June Reviews - Happy Pride!

Happy Pride! This marks my fifth year reading the rainbow, and it has been so wonderful to witness the increase in queer books even since I started. I have a plethora to pick from every year, and this year I picked some good ones.

Let's get to it!

The First Bright Thing by J. R. Dawson

My red book was either my second or third to last book (that's right, I don't read these in order!), depending on how quickly I read my yellow book. I've had it for a couple months but never felt like it was the right time to read it. Pride was the perfect opportunity to finally crack the spine!

Ringmaster, or Rin to her wife Odette and those who mattered, has been running her circus away from the Circus King and the memory of The Great War for years. When a new set of twins asks to join, Jo and Charles, Rin finds herself with two powerful Sparks, wielding magic the likes she hasn't seen in years. Trapped between a war in the future and the Circus King on their heels, Rin must decide what she can give up to protect those she loves-- and what she's not willing to let go of.

The magical setting of this book was brilliantly done. Jumping through space and time with Rin's spark we see three women desperate to protect those they love, caught in a web that cannot control no matter how hard they try. If there were ever a book about coming to terms with the things you can and can't control, this book is it. Rin, Odette, and Mauve have built a wonderful life at the circus, but are haunted by the man who held Rin captive for years. The book bounced between those stories-- the now and the then, slowly seeding in the understanding of what happened back then to make Rin as she is now, fighting back the demons of a man who's Spark is control. 

The use of war, both the first and second, was gruesome and powerful, showing the terror and violence of it all through the three women trying and failing to stop it. They love their people and want to protect them so much, but there is so much beyond their control. 

The Sparks of the circus were also so cool, I loved seeing all the ways magic manifests in people and the wonder they perform with it. I also love how the book is set primarily in 1926 but that doesn’t stop people outside the norm (queer, folks of color, Jewish folks) from finding a place where they can belong. The book was clearly written with so much love and wonder because it comes through in every part. Dawson has a beautiful writing style and her descriptions made it all the more magical.

Overall this was a very good book with a lot of heart that forces you to look at the thing you're afraid of and know that you are enough as you are.

D'Vaughn and Kris Plan A Wedding by Chencia C Higgins

This was the second book I read for pride, and one I picked up solely for the color, but still had a delightful time with!

D'Vaughn and Kris are given the opportunity of a lifetime on the reality TV show Instant I Do-- they have six weeks to plan a wedding and convince their family that they're deeply in love, despite having only just met. If they can make it to the end, they both walk away with a lot of money, as well as further fame for influencer Kris and a chance to come out to her family for closeted D'Vaughn. But when real feelings start to sneak into their fake relationship, they have to decide if risking it all for love is really worth it. 

This was a pretty quick and charming read. Kris and D'Vaughn were both funny and sweet, building on an instant mutual attraction to find a deeper connection almost immediately. Their families were funny and the challenges they were given each week lended even more humor to the situation. I simply love a fake relationship where real feelings develop.

There were some more serious parts of the book, especially dealing with D'Vaughn coming out to her religious family and her mother's somewhat complicated controlling relationship. That didn't get a lot of closure beyond recognizing what was there and loving one another anyway, but I did appreciate that family flaws didn't create villains, just hurdles. 

Overall this was a very sweet read and I had a good time with it.

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

I wasn't sure I'd finish this book in time for the month, let alone to get another book done afterwards. But where's there's a queer will there's a queer way, and I've been meaning to read this book for a while anyways.

Priya is a survival or the temple Hirana massacre, living in a city that wants people like her dead. Malini is a princess who refused to burn, imprisoned by her brother to atone for the crime of not dying. They have nothing in common but the temple that they occupy, but they may be one another's last hope for survival. If they can trust each other long enough to escape, they may find more common ground than expected.

It's been a minute since I've read such a thick fantasy book, but this one was very, very good. The world building is phenomenal, fleshed out and dangerous with magic leaking from the whole thing. The rotating perspectives kept me on my toes, connecting dots or watching the pieces clash together. Malini and Proya fell toward one another in a desperate act of mutual necessity that turned into something more.

I especially thought the rot disease was interesting, both in how it manifested and how it compared to how nature and magic were so intertwined in this book.

I'm literally writing this review in a parking garage after a concert at 11:30pm, so it's not super coherent but the book was very well written and I really liked it. Suri's writing is rich and her characters are brutal and I will gladly read the rest of however many books I in this series.

Junker Seven by Olive J Kelley

Our green book for the month is the third book I read, and also took the brunt of when I was sick, so that may have impacted my reading just a little bit.

Castor is just trying to survive in a galaxy that wants them dead. So when a chance to earn a lot of money fast comes their way, they jump on it. Except the job involved transporting wanted activist Juno Marcus through conservative airspace. Castor reluctantly agrees, launching both them and Juno into a life changing and dangerous journey, where they might both just find a reason to keep fighting. 

I'll be honest, I'm very exhausted and at the tail end of a major cold and a shitty two week work situation, so I'm going to make this review very short. I didn't love the book, but I think the message of it and the clear fear and anger and hope that comes through are important. Castor and Juno are both transgender and the worldbuilding of the book is a very dystopian but realistic Sci fi future that feels very much like a path we could be headed down, especially in terms of losing rights to conservative law makers and gun violence. It hit very close to home and I think part of me shied away from it simply because I could see the mirror of our own society and it's difficult to read something and watch it happen in real life at the same time. That's part of what makes it all the more important, but my cold riddled brain could just handle skimming a lot of it. 

Overall I think the concept was big and the worldbuilding scary and an angry commentary on the policing of bodies and expression that goes on in reality. And that's kind of all I have the brain power to say on that.

Icarus by K Ancrum

This was the fourth book I read this month and very easily my favorite (or at least my favorite so far, but it was so good that I feel pretty confident saying that with at least three books still to go).

Icarus has been breaking into Mr. Black's house to steal art for his father for years. He's good at it, good at flying below the radar, good at keeping people away while still blending in. Until he finds Helios, Mr. Black's son, trapped in the house. He and Helios form an almost instant connection, and before long Icarus realizes he's willing to risk everything o get Helios out.

The book was written in little vignettes, which made it feel so much like poetry. Ancrum's writing style is also just gorgeous, her descriptors and dialogue masterfully done, which just added to the poeticism of it all. Icarus and Helios are both so young but know so much, trapped in their own terrible worlds by their fathers. Their family history was gorgeously revealed and the sparks between them are made to feel enormous and all consuming, mirroring how Icarus feels when Helios touches him. 

The friends the Icarus makes mean to very much to me. The care that Luca and Celestina showed him, the plans they were making to keep him safe before they even knew what was wrong were so touching. Ancrum is right; teenagers notice things that adults don't, they see the way kids who make seem like they have it together are falling apart and they reach out to help them. It's a beautiful story about connection and loneliness and falling and I didn't want it to end. 

I will absolutely be looking into more of Ancrum's work, consider me obsessed with her writing style.

Being Ace edited by Madeline Dyer

I kicked off pride month with this read, and honestly it really put me in the right mindset for consuming a ton of queer stories.

I always say that reviews for anthologies are hard because I'm not writing a review of each story, I'm writing about the collective. But honestly I really liked all of the stories in this and was so appreciative of the kind of ace rep present-- namely sex repulsed or aroace. Not to complain because all sorts of ace rep is neccessary, but it seems like the Big Ace Book (Angela Chen's Ace) focused on aces who still have sex, which made me feel very on the fringes. But this one is had an amazing array of genres and characters who were all uninterested in sex (and some uninterested in romance too!).

And by all genres I really do mean all genres. There was poetry, science fiction, fantasy, thriller, contemporary, truly everything. And each writer had their own unique story and way of telling it, brought together by their sexuality. Aces writing aces! And the array of aces was nice, from folks who knew already and were just waiting for society to catch up to the folks who needed a bit of a push to truly accept themselves.

I loved it, and I'm really happy I started off with this book.

Mute Cute Diary by Emery Lee

This was the last book I read, and honestly I was on enough of a busy time crunch that I wasn't sure I'd get it finished in time. But I did it!

Noah has been running the Meet Cute Diary blog for a while, where trans folks can submit stories about how they met their partner to share joy with their community. Except Noah's been making up the stories, and when another blog calls him out, he has to act fast to save his reputation. Enter Drew: older and willing to fake date Noah to help save the Diary. But dating Drew isn't what Noah pictured love as, and he's starting to see his coworker Devin a little differently. When the Diary drama grows even bigger, Noah will have to decide whether it's worth saving at all.

This was ultimately a cute book, but I think the biggest problem is I'm old now and reading about this little sixteen year old missing all the red flags in his relationship and fixating on what felt like kind of silly online drama was kind of excruciating. But he's young (sixteen! A baby!) and figuring things out and not sure of what he wants, so the silly online drama and dating the wrong person is kind of par for the course.

There were a few places I was really expecting the plot to go but it didn't, which was kind of funny because usually I'm pretty good at predicting certain things for books. I think was I really appreciated most about this book was the sibling relationship between Brian and Noah. Like, Brian was clearly putting in the work to support and defend Noah after his transition, and they very clearly cared a lot about one another. And I thought the meet ugly between Devin and Noah was a pretty funny twist on the theme of meet cute. 

I was really entertained by the fact that the book takes place in Denver during the summer, because Noah kept talking about how cold it was (babe it's June and almost 100 degrees) and because I recognized a few places the characters went!

Overall this was fine, not the bang I was hoping to end the month on, but still a cute read.

And that's it! June was wildly busy so it's a wonder I had any time to read at all, but I did it! And it was wonderful!

Looking forward to all the summer reading I'll get to do!

Literary recommendation: Loveless by Alice Oseman (ace pride, baby!)

Media recommendation: I am still consuming massive amounts of Dropout content and almost nothing else, whoops not sorry