thebookbin's reviews
503 reviews

I just finished Over the Woodward Wall by A Deborah Baker, a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire. I canNOT express to you how much I love her work. On its own, this book reads like a fairytale for adults. The main characters are two children from the same street who have never really met, and are opposites in almost every way. Avery is highly controlled, he does not deal will messes well. Zib is almost entirely unsupervised, wild, and unrestrained. On the way to their different schools one day, both of the ways are blocked, so they have to take a new way, which brings them together. They come across a wall which is not a wall, and decidedly not supposed to be there. They climb over the wall and find themselves in the Up-and-Under, trying to find the improbable road to take them to the Impossible City. The prose is such a delight, almost poetic in its nature, and yet there are times when the childishness of the story comes through: an owl named Meadowsweet. But then again, there are some very adult themes.

But the real magic of this book is that it’s a book within a book. In Middlegame by Seanan McGuire, Deborah is a powerful alchemist that meets two kids very similar to Avery and Zib and writes the story, which goes on to have magical properties. Essentially this is a story within a story, and yet we actually get to READ the story that was in the story. Book 2 comes out soon and you can’t believe how excited I am for both that and Middlegame.

5/5 kids on an improbable adventure stars 

So it is 11:57 and I just finished Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey. This is a short novel about lesbian cowgirl librarians (and if that sentence doesn't excite you, we can't be friends). I think the premise was awesome, but it didn't quite live up to its own standards. I was wary of this book: I'd read some Gailey before--I didn't really enjoy Magic for Liars but the premise of this book was too tempting for me to ignore.

Where I think Gailey excels is that she is capable of writing a compelling and interesting but unlikable MC. Esther is a lesbian whose girlfriend was just hanged and it is implied Esther will meet the same fate, and so she runs away to join the illustrious traveling Librarians who spread propaganda and Approved Reading Material to the masses. Esther has a lot--and I mean a lot--of internalized homophobia. This novel was very short and I think it would have benefited by being longer or part of a series. Esther almost immediately falls for Cye, a strong-willed road-hardened nonbinary Librarian Apprentice and that deep intense crush didn't fit in with both her internalized homophobia and her grief over recently executed Beatriz.

Esther, the main character, is by far the least interesting character in the book. She is naive and fully under the whims of propaganda. The story moves too fast, she goes from traumatized runaway to full bandit in less than 100 pages, but I feel like I didn't get to witness any of that growth. Cye, as previously mentioned is a young wry sharpshooter that Esther almost immediately falls for. Bet and Leda are the two head librarians, older, more weathered and used to desert life and the Old Gay content you crave. They are two halves of a whole, but each interesting in their own right. And my personal favorite, Amity. An assassin so hardened by desert life, she is immune to death. But by god is she funny, and she's not a villain character. She's incredibly interesting to read.

Overall, this is a solid 3/5 stars for me. I adored the premise and the groundwork is there for something great, but the execution prevented it from reaching its full potential. 

 I also just finished vol 1 of Blue Period, which is about a high schooler who excels in school but is just going through the motions and working his way up to success but he feels dissatisfied. When he walks by the art classroom and sees a painting, something just clicks for him. He actually tries on his next art assignment and feels a deep connection with art and the ability to convey such a specific and poignant feeling without words, and so he decides he wants to embrace his love for art.

This manga made my heart hurt, because I used to be such an artist when I was younger but the world telling me that it wasn’t worth it: how would I ever get a job, really wore me down. Watching Yatora struggle through learning basic techniques and compare himself to other artists was such a familiar experience.

I absolutely loved it, and I bought the next two today as well. The trans rep in this series is so good: it’s not even a point of contention, it’s just there.

Highly recommended for artists or anyone who ever wanted to be.

5/5 stars 

I really struggled with this book, because I wanted to love it and I just didn't. I spent a long time struggling with this and examining those feelings, because I was worried it was internalized misogyny, but I realized that has nothing to do with it, and half the books I read are sapphic anyway.

One Last Stop is a light-hearted romcom set in New York City. But for me, it was almost too light-hearted. The stakes didn't feel real, and the characters, particularly Jane, felt a little too paper-thin.

The story is both slow and fast at the same time. The beginning was slow because there is nothing else really happening besides the main relationship, and the main relationship takes a while to get going.

August is a very ambivalent main character. She felt more solid than Jane, but she also didn't feel fully developed. Moving away from a crime-obsessed mother, and being on the run didn't seem to have a huge impact on August besides having a blank slate as a past. The fact that she had no prior relationships or friends at 23 just didn't seem real.

Compared to the side characters, who were all viscerally interesting and I wanted more of, Jane and August seemed kind of... flat. Jane is literally stuck in time and can't remember her past, but even as she starts to remember, her past doesn't feel real. Jane is from the 70's--a really important and often dark time in queer history, and McQuinston touches on it, but never addresses it in a serious way. It felt like the 70's was just for the vibe or the aesthetic, and the details are murky and unimportant.

There is nothing happening in this book. August is trying to finish school, after transferring and changing her major for the 5th time, and has a job at an old pancake joint. But about halfway through the novel she stops going to work for A MONTH and skips school for A MONTH to be with Jane and there are absolutely no consequences for these actions. Because there are no stakes, when the time came for an actual stake (Jane either gets sent back to her time or is effectively destroyed) it didn't feel real, there was no suspense, because I knew she would be back.

The side characters are so infinitely more interesting than the main ones, Niko being my favorite. I almost wish this book was about Niko and Myla's relationship (and the fact that they gather queers like orphaned children) or just more of a focus on the apartment inhabitants in general because Wes and Isaiah's relationship was also so much fun.


And now, because it's inevitable that this will happen: the RWRB comparison. This book made me realize that contemporary romances aren't really for me. Red White and Royal Blue was an outlier: I love Texas, and I am a politics junkie. The US presidential election is my Superbowl. I know all the counties baby. That is what made RWRB appeal to me outside of the romance aspect. One Last Stop is like a cheesy love letter to New York City, which I personally feel very ambivalent about, so it didn't resonate with me there. Where Alex and Henry both had such strong personalities, I feel Jane and August were lacking: August didn't have much of a personality and Jane was all personality to where it erased the historical elements and the racial ones.


This was a fun read, and a good time, but didn't leave a lasting impression on me, and didn't live up to the very high expectations I had. I wanted to love this book, and instead I just kinda liked it, which is it's own disappointment. 

3/5 time traveling lesbian stars

I just finished all four volumes of Our Dreams at Dusk and I know this series will stay with me forever. The story follows Tasuku, a high school boy who gets outed at school and contemplates suicide. But before he can jump, he meets a mysterious stranger who leads him to her clubhouse: a place that’s a haven for the local LGBT+ community. Tasuku learns to accept himself while learning about the other people around him. He takes a young kid questioning their gender under his wing, he meets lesbians in a committed relationship, he meets a trans man and a completely agender asexual person. But this is a story of relationships, of understanding and of hurting. Some parts are hard to read, when characters use slurs but the hardest is when Tasuku uses them against himself.

This is a beautiful coming-of-age story that explores so many difficult topics: coming out, first gay crushes, how to treat LGBT people around you, how to accept your differences even if you don’t quite understand them. One of the best parts in the series is when Tasuku takes young Misora-san under his wing. Misora is still in junior high, but only feels comfortable in girls clothes, which he only wears at the clubhouse. Tasuku offers to take Misora to a local festival while Misora is wearing a yukata (female outfit) and it starts out fine. But, Tasuku is unknowingly pushing Misora too hard, too fast, and ends up hurting him in the process. Their relationship is sweet and kind and Tasuku even says “I want to be the kind of person I wish was there for me.”

All in all, this is hands-down one of the best manga I’ve ever read.

5/5 glorious gay stars. 

Nghi Vo's debut novel solidified her as one of my all-time favorite authors, and I am now firmly committed to buying anything with her name on it.

The Chosen and the Beautiful is a masterclass on storytelling, with poetic and hazy prose, an examination of race, class, and sexuality, and a thorough blend of both the historical and fantastical. This book is the perfect answer to Fitzgerald's original novel, it's narrative mirrors the extravagant wealth it criticizes, blindingly beautiful and smoky on the surface, something darker and sinister lurking within.

I would describe this as a grimdark story, which may or may not be accurate because I absolutely did not like my last grimdark novel, but this one I loved. Jordan Baker is a visceral protagonist, she hides herself so well from the overwhelming white wealth around her, she hides from herself as well. Seeing her play this game, try to navigate this society as someone who was raised in it takes you along for the ride, but her exploration of sexuality and race differentiate her from that which she criticizes. Khai's presence is so necessary, because he represents the average man, a direct contrast to Jordan's opulent wealth.

As in the original, Nick was my favorite character, but this Nick was so much more complex than the original. He's still one of the more genuine characters, but he has such hidden depths. His relationship with Gatsby was much darker that in the Fitzgerald novel, but at the same time so much more visceral.

The added fantastical element was unique in a way I don't see too many American writers tackle. Vo weaves in magic to the world so seamlessly it's almost an afterthought, but it gives the story an added element that elevates it beyond it's original concept.

This book is fantastic, but I suspect it will garner strong opinions on either side. I am firmly on the side that this book is a masterpiece, with lyrical prose and a gut-punch of a story.