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when I come back
the bee sting
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie is up to his armpits in debt and increasingly preoccupied with preparing for an apocalypse that may or may not be just around the corner. His wife, Imelda, has become invisible to everyone except Big Mike, a man with unsavory local connections and a long-running feud with her husband. Their teenage daughter, Cass, always at the top of her class, has started drinking and staying out late, though nobody seems to have noticed. And twelve-year-old PJ is spending more and more time online, talking to a really funny, friendly kid called Darryl who never has his camera on and wants PJ to run away from home.
I could not put this book down. If you asked me what made it so great, the only answer I could give you would be a confused shrug – I have no idea. Choral cast novels have always been a soft spot of mine, so maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s how incredibly well-defined each of…
bellies
It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at a university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a charming young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom’s awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming’s orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he’s already mapped out their future together. But, shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.
From London to Kuala Lumpur, New York to Cologne, we follow Tom and Ming as they face shifts in their relationship in the wake of Ming’s transition. Through a spiral of unforeseen crises – some personal, some professional, some life-altering – Tom and Ming are forced to confront the vastly different shapes their lives have taken since graduating, and each must answer the essential question: is it worth losing a part of yourself to become who you are?
This novel is told in two points of views, Tom and Ming’s. The narrator isn’t always clearly identified from the start, so it sometimes took me a paragraph or two to realize that a new person was talking. I liked the way that the same thing was shown from two very, very different points of…
yours for the taking
The year is 2050. Ava and her girlfriend live in what’s left of Brooklyn, and though they love each other, it’s hard to find happiness while the effects of climate change rapidly eclipse their world. Soon, it won’t be safe outside at all. The only people guaranteed survival are the ones whose applications are accepted to The Inside Project, a series of weather-safe, city-sized structures around the world.
Jacqueline Millender is a reclusive billionaire/women’s rights advocate, and thanks to a generous donation, she’s just become the director of the Inside being built on the bones of Manhattan. Her ideas are unorthodox, yet alluring—she’s built a whole brand around rethinking the very concept of empowerment.
Shelby, a business major from a working-class family, is drawn to Jacqueline’s promises of power and impact. When she lands her dream job as Jacqueline’s personal assistant, she’s instantly swept up into the glamourous world of corporatized feminism. Also drawn into Jacqueline’s orbit is Olympia, who is finishing up medical school when Jacqueline recruits her to run the health department Inside. The more Olympia learns about the project, though, the more she realizes there’s something much larger at play. As Ava, Olympia, and Shelby start to notice the cracks in Jacqueline’s system, Jacqueline tightens her grip, becoming increasingly unhinged and dangerous in what she is willing to do—and who she is willing to sacrifice—to keep her dream alive.
I find too many dystopias boring because of their focus on very normal people. This one doesn’t really fit the general model, if only because everyone’s extremely queer. Even though the premise is extremely basic, and the plot twists are overdone, there are a couple of very interesting characters who breathe just enough life into…
all night pharmacy
On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions—nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and, despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears.
Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who arrives at the hospital claiming to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator’s spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism, and ambiguous power dynamics.
This book was not what I wanted to read and it took me a while to get into it. But once I had, oh boy! New Year’s came and went with all the fanfare of a menstrual cycle. This novel was a wild ride. I don’t know what it is with me reading about toxic…
Trieste
Venezia
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Small Miracles
A little bit of sin is good for the soul.Gadriel, the fallen angel of petty temptations, has a bi…
This was Tracy’s recommendationfor an uplifting read, and she nailed it. An adorable tale of petty sin, chocolate, and all the different kinds of love there are, all this with big Good Omens vibes (which are openly acknowledged at the end of the book). Nothing that will change the world of literature, but exactly the…