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In the old days, Whiskey greeted her at the front door every morning. Fourteen-hour overnight shifts were no match for the cat’s crippling separation anxiety. Now, she was lucky to get more than one glimpse of her speckled brown coat per day. “Whiskey! Breakfast!” she calls, and cracks open a pink can of Fancy Feast, a feeble attempt at enticing the cat out of her hiding spot. James had never let her buy wet food for Whiskey, usually picking up one of those cheap, unappetizing orange-and-pink kibble mixes himself. It was one of the first parts of her daily routine…
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2/5 I wanted to like Housemates so badly. It was recommended by several people, and it sounds like exactly the type of thing I would usually love. A queer roadtrip? Yes, please! Unfortunately, this book missed the mark for me. To start, the narration style was nonsensical, chaotic, and inconsistent. It’s seemingly told by a mythical elder lesbian artist who is sometimes omniscient, sometimes not. If you haven’t read this book and think this sounds cool, I promise, it’s not. It’s incredibly distracting and feels voyeuristic in a deeply unsexy and uncomfortable way—one of the worst narrator choices I have…
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Utopia is an impossible demand. Most likely, it’s what happens when no one’s looking. On Grindr, my profile stated: DESIRE IS A PLANET TRAPPED INSIDE AN EVEN BIGGER PLANET. The men I met were aroused by the world; I was aroused by the opposite of the world. Turns out there can be so much night inside a single man that to be contained within it is a kind of violence. Turns out the body is so much more than I ever bargained for. Of course I didn’t love them properly—I livedwith the vastness and loneliness of a continent. Please don’t…
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A shotgun in the backyard silences the barking. Don’t misunderstand me, the man has not shot his dog. In the morning, when the man wakes, the bitch will be gone, her only trace the holes she chewed in his once-brand-new suede leather boots. The other dogs will howl until they tire of the raucous and return to lick the man’s bare feet while he weeps. The man, who will witness the great return. The man, who only cries when he’s not alone. The man, who forgets he was something else first. He prays for the end…
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5/5 Endling was my favorite read of 2025 so far. I discovered Maria Reva a few years ago when she had just published her debut novel, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, and I’ve been eagerly waiting for more since. Good Citizens was an interconnected short story collection that follows the residents of an accidentally uncataloged apartment building in Ukraine. The book’s characters and unusual style left quite an impression on me and I think about it often. Endling was no different. The plot is ingenious bordering on insane. I’m fairly certain no one else would have come up with a…
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You grow old. You love everybody. You forgive everyone. You think: we are all leaves dragged along by a wheel. Then comes a splendid spotted yellow one—ah, distinction! And in that moment you are dragged under.
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The shop smells like cut stems and lemon-scented Lysol. It’s one of the few places in the city that stays the same, year after year, even as the lifespan of its patrons shortens and the yellowish haze outside grows thicker. “Six pink carnations, six white daisies,” she says to the florist, hesitates a moment, then adds: “And some green, if you have it.” With the middle-aged woman distracted, she browses the half-empty rows of overpriced plants. She detaches the arm of a miniature succulent and pinches a yellow pothos stem from the vine with her fingernails. A scrawny lemon tree…
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5/5 I purchased a copy of Sunburn at a bookstore called Novellette in Nashville halfway through my 10-day drive to New York City, and I could not have chosen a more riveting read to accompany me. Sunburn is a devastatingly beautiful (but not necessarily unhappy!) story of first love and repression. Everything about it was just gorgeous, from beginning to end. The characters, the connections, the setting, the imagery of the golden summer sun on skin. I was extremely attached to the main character, Lucy, and I saw a lot of myself in her. I’m obsessed with the way Howarth…
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I love you because your spirit flickers like a candle left by a window. I love you because when I think you’re mine, the flame blows out, and it isn’t so. I love you because you don’t carry on about wedding bells and vows and things, a love like ours, so fleeting and precious, should not be bound by any gold rings. For I will never darn your tattered socks or see you trudge about with a frown, and you will never find me tired and glum, wasting away in an old nightgown.No, let us meet in the very late…
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You know the line: it’s not you, it’s me. You were perfect, I swear. Couldn’t have asked for better. Even that one time you flooded out of nowhere, leaving me to drive to the auto repair shop with my pedals nearly underwater. Even when your cruise control stopped working halfway through my two-week drive to New York. Little things like these could never have stopped me from treasuring you, and please believe, they didn’t. You were my first way out. You were my first taste of freedom, my introduction to the idea that there are roads yet to be taken.…
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Emily Vance Brown 