@summer-reading-challenge indie author!
Take it from the Top by Sadie Hepworth, aka @cemeteryangel725
An easy choice for the Indie Author spot, since this came out a couple of weeks ago! This is a bit of a flashback to my youth and the music scene of 2002, so I felt right at home here, and there's a bisexual awakening, which is always delightful. Sadie has written a (very) sexy and fun queer friends-to-lovers story here; the characters are well-rounded and feel very human, and we get a wide range of perspectives on events to balance out the unreliability of some of them!
The plot does lean on failure-to-communicate-because-anxiety-and-doubt, which isn't my favourite version of the miscommunication trope (failure-to-communicate-despite-best-attempts my beloved!) but it's executed well. Sadie has also been sharing the most amazing illustrations as promo for the story over on Insta, which kept coming back to me while I was reading, and Sam and Max deserve their happy ending. Recommend for a bit of indulgence in your summer reading material 😍
Recommendation from a friend next! This one will take a while (650 pages...)