12 Queer Books to Read Now (Pt 2)

June 12, 2022June 11, 2022 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Last week I posted a list of 12 Queer Books to Read Now (Pt 1), and because I read a shit ton of queer authors, I wanted to do a second post full of authors you can check out. I may also do a list of authors I have on my to-be-read pile but haven’t gotten to yet. We shall see. You may have also noticed that I changed the title from queer authors to queer books because I don’t think an author needs to be out to write a queer book, so this is more inclusive.

Anna-Marie McLemore– McLemore’s books are an auto-buy for me because their books are so rich with texture, magic, and queer characters. Many of their characters are also neurodivergent and/or trans, which speaks to me. I highly recommend Lakelore or When the Moon was Ours.
Tehlor Kay Mejia– Mejia has teamed up with McLemore before, but I also really enjoyed her dystopian, Latinx fantasy duology We Set the Dark on Fire, which has a really interesting sapphic couple at the center of the story.
Keito Gaku– Gaku’s 4 volume manga Boys Run the Riot is the first I’ve read featuring a trans masc character by a trans masc author. The story is about friends, fashion, and going after who you are and what you want to be.
Margaret Owen– I adored all three of her books so far (with Little Thieves being my favorite), which all feature lots of queer characters and have asexual rep as well. If you like heroines who are a bit rough around the edges and softer, dorkier love interests, her books are for you.
Talia Hibbert– While Hibberts Brown Sisters series is M/F romance, Dani Brown is bi and Hibbert is nonbinary, and that queerness shows in the books. Hibbert’s books have queer side characters with the promise of future queer stories. Also, great neurodivergent rep in the Brown Sisters series!
Lara Kinsey– Kinsey writes quite a bit of f/f romance, and I absolutely loved Budding Romance and Blooming into You. She manages to cram so much development into novellas. They’re perfect if you need a short, compelling piece.
KJ Charles– I would be remiss if I didn’t include KJ Charles’s books on the list. Her queer romances are *chef kiss* and run from magical fantasy to political intrigue.
Joanna Chambers– Chambers’s work is reminiscent of KJ Charles’s as they both write historical, political/historical focused MM romance. My favorites from Chambers are the Winterbourne series, which are shorter and follow different characters. They’re soft and sweet and just warm.
P. Djèlí Clark– I don’t think Clark has a single book that doesn’t have a queer character. The main pair in A Dead Djinn in Cairo is sapphic, and his books have complex characters, amazing stories, and interesting magic with lots of rich texture.
Yuki Fumino– Fumino’s I Hear the Sunspot is one of my favorite manga series. It features a very slow-burn MM pair and talks a lot of deafness and what it’s like to be hard-of-hearing with an immense amount of detail. One MC is losing his hearing and the other works for a company that tries to make things more inclusive for the deaf community.
E E Ottoman– Ottoman is a trans masc author who writes some really fantastic romance featuring trans characters. They’re smart, cozy, and usually have quite a bit of heat.
Nina Varela– Crier’s War and its sequel were books that I read and sort of sat there in a daze after because I enjoyed them so much. A robot princess, a human girl in the midst of starting a rebellion, and the collision course that brings them together. Who can ask for more?

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope you have a bunch of new books to add to your TBR pile and stay tuned for EVEN MORE authors to add in a future post.

Book Reviews

Reading Rec: When the Moon Was Ours

October 31, 2018October 31, 2018 Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

In When the Moon Was Ours, Anna-Marie McLemore once again casts us under her spell and fills our world with pumpkins and roses.

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Miel met Sam the night she magically appeared out of the the town’s fallen water tower. As children, they were inseparable, Honey and Moon, and while Sam hung painted moons all over town to make Miel happy and keep the nightmares of the other children away, Miel became known as the girl who grew roses from her wrist. Every few days I new rose would burst forth, but soon, the town’s it-girls, the Bonner Sisters, believe they need Miel’s roses to keep their powers of enchantment and romance and they will use all of Miel and Sam’s secrets against her to get them.

First off, if you aren’t new to this blog, you know I love Anna-Marie McLemore’s work, so keep that in mind as you read this review.

Now that fall is upon us, When the Moon Was Ours becomes extra atmospheric, evoking all of the hallmarks of fall with bright moons, pumpkins, leaves, and shades of orange. The scenery of this story is lush in detail and magic without becoming overwhelming or too strange. With all of McLemore’s books, you need to be open to magic and strange things happening in the normal world. It’s a hallmark of magical realism I know some have a hard time dealing with. My advice is: magic happens, so don’t question it, just enjoy it.

One of the things I loved about this story is the different ways magic is explored. We have Miel’s caretaker, Aracely, who helps to cure love sickness using traditional means like eggs, herbs, flowers, etc. Then, there’s Sam’s mother who has the uncanny ability to get children to do their lessons and practice their instruments even when they give others a hard time. Sam makes his beautiful moons while Miel grows flowers from her wrist and the four Bonner Sisters ensnare lovers as easily as breathing. Each character has a different magical quality and while some are more overt than others, it’s obvious that each has more going on than meets the eye. This leads to a discussion of who is a considered a bruja. Bruja has a bit of a different connotation than simply saying someone is magical; it’s typically seen as more of an insult or something to be feared. Behind their backs, the Bonner Sisters are referred to as brujas while Miel and Aracely hear it to their faces despite how many people come to Aracely for help with their love lives. The discussion of race is fairly subtle but certainly there.

While this is a story of magic, it is certainly one of identity as well. Miel struggles to remember who she is before she appeared in the water tower while the Bonner Sisters deal with losing their identity after their oldest sister leaves and returns a different person. It is also the story of Sam’s identity. Sam is transgender, but he hasn’t quite come to accept himself and his identity yet, despite identifying as a boy for the majority of his life. Sam fears what it means for him to fully accept that he is a boy/man and not a bacha posh, a Pakistani tradition where a family with no sons dresses a daughter as a boy and treats her as such until she reaches adulthood and returns to being a woman. The arc about coming to terms with a shifting identity was handled incredibly well and McLemore states that the essence of Sam’s character was pulled from her husband’s experiences coming to terms with his identity. The realism behind Sam’s struggles are obvious and well done.

Overall, When the Moon Was Ours is a beautiful story about love and identity wrapped in a blanket of moonlight and pumpkins. If you’re looking for a seasonal tale to sink into for fall, I highly recommend it. You can grab a copy here.

Book Reviews

Reading Rec: Wild Beauty

August 6, 2018August 4, 2018 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

If you follow me on Patreon, you may have read my post about Bookcon and how Anna-Marie McLemore’s book signing and ARC giveaway was the ONE event I knew I had to attend. I was elated to find a signed copy of Wild Beauty at Bookcon, which I didn’t realize was signed until I got home (bonus!). After reading Wild Beauty, McLemore has been added to my auto-buy list.

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For years, the Nomeolvides women have been trapped on the grounds of La Pradera, growing plants from their hands on the forgotten estate of the Briar family. More mysterious than their magical abilities is that if they step off the land, they die a painful death and those the Nomeolvides love go missing, never to return. Then, a boy in antiquated clothing and covered in dirt appears in the garden. Estrella and the other women wonder if he is a blessing from the garden or a warning, but Fel cannot remember where he came from or who he is. Estrella and her cousins must figure out who Fel was and how to escape the grip of La Prader before it’s too late.

I love Anna-Marie McLemore’s style. It’s an ingenious blend of the normal and surreal where magical flower growing women live along side cotton candy and instant mashed potatoes. Her prose is effortless to read, and her world is rich in texture and beauty. Magical realism is hard for some to deal with because of that intermixing of real and unreal, but if you can suspend your disbelief in this pocket of magic, it’s well worth it.

One of the things I worried about with this book was how it had an obvious aesthetic: flowers. What I mean by that is that some authors beat you to death with repetitive imagery and metaphors. While McLemore makes reference to flowers constantly throughout the story, it is done in such a way that it comes off as varied and artful. She capitalizes upon the sheer number of flowers available to utilize in metaphors and combines them with interesting actions and images. One of the other aspects I love that other readers may miss or think is a fault in the writing is how McLemore makes the Nomeolvides women interchangeable for the most part. Each generation there are five women, and they tend to be names without obvious identities apart from the plants they create. I feel this is done purposely and shows how the outside world sees the women versus how they are easily able to tell each other apart.

The story itself speaks to the impact of history on real people and we often try to sanitize or bury our pasts. This feels very relevant with what is going on in America politically. While McLemore doesn’t explicitly state this, readers should be able to see the parallels and understand why we must dredge up the bloody parts of our history in order to learn from them and grow.

I don’t want to give too much away because this book builds layer upon layer until the story truly unfolds at the end, and I don’t want to spoil that. If this review piqued your interest, you can pick up a copy of Wild Beauty on Amazon or at your local bookstore.

Book Reviews

Reading Rec: Blanca & Roja

June 18, 2018 Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

Since June is LGBT+ Pride Month, I decided that I would read and review books written by and about LGBT+ people. I finished several books over the past week while the house was being torn apart (and still is), so expect a few more reviews to come your way this week.

Today’s review is of Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore, which won’t be out until October. I received this book as an ARC at Bookcon (you can read more about Bookcon on my Patreon), but I couldn’t help but read it as soon as I got home.

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Blanca & Roja follows the tale of two sisters at the mercy of a family legacy where one of each pair of del Cisnes girls are taken by the swans. Blanca is fair and sweet while Roja is headstrong with hair so red it’s nearly black. Blanca and Roja do their best to trick the swans into giving them more time by trying to act the same to make it harder for the swans to pick which sister to take. Intertwined with their story is the tale of two friends who give themselves to the forest to escape their lives. Blanca & Roja is a riff on Swan Lake as well as Snow White & Rose Red.

What I loved about Blanca & Roja was how the story was aware that they were repeating history through the archetypal tales mentioned above. The fact that the characters are aware makes the story a little more interesting than most retellings. The style of the story is less fantasy and more magical realism. I feel the need to point this out because it begins more like a fairy tale and then suddenly there are cars and school. My rule of thumb for magical realism is to just roll with the weirdness. Swans steal girls in this world and turn them into swans. Take that as fact and move on. Stylistically, McLemore’s work is similar to Louise Erdrich and Maggie Stiefvater but with a queer, Latinx flare.

Her characters are archetypal yet realistic, and her worlds are full of lush texture and greenery. McLemore is a master of magical realism, making it easy to suspend disbelief long enough to sink into the world of her characters. Within that world, the characters are diverse and complex. Being a self-described queer Latinx, she makes certain to include characters of varying sexual and gender identity. These identities flow seamlessly into the work and are taken in stride by the characters without making a big to-do about it.

My only issue with Blanca & Roja has more to do with the back blurb’s representation of the characters versus how they are in the story. The blurb feels too simplistic and polarizing and does a disservice to the characters, especially Roja.

If you’re looking for a rich magical world hidden within our own with characters who are diverse and complex, you should pre-order Blanca & Roja before it comes out October 9th.