5 stars All Joana’s dreams are coming true. She’s secured her dream job as a potions maker in London. She makes friends, finds an apartment, and explores romantic pursuits. Everything should be perfect. But something feels off. She’s tired all the time and constantly plagued with doubt. She pushes down her emotions as best she…
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by Shou Arai Translated by Massiel Gutierrez 2.5 stars An interesting read about gender, aging, relationships, and living as an intersex person. Arai works in various topics including sex, age differences, culture, and gender expression. It was especially interesting to learn about some of the intricacies of living as an LGBTQIA+ person in Japan such…
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Featuring Dorian Alexander, Archie Bongiovanni, Sage Coffey, Shelby Criswell, Dylan Edwards, Julia Bernhard, JB Brager, Rosa Colon Guerra, Max Dlabick, Trinidad Escobar, Mady G, Alex Graudins, Binglin Hu, Shing Yin Khor, Kazimir Lee, Melanie Gillman, Levi Hastings, Robyn Jordan, Maia Kobabe, Matt Lubchansky, Mariah-Rose Marie, Jason Michaels, Sfe R. Monster, Breena Nunez, Elisabet Run, Ria…
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by Huda Fahmy 5 stars A sweet, humorous story about Fahmy’s journey though the pressure to get married, incompatible suitors, and finally meeting her husband. The story goes through various rules of Islam related to interpersonal relationships and some of the innerworkings of arranged marriages. It offers a first-hand, positive experience with arranged marriage, corrects…
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5 stars A fantastic memoir dealing with issues of gender, identity, acceptance, and perception. The story follows Kobabe as ey learn about and explore eir self-identity. This includes coming out to family and dealing with their reactions; navigating crushes, sexual relationships, and doctor visits; discovering eir pronouns; and finding eirself in music and books. Through…
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3 stars Overall, a good collection of short poetry. Various topics are covered and themes quickly emerge including recognizing one’s worth and letting go of what hurts you. One issue I generally have with poetry of this nature is that the short format often fizzles out. Too often short poetry feels like the beginning of…
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3 stars A good collection of poems on a variety of topics formulated to follow a fairy tale arch. Topics covered include family, romantic relationships, breakups, love, self-harm, eating disorders, and abuse. There are a lot of hard topics in this book, but also many points readers can relate to and empathize with. For me,…
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5 stars A powerful novel in verse that proves you are more than the hardships you have faced. I’d recommend looking at the trigger warnings before going in to this as there are quite a few traumatic events that occur. These include rape, food insecurity, homelessness, drug overdose, and police brutality. This book may not…
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5 stars A stunning poetry collection. Baird tackles many hardships in her poems including eating disorders, sexual assault, rape culture, relationships and sexuality, and healing. One thing that really stuck out to me was how well organized this collection was. Each poem flowed so nicely into the next. The themes build as the book goes…
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4 stars A hilarious collection of essays ranging from the writing process to health problems to getting older to relationships and married life. This is the first book I’ve read from Irby (but won’t be the last!). I’ll admit it took me a bit to get into the flow of it. The audiobook is read…
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