Bookblr

Main: npdclaraoswald. Ellis, any pronouns. Icon is a stack of books in the colors of Star Trek uniforms with a space background. Header is a stock photo of a bookshelf

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Figured I should get around to making an introduction post! I'm Ellis, and I use any pronouns.

I read across genres and try to read pretty diversely. Starting in 2025, I post reviews of everything I read, and other than that most of what I post is monthly TBRs and wrap ups, as well as the occasional themed recommendation post. Most unique thing about my blog is that I include comic books and picture books in my reading and reviews.

Storygraph

Insta

Pango

Reading challenges:

Read the World

No more white authors in 2026

Read 20 of the 100 books that have been on my tbr the longest

My 2026 bingo (Original prompt list)

Batmanisagatewaydrug's bingo

Currently reading:

Darling by K Ancrum

Forever is Now by Mariama J Lockington

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Hmmm. Perhaps I should have actually read the description for Kirby's Lessons for Falling in Love before picking it up from the library instead of hearing it was a queer disabled graphic novel and grabbing it. It appears to be heavily based in astrology, and I am Not Reading That

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I anticipate the biggest problems with my "not reading any white authors in 2026" thing I'm doing will be 1) the fact that I just watched Wicked For Good making me want to revisit the books 2) season 3 of IWTV will undoubtedly do the same 3) Supergirl (2026) will undoubtedly make me want to read more of her books

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Good news! 1) my fixation on Wicked has long since faded. While I do still want to revisit the books at some point, it's no longer a pressing desire. 2) I do not like the new season of Interview with the Vampire and am no longer even watching the show, much less having any desire to return to Anne Rice

Bad new: I saw Supergirl last night and ohhhhhh, I want to see my giiiirrrrrrrrrllllllllll again. If any of you know of any of her books, or even books where she's not the title character but has a significant presence written by writers of color, please let me know (I do already know about and have read Supergirl: Being Super by Mariko Tamaki et al)

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Based off the posts I'm seeing, it sounds like I made the right decision about the vampires. Would still love Supergirl recs if anybody's got them though

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Confessions of An Alleged Good Girl by Joya Goffney

This is a YA contemporary about a girl who struggles with the expectations placed upon her as a pastor's daughter and who gets dumped by her boyfriend when she physically can't have sex with him. Hoping to win him back, she starts investigating her vaginismus behind her parents' backs even if it means teaming up with two people she never thought she'd consider friends.

The goal of this book is very obviously to let the teen readership know that it's okay to explore their own bodies and that they shouldn't be ashamed of sex or let other people tell them how to feel about it- including pressuring them to have or not have it. And it largely succeeds on that front. The narrative is very much structured around Monique learning that for herself and manages to avoid ever getting too preachy, and I think Monique's own mindset represents a good and believable blend of her knowing that she should be the only one who gets to control her own body and being bogged down by the ideas she's been raised with. The only real complaint I could have in regard to this aspect of the book is that sex is only ever discussed as part of a committed relationship, with casual sex never mentioned, but I suppose that's not too surprising for a YA book- even one centered on this topic. Oh, also her friends' refusal to believe it was even possible that she doesn't masturbate- and the eventual confirmation of that- did ring a bit odd. Accepting people's relationship to their sexuality means also accepting people who don't engage with any manner of sex for whatever reason they choose. Yes, Monique in particular was struggling with shame, but some people genuinely don't have sexual drives and they shouldn't be alienated either.

Also, I was not fond of the romance. Reggie is of course superior to Monique's shitty ex in that he fully respects her condition, her right to decide how she feels about him even while grieving her last relationship, and her boundaries in regards to sex, but he ignores all of her other boundaries. I understand that getting her out of her comfort zone and learning who she is outside of her parents and her ex is a major element of the novel, but the way he continually and intentionally makes her uncomfortable in the name of being "funny" is not the way to help her do that. And he's not even funny! I admit Sasha could be a bit condescending and holier than thou, but jesus, did she feel like a better match for Monique.

I'm glad a book like this exists for this age demographic. It can veer a little bit into Baby's First Feminism territory, but it has a good message, even if I don't think it goes quite in depth about that message as it should. However, on a character level, I don't think the romance succeeds and it wasn't really for me. Though of course, I can't really read outside of my age demographic and then complain that it wasn't suited to my tastes, so I'll give it 3.5⭐️

[youmegravity]

It does piss me off a little bit that serious polyamory representation in media is pretty much non-existent

[youmegravity]

The fact that no one even seems to care makes feel like I'm going to explode, I'm tired of such a significant part of my life never being represented and often seen as less serious than monogamy.

[aspiringsorceress]

Its not that it's less serious, it's that functional polyamory challenges the nuclear family dynamic that capitalism has weaponized against the working class. If a household is shown to function with more than only two adults in an exclusive relationship, then it opens the door to what other parts of life might thrive better under community organization.

It also inherently challenges purity culture with multiple varied casual and symbiotically supportive relationships.

Taking both of those into account challenges the Patriarchy itself, and the idea that a singular man should be in charge and rule over his own household like a petty tyrant.

It's only potrayed as unserious or rife with conflict and betrayal in media to keep it defanged and propagandized as a guaranteed failure state. In truth, it very directly challenges several foundational pillars upholding the power structures in our current western society. The status quo therefore cannot allow it to exist or be portrayed as a healthy alternative to monogamy or to the nuclear family model.

[sionnualanicheallachain]

Yup—I can think of three recent examples of polyamory taken seriously in fiction off the top of my head, and all three are in works that are actively and explicitly pushing back on those exact power structures in multiple ways.

In the order that I happened to read them:

• A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys

• Spear by Nicola Griffith

• To Shape a Dragon's Breath and To Ride a Rising Storm by @moniquill Blackgoose

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There's also Shake Things Up by Skye Kilaen, Death's Country by RM Romero, and a lot of Xan West's work but most noticeably Their Troublesome Crush

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How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs

This is a short story collection centering Jamaicans- both on the island and emigrants- and their experiences in regards to love.

I liked this, but it didn't overall leave a strong impression on me. I enjoyed several of the individual stories like Light Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands, The Ghost of Jia Yi, and especially Shirley From a Small Place, and I appreciated the subtle way some of the stories connected to each other. And of course, I thought the theme of how interpersonal relationships are affected by the specter of imperialism and racism that haunt Caribbean peoples was explored well. But the book never really grabbed me in the way that I feel it should have. I will say that I listened to it as an audiobook, which I often don't connect as well with as opposed to physical books, so maybe I'll revisit this later in a different format. For now, I don't have much to say on it, and am giving it 3.5⭐️

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To be clear, Tingle IDENTIFIES as trans. His Hariet Porber parady series is trans centered. https://www.tumblr.com/drchucktingle/703110927864725504/what-flavor-of-queer-are-you-if-thats-not-too?source=share

non-dysphoric trans, he says that multiple times in his posts. Even says he declined to bring this up previously because he wanted to leave space for dysphoric trans people.

Okay? It's still weird to market your novels as being "unapologetically queer" without including any trans characters. And I know about Harriet Porber- I mentioned reading his shorter writing in those tags, and the Harriet Porber duology are 2/3 of I've read. But having trans characters in your comedy and not the more mainstream, serious work is arguably worse

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Happy Disability Pride Month!

I didn't realize when I was compiling the list just how many second chance romances were here

Daniel, Deconstructed by James Ramos

The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet by Jake Maia Arlow

All the Noise at Once by DeAndra Davis

Score by Kennedy Ryan

The Fall of Whit Rivera by Crystal Maldonado

Pedro & Daniel by Federico Erebia

The Way Disabled People Love Each Other by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

You're No Better by Andrew Joseph White

Where the Stars Are by Micah Flowers

[seshrat]

just in case anybody has been keeping track, chuck tingle has now released four Unapologetically Queer full-length novels that do not even so much as glance in the direction of transness, let alone have any trans characters actually in them

[seshrat]

i still think camp damascus is the worst offender of this even though it was the first one. how are you going to write a novel about the horrors of conversion therapy camps without putting even a single trans character in as a throwaway background mention. fuck you

[oaky-dokey]

love the library. there's no risk. you can take out a book and go "wow this sucks" and just give it back. and when you do that you're still making the library's Number Go Up so you'll be able to roll the dice on even more books. all for the low low price of free/you already paid for it with your tax money so you might as well use it

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Defanged by HE Edgmon

This is a middle grade novel about Lux, a young vampire in a world where vampires revealed themselves to the wider world a few decades ago, kicking off a fledgling vampire rights movement, and also prompting the government to create a cure for vampirism. Now old enough for the cure to work, Lux's parents bring him to be cured on his birthday, but afraid of losing the only way of life he's ever known, Lux runs away to take refuge in the rumored city of off the grid vampires living in abandoned subway tunnels.

I had a lot of fun reading this! Edgemon explicitly draws out the autism metaphor in their author's note, and that does very clearly come through in the text. In fact, it would be quite easy to argue that Lux is textually autistic, simply undiagnosed. But the government persecution of communities it can't control, as well as the machine of propaganda insidiously turning public consciousness against these populations to strip them of their rights while still being polite about it is written in a way that also echoes the history of the disabled community at large, the queer community, and communities of color- with Edgmon's Seminole heritage of course bringing the genocide of Indigenous peoples to the reader's mind. I see bits and pieces of all of these communities within Nox Urbus, and I think it speaks to how well written it is that it contains such intersections.

Though that is unfortunately not to say that the book is flawless. The romance(?) feels out of place and tacked on enough that I'm not even sure if it is a romance or a very affectionate friendship. Either way, it came on quite suddenly. I also don't feel that the side character of Cowboy had a complete arc, which leaves him feeling vestigial. It's also weird to have a guy idolize cowboys in a story like this. But I would have been willing to ignore those flaws if the book had a better ending. As it is, it is waaaaaayyyyyyy too abrupt. You cannot end a book in the middle of a climax and then just tack on an month later epilogue saying "everything's fine now!" without answering any questions as to HOW. This would have been such a good book if Edgmon had landed the ending, but unfortunately there just isn't an ending. Which would be one thing if it were intentionally open ended, but that epilogue implies it isn't supposed to be, so instead it's just bad.

The rest of the book is well written enough that I still had a good time reading, but boy does that ending bring it down. Edgmon is very much a hit or miss author for me where I love some of his books and hate others, but this one is the first one to land in a weird middle ground where I very much enjoyed, but I nonetheless can't say that it is well done. 3⭐️

[fluentisonus]

me reading one of the most famous books ever written: do people know about this book. do they know.

[noahhawthorneauthor]

In case you haven't heard, July is Disability Pride Month. Here is a collection of queer books with disabled characters and/or authors.

I've been doing this for quite some time, last time I did a post with this focus was Disability December and before that it was Disabled and Kicking Ass. Any recs I should include next time?

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As with To Shape a Dragon's Breath, I will not be posting my review for To Ride a Rising Storm on here because I know Moniquill Blackgoose has a tumblr and I don't want authors seeing my reviews. If you desperately want to hear my thoughts on it, my storygraph is in my pinned post

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When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michele Norris

This is literary fiction that follows Davis, whose estranged father dies on his wedding day, as he deals with the emotional fallout of both events.

I really don't know how to feel about this one. On the one hand, it was gorgeous, both in that I really liked the writing style and that Vivienne's story of self discovery was a beauty in and of itself. Also, I often struggle to be compelled by literary fiction, but this one easily held my attention the entire way through on the strength of its characters.

On the other hand, it feels like there are two different books trying to be written here. There's a deeply melancholic exploration of trauma, grief, memory, and family that is very grounded in realistic but horrible experiences and the ways that they stay with a person. And the other is a wonderfully sweet and hopeful exploration of self and identity that culminates in the most joyful outcome that people dream of. And I unfortunately do not think that these two stories are woven together in a way that makes sense. I deeply appreciate elements from both versions of the book and understand the desperate need for both types of stories, but forcing them together into one narrative simply does not work.

I loved Vivienne. I loved the dream she got to live. And I loved the look at the realities of a life such as hers. But that beautiful, hopeful ending is not one that the novel built up to. I really don't know how to rate the book because it does, I think, on a craft level fail. But it also drew me in so completely that I can't bring myself to give it a bad rating. I'll definitely have to sit with it for a while, but for now I'll give it 4⭐️

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If I had a nickel for every book I've read that is about being transgender and about being consumed by the artistry of playing an instrument in the violin family, I'd have two nickels

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Happy Disability Pride Month!

Witch Hat Atelier Volumes 1-12 by Kamome Shirahama trans by Stephen Kohler

How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity by La Marr Jurelle Bruce

Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life by Melody Moezzi

Isn't It Obvious? By Rachel Runya Katz

Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction by Sami Schalk

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

You Weren't Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

One of Us Knows by Alyssa Cole

Magic of the Lost by CL Clark