BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, support for good stories never felt easier or more fun

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
SALLY MALCOLM & JOANNA CHAMBERS Creative Types #3
Kindle edition
$5.99 available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Lights, camera…attraction!

When Tag O’Rourke, struggling actor-slash-barista, meets Jay Warren, son of acting royalty, it’s loathing at first sight. Loathing…and lust. Tag’s dream is to act, but it’s a dream that’s crumbling beneath the weight of student debt and his family’s financial problems. If his career doesn’t take off soon, he’s going to have to get a real job. After all, feeding his family is more important than feeding his soul. Luckily, Tag’s about to get his big break…

Jay never had to dream about acting; he was always destined to follow in his famous mother’s footsteps. But fame has its price and a traumatic experience early in Jay’s career has left him with paralysing stage fright, which is why he sticks to the safety of TV work—and avoids relationships with co-stars at all costs. Unfortunately, Jay’s safe world is about to be rocked…

After an ill-judged yet mind-blowing night together, Jay and Tag part acrimoniously. So it’s a nasty shock when they discover that they’ve been cast in a two-man play that could launch Tag’s career and finally get Jay back onto the stage where he belongs. Sure, it’s not ideal, but how bad can working with your arch-nemesis be? All they have to do is survive six weeks rehearsing together and navigate a cast of smarmy festival directors, terrible landladies, and vengeful journalists. Oh, and try not to fall in love before the curtain rises… Break a leg!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHORS. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well, whatever one expects from a romace novel, this book hands it over...enemies-to-lovers, second chance at love, soulmates discovering each other, all here. And all as much fun to read as fun gets.

Authors Sally and Jo don't exactly waste one's time with silly obfuscations. The story's pacing is neither rushed nor dilatory. The main duo are not in any danger of being relegated to juicy side characters...though Jay's mother could be a fun broad to follow around for a few hundred pages, hint hint...and the Others on the page still manage to make their presences felt. The playwright-cum-pal is another really good character I felt I knew enough about to get the story in gear, yet could also fill up her own book.

So there's absolutely every reason to go buy one. Go on! Go get a copy.

But you're only giving it four stars! I need a fifth one to autobuy!

Having heard this kind of statement on multiple occasions, I'll say this: The series is wonderful and fun, and funny, and endearingly honest about its characters' icky bits. All of those are good things. Tag irks me. He's a whiny little pisher whose chip is so big it needs both his shoulders to carry it so blocks his view straight ahead of him. Jay is quieter in his overplayed self-doubt but still manages not to hook me. Them together? I wanted to reach into the book and crack their heads tpgether, tell 'em to STFU and get back to having the kind of sex most of us don't dare believe exists because we ain't gettin' it.

So yeah. Four's where the star train stops.

It gets all those stars for the way I'm dragged into the story, the way my emotional investment is picked out of my readerly pocket. They mugged me in my own back alley, that pair of author/attackers! I encourage anyone with a taste for contemporary romances, for second-chance, artist-centered, and enemies-to-lovers romances, to get this entire three-book series.

DEAR CIS(GENDER) PEOPLE: A Guide to Trans Allyship and Empathy, when you wonder "what do They want" best ask Them

DEAR CIS(GENDER) PEOPLE: A Guide to Trans Allyship and Empathy
KENNY ETHAN JONES
DK Books
$24.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A powerful call to arms to empower cisgender people to be better allies, blending memoir, detailed research, and interviews.

The trans experience is all too often the subject of fierce debate in the media and online. While we’re having more and more conversations about the trans experience, the stark reality is that hate crimes against the trans community have quadrupled over the past five years and that two in five trans young people have attempted suicide.

But behind the shock headlines and the distressing statistics, what does it really mean to be trans?

In this powerful, extensively researched, and deeply personal book, Kenny Ethan Jones, a trans activist and writer, offers an authentic and in-depth insight into the trans experience. From gender dysphoria to surgery, from being outed to finding love and considering parenthood, Kenny Ethan Jones draws on his own life and the stories of others from the trans and nonbinary communities to create discussion around the complexities and reality of the trans experiences in today’s society.

Dear Cis(Gender) People is a powerful call to arms, equipping people of every gender with the tools to step forward as allies in order to bring about meaningful change. Through acting and speaking out, we can create a safer, fairer world for trans people—a world in which all of us can exist as our most authentic selves and celebrate who we are without fear.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I can not say this loudly, often, or long enough: PAY.

ATTENTION.

TO.

WHAT.

THEY SAY THEY WILL DO.

You can start here, with this book made up of trans peoples' words. It's addressed at all cis people, a group I am very much part of. I needed to hear these trans voices. These voices are not heard in any systemic way even in the QUILTBAG community. Trans people can and should speak up...and all too often, risk the direst imaginable consequences for doing so. I think the best way to learn is to ask, and if the silence imposed on trans people in F2F reality is blocking that avenue, then we can read! This book marries asking with reading because Author Kenny Ethan Jones has spoken to his fellow trans folk and used their own words to address us cis people, regardless of our sexual identities, about the nature of being trans.

The ball is in our court, cis folk. We possess the information, now we need to listen to what trans people want us to know. There is no more fig-leaf for our ignorance. Now it is a choice to remain ignorant. I think almost everyone who reads this blog, being readers themselves, will take this chance to lift the veil of unknowing and see what the most Othered people in the QUILTBAG rainbow of identities want to get in the way of support and acceptance.

I hope this compact, unchallenging read will make its way into your reading this #PrideMonth. There are so many ways to offer the gift of acknowledgment. The price is, honestly, negligble to the giver; the gift is precious to the receiver, as the stories told here will show you. Please do the whole angry, shouting world this favor:

Sit and listen to what your Othered siblings would appreciate you offering to them.

SONGS ON ENDLESS REPEAT, refrains all "what might have been"...saddening indeed

SONGS ON ENDLESS REPEAT
ANTHONY VEASNA SO
Ecco
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: By the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally expansive essays and linked short fiction exploring family, queer desire, pop culture, and race

The late Anthony Veasna So’s debut story collection, Afterparties, was a landmark publication, hailed as a “bittersweet triumph for a fresh voice silenced too soon” (Fresh Air). And he was equally known for his comic, soulful essays, published in n+1, The New Yorker, and The Millions.

Songs on Endless Repeat gathers those essays together, along with previously unpublished fiction. Written with razor-sharp wit and an unflinching eye, the essays examine his youth in California, the lives of his refugee parents, his intimate friendships, loss, pop culture, and more. And in linked fiction following three Cambodian American cousins who stand to inherit their late aunt’s illegitimate loan-sharking business, So explores community, grief, and longing with inimitable humor and depth.

Following “one of the most exciting contributions to Asian American literature in recent years” (Vulture), Songs on Endless Repeat is an astonishing final expression by a writer of “extraordinary achievement and immense promise” (The New Yorker).

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There are very few things I am more moved, saddened, and affected by than the early death of a promising artist. Basquiat, Heath Ledger, Anthony Veasna So, all dead from random bad luck. All gay guys (yeah, I said it about Legder, my gaydar goes DEFCON-5 every time I see him) who didn't get to finish their rough-edged bumptious growing processes. That is very much the feeling I had reading this collection of the gone-too-soon Author So's bits and bobs.

There's a kind of youthful arrogance, a judgment-passing superior smirk that shades into a sneer, in all the essays. It's to be expected, he was lionized early and often. He wasn't wrong, or wrong-headed; he was cocksure and unaware, in his youth, that being unsympathetic in your judgments doesn't make them stronger. In time perhaps that would've worn off, and he'd've reserved the sharpness of his eyes for more worthy opponents.

His fiction fragments in here point to an idea for a novel that could have turned into something interesting had he had time and some very good guidance. The fact is there was raw talent here, there was a Voice, and that loss is horrible. That it was down to self-destructive behaviors makes me think that the work we have now might have been all we ever got, living or dead. Many many addicted folk with powerful talents lose the war in themselves.

Not really recommended on its own; the reason to read it is that it feels like an act of mourning for what we all lost when he died of an overdose.

I NEVER LIKED YOU ANYWAY, I feel like Colin Clive should be shouting "IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!"

I NEVER LIKED YOU ANYWAY
JORDAN KURELLA
Lethe Press
$11.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Eurydice is dead, and hell is a school. She has to learn Hauntings, Baking Disasters, Threads of Fate, and all the other classes a newly dead soul needs to master before they're ready for what comes next. Eurydice is still processing the disastrous relationship that sent her into the land of the dead almost as soon as she was married to the brilliant love of her life, Orpheus.

She'll tell you how he swept her off her feet, and how their polyamorous group swept each other up in music and art and art theory and a life of creation from destruction, but mostly just destruction. But, this isn't their story. Eurydice is dead, and failing all her classes, and she knows Orpheus is coming to get her out. Not that he cares, but that's not what she wants. And, she's the only one who truly knows how Orpheus and Eurydice's story ends.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The term "disaster bisexual" gets a lot of airplay in this retelling og Orpheus and Eurydice. It very much fits. Everyone.

That's it. That's the review. In spirit, anyway.

I've heard many times over the years, "why can't They just leave {cultural shibboleth} alone? Why do They need to make it about Them?" Because it is about them, and if changing skin colors, genders, clothes, languages makes it more about them in ways they want it to, so be it. The only They who want things to be "left alone" are the "They" who want closet doors swung shut, schools to lead prayer circles, and women to admit they liked it.

This wildly 21st-century setting for the timeless myth of complicated love and its pangs, pains, and consequences, suits the spirit of the Archaic original in exploring the ways communication and courage fail in tandem. It brings the idea of The Grand Passion, The Noble Sacrifice, The Fame of Great and Good Men into sharp, pitiless relief when it's shorn of its togas and chitons, vivified out of its marmoreal bloodless heft into lively, real banter and passionate, full-throated desire.

Is this the best example of a queer myth retelling I've ever read? That would be Patroclus retelling the Iliad. But it is very funny, fun to read, and more like the way I suspect the mythcrafters intended the entire enterprise to play out in the original Bronze-Age dialect. Thev fussy, sexually neutered Myth we're accustomed to, the one They want us to leave alone, was...I promise you this...not the way it was first told.

So revel in this big, bold, bawdy recovery, this excavation of the graveyard of Literature, and drink the cold refreshment of a real, honest, genuinely felt myth for the first time in millennia.

365 GAYS OF THE YEAR (Plus 1 for a Leap Year): Discover LGBTQ+ history one day at a time, and enjoy the art on the trip!

365 GAYS OF THE YEAR (Plus 1 for a Leap Year): Discover LGBTQ+ history one day at a time
LEWIS LANEY (illus. Charlotte MacMillan-Scott)
White Lion Publishing
$24.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK DESIGN AND PRODUCTION AWARDS 2023

A fun and fascinating compendium of LGBTQ+ icons, one for every day of the year, and a celebration of queer history—or as RuPaul would say; Herstory!

Discover your queer hero and learn something new every day with 365 Gays of the Year, an accessible and fun introduction to LGBTQ+ history through the people that made it.

Carefully curated and thoughtfully researched, author Lewis Laney assigns a person or group of note to each day of the year to form the ultimate LGBTQ+ hall of fame.

Legendary queer icons such as Marsha P Johnson and Freddie Mercury sit alongside lesser known but equally important names such as activist Renée Cafiero, blood donor Barbara Vick, and Sappho the lesbian poet (who was doing her thing in 570BC).

All have contributed amazing achievements to the LGBTQ+ story. Each month also features one ally—inspiring heterosexual people who have all contributed something significant to the lives of the LGBTQ+ community. People like Elizabeth Taylor who “brought AIDS out of the closet and into the ballroom—where there was money to be raised”.

Each entry comprises a short biography plus a brief explanation about why that celebratory date represents an important milestone.

Lewis brings international figures to life (famous and lesser-known) with his witty and uplifting prose which are peppered with little-known facts and accompanied by bright illustrative portraits from the hugely talented Charlotte MacMillan-Scott.

This witty, unique celebration of queer history promises to inspire and empower readers with its wealth of bright stars.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: What a wonderful time this really is. This book, celebrating the existence of, success within, and growth of the great haters' favorite shibboleth: Them Disgustin' Queers, exists and so proves their point for them. We, the queers, are everywhere!

How awful for their ugly little selves. The book tells anyone interested about the success of:

...at bringing stories about us, and stories we are major parts of, into the world;

...at making the stories real to millions;

...at bravely, and without a map to success or even a hint of what success would look like, bearing witness to intolerance's horrible consequences;

...at living the awful truth of talent denied Because You Are You;

...at embodying the immutable truth the great haters know and eagerly desire to enforce: SILENCE = DEATH

So. To anyone who's been made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, unheard, unfocued-on, unvalued during my #PrideMonth blogging about QUILTBAGgery: Good. Now you know what your (in)action costs me and my QUILTBAG brethren and sistern. Take it in. Feel it.

And then reach out and do better, now that you know better. People you Other aren't obligated to meet you more than halfway; even at all. In my time trying to shed my vast, unconsidered racism and the jaw-dropping privilege I derive from it, I've learned some people will choose not to see me as the one making an effort but one battening on privilege. Those people have a valid point and an unassailable position. This effort I'm making isn't about me.

It's about changing one part of a whole that badly needs to change, and permaybehaps convince one or two others to join my effort. Consider this your altar call, religious christians; your summons in faith, all religious folk of all traditions, to live the Golden Rule.

Happy Pride Month!

GAY SCIENCE: The Totally Scientific Examination of LGBTQ+ Culture, Myths, and Stereotypes, fun froth for the train to Babylon

GAY SCIENCE: The Totally Scientific Examination of LGBTQ+ Culture, Myths, and Stereotypes
ROB ANDERSON
DK Books
$25.00 hardcover, available now

KINDLE SALE! $2.99! (NON-AFFILIATE Amazon link)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: New York Times Bestseller

Comedian Rob Anderson examines queer stereotypes and LGBTQ+ culture with humorous explanations borrowed from real principles across multiple fields of science.

Class is in session, babe! Discover the inner workings of the LGBTQ+ community with this humorous and informative book. Author and comedian Rob Anderson borrows the familiar science textbook format to skewer ridiculous queer stereotypes with his own version of science.

Using the principles of natural, social, and formal sciences, Rob answers extremely serious questions Why can’t gays sit in a chair properly? Why don’t lesbians have electricity in their movies? Are colleges turning people bisexual? How does gaydar work? Will bottoms survive the apocalypse?

You’ll read about the three subtypes of the gay uncle species, examine the Periodic Table of LGBTQ+ Elements, understand gay crime and punishment, and get educated on the types of bacteria and viruses that exclusively affect the LGBTQs, like the state of Florida.

Inspired by his viral “Gay Science” series, Rob recreates some of his most popular episodes in a literary format, and also tackles completely fresh subjects, presenting them with super empirical and totally evidence-based homosexual data.

Gay Science

Coverage of 60 topics across 29 fields of science including biology, chemistry, physics, genetics, botany, nutrition, astronomy, anthropology, oceanography, sociology, criminology, engineering, computer science, and more!Informative sidebars including Get PrePared, The Tea, Serving Conclusions, The Gloss, Yas or Naur, Fagtoids, and A Lesbian Explains.Diagrams, charts, illustrations, and maps to explain the gayest concepts.

Rob Anderson is course-correcting decades of educational shortcomings by explaining the scientific reasonings behind every aspect of LGBTQ+ life. If you’re looking for a fun book that will probably be banned (if it isn’t already), add Gay Science to your personal lesson plan.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK AS PART OF A PROMOTION. THANK YOU.

My Review: Do you remember the science textbooks from seventh grade? You will soon...you will forcefully recall the graphic design, the placement of information, the snippets and bullet points and images you sometimes wondered where they came from. It's deja vu only not scary...you're still sitting there book/device in hand, not out-of-body wondering how to escape the nightmare.

Comedy = misery plus time was never more well-aimed. The way we learn how to be queer is often bound up with laughter. Joking, clowning, being the butt of the joke, being laughed at...it's all laughter and all fuel for the deep wells of humor in gay culture. And notice I'm using "gay" not the more inclusive words. If this gigglemaker of a book has a flaw it's that it us very much for, by, and about the gay male. Being one of those I don't find that troubling. I find it more indicative of marketing segmentation than a product of innate malice or even unexamined bias. Go watch his YouTube channel; decide if you think the man's being insensitive or telling his own truth, not trying to generalize his experience into spurious universality.

Of course, as humor, it will inevitably fail to "hit" with some; I am not among them. I got good laughs and lots of snorts and a few eye-streaming fits. My Rob was a little scared by my call during one of those! He thought I was having another, weirder, stroke. He was far more muted in his responses to Mr. Anderson, possibly because I introduced him as "the hot comedian"—might've been a tad prejudicial.

The stereotypes and archetypes Anderson takes on are real, so there will be some butthurt among the people. Laugh at yourself, get over the idea that respect = praise, and most of all take in the scene...get some perspective on how you actually look from the outside. It very much helps everyone when we all do that.

So let me urge the gay guys to listen to this call from inside the house. Let me urge the eww-ick homophobes to splash out for a sale Kindlebook. Let's look at the reality of gay identity in its weird and wonderful strangeness, its wildly obsessive focuses, its deeply human flawed glorious fun-seeking.

And laugh. Together.

NICKED, fun and games holy-relic heist comedy

NICKED
M.T. ANDERSON
Pantheon Books
$28.00 hardcover, preorder for delivery on 23 July 2024

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning and bestselling author of Feed comes a raucous and slyly funny adult fiction debut, about the quest to steal the mystical bones of a long-dead saint

The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian port city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he interprets the vision as a call to action. But his superiors, and the power brokers they serve, have different plans for the tender-hearted Brother Nicephorus.

Enter Tyun, a charismatic treasure hunter renowned for “liberating” holy relics from their tombs. The seven-hundred-year-old bones of Saint Nicholas rest in distant Myra, Tyun explains, and they’re rumored to weep a mysterious liquid that can heal the sick. For the humble price of a small fortune, Tyun will steal the bones and deliver them to Bari, curing the plague and restoring glory to the fallen city. And Nicephorus, the “dreamer,” will be his guide.

What follows is a heist for the ages, as Nicephorus is swept away on strange tides—and alongside even stranger bedfellows—to commit an act of sacrilege. Based on real historical accounts, Nicked is a wildly imaginative, genre-defying, and delightfully queer adventure, full of romance, intrigue, and wide-eyed wonder at the world that awaits beyond our own borders.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I seem to be on an historical-queerness religion-themed heist novels jag. Remember RECITAL OF THE DARK VERSES?...now this fascinating, also ripped-from-the-history-books tale of Saint Nicholas of Myra's hajj to Bari, Italy. Y'know, the Chamber of Commerce never really changes, "bring on the punters and their gelt!" is their mantra no matter the language or the time period. "King Arthur" at Glastonbury? Heck, they needed a new roof and GoFundMe wasn't a thing yet. Now add the attraction of Octavian Nothing's author writing for adults for the first time, and I'm gaffed through the gills.

I loved the Octavian Nothing duology, so it wasn't like I had some hill of ignorance, or resistance, to climb. Author Anderson's got a deft way with words and a sharp eye for the telling detail (the dog-headed man who's actually dog-headed is a great start). The seamless way he weaves the medieval world-view into the actions and conversations of the characters; the unstressed way they assume things like miracles and visions are remarkable but unsurprising; the effectively limned but never foregrounded way the quest to steal the saint's relics gets justified, all make perfect sense despite being quite mad.

By twenty-first century standards.

Sexuality is part of the picture so limned, but there's no sex to speak of. It wouldn't have added a thing to the story. It's not glued on awkwardly to tick a box, and it does have a bearing on how the innocent and quite trusting Brother Nicephorus deals with the way his vision is, erm, repurposed by the roguish dashing thief Tyun, but it is not made up out of nothing. I like thngs like this to make sense, and it does. Our Brother, who sets the plot in motion, rides the waves of others' needs and actions. He changes, he learns about his god-given nature, and he changes those he must surround himself with. And it is, for a wonder, all really fun and funny to read.

The wonders of comedy applied to matters of great religious import are many...the idea of a miracle is, inherently to me anyway, funny. The nature of the "pox" afflicting Bari, and the purported miraculous excretions from Saint Nicholas's bones intended to cure it...well, comedy gold! Resurrection, which we see, just...well...I've had surgeries enough to know that there's a lot involved in resurrection and none of it is supernatural. People can and do wake up when it's supposedly impossible. The way Author Anderson does it is, honestly, so affirming, and so full of the joy of being alive inside a body, that I nearly cried several times. "Never forget that your life is a wonder...Never forget that there are miracles everywhere, and you are only present in this world to see them once." This is exactly true, though the miracles aren't religious in nature.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out how much fun with wordplay there is. Start with the title: Nick (as in Nicephorus, "bringer of victory"), to nick, Old Nick, Saint Nick...you can find more. These grace notes and the general vocabulary Author Anderson uses all flavor the read with an old-fashioned, yeasty head of foam on this draft of literary ale.

Delighted me; will delight anyone who liked Our Flag Means Death, the Locked Tomb series, and Ocean's Eight and its sequels.

VICTORIES GREATER THAN DEATH, well-deserved 2022 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Novel

VICTORIES GREATER THAN DEATH
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
Tor Teen
$18.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Tina never worries about being ‘ordinary’—she doesn’t have to, since she’s known practically forever that she’s not just Tina Mains, average teenager and beloved daughter. She’s also the keeper of an interplanetary rescue beacon, and one day soon, it’s going to activate, and then her dreams of saving all the worlds and adventuring among the stars will finally be possible. Tina’s legacy, after all, is intergalactic—she is the hidden clone of a famed alien hero, left on Earth disguised as a human to give the universe another chance to defeat a terrible evil.

But when the beacon activates, it turns out that Tina’s destiny isn’t quite what she expected. Things are far more dangerous than she ever assumed. Luckily, Tina is surrounded by a crew she can trust, and her best friend Rachael, and she is still determined to save all the worlds. But first she’ll have to save herself.

Buckle up your seatbelt for this thrilling sci-fi adventure set against an intergalactic war from international bestselling author Charlie Jane Anders.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHOR. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is, hands down, the queerest YA book I've read.

I really could stop writing now with the injunction for you to go get a copy and read it before setting it loose into the library, the Little Free Library, the bus subway breakroom etc etc. Tina and her found families are urgently needed in a world where the ugliest, most hateful and judgmental people are launching their latest attack on progress, inclusion, and a better world.

Same as it ever was.

What the younger readers will learn from reading Aunt Charlie Jane's book is that there is a future, and it can look the way you'd like it to look...but you have to be willing to move outside your boundaries, you have to embrace your ability to make, find, and accept the world's wildness and surprises. Your efforts will pay off in proportion to your commitment to them.

How Author Charlie Jane accomplishes that is to take one teen girl, one best friend of teen girl, and hurl them into a cosmic battle of good against evil. Do you know a teenager...have you EVER known a teenager...who did not resonate like a struck bell to this plot? And then Author Charlie Jane shakes the soda bottle to fizz up the stakes by making everyone in the girls' expanded universe into some form of different, but without Othering them for the differences...after all, if the way you just are is somehow different from how I am, who says *I* get to decide that YOU are the Other?

This is a truth that permeates all Author Charlie Jane's work. It makes the banners and haters and deniers completely mental. Since I think making those sorts of people wildly uncomfortable is a very worthy cause, I want to support it wherever I can.

While I love a dense, richly textured world, I'm an old man and have been reading since before Author Charlie Jane was born, so I found the expository bits too frequent and a smidge too detailed for my reading pleasure to morph into joy. They seem a touch overdone for today's SF-savvy youth, if I'm honest; but that is a thing I'm happy to see because it means this book can be an onramp into SF for even the most innocent and unworldly young person.

Matching my expectations, then, was not her project...that was what she did with Even Greater Mistakes, her other work from the annus mirabilis that was her 2022...but speaking to her audience, to the future leaders and readers. This is a wonderful thing, an excellent project, and a top-quality execution of it.

Gift it. Read it yourself, then give it to all the young readers you know.

ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE, 2013's winner of the Stonewall Book Award for Children’s & YA Literature

ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE
BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
$10.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A lyrical novel about family and friendship from critically acclaimed author Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common.

But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK AS A GIFT. THANKS!

My Review: First love, with another boy, when you're fifteen and angsty and from a Mexican-American family.

Wow, that's a lot. Like, a real, real lot.

Which, as adults, we sometimes do not take into account when dealing with teens. The thing we lose sight of most often is that teens have adult-strength emotions triggered by the same things we get triggered by but without our decades of perspective to temper our responses with. Ari's right...his Dad is suffering. His Dad is right...Ari can't understand this suffering. In fact, no one really can. Adults don't think this is as weird and awful as Ari, not yet used to the helplessness of loving others, does. All Ari knows is that his Dad's refusal to talk about his feelings feels like rejection. So Ari clams up...and doesn't see the irony of this. Perspective: missing.

Dante, being brash and bold, just...does stuff. Ari feels envious, astonished, drawn to this bigness and forcefulness. This feels so intoxicating, so overwhelmingly right, that he and Dante meet each other all the time, talk, think, and in that gloriously uniquely young man way, fall in love. They're on different pages here, too, stunningly. Dante doesn't see this love as weird or ugly...it's the 1980s! Stonewall was in the 1960s! Ari thinks it's another way he's weird. He does think Dante's weird, too, and if Dante...big, bright, beautiful Dante with his strong ideas about Chicanismo...is weird, weird must be okay. Somehow that must be true, but how?

Thus is first love born. That was my absolute favorite thing about the story. It wasn't about the zeal of the organs for each other, in Joseph Campbell's memorable and accurate formulation of sexual desire's essence; it was instead about the addictive rush of communion with the Other, the joy of discovering the Other is not only Other but gloriously beautifully Other. These boys discover, slowly and organically, that Love is the best, the only addictive drug that makes things better.

Or it can. And it does in this story. It does this, you should note, S L O W L Y. And Ari, angry teen with a huge rock on top of his mouth, needs help figuring out what it is about Dante that he is, well, Noticing. Here is where I felt the true beauty of the story comes to the fore. It is Ari's parents, these complicatedly wounded souls who are sources of difficulty for him (as all parents must be) who rip off the bandage and show him that he is in love with Dante.

And they do it, in 1980s El Paso, Texas, with kindness and acceptance. This is how we know it's fiction.

Everything about this read was a pleasure to me. It's been over a decade since the story burst on the scene. There are sequels (I haven't read those yet). This story keeps reverberating through our louding voices of hatred. I hope you and I, readers with mileage and perspective unavailable to its target audience, can help that audience find this wonderful story of honest love and acceptance offered and accepted.

GIRLS WHO LIE TOGETHER, exactly what it says on the tin

GIRLS WHO LIE TOGETHER
JESSA RUSSO
Kindle Freebie
$0!

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Easy summers lead to hard falls in this Grease meets Mean Girls contemporary romance…

When seventeen-year-old Renata Carpenter hijacked her stepdad’s classic car, she hadn’t planned on totaling it and landing her best friend in a cast from hip to heel. She definitely hadn’t planned on being sent to a work program in New Orleans as punishment. And she certainly hadn’t planned on falling in love.

But Ren’s summer of forced manual labor has a bright side: her name is Brit, and she’s everything Ren never knew she needed. First love becomes first heartbreak when their summer romance comes to a crashing close earlier than anticipated. Adding insult to injury, Ren’s break-up with Brit is followed by a big move to a small town.

As if starting senior year completely alone isn’t bad enough, Ren soon discovers that the Hell on Heels mean girl who rules Sun Ridge Prep with an iron fist and a vicious tongue is none other than her first love. Too bad this Brit is far from lovable.

But Ren knows the girl beneath the façade, and she refuses to give up on rekindling their relationship. Secretly, the girls pick up where they left off, falling deeper in love and risking it all to be together. But when their affair is exposed by Brit’s boyfriend, Ren and Brit are faced with the ultimate choice: love or acceptance.

Because they certainly can’t have both.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK AS A PROMOTION. THANKS!

My Review: The author markets this as a YA title. I disagree. I'd hesitate before I gave it ti a sixteen-year-old, or a naïve seventeen-year-old. So let's say it's more a New Adult title.

It's definitely on the money with the Mean Girls comparison. Ren is a classic Mean Girl. She's also a very horny character, and no respecter of boundaries. Brit: "I'm not gay!" Ren: "Get a load of those tits! Such a sweet pair of [upper]lips!"

Then there's the slur usage. I get reclaiming words, and even use queer myownself these days. That was a nasty one in my youth. But using slurs and only slurs? Not now, not ever. That's reinforcing abuse.

While I thought Brit was toying with Ren's feelings...denying you're gay does NOT absolve you of responsibility for behaving sexually with someone of the same sex...I found Ren deeply dislikable and overbearing. Brit's manipulative. Neither is someone I'd like to spend any more time with.

The main issues above weren't made better by the way the story is structured, with time-gaps that just make the chemistry between these two feel very unlikely for teens to experience. The writing was okay, with flashes of creative interest once in a while. Not a favorite read. Caveat emptor re: sexual content.

ARTHUR AND TEDDY ARE COMING OUT, gentle, fun amusement about the complexity of Coming Out

ARTHUR AND TEDDY ARE COMING OUT
RYAN LOVE
Harper 360
$18.99 trade paper, available now

KINDLE EDITION ON SALE FOR 99¢!

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: No one in the family is prepared when 79-year-old Arthur Edwards drops a he's gay, and after a lifetime in the closet, he's finally ready to come out. Arthur's 21-year-old grandson, Teddy, has the same secret. But Teddy doesn't feel ready to come out yet – especially when Arthur’s announcement causes shockwaves in the family. Can Arthur and Teddy navigate first loves, heartbreak, and finding their place in their community?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Cute take on the evergreen "coming out is hard" plot. The fact is that there are a lot more late-life outcomers than one would imagine, and we're not told much about them. It's not sexy, I guess...who thinks about wrinkled old people and sex unless they're trying not to cum?

The shocking thing for me is how comparatively few of these stories there are. I'm very glad to see that changing.

New-adult books are what I've always characterized as "YA with pubic hair" books. That still holds true. This is not a romance, or a smexytimes comedic novel. This is a fun, light, unchallenging look at the eternal truth of coming out: It's hard, it's scary, it's often the source of terrible judgmental responses from the most unusual, unexpected places, but in the end it's The Only Way.

Living a lie is often couched in and obscured by the language of love. Especially true for late-life outcomers. Love, however it looked in the past, looks different as we age. The need and desire to offer and accept love in the way that would always have been one's preference does not invalidate or diminish love already offered; it does not invalidate a lifetime's love or "cheapen" an established bond. Love, as Arthur is modeling for Teddy, isn't like pie, only so many slices to go around; it's the bakery, and the wheatfields.

Read this story to be reminded of how extremely abundant the world is. How much it matters to love; and how much loving honestly and openly frees up the giver and the receiver to tap deeper into the limitless supply there is. It won't change your world but you'll smile a few happy smiles as you read.

That's worth a lot in the world we live in.

THE SONS OF EL REY, intergenerational fathers, sons, and expectations with added gayness

THE SONS OF EL REY
ALEX ESPINOZA
Simon & Schuster
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the American Book Award–winning author comes a multi-generational epic spanning 1960s Mexico City to contemporary Los Angeles, following a family of Luchadores as they contend with forbidden love and family secrets.

Ernesto and Elena Vega arrive in Mexico City where Ernesto works on a construction site until he is discovered by a local lucha libre trainer. At a time when luchadores—Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes—were treated as daredevils or rockstars, Ernesto finds fame as El Rey Coyote, rapidly gaining name recognition across Mexico.

Years later, in East Los Angeles Freddy Vega is struggling to save his father’s gym while Freddy’s own son Julian is searching for professional and romantic fulfillment as a Mexican American gay man refusing to be defined by stereotypes. The once larger-than-life Ernesto Vega is now dying, leading Freddy and Julian to find their own passions and discover what really happened back in Mexico.

Told from alternating perspectives, Ernesto takes you from the ranches of Michoacán to the makeshift colonias and crowded sports arenas of Mexico City. Freddy describes life in the suburban streets of 1980s Los Angeles and the community their family built as Julian descends deep into the culture of hook-up apps, lucha burlesque shows, and the dark underbelly of West Hollywood, The Sons of El Rey is an intimate portrait of a family wading against time and legacy, yet always choosing the fight.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The very idea of luchadores is Exotic to me, in the settler-colonial sense. I am as far from a wrestling fan that it is possible for someone to be. So, well, what's the appeal of this story to someone like me?

The very idea of the immigrant journey.

Immigrants are the lifeblood of the US on economic and cultural levels. The country wouldn't exist without us. (The Native Americans would doubtless see this as a plus.) The present cultural conversation around immigrants and their role across the world demands that we see the actual, real humans in these roles not abstractions of Otherness. The best way I know to do that is to learn the stories that immigrants tell us. Author Espinoza, infant immigrant to the US, knows the life he's writing about as a grown queer man.

What he does in this novel is to open the world of men whose lives are lived in the weighty spotlight of expectations. The ones they have, the ones their families—born, chosen, made—have, the ones US culture imposes. Exploring that interplay is fertile ground for stories, for secrets, for endless surprises...mostly the surprise, evergreen, of how very much of a miracle it is that there are any adult survivors of childhood. Fathers aren't usually much good at parenting because, well, where would most men learn it? Immigrant fathers don't even have the acquisition of culture to pass down, so these luchadores are actually very lucky in that they have this familial tie to their fathers. Of course, the links in that chain are all shaped very differently. A gay son isn't going to follow his father into the family trade when it's so explicitly homophobic, is he. And, to be honoest, that surprises me: Lucha libre is vivid, male-centered, and as close to drag as it's possible to be without falsies and heels being involved. (Plenty of wigs, though.) It veers at the last second into that other drag-adjacent cosplay genre, the superhero/supervillain dichotomy.

The women in the story are peripheral, and that is (I believe) by design. If it's going to bother you not to read yet another take on immigrant mother pluckily overcomes cultural and patriarchal barriers story, there's shelves of books that will stroke your needy story parts. The existential stakes aren't, for once, set by the women but by and for men. The women aren't consulted or considered. How very unexaminedly patriarchal. You've been warned.

For #PrideMonth, it's a dads-and-lads custom-made celebration of the bond we either fail to form or miss feeling; it's a clear-eyed look at the gay-son-defies-tradition tale so popular in our group; and a call to acceptance of nonwhite men in our wider community. It's also, in Author Espinoza's award-winning tradition, a delight to read on the language level. Don't expect a deep dive into the world, and language, of the luchadores...our focus is definitely on the people, the family they form and change. They live in the intense, hyperreal fakeness of lucha libre, but they spend little time examining it. As you do. That means as a consequence that the reader doesn't examine it, either. Go in to the read knowing what's on offer and avoid disappointment, says me.

The Mexican backstory is, in my view, scanty. It's not meant to be a knock...it's not the story solely of El Rey Coyote...but it does seem to me that another chapter in Michoacán would've been very welcome. The ending is rushed, and contains a plot thread that's...obscure...for the vast majority of the book. That missing half-star is down to my sense that it was pretty much just sprung on me, though I hasten to say that it did not feel as though it was parachuted in from above. It just wasn't given any oxygen until the ending. Again, best to know now, not come up suddenly upon the end and think, "...wait...".

Not my perfect read, but one I enjoyed very much indeed. A terrific #PrideMonth read.

IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND, YA rom-com with lovely, sweet boys

IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND
ROBBY WEBER
Inkyard Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$18.99 hardcover, available now ***limited time $1.99 on Kindle***

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this hilarious and heartfelt debut novel, an aspiring screenwriter learns sometimes love has its own script.

Harry wants nothing more than to write Hollywood screenplays. He knows the first step toward achieving that goal is winning a screenwriting competition that will seal his admission into the college of his dreams, so he’s determined to spend his summer free of distractions—also known as boys—and finish his script. After last year, Harry is certain love only exists in the movies anyway.

But then the cause of his first heartbreak, Grant, returns with a secret that could change everything—not to mention, there’s a new boy in town, Logan, who is so charming and sweet, he’s making Harry question everything he knows about romance. As he tries to keep his emotions in check and stick to his perfect plan for the future, Harry's about to learn that life doesn't always follow a script.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Debut YA/NA novels don't get much easier to devour than this. The genre tends rowards the the digestible, after all; its intended consumers aren't yet very experienced readers. Nuances? Not many. Lessons? Indeed, by the carload. I suspect that having Harry, our MC, aspire to be a screenwriter evolved out of a need to distance the Lessons from the story...they slid down fairly painlessly.

The Lessons that Robby Weber taught are, thank goodness, very much ones I support and can attest are urgent for young gay guys to learn: Be present; be mindful of others' presence and feelings; be flexible to get ahead of your failures, which are inevitable; embarrassment is not fatal; secrets are only toxic while you keep them. Respecting his audience by making the Lessons part of the stakes of the book was a good idea.

The most deeply affecting parts of the read are, as expected, the moments we're with Harry. The structure of the chapter/script excerpt/chapter again is not greatly to my taste. It works well enough, I just found it less than smooth because it was repeated so often.

That, however, is a rising-seventy-year-old speaking. It will, I expect, feel very different to one decades younger and a trillion trees farther behind in pages consumed. The point of my reading a book like this is, for my own sake, one of celebration. The fact that this queer-boy romantic comedy exists, and came from a major publishing house (albeit from a now-shuttered imprint), and that it's very clearly meant to make a positive self-image impact on its readers, is a joy.

This is what the book-banners and reactionaries can not allow. The way to see yourself in any kind of a future is for that to be available in your cultural orbit. Libraries and bookstores, in that they serve the public, will always have to have battles about books like this one. The idea that someone they dislike is being nurtured and supported for being their honest, authentic self is intolerable to these kinds of hatebags. So, of course, being deeply intolerant of intolerance aimed at people like me, I say: go forth and buy copies of this and similar books to donate to your local library.

And, not coincidentally, support a young gay author as he starts his writing career. Your consumer dollars can never be better spent.

CANTO CONTIGO, music-world YA with trans rep...brush up on your Spanish at the same time

CANTO CONTIGO
JONNY GARZA VILLA
Wednesday Books
$20.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: When a Mariachi star transfers schools, he expects to be handed his new group's lead vocalist spot—what he gets instead is a tenacious current lead with a very familiar, very kissable face.

In a twenty-four-hour span, Rafael Alvarez led North Amistad High School’s Mariachi Alma de la Frontera to their eleventh consecutive first-place win in the Mariachi Extravaganza de Nacional; and met, made out with, and almost hooked up with one of the cutest guys he’s ever met.

Now eight months later, Rafie’s ready for one final win. What he didn’t plan for is his family moving to San Antonio before his senior year, forcing him to leave behind his group while dealing with the loss of the most important person in his life—his beloved abuelo. Another hitch in his plan: The Selena Quintanilla-Perez Academy’s Mariachi Todos Colores already has a lead vocalist, Rey Chavez—the boy Rafie made out with—who now stands between him winning and being the great Mariachi Rafie's abuelo always believed him to be. Despite their newfound rivalry for center stage, Rafie can’t squash his feelings for Rey. Now he must decide between the people he’s known his entire life or the one just starting to get to know the real him.

Canto Contigo is a love letter to Mexican culture, family and legacy, the people who shape us, and allowing ourselves to forge our own path. At its heart, this is one of the most glorious rivals-to-lovers romance about finding the one who challenges you in the most extraordinary ways.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: People are complicated, messy creatures, amalgamated from every speck of the spectrum of existence. No one who thinks babyqueers, that is your adolescent persons of all genders and preferences, should be kept in the dark about this, has any moral authority. They're arguing for repressions that they screech loudly about perceiving against them, but it being okay to do to others because they're Other.

The centrality of "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is obviously lost on these idiots.

Now that's out of the way, Canto Contigo (that title rips my sentimental heart out) is the 180° opposite of the book-banner/oppressor mentality's comfort zone. There's an out trans person in a gay relationship! That ought to send some fur flying among the deeply homophobic Latine folks, the religious nuts, and the fascist identity police. Good job, Author Garza Villa. Keep swingin' for their kneecaps. That goes also for Rafie's overweening Man-itude. The sheer arrogance of all adolescents I have ever met too often gets left out of the mirror of YA fiction. There is not a male person alive in the world today who could not benefit from seeing how his Man-itude looks from the outside. Start early instilling awareness and perspective in your boys, gay or otherwise. It will help him, and all who love him, in the long run.

The grieving that Rafie does for his Abuelo is very well-handled, and makes Rafie's dickheadedness a lot more forgiveable. It's a big refreshing change to see boys being credited with the ability to process deep emotions, albeit not smoothly. Too often the resolution of the grieving is both too smooth and too fast. Rafie's grieving isn't complete by the end of the story but it's underway...much more honest, IMO. I'll alsi let Anglophone readers know that there's a goodly amount of Spanish used in the dialogue. As that's normal for Mexican-American boys, I didn't actually notice it much until I was asked to translate something. So, be aware if speaking Spanish is not on your list of accomplishments.

The vibrancy of these boys rushing into their lives, hurtling past the idiocy of phobes and their control fetishes, their smallness of spirit, and the rules they insist must be obeyed, was delightful. The music lessons are fascinating. The fact that the boys are rivals for a very important and prestigious position in their school's mariachi contest is a great way to keep the emotional loud pedal down without it feeling as though the author's manufacturing crises. It's baked in when the situation is set up this way. Going for the same role in a public-facing event is going to make competitors out of any two boys, then add to the mix that Rey's got the added pressure of representing for all of transmasc-dom.... They're believably entwined, they're completely besotted, and they each want to win.

Great way to tell a story. It's told well. I'm glad I got to know the entire bunch. Yes, even the jerks...need jerks to make a love story about us-v-them really work. This one's got that covered. I might think twice about handing the book to anyone fourteen or under without really carefully considering where that kid's social development was. Fifteen on up I'd be completely comfortable handing it over.

Get one for yourself, too, grandparent, and have a book club.

WELCOME TO FOREVER, lovely meditation on what makes you, you

WELCOME TO FOREVER
NATHAN TAVARES
Titan Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$10.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A sweeping, psychedelic romance of two men caught in a looping world of artificial realities, edited memories, secretive cabals and conspiracies to push humanity to the next step in its evolution.

For fans of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Ubik, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Evangelion.

Fox is a memory editor—one of the best—gifted with the skill to create real life in the digital world. When he wakes up in Field of Reeds Center for Memory Reconstruction with no idea how he got there, the therapists tell him he was a victim in a terrorist bombing by Khadija Banks, the pioneer of memory editing technology turned revolutionary. A bombing which shredded the memory archives of all its victims, including his husband Gabe.

Thrust into reconstructions of his memories exploded from the fragments that survived the blast, Fox tries to rebuild his life, his marriage and himself. But he quickly realises his world is changing, unreliable, and echoing around itself over and over.

As he unearths endless cycles of meeting Gabe, falling in love and breaking up, Fox digs deep into his past, his time in the refugee nation of Aaru, and the exact nature of his relationship with Khadija. Because, in a world tearing itself apart to forget all its sadness, saving the man he loves might be the key to saving us all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind only gay it up. I loved that film, and this book, for the same reasons: They show us how extremely integral to our sense of self and buying in to the social construct of reality memory is. If someone doesn't share your memory of something, is your memory wrong? If you can't find a memory in your mind, is it gone? Where'd it go?

After the strokes I had in 2023, these questions are more important than ever to me. They were never unimportant to me but have gained urgency as a result of that crisis. Reading this book with its structural similarity to my own experience of needing others...the kindness of others is literally everything, y'all, practice giving it as well as receiving it....to help me find my sense of myself in the world was satisfyingly resonant.

Questioning one's identity is a thing we're told magically stops for queer people when we come out. (Spoiler alert: It does not.) All the jostles to one's sense of self that a long-term intimate relationship brings are wildly out-of-proportion shocks to many of us. Fox meeting Gabe, meeting him again and again, and still coming up against that shocking wall of The Other as a complete and entire being not knowable to yourself, makes this a wonderful piece of relationship fiction. It's very much also a SFF exploration of overweening tech hubris. It's also a sly jab at the savior complex of the people who look at humanity as a set of problems to be solved. All of these facets are inherent in the story's conflicts, in the quest that Fox sets out on to rediscover and reintegrate himself after trauma.

I'll say that, after the success that was my read of A Fractured Infinity, I went into this sophmore effort hoping for no slump and wishing for an out-of-the-park homer. I got neither. I got the top-quality expansion on the strengths of the first novel, its relationships, and that is way more than enough to get an extra half-star from my stingy self. A full star didn't happen because the first book's film-editing style didn't thrill me this time, either. I honestly expected scene numbers and location directions. I suspect Author Tavares uses shot lists to organize the stories he tells...hoping for his sake this makes the film industry take him up and film both his stories.

This story should be of extra deep interest to readers over 35 because that group has, as a rule, experiences like Fox's and Gabe's to bring to the table. It is straight-people safe, no NSFW smexytimes to shock and/or affront you. The love story, the trajectory of a man constructing and reconstructing his life after a horrible, external trauma, ought to draw in all identities...or so I hope in this polarized world.

Very much a recommended #PrideMonth read for us and for allies all.

THE BALLAD OF JACQUOTTE DELAHAYE, ladypirates who love ladies

THE BALLAD OF JACQUOTTE DELAHAYE
BRIONY CAMERON
Atria Books
$28.99 hardcover, available romorrow

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: This epic, dazzling tale based on true events illuminates a woman of color’s rise to power as one of the few purported female pirate captains to sail the Caribbean, and the forbidden love story that will shape the course of history.

In the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ambitions are bound by the confines of her life with her self-seeking French father. When her way of life and the delicate balance of power in the town are threatened, she is forced to flee her home and become a woman on the run along with a motley crew of refugees, including a mysterious young woman named Teresa.

Jacquotte and her band become indentured servants to the infamous Blackhand, a ruthless pirate captain who rules his ship with an iron fist. As they struggle to survive his brutality, Jacquotte finds herself unable to resist Teresa despite their differences. When Blackhand hatches a dangerous scheme to steal a Portuguese shipment of jewels, Jacquotte must rely on her wits, resourcefulness, and friends to survive. But she discovers there is a grander, darker scheme of treachery at play, and she ultimately must decide what price she is willing to pay to secure a better future for them all.

An unforgettable tale told in three parts, The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is a thrilling, buccaneering escapade filled with siege and battle, and is also a tender exploration of friendship, love, and the search for freedom and home.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I think this is a story of two halves: the first half, a survival story rooted firmly in its rime and place; the second more of a fantasy fulfillment that didn't follow the rules of the first half.

The delights, so to speak, of feeling transported to the slave economy of Santo Domingo, there to meet Jacquotte and see the milieu she was destined to live in...many. The characters, the situations, the atmosphere of the town, were all set up sufficiently clearly that I invested in them. That's most of the battle in my reading world. So I was rockin' along, expecting a five, or at worst high-four, star read.

Then came the twenty-first century.

Jacquotte and company all start having very modern conversations about rights and feelings and equality. I suspect this is not realistic not because we haven't seen it before...the cultural conversation has been dominated by the white oppressors for millennia, how would it get reported?...but because this woman and her cohorts have, until now, behaved and spoken more or less like the period demands. The shift was the jarring part, not what was shifted to.

There's action, there's love, there's a lot to like. When we go off into the second half's fantasia, it's still a good read with swashes being buckled and derring being done. It just wasn't congruent with the first half. They're both enjoyable, make no mistake. I'm glad I read the story. I'm glad to get to know Jacquotte.

Be better prepared to suspend disbelief than I was and get even more out of the story.br />