Mexican Gothic
by Silvia Moreno Garcia
one of my favourite books ever. i love the gothic as a genre and MG's take on it was fucking phenomenal. the haunted house as a legacy for the decaying legacy of colonialism was a genius move, and the use of fungus as both a biological and narrative pathogen was incredible. i loved the protagonist and the setting and the everything about this book. so good
rating: 10/10
The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet
by Becky Chambers
this is not your typical sci-fi, in that the plot itself is a lot slower and less cosmically earth bending than most sci-fi stories. our protagonists are not The Most Important People In The Universe, they're just some guys, which is why i love it. the worldbuilding here is great, the characters feel real and their relationships are nuanced and believable. i need to read the sequel once i get unbanned from the library. felt so cosy and honest, i loved it.
and yes... there were lesbians :)
rating: 10/10
My Sister the Serial Killer
by Oyinkan Braithwaite
super super fun story about a woman who accidentally becomes an accomplice to her little sister's habit of killing boyfriends. a really enjoyable read with a sweet message about sisterhood at the end.
rating: 9/10
the girls are all so nice here
by L.E. Flynn
this book queerbaited the fuck out of me. i mean just look at that cover.
crime novels aren't usually my bag, but i was curious about this. it follows a woman navigating her past and confronting the utterly terrible thing she did at university while friends with a charming sociopath, in the runup to the 20 year reunion.
it was a pretty good book but i'm still bitter we didn't even get a whiff of lesbianism. like how can you do codependent female friendships and not even make it a little homoerotic
rating: 6/10
Girl, Woman, Other
by Bernadine Evaristo
this one had been on my list for a while, meant to be one of the best modern feminist fictions. and rightly so. a pseudo-anthology, it follows the lives of mostly black, mostly women in the uk across the 20th and early 21st centuries. it manages to capture a real sense of history and heritage, establish a huge variety of distinct characters very quickly, and weaves a rich tapestry of how our lives interact with and function as products of those who came before us. i cried like three times reading it. incredible work.
rating: 10/10
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte
there isn't much about this book that hasn't already been said. it was sincere, in a lot of ways i think many books aren't, and while the story felt obviously very grounded in the society that produced it, it also struck very easily across time. the characters are not perfect, not any of them, but they are never entirely evil too. therre are some parts where the victorian sensibilities jump out, of course, but overall it is areally tender story of love, redemption, and coming of age.
rating: 9/10
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
by Otessa Moshfeigh
this book wasn't an intentioanl read, i just found it in a chairty shop and i'd been hearing about it everywhere so i gave it a go. it was super good, really funny at times, horribly bleak at others. doesn't waste any time with a ham fisted moral message at the end, which i was relieved about. just a story about girls being kind of the worst, but you still can't bring yourself to hate them
rating: 8/10
The Stardust Thief
by Chelsea Abdullah
i thoroughly enjoyed this book and knowing the sequel isn't out until 2025 makes me weep. this was my first foray into arabian fantasy but it will not be my last. the setting was rich and vibrant, the interweaving of arabic mythology and the characterisation of djinn was really engaging.
i adored the characters, particularly aisha, and cannot wait to see what they get up to next. great worldbuilding, great prose, great plot. a large book, so might be intimidating for casual readers, but very easy to follow. maybe i should reread it. would be a ten if there were lesbians, but i remain hopeful for the rest of the series.
rating: 8/10
This Is How You lose The Time War
by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
utterly spellbinding. how El-Mohtar and Gladstone managed to construct both a cohesive society of inter-time travel and a believable, beautiful love story in about 200 pages is beyond me. the prose, oh my goodness, the PROSE, it was enchanting and visceral and is some of the most beautiful words i have ever read on love.
i read this in about two days on my commute, and i finished it both completely satisfied and wishing for more. incredible. showstopping. bigolas dickolas was right
rating: 10/10
Persephone Station
by Stina Leicht
fuck this book. from the bottom of the deep, unending well of my heart, fuck this book. it was a chore to read, i only paid 3 pounds for it and i still felt ripped off.
this thing sold itself with a cool cover and an all-women cast of mercenaries. sound great. sounds right up my street! i don't usually go for cyberpunk, but i'm all for expanding my horizons. i was soon to regret it.
this book has no sense of stakes. the entire main cast are revivified corpses. you'd think that might pose some trouble for them, wouldn't you? well you'd be WRONG! they just have to take some pills. then, shock and horror, the unbelievably flat (and slightly offensive, unspecified asian character kicked out of her ninja academy for "losing her honour" when she failed a mission) protagonist forgets to take her pills! oh wow, finally something interesting- no, wait, she just got a bit of a migraine that doesn't impact the plot at all. are you actually joking?
moreover, it takes 200 of 500 pages for the plot to even start. the most interesting characters (enid, sukyi, and kennedy), either die unsatisfyingly of an vague illness (sukyi), just peace out without answering some major questions of their arc once the plot is done (kennedy), or do literally nothing for the entire novel despite having the most interesting potential (enid).
this novel presents itself as a queer work without any actual queer stuff. one nonbinary character mentions liking dick, enid has an offpage girlfriend we never meet, and lou makes an offhand comment about being bisexual, and that is it. the only actual romances shown or discussed in the novel are HETEROSEXUAL. it's actually fucking egregious to market yourself as a queer novel with nothing more than some throwaway lines while all the onpage relationships are with men, and nearly angered me more than the awful writing.
the plot itself hinges on protecting the planet's indigenous life form from a corporation that wants to exploit their natural resources, which had some pretty good potential, however the natives were uncomfortably close to the noble savage archetype for my liking. no societal flaws, inequality, or any bad stuff, and literally physically incapable of violence, they conveniently have very little agency of their own and are entirely reliant on the gracious humans to rescue them, even though they fail.
one of the natives manages to inject the main villain with a gene-altering virus at the start. holy shit! you might say, that must surely impact the plot later on. and yes, if by imapct the plot, you mean the villain coughs like twice before dying from completely unrelated reasons, then i suppose it does. the perpreatator herself never even faces consequence for this brazen violation of her species' central value. she also died of unrelated reasons. sigh...
there are so many things i could complain about. one protagonist enters a coma with little chance of survival, then shows up flying a rescue plane not twenty pages later. and no, before you ask, this is never explained. the book is also a standalone, meaning it never will be. the protagonist was flat and kind of boring, leicht tried too hard to make her likebale that she forgot to give her a personality beyond good at fighting and cares about honour. who even gives a shit? every page was a chore. worldbuilding was lazy and confused. characters were flat and plot was uninteresting, stakes nonexistent. a waste of ink.
rating: 0/10