#heather walter

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Malice by Heather Walter (2021)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onAug 14, 2025

[bookshelvesandtealeaves]

✨ BOOK REVIEW ✨

Malice by Heather Walter

⭐️⭐️⭐️

QOTD: What’s a book you wanted to love but just missed the mark a little?

[instagram]

I wanted to love this. I really did. There was so much to like about it! The main character is treated like the villain, the romance is sapphic and forbidden, there’s magic and politics and an old war that shaped the realm.

The world building was really good. Intricate yet easy to follow. The plot was decent too; trying to break a curse, hoping for a better life, a better world. These are the main reasons I didn’t give up - I was waiting for something to click.

But the characters did nothing for me. I never felt that emotional hook and I’m not actually sure whether or not I’ll pick up book two because I’m not sure I care about what happens next.

[aliteraryprincess]

Choice is a magic in and of itself.

Heather Walter, The Crimson Crown

[thelonginglookslibrary]

Sapphic Books I've Read That I Genuinely Liked

Malice - Heather Walter's debut novel, part of a duology. A Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent retelling with the magic and lore redone in a way that at first was difficult to follow but after two or so chapters began to make sense. I believe this is tagged as young adult but it bordered on darker themes. Fade to black scene, cliffhanger ending. Somewhat predictable but still very enjoyable to me. Would recommend this for sapphics that are interested in fairytale/Disney retellings but want a darker vibe to them or to anyone that is getting back into reading and needs a decent mix of fantasy and romance.

Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Okay, admittedly I never finished this. I picked it up right before my wife and I moved, BUT from what I have read so far it was really good. I plan to re-read it to have a more cohesive thought but this is a major recommendation for anyone JUST starting to get into sapphic books (whether you are sapphic or not), and honestly for anyone that has struggled with identity in the sense of struggling to exist only as yourself rather than how everyone seems to see you. I recommend this to anyone that has had to put on a mask to survive, act a certain way to make it through, and just lived a life that feels fraudulent to them. It doesn't have to focus a queer identity experience as I feel Evelyn struggled with identity beyond just her queer identity. But again, take what I say with a grain of salt as I have not fully finished it yet.

Make the Season Bright - Ashley Herring Blake, the woman you are. This book made me cry. It's been a really long time since I've read a book where a character on a page makes me feel seen, heard, and understood. That said this is a second chance romance involving being left at the altar - the reviews about this specifically are SO POLARIZING and at first glance I get why people are so quick to say absolutely not. HOWEVER, AHB literally goes into great detail on how both mc's are flawed, she covers why it happened, how it lead up to happening. I feel like she did a phenomenal job at creating these two very real and very relatable characters and gave them real flaws, and I don't know. I just feel like the negative reviews that focus only on the leaving at the altar and claiming there was no excuse didn't give the book an actual chance and didn't fully take in the emotional aspect of where this relationship struggled before. That said, the ending feels very rushed, there is a third act breakup which feels abundantly unnecessary but such is the romance genre. I would say anyone that loves complex characters, that loves watching two people sort through their emotions, and also a little petty drama here and there would love this book. If you HATE communication troubles, second chance romance, and somewhat rushed endings - maybe sit this one out.

[vordenburg]

I still firmly stand by the belief that Alyce should’ve rebranded herself Maleficent instead of Nimara at the end of Malice and going into Misrule.

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Queer Book Ship Tournament 2025 Round 1

Magnus Chase/Alex Fierro- The Magnus Chase series

Alyce/Aurora- Malice

Wenren E/Yin Hanjiang- Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know

Sedric Meldar/Carson Lupskip- The Rain Wilds Chronicles

Voting ended onJan 20, 2025

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Magnus Chase/Alex Fierro- The Magnus Chase series by Rick Riordan

Alyce/Aurora- Malice by Heather Walter

Wenren E/Yin Hanjiang- Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know by Cyan Wings

Sedric Meldar/Carson Lupskip- The Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fiction Free-for-All Book Bracket Tournament: Round 1D

Choose a book:

Malice duology (Malice, Misrule) by Heather Walter

Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

Voting ended onMar 8, 2025

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

Malice duology (Malice, Misrule) by Heather Walter

Once upon a time, there was a wicked fairy who, in an act of vengeance, cursed a line of princesses to die. A curse that could only be broken by true love’s kiss.

You’ve heard this before, haven’t you? The handsome prince. The happily-ever-after.

Utter nonsense.

Let me tell you, no one in Briar actually cares about what happens to its princesses. Not the way they care about their jewels and elaborate parties and charm-granting elixirs. I thought I didn’t care, either.

Until I met her.

Princess Aurora. The last heir to Briar’s throne. Kind. Gracious. The future queen her realm needs. One who isn’t bothered that I am Alyce, the Dark Grace, abhorred and feared for the mysterious dark magic that runs in my veins. Humiliated and shamed by the same nobles who pay me to bottle hexes and then brand me a monster. Aurora says I should be proud of my gifts. That she . . . cares for me. Even though it was a power like mine that was responsible for her curse.

But with less than a year until that curse will kill her, any future I might see with Aurora is swiftly disintegrating—and she can’t stand to kiss yet another insipid prince. I want to help her. If my power began her curse, perhaps it’s what can lift it. Perhaps, together, we could forge a new world.

Nonsense again.

Because we all know how this story ends, don’t we? Aurora is the beautiful princess. And I—

I am the villain.

Fantasy, retelling, romance, fairytale, series, adult

Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

Endorsement from submitter: "Long running serial comic about lesbian life. Incredibly relatable, evolves with the times. A classic of the genre."

From the author of Fun Home—the lives, loves, and politics of cult fav characters Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice, and others

For twenty-five years Bechdel’s path-breaking Dykes to Watch Out For strip has been collected in award-winning volumes (with a quarter of a million copies in print), syndicated in fifty alternative newspapers, and translated into many languages. Now, at last, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For gathers a “rich, funny, deep and impossible to put down” (Publishers Weekly) selection from all eleven Dykes volumes. Here too are sixty of the newest strips, never before published in book form.

Settle in to this wittily illustrated soap opera (Bechdel calls it “half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel”) of the lives, loves, and politics of a cast of characters, most of them lesbian, living in a midsize American city that may or may not be Minneapolis. Her brilliantly imagined countercultural band of friends—academics, social workers, bookstore clerks—fall in and out of love, negotiate friendships, raise children, switch careers, and cope with aging parents.

Bechdel fuses high and low culture—from foreign policy to domestic routine, hot sex to postmodern theory—in a serial graphic narrative “suitable for humanists of all persuasions.”

Graphic novel, humor, slice of life, politics, series, adult

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: Queer Fantasy About Monstrousness and/or Villainy

Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust (YA) Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells (YA) Malice by Heather Walter Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht

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