“i have learned what it means to be alive. remember that, in the end. i am alive. and i will never let
one day i'll sue tj klune just you wait buddy
“i have learned what it means to be alive. remember that, in the end. i am alive. and i will never let you see what’s in my heart. it was never for you.”
hidden high up in the branches of a grove of trees live a strange little family— victor (human), gio (victor’s android father), a sadistic nurse machine, & a anxiety-riddled vacuum. when vic salvages an android labeled “HAP” from the scrap yards, he learns of a shared past between his father & hap. when gio’s past catches up to him, he’s captured & taken back to his former lab—one where gio & hap were once programmed to hunt humans.
to quote the great taylor swift: i think i’ve seen this film before. it is undeniable that klune has carved out a space for books about humanity. what does it mean to be human? why we do the things we do despite it’s futility? you’d think i’d have grown tired of it by now.
wrong.
this time it’s puppets. this time it begs the question: tell me about that heart that beats inside your chest. why does it matter when all it does is hurt?
there's something so special in finding that answer through the eyes of something not quite human at all. each breath, each laugh, each frown. it felt like a gift watching vic breathe life into them, to be the very heart beating in a chest that doesn’t rise & fall.
for as much as klune’s books shatter my already fragile psyche, i'll never stop loving a reminder of how alive we are, how complex and disturbing and sometimes, foolishly brilliant. its so easy to forget.
there’s something so endless about a song calling you home. to find it in the most unexpected of places. the relationship between each character is so profound that you can’t help but know in your bones that they belong together. they choose, fight, sacrifice. they pull each other from the wreckage & start over, building home, rediscovering memories & making new ones. pausing, but never stopping.
& ultimately, living for the hope of it all. hope that we can choose whoever we want to be. to be different. to be better. to make a choice. hope that whatever we are, it is enough....more
FREYA MARSKE YOU BEAUTIFUL BASTARD I’M SENDING YOU A GODDAMN FRUIT BASKET
“i would put your heart between my ribs and guard it like my own. is there
FREYA MARSKE YOU BEAUTIFUL BASTARD I’M SENDING YOU A GODDAMN FRUIT BASKET
“i would put your heart between my ribs and guard it like my own. is there any way i could make you believe it?”
lets go to the beginning of the end—
following the death of his sister, hawthorn is having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Time. to uncover the final piece of the last contract and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, he’s reluctantly drawn back into the world of magic, living in and trying to solve a bizarre puzzle-box of a home. the key? alan ross—writer, thief, hater of hawthorn, and absolute short king.
series closers are an odd little thing. we yearn for it, mark its release date on our calendars, make a big event out of it, counting down the days and speculating over how the story ends. then the day arrives. the very last instalment in your hands. and suddenly a part of you doesn’t want to read it. you don’t want to say goodbye. because, well, then what?
it’s no secret that a power unbound is my most anticipated read of the year. it’s a finale, a grand hurrah. it closes off the story that began in one of my favorite books—a marvellous light. the hand kink book, if you will.
but within its pages is also a story of new beginnings. of learning to let go and stop running, to allow yourself to grieve and feel pain. to forgive yourself and make amends. to learn to move through the world again, allow yourself to feel, to let the blood rush back into numb flesh. to live again.
there's something about freya’s writing that makes me feel so insane. whimsical but not overly flowery. the way she strings the most innocuous words together in a way that makes me want to claw my eyes out. gnaw on my fists. tattoo them on the inside of my eyelids. eat her words whole.
and of course, hawthorn and ross. the feral wet cat and short king. filthy and delectable with so many levels in between. a consensual and fun play with power dynamics that doubles a vehicle for exploring class inequality. i’m fully obsessed with freya’s mind.
it’s always so interesting reading about historical queers. to see how they have to navigate their sexualities in that time period, how they keep themselves safe, how that love flickers like a bright light anyway, restless and powerful.
and now: the end. time to say see you later. but i'll always look at these books the same way robin looks at edwin: with a besotted gaze that says they could be doing anything and i would be just as content basking in their light....more
hayley kiyoko's girls like girls music video fundamentally altered the course of my entire life in this essay i—
“i could spend my life chasing her.
hayley kiyoko's girls like girls music video fundamentally altered the course of my entire life in this essay i—
“i could spend my life chasing her. devotedly. doggedly. but she could spend her life running. i might never catch up with her. that's what’s so scary about it.”
based on hayley kiyoko’s music video, girls like girls follows coley who moves to rural oregon after losing her mother. there she bumps into sonya, a girl who runs with the popular crowd. as they spend the summer dancing on train tracks & getting high at parties, both girls find themselves running towards & away from each other. but you can only run from the truth for so long.
there are moments in life that are forever memorialized. sometimes a song comes on radio & transports you elsewhere; other times a certain smell will take you back to when you were young & it’s crystal clear again, like sunshine on water.
girls like girls is that for me. reading hayley’s debut novel, suddenly it’s 2015 again. i’m back in my bedroom in grubby nike sweats, sobbing to future lesbian jesus, freshly heartbroken over a girl who holds my hand & gives me her jacket. a girl who makes the songs all make sense.
(i’ve been crossing all the lines, all the lines / kissed your girls and made you cry)
reading this felt like watching an extended cinematic cut, the closest to a full length production many rallied for. hayley’s a musician, of course her writing reads lyrical—a little cringey & dramatic but beautiful all the same.
it was comfort i didn’t know i sought for, because it’s not 2015 anymore. now i’m on the other side of it looking back at coley and sonya, having learnt what they did: that you can’t control people—how or why they hurt us, how they leave our lives, how sometimes that trust is earned back but other times we have to learn how to let go. that things are kind of scary, but lots of good things are.
mostly, however, it was comfort i didn’t know i needed as turns out i had it in me all along. i’m no longer eighteen, no longer running after a girl. heartbroken no more. how grateful i am to every version of girls like girls for that awakening, both then and now.
✼ thank you to wednesday books for sending me an arc of girls like girls in exchange for an honest review....more
“all at once i could see who i was becoming as opposed to who i once was. i was split in two: my future and my past. i wanted to remain here on the
“all at once i could see who i was becoming as opposed to who i once was. i was split in two: my future and my past. i wanted to remain here on the edge between by two selves, doubly exposed, all hunger and heart.”
halfway through a scatter of light i started reeling, with my only thought being an emphatic “fuck”. this was not what i had expected. then i thought “okay let’s run with it” & now i’m stuck in emotional limbo; cracked wide open.
let me go back. aria tang west knows who she is. after a party goes wrong, she gets exiled to the california bay area to stay with her artist grandmother, joan. there she meets steph, her grandmother’s gardener who shows her a new world of art, people, & the queer community during the first major legalisation of gay marriage. suddenly aria doesn’t quite know who is she or what she wants to be anymore.
a scatter of light is billed as telegraph club’s companion piece but truthfully? it’s strong enough to hold it’s own. its the queer past meets queer present & future, with that connecting thread of something larger than all of us—lily sends her love along a telegraph wire; aria sends her love in a brushstroke.
i feel destined to love this book. so much of it revolves around women’s creativity and lesbian artists. i see myself as a twenty-something retired artist, now as someone who wants to write about art. art is timeless; art is connection. what you create is going to end up affecting people you don’t know & have never met. that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? that you keep creating & going because you never know who you’ll affect?
circling back, i said this book was unexpected. grief books are my favorite sub-genre & i had not expect this to fall into the category. but it did. a pleasant surprise. it takes the heavy weight of first loves & first loss, of falling in love with someone you never expected to & someone you shouldn’t. then paints it with a brushstroke through through the stars, through the flash of a disposable lens, through yellowed newspaper clippings.
how could i not fall in love?
✼ thank you to PRH international for sending me an arc of a scatter of light in exchange for an honest review
"paris is so annoying" yes it is his crippling anxiety that's the point!!"paris is so annoying" yes it is his crippling anxiety that's the point!!...more
“there he was, familiar and comfortable. that’s what it felt like. like his heart, or whatever part of him it was that yearned for someone worthy t
“there he was, familiar and comfortable. that’s what it felt like. like his heart, or whatever part of him it was that yearned for someone worthy to serve, had recognised the person he was meant to follow. the person he was meant to die for. there he was.”
perhaps the most annoying thing about me is that i love being right.
last year, i procrastinating reading this book, fearing it would mess up my rankings. for months lusted over it but held back. the moment the new year hit, i picked it up.
& i was right.
hey google how do i inject a book into my veins.
when an altercation puts kadou, the shy price of arasht, on shaky footing with the queen, he tries to prove his loyalty by investigating a break-in at a guild with his newly appointed bodyguard—cold & stoic evemer. as they uncover a conspiracy that threatens to ruin the kingdom’s financial standing, kadou & evemer have to protect each other at every turn.
so like. there’s a lot going on here. there’s breathtaking world building with casual queerness, political & economical intrigue, a plot that meanders like a lullaby, a gorgeously diverse & layered cast, & women who wield their power without hesitation.
but the eye of the storm? that's evemer & kadou.
together they are a slowburn, a *clenches fist* Yearning so palpable that i swam it in, later choking & drowning. absolutely beautiful. i ate it all up. they teeter on a cliff’s edge, dreaming about leaning forward but holding back, the push & pull of duty vs. devotion, of consent & reciprocity. when they fling themselves into the wind? i’m gone.
there's the raw intimacy of fealty & devotion, looking at each other like they’re staring into the sun, the north star. crawling over coal & broken glass to kneel & press a forehead against the back of a hand. at first from duty, then wondering when it transformed to love, then to the steady compass used to set course by.
so many of y’all told me that i would love this. that it would be right up the alley of my pulley/marske loving ass. as i sit here with my brain oozing out of my ears, all i have to say is: you were all right.
started crying at page 1 word 1 and only stopped at page 496. that's a lie i'm crying while typing this. honestly perfect
“i’m so glad i met you,” i
started crying at page 1 word 1 and only stopped at page 496. that's a lie i'm crying while typing this. honestly perfect
“i’m so glad i met you,” ilya said quietly. shane’s heart clenched. it was such a simple statement, but it was so open and honest.”
✼ thank you to the carina press & netgalley for sending me an arc of the long game in exchange for an honest review.
i’ll start off by talking about game changers as a whole. 5 current books, 5 times i put my heart in the palm of rachel reid's hands; 5 times she gently returned my heart, each time slightly warmer, slightly fuller, slightly more full of hope.
and now, once again, i give her my heart.
i’ve only met shane and ilya not too long ago, but i already missed them terribly. each time they were mentioned in other books, i would go faintly feral. so to say hello to them once more, i can breathe easy again. it feels dramatic and yet insufficient to say that i cannot physically contain my love for them. after all, i have been loving them very loudly.
it’s been 10 years since shane hollander & ilya rozanov started seeing each other. 10 years of secret kisses, secret homes, a secret love. to tell the world of their relationship risks impacting shane's hockey career, but ilya is tired of hiding. he wants the closeness, the intimacy. so now, it’s time for them to make a call.
the long game was everything to me. there were scenes that made me cry with my entire body, there was one where i literally put down my e-reader and ran a lap around the house. the love was so overwhelming - their love for each other, and our love for them.
“when will i have you for as long as i want?” was my absolute favorite line from heated rivalry. to me, it truly encompasses the secret relationship, the cost of fame, the sheer pure love for each other that is tearing at the seams and yet they try to keep it contained, even if it hurts each time.
in the long game, this gets taken up a notch. and it was glorious. when i think of going the distance for love, i think of shane and ilya - two people cradling each other’s hearts, protecting it against the loneliness, the harsh culture of toxic masculinity, and making it happen against all odds. how i wondered how they would build a life when constantly on the move, only to realize that home is each other.
with every interaction, every touch, every thought, it’s so clear how much they truly love each other, how well they know each other, the utter charm of how much they make each other smile.
shane and ilya were rivals. rivals-with-benefits. something more. lovers. a love story that spans thirteen years. they were inevitable.
at this point (although i knew it long ago), i would trust rachel reid with my heart....more
freya marske can we talk? our horny asses would be such good friends i'm certain of it
“maud blyth. you are a terror and should not be allowed to ru
freya marske can we talk? our horny asses would be such good friends i'm certain of it
“maud blyth. you are a terror and should not be allowed to run loose in the world.”
aboard an ocean liner, maud serves as mrs navenby companion. but when she finds mrs navenby dead, maud is left with a parrot, a ship full of suspects, & violet debenham—magician, actress, scandal. together they continue what was started in a marvellous light: solve a murder & put together pieces of the last contract, or risk a plot that threatens every magician.
it's no secret that aml is one of my fave debuts & a fave book. when you love a book this much, moving on is hard. you keep looking over your shoulder, at what you’ve left ashore. perhaps that’s why i put off reading a restless truth: i expected to yearn for robin & edwin the whole time. & of course i did.
but as i packed for my own cruise, i knew it was time to take the plunge. i had to go with maud & violet. to give myself the chance to fall in love with them while i, too, dramatically pranced around a ship crossing a sea.
& fall in love, i did.
part of it was the immersion. the fun of reading about hijinks & mischief in staterooms, decks, & dining halls. feeling like if i closed my eyes, that world could’ve fit over mine like a magic trick.
the larger part: this is freya marske’s world. home to my favorite magic system, one of cradles & leylines &...magical rope bondage? (freya can we talk?)
somewhere along the way, after rereads & subconsciously mulling over the threads behind each spell & cradle, this world has become a comfort. it happened so naturally, blink & you miss it that i barely realized. how good it felt to come back, to learn more its possibilities, limitations, & manipulation of intent.
& intent there was within these pages, woven into every word & act, so carefully thoughtful & lush. with women who wield their femininity like the power it is, defiant & bold, a sharp tongue & sharper wit.
but turns out all the awards actually go to hawthorn who needs a break from the worst babysitting job ever.
y’know who would love this book? fuckin' benoit blanc.
& if i wailed whenever robin & edwin were mentioned that’s between me & god.
i'm forever in a love spiral over that forearm hussy....more