CONFLUENCE, our queer elders show us how they did it in times more dangerous than today

CONFLUENCE
ALEX TURNER with Lucian Childs
Arsenal Pulp Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$10.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: An intimate, deeply moving queer coming-of-age novel that evokes '50s small-town life and the surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall '60s

In 1956, lonely teenager Teddy is drawn to the water and woods surrounding his small town, where he meets bad boy Wade and becomes overwhelmed by his attraction to him. During the rapturous early period of their friendship, the two range over the area’s mountains and waterways before falling out after high school over Teddy’s sexuality. In the years following their separation, Teddy—now going by Ted—struggles to live openly as a gay man, finding and losing lovers at parties, dance clubs, and cruising spots in a surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall gay Vancouver. He is befriended by a lively crew of eccentrics—a new chosen family—who aid him in finding fulfillment both as a gay man and as an artist. Returning to his hometown nearly a decade later, Ted must decide whether or not to reunite with the one who once meant so much to him: the sexy and mercurial Wade.

Confluence is a collaboration between late author Alex Turner and his husband, Lucian Childs. Drawing on his sixty-year history with his beloved West Coast home, Turner wrote much of this beautifully rendered novel before he passed away in 2019. Childs, an award-winning author himself, completed the work, a novel that is simultaneously poetic, humorous, and exuberantly down to earth.

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

My Review: "Exuberant" is a very good word to use with this novel's affect in mind. It's inherent, in a funny way, in the idea of coming of age; it feels a lot harder and more like a chore as you're doing it than the reality from the outside, and later the memory of it, report.

Teddy and Wade, misfits in their small town of origin, do what misfits most often do. They find common cause, they make a mutual defense pact against the world...in this case more like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact than the Kellogg–Briand Pact, one ending when they began a war and the other still in force. Teddy's attraction to Wade is different than the usual alliance of convenience only neither knows it until it's been the glue between them for quite a while.

It's quite a common experience, the different relationships/same people one. As always there's an event that brings out the need to discuss what each feels as adolescence presses its hormonal buttons. Wade, being straight and it being 1956, doesn't respond very kindly or acceptingly towards Teddy, hastening his departure for the big city of Vancouver.

Life, as is its wont, happens; Teddy becomes Ted, a good-looking young queer-about-town exuberantly exploring the joys of sex and the consolations of friendship. It's a story I've read oh so many times, set in a place I've never been but recognize as a cognate with my natal place San Francisco, my coming-of-age place Austin, and my home Manhattan. It's the island of safety in an unsafe world.

That safety, the sense of it being okay to be yourself, is what makes this such a magical read. Its hormonal passages aren't lacking in number or excitement. Its more important idea, though, is the safety to explore the hormonal drives because there's a safe place to do it, albeit still without any legal protection; but a loving group of likeminded people to cushion the fall from the heights of Love and the pangs of loneliness that follow the ends of things. That's honestly more important in the long run.

Of course a novel will always need resolutions to big unresolved threads in a life. Reality doesn't impose such conditions on us. We-the-reader need to know, though, what happened to Wade who stayed behind.

We find out.

It was a pleasure to be with these young gay men in their youth, distant by decades from my own youth and most of a century removed from the present. It is vital to have these words of witness from someone who was there to understand it from the inside, who lived its reality and thought it good to bring those moments to life for us who followed in time. I hope those younger than I am will find those words, realize how similar humans are to each other, how much different their own time is from the story's time and hopefully to find those differences contain mostly improvements.

We live in a time of miracles being commonplace. Appreciating that is a great way to honor those who worked for a world better than their own to come into being.

HOW TO DATE A FANATIC, two halves make a funny-shaped whole

HOW TO DATE A FANATIC
ARUNI KASHYAP
HarperVia (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this compassionate, poignant novel set in contemporary India, a young professor searches for connection and love during a time of political and cultural upheaval.

As political tensions rise precipitously across India, Rohit returns to Delhi University to teach and gets caught in a web of unrequited love with his friend Dhruv. To alleviate his inevitable heartbreak, Rohit seeks relationships with other men on campus, until he meets and embarks on a delicate new romance with the effervescent Sayan, a literature student he hopes will be the answer to getting over Dhruv.

Rohit’s life soon becomes more complicated as the country's political tensions erupt on campus, sparking a turbulent student-led movement that entangles Rohit when Dhruv joins the fray, a tipping point that changes Rohit’s life forever. Set against the vibrant, volatile tapestry of modern India, Rohit and his friends must learn to navigate the challenges and triumphs of queer life to survive in an unpredictable political landscape.

Propulsive, tense, and charged with humor and tenderness, How to Date a Fanatic is an exploration of identity, connection, and the enduring hope for a better future in a rapidly changing world.

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

My Review: India's right-wing horrible human beings are enough like our US versions that I was stressed for Rohit from the get-go; I was also reminded that au fond, humans are not different anywhere on this globe. The same insatiable desire to control others in every way, the same pressure to conform or else, the same kinds of violent resistance and repression, for reasons only cosmetically different.

The reason I'm not offering perfect ratings and warbles of delight for this clear-sighted takedown of the repression and conformity machine is simple: Dhruv's a bastard. Rohit needs to get over his addiction to an emotionally unavailable man, and that story is *uncomfortably* close to home. It's all on Rohit, of course, Dhruv's uninterest could've been more kindly expressed but that is not incumbent on any of us to come up with in the moment. Rohit losing himself in the pursuit of distraction is deeply relatable. His choices are very interesting to me because they're further evidence of human nature being consistent across cultures.

Where the mess that is the authoritarian horror India lives under (and the US seems to be rushing to emulate) takes hold of the narrative, the second half becomes more a political argument against authoritarianism while backgrounding Rohit's emotional life. The shift in tome is always going to be tricky to navigate; I didn't feel it was all that well handled. I was taken from one focus, on the intimate life and choices of Rohit, into another, the violent and vicious reactionary response of a right-wing regime to gay men.

Both were very involving, though a reader looking for more of the first story might not like being catapulted into the second much. Readers interested in the second stiry might have preferred it to be more than just lightly foreshadowed from the beginning. It's this dichotomy between the (roughly) halves that stalled me out at four stars. There are that many because I really liked and invested in Rohit and his happiness. Sure, I wanted to shake him by the shoulders and demand he get on with finding someone who deserves his love. But he really deserves that kind of happy ending. (Other kinds too but permaybehaps on the page in my imagined other story...not this unsteamy one.)

A successful read for all my quibbly niggles, a story I'd enjoy seeing more of, should a follow-on tale eventuate. That ain't the most common end to a review I write about a book that frustrated me!

MAZELTOV, gay Jewish teen's bar mitzvah mishegas

MAZELTOV
ELI ZUZOVSKY
Henry Holt & Co. (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now (preorder a paperback for $17.99, delivered 25 August, at that link too)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In a glorious debut, a boy confronts queer lust, shame, the threat of war, and the plague of family on the day he becomes a man.

At a banquet hall, at the onset of war, Adam Weizmann’s bar mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe. On the cusp of manhood—and the verge of a nervous breakdown—Adam has been bracing for his special day, mired in family neuroses and national dysfunction.

In a chorus of voices, a fractious cast of well-wishers narrates Adam’s coming-of-age in Israel: his newly devout father and the mystic rituals he practiced on his young son; his best friend, Abbie, who points the way to joyful transgression; Khalil, a Palestinian poet, who offers a glimpse of a different way to be; and Adam himself, filled with shame and desire as he faces the brokenness of his world.

At once tender and lustful, a work of scathing satire and piercing insight, Mazeltov is a wholly original vision of a young man’s quest to know his own heart.

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

My Review: Framed as a long flashback from a future not filled in (so as not to give stuff away), this coming-of-age story centered on a religious rite of passage that's recognizing the adolescent mind's shift into high (adult) gear. Unsurprisingly that's also a time many queer kids become aware they're different...and some of those become aware of just exactly how they're different.

Adam's name, shared with the first-ever man in his religion's mythology, is a clever choice. It truly does feel as though one is the very first ever to go through the self-discovery process. Then there's his surname: Weizmann. Only the greatest Zionist of them all was Weizmann. Can't unsee that call-back. It's prestigious in Israel, very much the opposite in my world.

No matter how accepting one's peers and family might be, there is anxiety around recognizing one is Other in the eyes of the world. Most of us don't feel accepted in that awful 13-15 age bracket though, so the queer identity adding complexity to the existing tsurres is seldom welcome.

The Israel setting is going to be an issue to some who read my blog. The ongoing genocide against Palestinians is not foregrounded here, so make your decisions with that information in mind. I myownself was not minded to reject the book outright for not writing the details of a war crime that long predates the PoV character's birth into his personal story. You do you, though.

The multiple PoVs and the technique used to switch among them, along with quiet, unheralded details that are not consistent in the different PoVs, is more likely to cause readers problems than procrustean political tomfoolery. I'm sure some readers put these detail differences down to a lack of novelistic craft. I'm not of that opinion myownself. I think Author Zuzovsky put those variations in the narrative because the characters are going to have those differing recalls, and we as the listeners aren't necessarily going, or even likely to know whose version is factually correct...if any version is.

Adam's unhappily divorced parents are *awful*...and this is judging them from their own PoVs not from dam's adolescent one. Dad snipes at Mom in his remarks for the occasion, Mom can't be arsed to write a speech or her son's rite of passage...ick. Send these two to Gaza to be aid workers so they'll be forced to think of others not just themselves.

It's a sort read at under 200pp. I'll say I was never bored. I'll mention that I was empathetic for this kid's relatable, familiar struggles with naming and taking on his adult identity. I can't not say that I'm squeamish about Israeli literature because the way their government is acting is appalling...and my government's bankrolling it.

It's complicated, like Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah. It's messy, like Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah. It needs some room to grow it didn't get, like Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah.

But it's a debut. More and even better things are to come. Like the aftermath of Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah.

THE PIANO STUDENT, fictionalized gay love story from the scariest part of the 1930s

THE PIANO STUDENT
LEA SINGER (tr. Elisabeth Lauffer)
New Vessel Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$10.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Piano Student centers on an affair between one of the 20th century’s most celebrated pianists, Vladimir Horowitz, and his young male student, Nico Kaufmann, in the late 1930s.

As Europe hurtles toward political catastrophe and Horowitz ascends to the pinnacle of artistic achievement, the great pianist hides his illicit love from his wife Wanda, the daughter of the renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini. The affair is narrated by Kaufmann in the 1980s to another music devotee, who comes to him enchanted by Schumann’s composition Träumerei and awakens memories of the thwarted relationship. Kaufmann is spending his final years playing in small-time Zurich bars, never rivaling his teacher’s musical mastery and rapturously received concerts.

Based on unpublished letters by Horowitz to Kaufmann that author Lea Singer herself discovered in Switzerland, the novel portrays the anguish that the acclaimed musician felt about his never publicly acknowledged homosexuality and the attendant duplicity of his personal life. It's a riveting and sensitive tale of musical perfection, love, and longing denied, with multiple historical layers and insights into artistic creativity.

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

My Review: Given the times and the stakes, Horowitz staying closeted was a solid decision to make. If his wife didn't see a golden opportunity in his necessary secret, I'll kiss a pig. But being "out" as we twenty-first centuryans conceptualize it would've been career...possibly literal...suicide.

Suicide's a major part of this work. Do not pick it up if you are in distress, or if ongoing ideation around ending your own life is an issue for you. This review will not be delving more deeply into the topic.

This novel polarizes readers. It's more a stream of consciousness work than a standard narrative. It does not spoon-feed readers, it expects you'll be paying attention to the details well enough to follow or at least be able to figure out who is speaking, whose head you're in, or whose PoV is dominant at that moment. For those not looking for a read of that nature just now, it's best to pass it by.

As a story this is a pretty ordinary one: lovers must hide from the world because the world does not and would not accept their love as valid or acceptable. This moment in history we in the Anglophone world are seeing how much that story resonates with readers and viewers with the wild ascendancy of Heated Rivalry. I do not recall anything like this level of investment or passion for a yearning-romance story since Moonlighting in the 1980s. I hope it does not fizzle like that show did...or this excellent novel has done in the past six years.

I'm certain that the author's choices of narrative complexity were deliberate and considered. The framing device of Robert Donati avoiding the consequences of a decision he made but regretted meeting Nico Kaufmann and exchanging stories is a well-worn one, only rescued from triteness by its stream-of-consciousness presentation. It establishes the psychological safety of baring one's soul to a stranger as the reason we're hearing the stories at all. Considering the pseudonymous author discovered the Kaufmann story in letters buried in an archive the device is very apt, reflective of her own presumptive experience of discovery.

The unbearably sad life of a man who does not control his own destiny isn't a new idea for a story either. Wanda Toscanini Horowitz managed the career of her husband for her benefit, his safety, and their material security. Horowitz did not have any freedom, any latitude, in the course of his musical career—though not one soul could claim much credit for directing his astounding musical gift, how it became world-famous cost him a lifetime of terrible depression, emotional collapses, and caustic unfreedom of living an honest, open love. Kaufmann was the first (we know of) musical protege who was really a lover. Nico's story makes it plain he loved Volodya very much but was ultimately unable to commit to a life on Wanda's terms. Or Volodya's...Nico was too young to consider monogamy a good personal choice, and that was always going to be their downfall as lovers.

It does not prevent their friendship, based in the camaraderie of living double (dishonest) lives, from persisting...Horowitz writes to Nico over the years of his ups and downs. It's a sad truth of life that friendships based in shared trauma can, as this one did, curdle; ultimately the choices of a life lived for an external goal amputate the lingering ties to a life lived for personal happiness incompatible with that goal.

Nico's unexceptional talent and Volodya's era-defining one were doomed to clash. Their moment of lovingkindness and connection was a gift each man treasured. It could not be celebrated in their world, but it can be now.

I'd recommend this passionate love-chronicle to the readers who enjoy, and are in the mood for, putting some effort into living inside a great love's contained world.

WATERSPOUT, one of Troy Ford's Pink Sheep Novels

WATERSPOUT (The Pink Sheep Novels Book 2)
TROY FORD
Sweet Flag Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Pillion meets The Goldfinch in this dark literary novel about art, ambition, and the volatile people who become our muses.

Jimmy Traywick is running out of options. Job, apartment, boyfriend, and gallery in San Francisco—gone. Retreating to a quiet town across the Bay, he’s hoping for a fresh start when a charismatic insider offers a shot at the New York art world.

Desperate to seize the opportunity, he begins painting the new lovers and friends who have pulled him into their orbit, transforming passion and chaos into a raw new body of work.

But when secrets surface and relationships fracture, he discovers too late that inspiration can come at a devastating price.

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

My Review: Ambition's a cruel taskmaster. It forces people into actions they'd otherwise overthink their way out of, like trading sex for fame. It's a terrible price to pay for a a commodity that loses value when you lose interest. Money...assets...jewels...their value is more durable.

It doesn't stop people from making that bargain. For millennia people have traded sex for tangible items and intangible things like gods and power and fame/notoriety. Jimmy Traywick did that. It worked...until it didn't.

That's the thing about Faustian bargains: Wanting something badly enough to ignore your own misgivings about it is its own reward. Funny word to use, isn't it. Not funny-ha-ha but funny-hmmm. It's a bad reward, but a real one, to set and pursue a goal to the single-minded exclusion of doubt and fear. Jimmy, like other ambitious people, desires at a more intense level than most of us. He's not stupid, wait yes he is, he's not dumb because he sees Paul Allenson in 3D, shadows are there, they point to things that aren't open, aboveboard...and he takes the proffered bargain anyway.

It's a choice. A choice he made. Now we meet Jimmy in the aftermath. He still owns his choice, its mark is on him for good and ever. The story you're reading is the story of making that choice, choosing that fate knowing it will be costly but not what exactly the cost will be.

It's always fascinating and not a little enlightening to read stories about people who are more intense about their lives, their goals, the desires than we-the-reader are. We're looking in on a train wreck, watching the rescue operation be hit by flash floods, the director with the radio coordinating everything get hit by lightning, the ambulances fall into sinkholes on the way to the scene...and we-the-reader sit comfortably in our chair in the air conditioning thrilling to it all.

Ain't reading grand?

Author Ford is an unkind man with a depraved soul. Goddesses please bless him for showing it to us. Jimmy goes through the wringer and comes out flattened but never flat and featureless.The same is less true of those around him, or this would be five stars with a yodel of rapture. It's a tough balancing act, taking time away from our PoV guy to limn some depth for the supporting players. It's a thing all too often left undone. I don't think it was left undone here, Author Ford's not careless or unskilled. It was part and parcel of the choice to tell the story with its focus resolutely on Jimmy. It was a lot to put onto one character, and that one character was rather less nuanced than I'd've needed for him to be to sit back in my chair with the book open on my lap with a slightly dazed expression on my puss.

It's a really involving tale, once I opened it I didn't close it willingly; it never once bored me or made me wish to heck he'd get bloody on with it; but it explored depths I didn't find that deep, so it's not my idea of perfect.

It very much is perfectly entertaining and, not for nothing, really begging to have a movie draped over it. Get you one and see if I'm wrong.

UNSAYABLE: A Life in Writing, speaks the unsayable into being

UNSAYABLE: A Life in Writing
MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: An intimate memoir portraying a life spent trying to describe the indescribable—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of The Hours and Day

Go ahead. Try using language to slit the skin of mortality to see what’s on the other side.

At the age of three, Michael Cunningham began obsessively collecting the names of oak, Chevrolet, finch, tulip, Tupperware… Each word rendered the world ever so slightly more understandable, more describable, kicking off a lifelong love affair with language—one that would, eventually, maybe inevitably, lead him to become a writer.

In Unsayable, Cunningham’s memories spill forth, and with them, reflections on the craft of writing. He is fifteen, in a swimming pool at night, gazing at the first boy he ever fell in love with, who is lost in contemplative silence. He is a new college graduate, setting off for nowhere in a Dodge Dart, hoping to pull meaning (and a novel) from the expanse of America. He is on Cape Cod, regaling an elderly couple with invented tales of sexual escapades. He is in an art gallery, unwittingly having the first in a lifetime of conversations with the man he would marry. A thread ties each beautifully-wrought moment to the what is unspoken, what won’t yield to language, what is embellished beyond recognition, what is still left to say.

Luminous, perceptive, and powerful, Unsayable is an ode to literature, a meditation on craft, and an intimate account of a life spent trying to put into words that which resists depiction. This, it turns out, is the lifeblood of the fiction the impossibility of capturing the human experience, and the relentless desire to try.

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

My Review: Do you like life?

Really unanswerable, that question. Does it mean your life or just Life, that vast agglomerating thing that doesn't even have a rigorous definition? See...pointless to ask, unable to be pinned down well enough to create an answer.

But asking the question made you think, made you name things to focus thoughts, organize feelings, contemplate so many things no one ordinarily just...turns over deliberately. And all of it was done in words, because you read words, and put your words into combinations they probably havent been in for a long time. Or ever.

This is what Michael Cunningham has done in Unsayable: he has turned over in his mind all the life he's had, looking for words to put around the very odd thing he's organized his life around, being a writer. He loves writing, he loves words, he loves stories, and each anecdote in this memoir reinforces the reader's sense of these facts as rooted in his life. It's a tacit admission of his likely audience, the aspiring writers of the Anglophone world. It's also a generous gift from a seventy-plus year old teacher of the arts of storytelling, because it will survive him as well as his professional career. There are moments of craft advice in the moments of life story, there are even more clues as to how a reader can view the stories they consume so as to get the most pleasure out of the reading. It's just never made sense to me that more readers who don't plan to write fail to see the benefit of reading writing advice. How better to comprehend a story's creator as a person practicing a craft?

It's as deft an exercise of prose-writing as you'd expect. It's a read filled with stories for you to know Michael Cunningham by. It's a powerful tool to create a narrative, whether for your own life, a story you want to write, or empower yourself to create change.

Goodness knows the world needs people of vision to create better, more humane stories to follow in the world itself. Best to learn how from a master practicioner of the storytelling art.

HOW QUEER BOOKSHOPS CHANGED THE WORLD, worthy thesis defended with passion

HOW QUEER BOOKSHOPS CHANGED THE WORLD
A.J. WEST
Oneworld Publications (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending June 30, 2026

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: For over a century, LGBTQ+ bookshops have been the unsung heroes of queer liberation

Home not only to books but chaotic community noticeboards, vicious rescue cats and countless meet cutes, queer bookshops have always been more than just bookshops, offering friendship, solidarity and sanctuary.

Traveling the world—Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Gay’s the Word in London, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York—A. J. West explores the remarkable history of these bookstores. Tracing their evolution from under-the-counter operations to beloved out-and-proud institutions, West reveals how the queer bookshop stood at the vanguard of LGBTQ+ rights, offering support and vital information through the AIDS crisis and bringing the fight to Section 28 and book bans.

A powerful testament not only to bookshops but to the courage of queer booksellers, from Sylvia Beach hiding books from the Nazis in laundry baskets to Craig Rodwell facing off against the police at the Stonewall riots, A. J. West celebrates the shops and booksellers that brought queer literature and lives into the mainstream.

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

My Review: I'd give it a perfect rating if I hadn't felt so put-upon with the opening chapters speed-lining queer history.

It was my emotional reaction. I'm not wrong; I literally cannot be wrong about my feelings.

It's necessary to put not-queer, or new to their history queer, readers in the picture of what these trailblazing heroically brave people did and what they risked for us all to have access to queer stories. It is breathtaking, and eye-opening, and quite honestly shaming for those of us not willing or able to stand up against Authority for the good of all.

It is more clear to me than ever before that the urgent project of the authoritarians trying to ban queer books, the tech scum trying to make all knowledge available only on their say-so and the seeker's ability to pay any vig "They" choose to demand, and the ruling class's desire to keep you as stupid as possible intertwine like snakes on Medusa's head. The underknown prophet of this future we now live in, Sinclair Lewis, wrote: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross."

Look around you...that was prophecy, not fiction.

Author AJ writes about the past in this book. It could, one day soon, feel like an elegy for les jadis if you and I are not very careful and very intentional in our actions in November 2026. It's fragile, this thing called Liberty, and it's always been very, very unpopular with with the ruling class. We-the-people have already seen how much control "They" want after women's bodily autonomy was stripped away from them in the US. Revoltingly it was enabled by a quisling woman. All of these struggles, legal battles, and societal shifts are under long-term and well-funded attack. How I wish more people had listened when Hilary Clinton spoke that truth.

Author AJ details the harms this determined regressive minority causes with seeming impunity in his chapters on the role of AIDS amelioration and drag-queen story hour bannings. Restraining the flow of often life-saving information to those in desperate need of it, and excluding people "They" don't like such as gender-nonconforming people, are terrible actions on their face. The true evil doesn't announce itself. It unfolds as Author AJ shows us consequences.


The best kind of non-fiction writing tells you a story that evokes emotional responses from the reader. I've seldom been more emotional in my response to a true story that does not involve a murder. Author AJ deserves all the kudos there are for bringing a storyteller's constructive attention to this crisis in our body politic.

JUNE/PRIDE MONTH/2Q2026 IN REVIEW

amazing advertising artwork promoting the new Dune movie

It was Pride Month here on my blog. I focused on queer reviewing for the whole month (and a little bit of May). I wrote twenty-eight specific-to-Pride reviews. Twelve of those were June 2026 DRCs (out of twenty June 2026 DRCs reviewed this month, and a slightly appalling SEVENTY-FOUR June DRCs I received. Seriously...one less than my LibraryThing home group's annual goal in one month?! Who do I think I am, Biblio-Terminator?).

I'm torn between The Invention of Nature, a biography of my elder sibling in gay-maleness Alexander von Humboldt, and Medea Sang Me A Corrido as my favorite Pride reads. I thoroughly loved Villain but it was less clearly queer than Hench so got a hair less luuuv from me. The Summer Boy was a lovely read, a story I felt was aimed directly at me; yet it wasn't as energetic, as actively pursuing my attention as my two favorite candidates. I read two Steven Rowley stories, liked both, but...not quite enough to warble my fool lungs out over them. It was a good 2026 Pride crop, one to savor in memory, and makes me very glad I didn't pressure myself with a numerical goal so I didn't fret about "making progress" or other such artificial stricture. I'm labeling this tracking project a successful trial. Maybe I'll aim for a numerical goal in 2027. I have a solid eight months to decide, no rush....

In June overall, I wrote thirty-six reviews. I received a slightly appalling SEVENTY-FOUR June DRCs; thus my reviewed-DRCs percentage is a barely tolerable 48.6%. I'm obviously quite greedy, and a fast reader, but THAT is worrying me. It could be years before I review those generously gifted-to-me books! I must work on my s(h)elf control.

Of the sixteen reviews for not-QUILTBAG books in June, one stands out like a lighthouse in the living room as a "please please pleasepleaseplease read this book": The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow. It's important. Please read it. Get it from your library if you don't want to spend money on it. Just read it. Please. In those sixteen non-QUILTBAG reviews there were no fictions that I found terribly exciting. The crappiest book I read in June was Puck, and I am not kidding when I tell you the one I'm talking about here gets lost in one's search-results options because the hockey-romance craze is INSANE! Puck-the-character adapted here from Shakespeare turned me off completely.

So I soldier onward to July, and the third quarter of 2026. I expect to see a dramatic decrease in my blog's engagement because Bluesky no longer allows me to access it through my browser...it insists on being the only thing on my screen, being vertically formatted, and thus unreadable for me. I do not expect them to reverse course so I'll be on their site at most a few times a day. I hate it when tech scum make decisions for me. They *never* get it right. ENSHITTIFICATION is real. Like the way the goddamned motherfucking AI decided I wanted to capitalize "enshittification" when I did not.

The second quarter of 2026 saw me write reviews for 105 books in total, sixty-three in their publishing month. That's out of a total of 171 DRCs received for this quarter, or 37% reviewed in the month they were published and 60% of my total reviews written. I was most eager to read The Violence: My Family's Colombian War because Author Adriana is an old friend's daughter-in-law, who happens to be a very talented writer. It was a great success in the marketplace, and with me. The second of my two current possibilities for 2026's six-stars-of-five read is a non-fiction book for the first time ever: A Bird's IQ: Innovation, Intelligence, and Problem Solving in the Avian World is by Louis Lefebvre and translated from French by Pablo Strauss. It was a surprise to me how much of Author Lefebvre's earlier novel-writing training held over into his non-ficton prose creation without making it feel as though he was book-horning pretty sentences into places they felt brummagem or incongruous.

Overall, I liked non-fiction a lot more than usual this quarter, with some tippy-top reads as well as a true shocker coming from that genre. The shocker was Self-Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living by Peter Jones; self-help's a genre I view with great skepticism based on what "They" tell you it is, ie a way to fix problems. It's much more interesting to me as a barometer reading of the culture's current obsessions, and the average person's most pressing personal fears. This book managed to be a bit of both. That was a pleasant surprise, plus I liked Author Peter Jones's presentation of self.

Looking ahead to July, I'm not going to kid around: I have forty-two DRCs of July-date reads unreviewed out of forty-three received (as of 1 July, it could go up as the month wears on). I want to get half of those reviewed. I plan to prioritize political books as we head into midterms this quarter. I've got a lot of political-reads noted already from years gine by. I've always held back because so many people I know just flat refuse to put in the work of reading the books. That's no longer something I can factor in to my review-writing queue. The stakes are too high to pander to lowest-common-denominator reading habits.

Can't make y'all read the books, or the reviews, but you'll have to make a conscious choice to skip them.

June 2026's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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IN THE ARMS OF MOUNTAINS: A Memoir of Land, Love, and Queer Resistance in Red America by COLE NICOLE LeFAVOUR

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Rural America deserves more than an elegy: A powerful story of hope, resilience, and political resistance where you least expect it, from Idaho’s first openly LGBTQ+ lawmaker

Cole LeFavour was 11 years old when their hippie parents moved the family to a guest ranch in Idaho. Hours to the North, as the LeFavours unpacked pots and pans, Richard Butler dreamed of establishing a white separatist nation. It’s here, in one of the reddest states on the map, where Cole learned to raise ducklings, hike the wilderness alone, and build political resistance where you least expect it.

This is the story rural America deserves to tell—and that the rest of the country needs to hear. Follow LeFavour’s journey from their 2-mile walk to the school bus along a dirt road to their monumental election as Idaho’s first openly queer state senator. Cole recounts anti-apartheid protests in Berkeley, the solitary life of a fire lookout, and the gravitational pull of unexpected romance and loss. In the Arms of Mountains is a memoir with dirt under its nails and heart on its sleeve. It shatters the carefully constructed “monolithic heartland” myth and rewrites Hillbilly Elegy’s bleak epitaph.

Haunting, hopeful, and full of fight, Cole’s story reminds us of what’s possible when we look beyond red and blue, right and left, to meet each other at the edge of the wild.

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

My Review: I liked this read just fine. I was more interested in the author's journey to becoming an Idaho state legislator than their family history, but both held my attention.

Seeing myself in their life's journey was not simple, but my curiosity pulled me along, and I ended my read feeling "here's someone I think would not like me personally but would be interesting to chat with at a cocktail gathering."

Beacon Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) politely holds out a hand expecting you to put $17.95 in their palm for an ebook.

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Under the Water by Paul Pen (tr. Simon Bruni)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: What does the perfect family have to fear most? The perfect stranger.

From the outside, Frank and Grace seem to have the perfect family. He’s a loving husband, she’s a devoted wife, and together they have two happy children. But appearances can be deceiving. A strange series of misfortunes has left them an unexplained break-in, a catastrophic accident, and a bizarre poisoning that’s left Grace feeling especially unnerved. Packing up their RV for a move across the country, they’re ready for a fresh start, expecting to leave all their problems safely behind.

Then one night on the road to their new home, the figure of a young woman emerges from the darkness, causing them to swerve off the road. The injured stranger says her name is Mara. Miles from help, they invite her to stay. But Mara is hiding a secret. And she is not the only one.

Was it all just another inexplicable accident? Or have they opened the door to an escalating family nightmare designed to tear their perfect world apart?

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE.

My Review: Another creepy suspense story from Paul Pen, one that strongly hints at supernatural stuff without tipping its hand. Audrey's my kinda lass, irritatingly opinionated and highly judgmental and not smart enough to hide it despite being smart enough to know she should. Hello daughter of my cloning.

The way it all unravels as the parents' "perfect marriage" unsurprisingly fails the stress test of moving cross-country to escape something rather than make something was fun to watch, if predictable. I don't see classic written all over it but I'm not mad I read it.

Amazon Crossing (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks you for $2.49 for the Kindle edition. Good value for your dollar IMO.

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Desert Flowers by Paul Pen (tr. Simon Bruni)

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Rose and Elmer have created an idyllic sanctuary for themselves and their five daughters in Mexico’s Baja California desert. Out there in the middle of nowhere, blissfully cut off from the burdens of modern society, they’re free to raise their beautiful family…and preserve its secret.

And they’re never giving it up.

Then a young hiker named Rick comes looking for a place to stay. It’s just for the night, he says—but long enough for Rose and Elmer to fear they’ve made a horrible mistake. As the stranger grows more intrusive and more suspicious, the couple know they must do what they can to protect themselves. What they don’t know is that Rick has a secret, too. Soon, home and family will prove to be as cold and dark as the desert nights. And even with so many places to run, there’s still no escape from the past that binds them.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE.

My Review: Very much a Paul Pen uneasy-making story. Rick is a faceless menace with a name but no characterization to speak of. Elmer and Rose are stock characters that evoke "weirdo Murrikinz" to European eyes; it goes unexplored how these two norteños got to Baja California without considerable attention being paid to them.

I do not recall a single thing about any of their daughters. Nothing. A story to pass some time, but if I'd paid for it I'd be frothingly furious.

Amazon Crossing (non-affiliate Amazon link) is "only" asking $3.99 for a Kindle edition.

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The Light of the Fireflies by Paul Pen (tr. Simon Bruni)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A haunting and hopeful tale of discovering light in even the darkest of places.

For his whole life, the boy has lived underground, in a basement with his parents, grandmother, sister, and brother. Before he was born, his family was disfigured by a fire. His sister wears a white mask to cover her burns.

He spends his hours with his cactus, reading his book on insects, or touching the one ray of sunlight that filters in through a crack in the ceiling. Ever since his sister had a baby, everyone’s been acting very strangely. The boy begins to wonder why they never say who the father is, about what happened before his own birth, about why they’re shut away.

A few days ago, some fireflies arrived in the basement. His grandma said, There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light. That light makes the boy want to escape, to know the outside world. Problem is, all the doors are locked. And he doesn’t know how to get out…

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE.

My Review: The first of Spanish writer Paul Pen's books that I read. It's a bit more like Room than I expected; it's dark and dreadful and worryingly claustrophobic.

Would've been a full four stars for eerie, entirely gorgeous prose...except that brisk, brusque ending that ties a neat little bow on the backside of a shambling, messy orc of a story.

Amazon Crossing (non-affiliate Amazon link) would like $4.99 for the Kindle edition.

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This Never Happened by Mempo Giardinelli (tr. Rhonda Dahl Buchanan)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this autobiographical novel, a journalist witnesses the hot-off-the -presses editions of his own books thrown onto a bonfire of books. The date is March 24th, 1976, the day of the coup d'etat that led to the overthrow of the Isabel Peron presidency in Argentina and 18 years of terror known as "La Guerra sucia" or The Dirty Wars" in which 30,000-plus are still unaccounted for.

Fearful for his life and those of his wife and children, the narrator must find a way to navigate the highly volatile and murderous world under the boot of La Junta, in hopes of saving himself and his family; but first he has more important business to attend to—his mistress, with whom he's been having a scorching love affair—and finds himself grappling with several major dilemmas and very real dangers confronting him as he works his way out of this lethal maze.

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

My Review: In just over 200 pages, a future as dark as any Orwell dreamt up, as grim as Fahrenheit 451, is limned from the author's lived past. It's a bitter draft to swallow...especially the book-burning scene.

I might have swallowed it with better grace had the author not larded in a tacky, creepy cheating episode and never explored its emotional resonances; it felt like a cheap ploy to engage my worst, most prurient feelings. Stalled at three and a half stars instead of the full five I was heading for.

Schaffner Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs a mere $11.99 to grant you access to the ebook.

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The Bridge: An Annotated Edition (1st Edition) by Hart Crane (annotated and with an Introduction by Lawrence Kramer)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Now in paperback, with a new preface and clear, reader-friendly annotations that unlock Crane’s landmark poem.

Hart Crane’s modernist masterpiece The Bridge has steadily grown in stature since its 1930 publication. Once dismissed by influential critics as a noble failure, a view that hardened into conventional wisdom, it is now widely regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth-century American poetry. The poem unites mythology and modernity to reckon with the promises, kept and broken, of American experience.

The Bridge is challenging in the best sense, exacting and ultimately rewarding. Beloved yet often misunderstood, it threads indirect and finely grained allusions through period-specific references to 1920s life that can elude contemporary readers. Crane’s elaborate compound metaphors braid disparate sources, making the poem’s movement at times hard to track. Its topical and geographic markers call not only for identification but for explanation. Without specialized knowledge, much of it not readily available even online, many passages remain opaque.

Until now, there was no single, convenient resource to help readers unlock Crane’s vision. This book is that guide. Its detailed, far-reaching annotations make The Bridge fully accessible, whether you are a scholar, a student, or a devoted reader of poetry.

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

My Review: I am not "...a scholar, a student, or a devoted reader of poetry," so I had no business reading this queer poet's great edifice of thought. I loved the Walker Evans photos, and appreciated Lawrence Kramer's erudite and informative annotations, but it took me from October 2025 until now to finish this #PrideMonth read.

He might be one of gay history's "might have been great"s but I simply could not care less about poetry no matter how hard I try.

Fordham University Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests and requires the surrender of $23.99 for an ebook. You do you, Boo.

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A Dangerous Sky: A WWII RAF M/M Romance by Sebastian Haig

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Two fighter pilots. One secret that could destroy them both.

England, 1940.

The sky over the Channel is filling with enemy aircraft, and every sortie could be a pilot’s last.

Flight Lieutenant Tom Ashford has survived long enough to know the rules: keep your men alive, keep your emotions buried, and never let anyone see what truly matters to you. War is ruthless to weakness and even more ruthless to secrets.

Pilot Officer Callum Fraser arrives at the squadron young, capable, and determined to prove himself in the brutal air war over southern England. Under Tom’s steady command, he learns quickly how to fight, how to survive, and how thin the line between courage and fear can be when the sky fills with fire.

But danger isn’t confined to the cockpit.

In the quiet spaces between missions—fog covered village lanes, silent barracks after midnight, and the lonely miles of the Sussex countryside something begins to grow between them. What starts as trust between pilots becomes something far more dangerous: a connection neither man can deny, and neither can afford to be discovered.

Because in wartime Britain, loving the wrong person can destroy a career… or worse.

As the Battle of Britain intensifies and losses mount, Tom and Callum must decide what they are willing to risk in the air, and on the ground.

Because some battles are fought at thirty thousand feet.

And some are fought in the heart.

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

My Review: Blandly competent. WAAAY too long. Unmemorable prose, a subtitle that's a log line, a synopsis that's ridiculously overcomplicated and simultaneously portentous and uninformative as well as clearly designed to be read on a smartphone...not much thrilled me about this read except finishing it.

Which I did, so there are 2.5 stars.

Sebastian Haig (non-affiliate Amazon link) only wants $3.99 for the Kindle edition, so if you need to fill a few hours....

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The Grand Couvert by Eoghan Brunkard

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: One man trying to survive the revolution. One man trying to climb out of the gutter. One cat trying to kill them both…

Edouard Laurent is a young man struggling to survive in a tumultuous Paris during the dying embers of the Revolution. He was a hesitant participant in a chateau burning and has been conscripted to the Republican army. So, when Ivo Armel, a power-hungry official offers the chance of a pardon if Edouard retrieves a mysterious relic, Edouard and a strange team of adventurers set off. Unknown to them, they are being pursued by a small feline, who believes himself to be the Comte of the chateau Edouard helped reduce to ashes.

Will Edouard and his friends unravel the mystery of this relic and its significance to Armel’s revolution? Can the Comte endure terrible wine, worse lovers, and the indignity of repeatedly getting his head stuck in glasses while in pursuit for his vengeance?

A highly comedic, heartwarming and oddly, historically accurate novel by Eoghan Brunkard, author of ‘Clementine Lane’, of the trials of surviving late 18th century Europe.

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

My Review: "Ivo" and "Armel" are Breton saints...the latter spent the end of his life defeating a dragon burning up a Breton forest, the former a sainted abbot who championed the rights and care of the poor; on the nose much, Author Eoghan? It was a fun read for me. I cheered when the comte died, and thoroughly reveled in his afterlife as a stray cat.

I liked the read because I was sent to Holy Scripture aka Wikipedia to test my knowledge of Revolutionary France while giggling. It wasn't paced that well, some scenes too long; but overall I'd be glad to read Author Eoghan's next book.

He only wants (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) $4.99 for a Kindle edition which feels reasonable to me.

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The Seduction by Sara Torres (tr. Mara Faye Lethem)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Unspoken tensions simmer between two women under the heat of a Catalan summer in this internationally bestselling, erotic, and quietly radical portrait of queer desire.

In a sun-drenched house on the Catalan coast, a young, queer photographer arrives to capture the portrait of a celebrated writer. But what begins as a professional collaboration slowly unravels into something more intimate and unsettling—a charged exchange of glances, silence, and shifting emotional boundaries.

The photographer, unnamed and quietly observant, is drawn to the writer’s enigmatic presence, her self-possession, her power. Over shared meals and quiet routines, the difficulty of understanding the desire of the other begins to obsess the narrator. As the summer heat thickens, so too does the unspoken tension between them, heightening the photographer’s insecurities and her perception of her own flaws. When a third woman arrives, an old friend with blurred boundaries, the fragile connection begins to unravel. Is this seduction, or projection? Intimacy, or illusion?

Told through lyrical, introspective prose, The Seduction is a poetic, slow-burn exploration of the complexities of seduction between women, intimacy, queer longing, and the quiet ache of unfulfilled connections.

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

My Review: "Lyrical, introspective prose" is code for "pretty-sounding, too-long sentences telling a shaggy dog story." This is lovely to look at stuff that's in no hurry to tell you a story.

I kept reading, finished the book, because it might not've taken me much of anywhere new but it picked the most scenic route to get there that I could even imagine.

Atria Books/Primero Sueno Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs $12.99 before you get to read your ebook.

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Dearly Departed by Chip Pons

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: Hope is a dangerous thing for gods. Even former ones.

From the highly beloved author of “contemporary romance magic” (Christina Lauren) Winging It with You comes a Hades-inspired gay rom-com, in which the former god of the Underworld turned grumpy funeral director must find a loophole in the Immortality Retirement Act that banished him to Earth, until the florist next door who sees life in full bloom begins to unravel all his carefully laid plans.

Hayden Harlow, once the mighty Hades, has spent centuries quietly resenting his fall from immortality. Stripped of his godhood by the allegedly irreversible Immortal Retirement Act, he now runs Harlow and Sons Funeral Home—a front for his eternal sentencing among mortals, and a bleak reminder of the purpose he’s lost. Still, he’s determined to claw his way back…if only the Fates at City Hall would stop toying with him.

Enter Levi Wilder: a florist with an artist’s heart, an infectious smile, and a gift for finding beauty in life’s messiest moments. When Hayden storms into Levi’s shop to complain about a bouquet of sunflowers—an offensive choice for a funeral, in his opinion—their worlds collide. Hayden is all restraint and shadows; Levi is all sunshine and charm. But beneath the clash lies an undeniable spark neither can ignore.

As their connection blossoms, Hayden finds himself caught between the life he once knew and the bright future Levi dares him to imagine. But trusting Levi means risking the walls he’s kept in place all these years—and it’s not just his heart on the line. Because in the threads of fate, one choice can change everything.

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

My Review: Sweet, adorable meet-cute/grumpy-sunshine gay rom-coms are *perfect* summer reads. This one was just a shade too twee for my brooding cynical "heart" or whatever scar-tissue Frankenthing replaced it. There's more spicy racy stuff than I expected, but it was well done so I rolled with it.

I'd give four stars if Levi hadn't demanded emotional openness without offering to accept his own behaviors as occasionally over the top. It's not lethal but it niggled at me; Levi can be demanding but Hayden can't feel some kinda way about it...?!

G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires a fare of $12.99 to get on the ferry across the story-Styx.

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Queerleaders by Olivia A. Cole & Ashley Woodfolk

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Two cheerleaders find themselves inconveniently tumbling head over heels for each other in this satirical, sapphic teen rom-com that’s Bring It On meets She Drives Me Crazy.

Oak Haven High doesn’t have cheerleaders—it has queerleaders.

It’s a fun coincidence that every new varsity cheerleader since Davie Cathee took the squad by storm three years ago is—or soon comes out as—queer.

But when a rumor sparks that this season, newly minted captain Davie has been specifically recruiting queer members only, Davie is accused of “discrimination” against straight students. She’s given an ultimatum: recruit a straight athlete for the team or the funding for their competitive cheer season will take a major tumble.

Enter Kendall Hayes, the edgy, mysterious new girl. When Davie sees that Kendall has a boyfriend, she quickly convinces her to join the squad. Problem solved.

Until she finds out that Kendall’s actually bisexual…and newly single.

Now Kendall and Davie are faced with having to keep those details under wraps until nationals, which only gets more complicated when they start falling hard and fast for each other. Can Kendall go back in the closet long enough to save the squad? Or will Davie find the courage to love her new crush out loud, even if it might mean the end of the queerleaders?

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

My Review: Adorable! And, as a YA novel, so chock-full of quality representation it bulges. I'd hand this to my granddaughter without batting an eyelash.

I myownself am old enough to see through to the plot beats so wasn't deeply engaged; great for the sixteen and unders and you won't pass out from boredom pre-reading it but it's not for us.

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) says, "$10.99 please" at checkout.

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Bromantasy by Máire Roche

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Two heroes. One brain cell.

BROMANTASY is a cozy, queer fantasy about the mortifying ordeal of being known by your totally platonic best friend and the epic quest that might force you to confront the truth.

Fellas, is it gay to kiss your bff while on a quest through the forest you’re unqualified for?

Juniper O'Reilly is good at only two things: demolishing a pint of mead and finding the perfect skincare routine. Everything else—taking care of the farm, bartering for goods, any sort of manual labor—falls to Juniper’s best friend, the absurdly capable, endlessly patient Mo Elmthorn.

But when Juniper accidentally volunteers them both for a quest to kill a fearsome monster, he knows he’s finally gotten in over his head. Juniper hates camping, he hates the dark, and there’s no way all these foraged mushrooms are going to sit well in his stomach. One thing he doesn’t hate? How good Mo’s thighs look in his questing pants—he doesn’t have time to think about that, though, with a monster to hunt and their futures on the line.

But monsters come in all shapes and sizes. When Juniper and Mo realize that the terrifying beast they’ve sworn to kill is just a scared little girl torn from their family, they’re off to find not only the true villain of the story, but maybe even a happy ending.

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

My Review: The humor's a little obvious for my taste. I don't think the set-up is as cute as more sentimental readers will. The fantasy trappings wore thin very soon because they felt very inconsistent to me.

If you like the publisher's comps up top, or that orc/coffee shop thing, maybe you'll get a kick out of this one, too.

G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $12.99 for an ebook.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books.

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Dreams in Which I'm Almost Human: A Memoir (35%) by Hannah Soyer

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Dreams in Which I’m Almost Human is a genre-defying memoir of disability, identity, and desire that fuses lyricism, myth, and medical truth to explore what it means to live and love a body defined by others.

At eight years old, Hannah Soyer had no choice but to undergo an intensive spinal fusion surgery, in order to keep her lungs from eventually collapsing. Fourteen years later, she chose another treatment for her neuromuscular condition: regular drug injections into her spinal fluid. But what does “choice” really mean, and how much weight do our choices hold?

In taut, lyrical chapters, Dreams in Which I’m Almost Human confronts and communes with bodily autonomy, medical and sexual consent, traveling abroad in a wheelchair, caregiving and caretaking, appreciating the natural world, family history, bedtime stories, fantastical creatures, Irish poetry, and the limits and wonders of language and love. A bold collection of genre-bending essays, this memoir is an investigation into what we (and our words) are capable of, as we yearn to make sense of our relationships to ourselves, each other, and the worlds we inhabit.

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

My Review: I like lyrical prose, I batten on queer identity stories; I had to nope out of this one after I read:

What I mean is, in the words of Jenny Boully, "why is it that I have feet and yet still refuse to flee?"

The next paragraph enumerates the experiences the lover has regarding the beloved, and I literally could not stop sobbing. I'm not happy with how my Young Gentleman Caller left things between us, and was hopeful when I got a text from him; the conversation I'd hoped for was not forthcoming, and I still feel raw. Sorry Author Hannah, I just can't. Maybe later...?

Red Hen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) will need you to cross their palm with $9.99-worth of silver before granting your wish to become one with this sky-mermaid's being.

THE DISCO AT THE END OF THE WORLD, moonbases and alien motherships inside discoballs...WILD!

THE DISCO AT THE END OF THE WORLD
NATHAN TAVARES
Titan Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An alternate 1970s science fiction romance blending first contact and queer counterculture in the Los Angeles disco scene, perfect for readers of Vajra Chandrasekera and Victor Manibo.

In 1977—a world where America launched its space program shortly after WWII—Mitch Ward is a grunt in the US Spaceguard. Stationed in a backwater base on the Moon, his only friend is Gloria, who performs "Lady Moondust" for fellow soldiers, until he's briefly reunited with Flynn, a love from his youth who has never been far from his heart.

Following a visit from an unseen, terrifying but also maybe euphoric being, Mitch and Gloria find themselves quickly discharged from the Guard, and sent back to Earth. Moving to Los Angeles to chase their dreams, the duo scrape by, dancing between joy and defiance at the discos in a rapidly changing city that's unwelcoming to those who don't fit the Golden Age of Hollywood standard.

But when Flynn crashes back into their lives, he comes with a warning. He claims to be the host for a traveler and emissary of a utopian civilization, who has caught notice of Earth. This civilization is either the source of humanity's salvation—or its destruction. And they're on the way.

With the strange new powers blooming in Mitch and Gloria and Flynn's motives perhaps as hazy as those fog-filled LA dance floors, it's up to this community of disco-loving misfits to stand up for what is beautiful and right. And save those who maybe wouldn't do the same for them.

They're not going down without a fight—and one hell of a party.

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

My Review: I'd give it four stars just for the Mothership being a disco ball.

As it was, I gave it four stars because the chilling terribleness of a 1970s Reagan presidency coming as a natural development of Ronnie's disgusting authoritarian conversion in the 1950s, ushering in a repressive crackdown in place of Stonewall...well, it was a seasick feeling of "are we *sure* this didn't happen?"

I spent less time pondering Flynn's freaky-deaky...um, alteration?...than the alternate history elements. In fact the aliens were not particularly convincing to me, in that their role in the story felt less than integral to my sense of what should happen next. I found the ending flowed from their presence, so it wasn't joltingly out of place...just wasn't what I'd've preferred.

The Metronomes substitute for the christian nationalist horrors of our time quite neatly. Substituting one set of soi-disant judges for a different one is a wish-fulfillment move. It's like thinking the grade-school "how would you like it" argument on steroids...unconvincing, flimsy, and ultimately self-defeating. I'm not raving like I would be had we stuck to our alternate history premise, but honestly...I was having fun, so I unpuckered and got the pleasure the story I was reading offered me. I left the pining for something else on the dance floor with the fifth star.

BONE OF MY BONE, latest of Johanna van Veen's sapphic historical fiction/horror tales

BONE OF MY BONE
JOHANNA van VEEN
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Bram Stoker Award–nominee and USA Today bestseller Johanna van Veen unveils a sapphic folk-horror tour de force—perfect for fans of The VVitch and The Salt Grows Heavy. A skull's grin is eternal…

The year is 1635.

Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying man: the gilded skull of a saint.

It is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing the magic they seek comes at a cost.

At the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.

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

My Review: There is a period in History with no war. Statistically there must be.

This is not it. As usual, Religion...and religion...are at the heart of the Thirty Years' War that Author van Veen chose as her backdrop for the love between Elsebeth the canny formerly-Protestant peasant and Ursula the Catholic nun. Their meet-cute involves marauding soldiers and an unlikely act of salvation from the usual fate of women in a war. A bond formed then is unbreakable, and it helps that Elsebeth has already lost her religious faith. An odd sort of reward comes to the women for acting on human decency and female solidarity: the discovery of a first-class "holy relic" that both women understand the mythology behind (follow both links to see why that isn't unusual or anachronistic).

At that moment we leave the ordinary world behind. This is now a supernatural tale of pilgrims on a quest to perform an action for a reward. The background is war, violence, and its usual consequences for humanity caught up in it. That's the horror, and as I've said before, the kind of horror I can relate to; the supernatural horror so common in books is not scary to me because I don't believe in the supernatural or, maybe more accurately, in its innate power to act independently on reality. The women must protect the relic they've been charged with safekeeping from a necromancer who wants to use the thing to Perform Eville Acts.

It could as easily be a greedy bastard wanting to disassemble the adornments of the relic for onward sale and profit. Likewise the women's desire to protect the relic could as easily be motivated by their own need to survive, thus making returning the relic to its institutional owners for a presumably significant reward makes sense. Would change nothing, really, but the supernatural edge is used very well to heighten stakes that I myownself found entirely high enough. This is the origin of my half-star reduction in the rating: artificially (to my mind) inflating the stakes.

I genuinely enjoyed the women's love story more than any of the silly supernatural stuff. I got really invested in Ursula and Elsebeth reaching the understanding that their quest gave them the very best gift of all gifts in each others' love. It's a lovely process to follow no matter what other story beats an author uses around it. The love of same-sex couples will always garner my supportive interest in a story (see my reviews of Nicked and Recital of the Dark Verses for other examples). My joy at the women falling in love outweighed any reflexive eye-rolling at the notion of necromantic powers being able to create a kind of zombie-slave of poor Otto, for example.

I'm all in on recommending the read to my fellow queers. Author van Veen is a stylistic writing monadnock. Her eye for what makes a story compelling to a reader, not just a genre addict, is second to none. If you worry about gore and scariness in horror fiction, ,I'll tell you that I found all the trappings of horror less worrying than the awful limning of humanity's viciousness that's inherent in any story set in wartime.

Religion, the big public-facing institution, and its private-practice cousin, religion, come off poorly in this story. So y'all know going in. It's the genesis of the war being fought after all.

A MURDER MOST CAMP, cozy amateur-sleuth mystery with added queerness!

A MURDER MOST CAMP
NICOLAS DiDOMIZIO
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The Guncle meets Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies in this fun, twisty mystery following a spoiled nepo baby forced to work at a struggling summer camp who stumbles into a real-life murder mystery he has no choice but to solve.

Rustic cabins. Lakefront bonfires. A painfully hot lifeguard. And a murder? Summer has never been this camp.

Mikey Hartford IV has coasted through his twenties in a distracted blur of yachts and sex and partying. But when his father discovers his latest million-dollar impulse buy and changes the terms of his trust, the party's finally over. Now, unless Mikey can make a positive contribution to the world before his thirtieth birthday—one that doesn't involve throwing cash at his problems—he'll never see another yacht again. (Or even so much as a canoe.)

Enter: Camp Lore, a struggling summer camp in upstate New York where Mikey has to work as the oldest, least-qualified staffer to prove that he can "do good" alongside his twelve-year-old aunt. (Yes, aunt.) But Mikey isn't sure he'll be able to survive the camp's ramshackle living conditions, let alone the gaggle of preteens who won't leave his side. And when his campers become obsessed with a local legend set at an abandoned cabin on the grounds, Mikey's chances of not making it through the summer become dangerously real—because it turns out there's a murder hidden beneath Camp Lore. And someone there will stop at nothing to keep it that way.

Solving a decade-old cold case will surely be enough "good" for Mikey to earn his inheritance. He just has to stay alive long enough to do it…

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

My Review: What a hoot! This is one of those reads you, as a member of a group being threatened with ever-worsening life outcomes by the very government holding power over you, really, really can use right about now. I was completely prepared to roll my eyes and smile. I needed the hit of "it will be okay, smile more" energy I expected from the description.

I got that. I also got a fun mystery to solve. (Which...well...I've been readin' mysteries since 1967, hard to pull the wool over my eyes.) And a grossly overprivileged trust-fund workshy queenie-queen gets thrown into existential panic as my whipped cream topping on the sundae of this story.

I deliberately avoided using the "cherry" metaphor for reasons I hope are obvious.

What happens is kinda not the point of the story, it's what Mikey becomes in dealing...for the first time...with what happens when his woefully unprepared self is the one in charge of handling what happens. A pillow princess by avocation, Mikey is not at all accustomed to using the space in his brain around his movie trivia and his taste for hot gold-diggers for much of anything. It's "cute" in a young guy. (I don't think so, but that's conventional wisdom.) Mikey's dad isn't havin' it as a life for his soon-to-be-thirty son. Mikey gets a job as his aunt's kind-of carer. The twist is his aunt is twelve. (Go Gramps!) And the job's at a summer camp for her.

He, the laziest human imaginable, is about to be responsible for everything a camp counselor does. Without having been to camp.

*gleeful hand rubbing*

It goes like you'd expect: Poorly.Except, of course, not really. Lurching from crisis to problem to rebellion, Mikey finds the way out of leading teens by example is following his own teen passion for filmmaking. Telling people the story of a long-ago counselor who vanished without a trace and is rumored to have been murdered...his aunt's a true-crime nut, no one in the 2020s has not encountered the genre pervading our culture, and really honestly in our heartiest of hearts are any of us utterly immune to the appeal? Real people fall into awful circumstances and never receive justice because there are so many who need it and so few who know how to deliver it.

Opportunity practically uses a tactical battering ram on Mikey's door. He's now leading by example, helping his aunt find purpose, and attracting the kind of man who's more than physiologically a man...a strong, capable, grounded person with a man's anatomy.

So here's my reservation, and the lost fifth star's explanation. Jackson is a hottie with a heart. Sofar so good. He's way out of Mikey's league, but people cross those lines all the time because "the heart wants what it wants or else it doesn't care." (Bless you, Emily Dickinson!) It's the...unearned-ness...of Jackson's love for Mikey, it's the way Mikey really doesn't set out to become Jackson's man but kinda selfishly just accepts it is happening, that sticks in my craw. It's consistent and fully supported in the storyline, it's clearly how Mikey would have to receive the loving attention of a man like Jackson as a gift, but theres something off about that dynamic for me.

But that's what reviews are about, right? I'm here to say "the story worked but..." so you'll have a picture of how you think you'll respond not just what events you can expect to occur. If you want a book report ask a chatbot for one.

Only real people have opinions.

LEE WIND'S PAGE: The Different Kind series, A DIFFERENT KIND OF BRAVE & A DIFFERENT KIND OF ENEMY

A DIFFERENT KIND OF ENEMY (Different Kind series: Book Two)
LEE WIND
Interlude Press - Duet Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.8* of five

The Publisher Says: An anomaly in space has stopped in Earth’s path in a way not accounted for by astronomical physics. Is it aliens? With only six days before inevitable contact, newly married teen spies Nicolas “Nico” Hall and Samuel “Sam” Solomon are enlisted to investigate—each young man sworn to secrecy even from the other.

Nico is in the field looking for answers and tracking a mysterious Person of Interest. Sam is working first contact scenarios on the thirteenth floor of a Manhattan building that doesn’t officially have a thirteenth floor. And they're both wondering if the rules of love change if it’s the end of the world.

As humanity slips into the grip of alien invasion panic, Nico and Sam realize they're going to have to work together to save the world—and their marriage.

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

My Review: Oh boy.

SF plots really, really do not work this way in 2026. If I suggested fifteen as the target reader for book one, this one's maybe thirteen, and only if not a reader of SF. The number of ways I could think of for a mildly motivated fifteen-year-old to circumvent the ridiculous rules keeping the boys artificially apart...! Plus, how'd they get MARRIED? And why? And how'd they embed themselves in these inredibly high-stakes shenanigans?

Middle grade readers are most likely to roll with the incongruities. Even there I slightly hesitate because married teenagers? Who use worty dirds? Who have intimate talks? I don't know a lot of parents likely to be too terribly comfortable with that idea! Still...the right thirteen-year-old, maybe.

More accurately the right parent of a middle-grader. Or an older teen who's not interested in SF?

For me the read was never going to reach great heights of esteem because I've been reading SF for decades and this ignores realities of science at every turn. Yes, it's a fantastical premise from giddy-up to whoa but...well, you see how badly mismatched to the read I was.

I was glad to see Nico and Sam in something that felt more like a close relationship because they're each so deeply lonely. They come across as real, genuine friends, people I could imagine had things to talk about and thoughts to share.

There's a message I can solidly back sending to young gay lads and lesbian lasses.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A DIFFERENT KIND OF BRAVE (Different Kind series: Book One)
LEE WIND
Interlude Press - Duet Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.8* of five

The Publisher Says: Nicolas “Nico” Hall is sixteen when he escapes from Dr. H’s religious gay reprogramming institute in California. On his own, he assumes one identity after another to avoid recapture as he flees south to Peru and then to Mexico.

Seven days older than Nico, Samuel “Sam” Jonas Solomon is a privileged Upper West Side only child who idolizes James Bond. When his heart is broken, he vows that, like Bond, he’s never going to trust in love again. Then he meets Nico, and his heart won’t listen to any logic.

Nico’s survived by living only for himself—until his love for Sam has him risking his freedom for others. And as much as Sam wants to be like 007, he discovers that James Bond is a terrible role model.

Together, Nico and Sam set out to free the other teens trapped in Dr. H’s Institute, plunging readers into perils, drama, and a long-shot chance at love. To succeed, they’ll both have to be A Different Kind of Brave.

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

My Review: First in a YA coming-of-age series dealing with the horrors of conversion "therapy," which one of our young heroes escapes from in a very high-stakes way. Nico is forced into conversion "therapy" as he is kicked out of the foster family he's lived with in the care system. His running away from the horrors of the place puts him in the path of James Bond-obsessed Sam on a Mexican beach. The two create major sparks, though this being aimed at YA readers you know there's no steamy stuff happenin'. I didn't miss it...the boys are sixteen, how interesting can their sex be?...but I enjoyed Nico's PoV because he was so driven by the need to stay the hell out of the conversion "therapy" at all costs. He comes to fully understand how urgent it is for him to rescue the others left behind in the clutches of the monstrous religious nuts hell-bent on torturing kids into "straightness" through his deeply touching connection to a sexually-safe, neutered by ALS, man called Warren whose bucket list Nico makes possible for Warren to enjoy by being a gelping, caring friend. Nico *gets* how urgently he needs to get the inmates of conversion therapy out of their doul-destroying captivity; he also hatches the (utterly implausible) plan for how.

Sam isn't quite so deeply shaded a portrait. We lean heavily on his fixated adniration for 007 as his major affect on his surroundings. We know he's struggling with his wealthy parents' failures to, well, parent, and the awful void of identity that leaves in Sam. He fills it with the borrowed bravado of 007 from the film franchise. He's constantly name-checking the particular film that inspired him to acquire a specific item. It's a great way to show how very badly young people need connections and models to become functional adults. As a privileged kid with essentially unlimited money, he's well-placed to help Nico complete his rescue plans. The time these boys spend together in the course of the book was less than I myownself had expected. I'd rate it more highly had I not felt a bit misled by their parallel narrative strands, when they're billed as a duo.

Setting aside the literally not-credible way the teens are able to pull off a complex rescue operation tat's well beyond the present Administration's War Department's capacity, we have one other big issue: sticking the landing. Does the result feel as though it could've happened IRL? No. Does it feel as though the two guys really worked it out, thought it through? Here, I can't be quite so dismissive. It honestly surprised me how often I thought Nico had concerns I can only wish our US politicos could factor into their hare-brained actions. A pair of queer teens acting the parts of Bond heroes, pulling off a major humanitarian coup...well, that's excellent fun, so I let go of my desire yo have it all make sense on a practical level.

It was way more fun to watch Tom Ripley play spycraft games with 007. Your fifteen-year-old bored-by-summer gay nibling might get a chuckle and find a lot to chew over too.