Here’s another roundup of Pride book features that I’ve been doing over on Instagram. I’m a day behind, but catching up. It takes quite a bit of work to write these posts, but I’m having a great time and I hope it will help you to discover some new authors and books.
Pride Books Day 16 – Queens of Geek
I remember reading this book back in 2015 or 2016 when it came out and when I was actually still a teenager. I feel older every day. But I’m not going to stop reading YA just because I’m an adult, because I really think it’s a great genre and there are so many talented YA authors. I like adult books sometimes, but YA is still my favorite.
Anyway, reminiscing aside, I really loved this book when I discovered it. It’s about three friends who go to a Comic Con-style event and get to meet their favorite author. One of the girls, Taylor, is autistic and in love with her best guy friend, Jamie, and the third friend is a girl named Charlie with a crush on her favorite female YouTuber who also happens to be at the convention. So you have two love stories going on and they are both super cute.
What I really like about this book is that it shows how important fandom can be in a person’s life, and how it’s so much more than “just a book.” Taylor has a hard time with her own mind sometimes because she has anxiety, and her favorite book about Queen Firestone (a character made up for this book) is a source of comfort. She even works up the nerve to enter a cosplay contest and has to deal with body-shaming because she’s plus-size. I really saw myself in Taylor. I’ve gotten a lot more confident in some ways, but back in 2016 I was much more anxious and shy.
Charlie and her crush’s love story is ridiculously cute, even if it was a bit insta-lovey. I don’t really care to be honest because it was just so much fun. Charlie is having a hard time coming out as queer (I can’t remember but I think she’s bi or pan) but her love interest doesn’t want to be a secret, and I totally see where they both are coming from. Coming out is hard and scary, and some people just aren’t ready yet, and that’s hard.
Queens of Geek felt like a love letter to fangirls that said we are important, smart, and valued. In a world that tends to laugh at teenage girls’ interests, this book sings the importance of fandom.
Pride Books Day 17 – This Poison Heart
I have been an @owlcrate subscriber since November 2020 if I’m remembering correctly. I love getting a pretty YA fantasy book in the mail every month. I’ve discovered some of my favorite authors and books from them. A while ago, This Poison Heart was the featured book, and I loved it!
It’s inspired by The Secret Garden and is about a girl who discovers this magical garden near her new house. There’s also a mysterious, beautiful girl who definitely knows more than she’s letting on…and who Briseis (our main character) definitely has a crush on. It’s a duology, and I haven’t read the second book yet, but it’s on my list because the first one got me hooked.
I love the romance and the magical plants in this book. I’ve also read Cinderella Is Dead by this author, which has one of the prettiest covers I’ve ever seen (because it has the Cinderella dress and I’m totally obsessed with it). I preferred This Poison Heart, but both were wonderful reads.
And I also love the source material, which is The Secret Garden. It’s one of my favorite classic books.
Pride Books Day 18 – The Lost Girl of Goose Creek
Well this is exciting. It’s my book! The Lost Girl of Goose Creek never gets as much love as my other books, especially Unraveled, but I actually think it’s better than Unraveled. I improved as a writer between my first and second books and I’m very proud of how it turned out. It’s my first novel in verse, but definitely not my last – I absolutely love this form of storytelling.
Goose Creek is about a girl named Etta who goes missing and everyone think she’s dead. But eight years later, she’s discovered to be a captive of this evil man. The complication is that she read her favorite fantasy book over and over during her captivity, and now she confuses herself for the main character Mathilde. Basically, she has developed a dissociative identity disorder, and now she needs to figure out who she really is.
Etta and Lexa are in a sapphic relationship, but you don’t get to see them together until halfway through the book, except through flashbacks. Etta is a prisoner until that point. When she does get rescued, she wants to reunite with Lexa, whom she’s been dreaming about for eight years of captivity. But does Lexa want to get back together?
The romance is not a central part of the story, but Lexa is an important person to Etta, and thinking of her helps Etta survive her eight years of imprisonment. While I was writing the book, I kept thinking about how I would feel if my partner went missing. It was an intense writing process.
I’m just really happy that Etta chose me as her author to write her story. She feels like a real person to me, even more so than the Unraveled characters. I will be writing more books in the Goose Creek universe and am working on one right now. I might not be the most productive author (as in, it takes me a while to write a book) but I can’t imagine a day when I’m not writing queer books. There are so many more stories to tell.
Pride Books Day 19 – The Lord of the Rings
I’m going to try my best to stick to the 2,200-word limit for Instagram posts, but BOY OH BOY do I have thoughts on today’s post.
During my English major in college, I took a class on J.R.R. Tolkien. We read the entirety of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. (This class is where I met my best friend, who was a bridesperson in my wedding!) I had heard that people shipped Frodo and Sam, and I thought “that’s kinda funny, I don’t really get it.”
Well.
I get it now.
It’s not even subtext. It WALLOPS you over the head. Frodo and Sam express their love for each other, cuddle, hug, and kiss. Sam even literally cradles Frodo’s naked body in his arms. If one of the hobbits were female, everyone would be thinking “of course they’re in romantic love.” But because they’re both male, people don’t make that assumption.
My professor for the Tolkien class absolutely despised the idea that Frodo and Sam were in love with each other. She would actually write comments in my essays whenever I mentioned it saying things like “I don’t think so.” But the great thing about books is that everyone can have a different opinion. It’s okay if you interpret Frodo and Sam as being in platonic love. And it’s okay for me to interpret them as being a couple.
They are such a good example of selfless love. Sam in particular is what everyone needs in their lives. He does everything to support Frodo. And Frodo is such a selfless character, volunteering to take the Ring to Mordor even though he knows it’s basically impossible. They are great role models, and I love them so much.
I used to have a document with all the gay quotes from LOTR, but my computer decided to eat it. I would like to resurrect this document so I can share it with you all. There is so much textual support for them being in romantic love. In fact, my copy of LOTR is filled with sticky notes marking all the “gay moments.”
(For the record, I think Sam is bisexual.)
Are you a LOTR fan? I’ve actually only ever seen the first movie, but I would like to see the rest of them. I really liked the book.
Pride Books Day 20 – The Butterfly Assassin by Finn Longman (they/them)
I’m excited to recommend an extremely stabby book series to you all – The Butterfly Assassin by Finn Longman. The first two books are out now and the third one is coming out in the next couple years. I consider this trilogy to be New Adult because there’s simply so much violence – but it’s all handled tastefully by the author. This is, after all, a story about an assassin. Despite Isabel’s poor life choices, I still root for her as a character and want things to end up good for her.
As a child, Isabel was raised to be an assassin and was abused by her parents and the program that trained her. Now as a 17-year-old, she’s trying to start a life of her own free from being a killer for hire. But the program isn’t going to let her go that easily, and it puts everyone she loves in danger.
The great thing about this trilogy is there’s no romance, which is very unusual for YA, but it totally shouldn’t be. Isabel’s friendship with Emma is just as important as any romance. Isabel is asexual, although it isn’t mentioned by that name because she doesn’t have the words for it. But there are lots of queer characters including nonbinary people, especially in the second book. It’s also totally realistic that when she’s fighting for her life and the lives of her friends, Isabel doesn’t have time for romance.
I really like the pacifist themes throughout the trilogy. In the author’s note, Longman goes into more detail about how they created the world of Espera and that was very interesting to read.
I strongly recommend The Butterfly Assassin to anyone who likes their YA dark and twisty, and their heroines complicated and fascinating.