Ryan and Avery by David Levithan (audiobook)

 

Pages: 322

Publisher: Electric Monkey 

Narrator: Jamie K. Brown 

Released: 12th of September 2023 

When a blue-haired boy (Ryan) meets a pink-haired boy (Avery) at a dance–a queer prom–both feel an inexplicable but powerful connection. Follow them through their first ten dates as they bridge their initial shyness and fall in love–through snowstorms, groundings, meeting parents (Avery’s) and not (Ryan’s), cast parties, heartbreak, and every day and date in between.

What I Have to Say 

This book was pure queer joy. It was sweet, it was romantic and it was filled with the joy of new relationships. I loved Avery and Ryan so much as characters, balancing their lives in high school with their relationship despite the roadblocks that Ryan's parents put in their way. 

It was really really good to see a trans boy in a queer romance book. Trans representation is still sorely lacking in LGBTQ+ fiction and it's really good that in the last year there've been a couple I've come across. It makes me hope that we're making progress. 

Honestly, this book was just so relaxing to read. The narration was wonderful, really fitting the characters well and it was just a great audiobook to curl up and listen to. 

5 stars 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Electric Monkey for providing me with a gifted copy of this audiobook for review. 

Infinity Alchemist by Kacen Callender

Pages: 400 

Publisher: Faber & Faber 

Released: 6th of February 2024 

For Ash Woods, practicing alchemy is a crime.

Only an elite few are legally permitted to study the science of magic—so when Ash is rejected by Lancaster College of Alchemic Science, he takes a job as the school’s groundskeeper instead, forced to learn alchemy in secret.

When he’s discovered by the condescending and brilliant apprentice Ramsay Thorne, Ash is sure he's about to be arrested—but instead of calling the reds, Ramsay surprises Ash by making him an offer: Ramsay will keep Ash's secret if he helps her find the legendary Book of Source, a sacred text that gives its reader extraordinary power.

As Ash and Ramsay work together and their feelings for each other grow, Ash discovers their mission is more dangerous than he imagined, pitting them against influential and powerful alchemists—Ash’s estranged father included. Ash’s journey takes him through the cities and wilds across New Anglia, forcing him to discover his own definition of true power and how far he and other alchemists will go to seize it.

What I Have to Say 

The magic was really interesting in this book. I loved the idea of everyone being connected and made of source and how something as simple and natural as breathing can be actually alchemy. It was interesting to see the different tiers and affinity that the different characters could access with alchemy. 

I wasn't so keen on the romance, but I loved the polyamory aspect of it. I love that I'm seeing more and more polyamory in books and seeing characters believe that a person can love more than one person at once. What I didn't like was how quickly the characters could go from sleeping with one another to betraying one another and vice versa. 

The ending left me a bit unsatisfied. It felt like it was too easy. I hate when they build up something to be unstoppable and then just have a character magically solving it with what seems like no effort. 

It was a good world and a good magic system though, so I enjoyed it.

3 stars 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Faber and Faber for providing me with this gifted copy for review. 

The Borrow A Boyfriend Club by Page Powars

Pages: 288

Publisher: Hodder Children's Books 

Released: 14th of September 2023 

Need a prom date? Want to impress your friends? Or make your ex jealous? Just call...

THE BORROW A BOYFRIEND CLUB

When sixteen-year-old Noah starts at a new school, he has a plan to ensure the students see him as his true gender: join the school's secretive Borrow a Boyfriend Club, where members rent themselves out to their classmates for dates. The endless "accidental slip-ups" that plagued him at his last school will be a thing of the past once he joins the club; after all, it has "boy" right in the title.

But he fails the audition. Desperate, he strikes a deal with the club's prickly president, Asher: he'll help lead the nearly-bankrupt club to victory at the school's fundraising dance competition, and in exchange Asher will allow Noah to prove his skills as a boyfriend in a series of tests that include romancing Asher himself.

As Noah passes test after test, his fake romance with Asher starts to feel surprisingly real, and Noah is faced with a dilemma. If he fails to win the dance fundraiser the club will go bankrupt, and he'll not only lose the new friends he's made - the whole school will know he isn't "boy enough". But if Noah succeeds in securing the club their victory, he'll have to follow the most important, unbreakable rule of the Borrow a Boyfriend Club: no real girlfriends (or boyfriends) allowed.

Will Noah risk breaking the rules for a chance at love?

What I Have to Say 

This was such a cute story with some really strong emotions inside. It went deep into the need a trans boy has to be accepted as a boy both by his classmates and by his family. I really felt for Noah every time he didn't feel enough or every time his parents called him N. 

I liked the cast of characters in this book, though sometimes there were a few too many boyfriends to keep track of. It was nice to be handed a little hint about the character's personality at the start with "the popular one" or "the sporty one" or "the influencer one" and then learn more about their personality beyond that as we went through the book. 

And I loved how supportive this club was to each other and to Noah. It really had such a feeling of found family to it. I can imagine them sticking together through everything. 

4 stars 

My thanks goes to Netgalley and Hodder for providing me with this gifted copy for review. 

The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang

Pages: 496 

Publisher: Solaris 

Released: 17th of August 2023 

Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang's The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history—or tear it apart.

In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.

Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.

What I Have to Say 

I enjoyed this book a lot, though I found it a bit slow. I also found the names sometimes a bit confusing as there were a lot of them and  some of them were very similar but by focusing on just the main characters, I found it wasn't too hard to keep track. It was just some of the background characters I had to remind myself who they were the few times they came up. 

I found the Liangshan beautiful from the start. It was wonderful that they had somewhere for those betrayed by the empire to come together for a fresh start, where any past lives or crimes were forgiven and they were able to fight for a better future. It was great to see a group of mostly women and also a group where transwomen were just accepted and seeing solely as women and not anything else. 

I really really liked the ending. I wasn't sure if it was going to end happily or not. I could see it going both ways. But the way it ended was just an absolutely perfect message of hope, justice and just so fitting for all the characters. 

4 stars 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Solaris for providing me with this copy for review. 

 

The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson

Pages: 400 

Publisher: Harper Voyager 

Released: 8th of June 2023 

In the second installment of Juno Dawson's "irresistable" fantasy trilogy (Lana Harper), a group of childhood friends and witches must choose between what is right and what is easy if they have any hope of keeping their coven--and their world--from tearing apart forever.

Niamh Kelly is dead. Her troubled twin, Ciara, now masquerades as the benevolent witch as Her Majesty's Royal Coven prepares to crown her High Preistess.

Suffering from amnesia, Ciara can't remember what she's done--but if she wants to survive, she must fool Niamh's adopted family and friends; the coven; and the murky Shadow Cabinet--a secret group of mundane civil servants who are already suspicious of witches. While she tries to rebuild her past, she realizes none of her past has forgotten her, including her former lover, renegade warlock Dabney Hale.

On the other end of the continent, Leonie Jackman is in search of Hale, rumored to be seeking a dark object of ultimate power somehow connected to the upper echelons of the British government. If the witches can't figure out Hale's machinations, and fast, all of witchkind will be in grave danger--along with the fate of all (wo)mankind.

Sharp, funny, provocative, and joyous, Juno Dawson's sequel reimagines everything you think you knew about her coven and her witches in a story that spans continents and dives deep into the roots of England and its witchcraft. Ciara, Leonie, Elle, and Theo are fierce, angry, sexy, warm--and absolutely unapologetic as they fight for what they believe in, all in the name of sisterhood.

What I Have to Say 

I wasn't sure going in how this book would be as I really loved Niamh in the first book. But I actually warmed to Ciara really quickly considering she was a murderer who made deals with demons. Actually it was really interesting the way that Dawson dealt with all her characters in this book. It showed people as not really good or bad, but that they made choices that were good or bad. Ciara definitely made some bad choices and I certainly wouldn't trust her with anything (especially Theo) but I  really grew to understand her and why she made those choices and began to believe that she could make better ones. 

Theo is my favourite character and I would die for her. Her friendship with Holly is wonderful and adds to the themes of friendship and sisterhood that are abundant in these books. It was interesting to see them changing and developing especially with the things that happen during this book. 

That ending though. If you don't like books ending on cliffhangers, you definitely need to wait until the next book comes out before you read this one. The ending was killer and I need the next book right this second. My advice is to get all three books when the next one comes out, put them in a pile beside your favourite reading chair and devour them all in one go. 

5 stars 

My thanks goes to Harper Voyager and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review. 

PROUD blog tour: Recommendations

The authors of PROUD reveal their recommendations of LGBTQ+ lit! 

For this post, I asked Stripes for some recommendations of books that some of the authors featured in the anthology would recommend to readers looking for some more LGBTQ+ to read and boy did they deliver! So get something to take notes on because you'll want to jot down some of these amazing titles they came up with! I'm adding a bunch of them to my own list! 

1) What was the Queer book or poem you connected with personally as a young reader and why did it connect with you?

Simon James Green: BEAUTIFUL THING by Jonathan Harvey. It’s not actually a novel, it was originally a play, and then later a film. It’s about two teenage boys growing up on a council estate in South London, and it was written in the 90s. The dialogue is so real, and the story is so tender and, indeed, beautiful. You can buy the script (and you can watch the film) and I’d highly recommend it.

Michael Lee Richardson: Recently, Casey Plett’s Little Fish, about a trans woman finding out that her religious grandfather might also have been trans. Casey Plett is so good at character, and this book - her first novel - is so sharp and honest and witty.

Karen Lawler : My Real Children by Jo Walton - an alternate history title that follows its main character through two different versions of post-WW2 history (neither matches ours) and two versions of her life. In one she finds love, but the world is much worse than the one we know. In the other she finds heartbreak, but we have colonies on the moon. I was particularly moved by the questions it raised about individual happiness vs collective good, inevitability and the ways in which small actions can have huge consequences.

Moïra Fowley-Doyle: Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue -- a collection of queer fairytale retellings that I first read & fell in love with at 14

Cynthia So: Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake. A 12-year-old girl has a crush on another girl and realises she likes girls - I realised I was queer at about the same age!

2) Share a current book that you think someone who enjoys your story in PROUD would like to read next.  

Simon James Green: Check out FLYING TIPS FOR FLIGHTLESS BIRDS by Kelly McCaughrain, RUNNING WITH LIONS by Julian Winters, OUT OF THE BLUE by Sophie Cameron, and JACK OF HEARTS by L.C. Rosen.

Michael Lee Richardson: Simon James Green’s books, Noah Can’t Even and Noah Could Never, are fab! There should be more funny books about GBT boys.

Moïra Fowley-Doyle: Ask the Passengers by AS King -- a gorgeous contemporary YA with a dash of magic realism about a queer teen girl figuring herself out

Cynthia So: Picture Us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert, a contemporary realistic story about a Chinese-American boy who's an artist and in love with his best friend.

Karen Lawler: Simon vs the Homosapien Agenda. Contemporary gay teen romance for the win.

3) What Queer books do you love?

Simon James Green: BOY MEETS BOY by David Levithan. The final line of that book is probably my favourite final line, ever.

Michael Lee Richardson: I’m hoovering up Alice Oseman’s books at the moment - so much stuff about queer friendships and relationships and fandom and internet culture - love ‘em!

Moïra Fowley-Doyle: Jeanette Winterson has been one of my favourite authors since my secondary school English teacher lent me her copy of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit after I wrote a short story in class when I was fifteen about two girls falling in love. Every copy of her books I have has been heavily underlined by me at various ages since.

Cynthia So: The Miseducation of Cameron Post by emily m. danforth!

Karen Lawler: Sarah Waters and more specifically Fingersmith are my favourites. Fingersmith has it all - a brilliant, pacey, surprising plot, excellent and well-developed characters, a historical setting that completely comes alive, and a hot lesbian romance.

Author Bios: 

Simon James Green is an author and screenwriter. His debut YA novel, Noah Can’t Even, was published by Scholastic in May 2017, followed by the sequel, Noah Could Never, in June 2018. The books have also been optioned for TV by Urban Myth Films. Simon’s screen credits include co-writing feature-length rom-com Rules of Love (BBC), and a short stint directing Hollyoaks (C4).

Michael Lee Richardson is a writer and youth worker from Glasgow. As a screenwriter he has written comedy for CBBC and BBC Alba. His original work has been shortlisted for BBC Scotland’s Frank Deasy Award and the BAFTA Rocliffe Comedy Award, and his young adult comedy ‘Real Life Experience’ was ‘highly commended’ for BBC Writersroom’s Trans Comedy Award. In 2015 he won the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in the Children and Young Adult category. As a youth worker, he set up and ran Trans Youth Glasgow, part of LGBT Youth Scotland. He currently works for LEAP Sports Scotland on Trans Team, a project aimed at encouraging transgender young people to engage with sport and outdoor activities. www.hrfmichael.co.uk

Karen Lawler is an American living in London with her awesome wife and extremely cute dog Buffy. She loves reading, especially sci-fi, fantasy, YA, and historical non-fiction, and she funds her book habit by working in children’s publishing. She loves a good teen movie (10 Things I Hate About You is the best and she will fight you on that). This is the first time her writing has appeared in print.

Moïra Fowley-Doyle is the author of The Accident Season, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and Spellbook of the Lost and Found, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Irish Book Awards. Moïra is half- French, half-Irish and lives in Dublin with her husband, two daughters and two cats.

Cynthia So is bisexual and proud to be queer. She is Chinese, born in Hong Kong and now living in London. She studied Classics at university. Her writing has appeared in speculative fiction magazines including Anathema: Spec from the Margins, which publishes work by queer people of colour.

Proud edited by Juno Dawson

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 320 

Publisher: Stripes 

Released: 7th of March 2019 

A stirring, bold and moving anthology of stories and poetry by top LGBTQ+ YA authors and new talent, giving their unique responses to the broad theme of pride. Each story has an illustration by an artist identifying as part of the LGBTQ+ community. Compiled by Juno Dawson, author of THIS BOOK IS GAY and CLEAN.

A celebration of LGBTQ+ talent, PROUD is a thought-provoking, funny, emotional read.

Contributors: Steve Antony, Dean Atta, Kate Alizadeh, Fox Benwell, Alex Bertie, Caroline Bird, Fatti Burke, Tanya Byrne, Moïra Fowley-Doyle, Frank Duffy, Simon James Green, Leo Greenfield, Saffa Khan, Karen Lawler, David Levithan, Priyanka Meenakshi, Alice Oseman, Michael Lee Richardson, David Roberts, Cynthia So, Kay Staples, Jessica Vallance, Kristen Van Dam and Kameron White.

Following A CHANGE IS GONNA COME, winner of the YA BOOK PRIZE SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 2018

What I Have to Say 

This was a fantastic anthology. The fact that I loved almost every single one of the pieces (I just wasn't that fond of the first poem) is something that I've never experienced in an anthology before. Some of my particular favourites were:   Penguins by Simon James Green (and the adorable artwork to go with it by Alice Oseman), The Phoenix's Fault by Cynthia So (a new author found for this collection and a beautiful story from a Asian-inspired fantasy world), I Hate Darcy Pemberley (another new author with a lesbian retelling of Pride and Prejudice) and the Courage of Dragons by Fox Benwell (a lovely story of D & D players sneaking around the school to make everything in it gender neutral).

Along with each story is a piece of artwork to go with it. The art made a really great addition to each story or poem, though art can be a lot more subjective than stories, so I did find some of them were just not art styles that I liked. I really liked their inclusion though, it made the book so much more than most anthologies.

With all the contributors, writers and artists alike being LGBTQ+, this is an amazing book based on many different perspectives and experience.

Whether you're LGBTQ+, questioning or an ally, this book is definitely a MUST READ,

My thanks go to Netgalley and Stripes Publishing for providing me with this free copy for review.