pantsreadsbooks's reviews
1033 reviews

Bob the Drag Queen’s fiction debut is a fascinating and compelling read. The premise is wild— Harriet Tubman and other historical figures, including her band of freed people and abolitionists, have come back to life in the present. There is no attempt to explain why or how this has happened, and the narrative is the better for it. It’s not about the why or how, it’s about them finding their place in the present and telling their past stories to the public and more specifically to our protagonist. Darnell is a music producer who had some commercial success 15 years ago and none since; he’s been personally tapped by Harriet Tubman to produce her album and approaches the job with awe and trepidation as he learns the band members’ different stories.

The book really reads like a history lesson you forgot wrapped in a fictional narrative, and we learn/relearn so much along with Darnell. I love also that BDQ included some lesser-known information, like that Harriet Tubman very likely had narcolepsy. I wish they had put it out in time for Black History month, that seems like it was a missed opportunity. My one quibble would be that Darnell’s personal plot seemed a little unfulfilled, but I appreciated the difficult elements tackled, both his religious trauma and being a gay black man in the music industry.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the ARC of this book to review.

A worthy sequel to the absolutely delightful Knight Owl!

This was a lovely little brutal novella with a queer ace romance that totally took me by surprise. My first KJ Charles (about damn time, I know) and as much as I loved the mains here, I can tell that it’s all about Temp and Jerry, so I’m super excited to dive into the rest of the series.

This one took me a minute because of being sick and because the pacing is dead slow— it’s wildly improved from the first one, this one was just slow as opposed to all over the place. (But I’m excited for book 3 to be an improvement on that🤞. I definitely recommend the audio on these.) I liked it better than the first one, but the pairing was still a bit overly instalove for my tastes. This one wasn’t even so much the timing on them falling in love, but I didn’t really get why they were so into each other? Particularly Manuela is all in love after Cora’s just been squiring her around to boring functions. Manuela’s issues with her parents seemed like they were given greater weight than Cora’s also, where Cora was focused rightfully on protecting her kid. And again the end gets crazy… without the proper bananas follow through.