bisexualwentworth's reviews
753 reviews

I tried. I really did. I love the idea of this series and will certainly continue to follow Melissa Blair's career. If she ever publishes that sapphic contemporary romance she mentioned a while back on TikTok, I will probably gobble it up. But I'm still not vibing with the Halfling Saga's woldbuilding, and I think that romantasy is simply not for me. 

Will resume later.

Incredibly frustrating read. I enjoyed the road trip, though the New Mexico parts were very incorrect (it is NOT some sort of decolonized queer utopia unfortunately). I adored Joe and his entire storyline. He and his story were written with such care and sensitivity. I loved him right alongside the other characters. Unfortunately, the main characters are incredible frustrating and I found it hard to buy their romance with each other. They were friends/each other’s gay awakenings in middle school. Then they had a falling out and have been bitterly estranged rivals for two decades. This is a compelling setup. Unfortunately, their entire adult romance is based on their relationship as tweens, and I did not root for the adult versions of them to become a couple on their own merits. 

The celebrity swearing was also UNBEARABLE.

Very good dog, though.

By far my least favorite of Alison Cochrun’s books so far, Joe notwithstanding.

Will pick up again when I have the bandwidth.

What an amazing book. Lamya's reflections on her life, identities, and faith, all woven through with lessons from the Quran, made me reflect so much on so many things. Her use of the story of Asiyah was particularly effective--she uses it to talk about abusive relationships and the double binds that frequently exist within them, and then she uses that abuse as a metaphor for her own relationship with the United States.

I will be thinking about Hijab Butch Blues for a long time.

This book is quite good. Unfortunately, the audiobook narrator kept pronouncing words incorrectly to the point where it was extremely distracting. Will continue later in a different format.

Very fun by still by far my least favorite of the series. I almost fully skipped it on this reread. But it's still so fun and imaginative, and I genuinely enjoyed Elizabeth and Christina's friendship. Jaclyn Moriarty is still working on finding distinct character voices in this one, but she is already excellent at subtly drawing characters and especially family situations. They all feel so real.  The romances were unfortunately all incredibly uninteresting to me. I did not care whatsoever about any part of any of them. Shame that Christina dates that asshole down the line in the next book, though. He's definitely worse than Derek. 

I adored A Day of Fallen Night even more than The Priory of the Orange Tree. The world is even richer, the pacing is smoother, and the action scenes are longer and more vivid. I loved exploring this era of this world. I loved every single one of the POV characters. I loved the parallels between Glorian and Dumai, the connections between Tunuva and Wulf, the friendship between Wulf and Glorian, and so much more. Lesbians of different ages are both riding and slaying dragons in this one. The political intrigue is excellent. The religious/magical/mythological elements are still a focus, but I'd say there are the main focus in Priory, whereas in ADOFN, the main focus is on motherhood and on the role of women in society.

There is definitely a slightly dissonance between the queernormativity of the world and the emphasis on heteronormative continuations of bloodlines, but it didn't bother me much.

Personally, I would recommend reading this one first. I think Priory would hit harder that way. I look forward to a reread in chronological order later down the line when the rest of the series is out, though Shannon has stated that they will all be designed to work as standalones.

I don't like The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie (originally published in Australia as Becoming Bindy Mackenzie) as much as I like the other books in this series. The pacing is really strange, the suspension of disbelief is harder, and being in Bindy's head the whole time can be kind of a struggle.

However, this is one of the best character portraits I've ever read. Jaclyn Moriarty once again draws a detailed, compassionate, and accurate portrait of a flawed teenager and captures that teenager's voice perfectly. She expands the cast of characters at Ashbury High. She explores a very silly but also very high-stakes murder mystery plot.

Bindy Mackenzie is an insufferable character with every reason to be how she is. I adore the scene late in the book when her FAD group analyzes all of the reasons why she's like this. It's exactly what the reader will have already been doing, and yeah it's a bit obvious, but it's also very in-character for everyone involved.

Bindy reminds me of myself in a lot of ways, though I was kind of the opposite high-achieving student: I was so good at school that I never learned how to study, and when I finally had to, I crashed and burned.

Not to diagnose fictional characters, but WOW is Bindy undiagnosed autistic. I don't think Moriarty did this on purpose, but it's very much there.

And also, I really hope that she will work through her comphet eventually and realize that she's a lesbian.

2024 reread of this book that I loved as a tween and somehow I might like it better than I did then?

The Year of Secret Assignments (originally published in Australia as Finding Cassie Crazy) is a contemporary YA novel that centers on a pen pal program between an English class at a fancy private school called Ashbury and an English class at the neighboring public high school Brookfield. The entire book unfolds through the letters and through other pieces of in-universe writing from the characters, from emails to journal entries to the titular secret assignments. This is my favorite part of the book. Jaclyn Moriarty captures each character's voice so vividly and uses the epistolary format so creatively in this and in all of the Ashbury/Brookfield books. I love how the transcript introduces us to Bindy Mackenzie's quirks and POV (and sets up her dynamic with Emily in the next book). I love Lydia's sassy exchanges with her NotebookTM. And I love how Emily's father conducts his life the same way as his work through the endless legal memos and emails. Excellent touch.

The characters feel so accurate to the high school experience, and their arcs are so well-executed.

Emily's silly misuse of words, the realization that she usually does know what she's saying and is making intentional choices that just read as wrong, and then her victory in the mock court scene is such a satisfying progression. Her relationship with Charlie is real and vulnerable and I really was rooting for them. Also on the Emily front, I really liked how this book handled fatphobia? It's subtle, but there's this moment where it becomes clear that Emily's fatphobia is internalized. And Charlie drops the issue when that comes up. It's definitely something that Emily should work on, but it was also nice to have that highlighted as wrong, to be shown where it was coming from for the character, and then to drop it. Other readers might disagree, but it worked for me.

Lydia was my favorite when I first read this, and I still have a soft spot for her. Her tough girl exterior hiding a plethora of insecurities. Her mysterious sexy persona, under which she just wants to be known and loved for who she is. Her unending sassiness. Love her.

Cassie is the central character of this book plot-wise, gas leak call notwithstanding, and she has the subtlest characterization out of everyone. Her seeming naivete, her hidden self-destructiveness, and her very real hurt and vulnerability, coupled with her more out there talents, make for a complex character who only truly reveals herself near the end of the book. And I have rarely seen such a realistic portrayal of how someone in her situation would react to the death of a parent. Wow.

Seb you will always be famous. Sebastian is in some ways the least complex character. His and Lydia's plot is pretty straightforward, despite the thing he keeps from her and the generally convoluted nature of their relationship. I was OBSESSED with them as a kid, mind you. This is exactly the sort of relationship I went feral for. Nowadays I'm more in the Emily/Charlie camp, but these two are still SO FUN and it's impossible for me not to root for them. And for Seb generally.

Charlie is a sweetheart who is also very much a teenage boy who likes to be right and has reductive ideas about girls. He grows on both counts. Love him.

"Matthew" is such a convincing YA contemporary villain. I genuinely feared for Cassie at times. Screamed at her not to give him so much information. No one dies. Nothing truly unfixable happens. But the stakes are real and they are high.

Anyway, it's a great time, and I absolutely hope to learn lessons from this book about epistolary writing techniques. It is so rich with them.