abominations in the skies of Jupiter.
We battled the Möbius Beast itself, there in the red eye of the world.
Spoiler: we lost.
Hell's Heart will be published on March 10, 2026 and can be pre-ordered here!
Raised in a Greek legion, Phaidros has been taught to fight for the homeland he’s never seen and to follow his commander’s orders at all c
Raised in a Greek legion, Phaidros has been taught to fight for the homeland he’s never seen and to follow his commander’s orders at all costs. But when he rescues a baby from a fire at Thebes’s palace, his commander’s orders cease to make sense: Phaidros is forced to abandon the blue-eyed boy at a temple, and to keep the baby’s existence a secret. Years later, after a strange encounter that led to the death of his battalion, Phaidros has become a training master for young soldiers. He struggles with panic attacks and flashbacks, and he is not the only one: all around him, his fellow veterans are losing their minds.
Phaidros’s risk of madness is not his only problem: his life has become entangled with Thebes’s young crown prince, who wishes to escape the marriage his mother, the Queen, has chosen for him. When the prince vanishes, Phaidros is drawn into the search for him—a search that leads him to a blue-eyed witch named Dionysus, whose guidance is as wise as the events that surround him are strange. In Dionysus’s company, Phaidros witnesses sudden outbursts of riots and unrest, and everywhere Dionysus goes, rumors follow about a new god, one sired by Zeus but lost in a fire.
"We don’t last long, but our stories do."
Natasha Pulley's The Hymn to Dionysus is, in perfect Pulley fashion, a pointed novel about grief, memory, and identity, a reflection on PTSD and love, and a labirintine narration that draws you in, confuses you, enchants you, and leaves you begging for more. Pulley's distinctive voice is a soothing caress, mesmerising and hypnothising, as she tackles Greek Mythology with a deft hand and creates a new story that feels like the myth. Her Dionysus is a feral and uncanny creature, an ancient and curious god, kind and terrible.
The sole narrator, Phaidros, finds himself earning Dionysus' attention from a very young age. A vicious soldier and a polyglot, widowed of his guardian and commander, he is suicidal and compelled by duty and honor. He's the quintessential Pulley protagonist, and yes, she definitely has a niche, but what she does with her niche works everytime, like beautiful clockwork. This book has an intricate plot, with twists and turns that weren't predictable even by knowing the actual myths, and it meanders gently, pulling you by your hand, slowly unraveling madness and knowledge and freedom.
The relationship between Phaidros and the strange witch he suspects from the start of being a god develops beautifully, with moments of terrible tenderness and others that are heartbreaking. Phaidros' internal monologue paints him as a desperate, grieving man who can't find in himself to believe he's worthy of anything anymore, dealing with staggering loss and with the sudden duties he takes on because he has to. Slowly he'll learn to find value in himself, all while battling with a draught that threatens to kill all and with a supernatural madness taking on soldiers, as well as with a dynastic crisis.
The author did her research into history and myth, and it shows with her usage of greek words and historical references and with her deft threading of her own special Pulley-ness into the mythological tapestry. Her usage of language and etymology is as always superb, as is her particular kind of magical realism. This book has mask magic and bronze marvels that might or might not be inhabited by gods, and her inclusion of the blind prophet Thiresias in a new and fresh way is handled with grace. The major female character is handled with the usual depth and narrative cruelty. It should feel trite, but despite this, her women are always vibrant and never dulled down, and that is the saving grace.
The Hymn to Dionysus is a marvelous piece of art.
✨ 5 stars
[You can find more of my reviews about queer speculative fiction on my blog MISTY WORLD]
My, what a lovely and romantic book. I loved everything about this story, and so much more. The plot was so masterfully woven together I found myself gripped the entire way through! The two characters we have the pleasure of watching fall in love and stay in love are wonderfully rounded out and incredibly mature. Parts of me forgot I was reading a YA novel, truly. I love a good fated lovers during a war trope and this book absolutely delivered, and this book knows how to have fun! I felt like I was watching a perfectly thought out war movie, but it was deeply romantic and also fantastical. Edmund and Aubrey have a very permanent place in my heart, and it's a book I would absolutely read again! Please go read Prince of Fortune
Sorry I was gone I took a 6 month break from my book to go read JayVik fanfiction. But we are so back, I'm gonna finish Prince of fortune and start another book I promise!!
I love character development, but can adult romance please drop the "I'm just a fucking selfish idiot and need someone else (particularly a HOT someone else) to show me how stupid in being" type of character development.
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