Esmé J

Shipwrecks, friends to lovers, and a Jacque Cousteau musical filled with ocean puns await you in this surprisingly emotional adventure. One of the most honest coming of age stories I've read, Drake pulled me back into the exhilaration of self-creation. The tender, sapphic romance between two fully realized, flawed, complimentary characters make this one of my all time favorite queer stories!

Content Warnings: death, drowning, unsuccessful suicide attempt, hypersexuality as a trauma response, substance use, coming out

Diaspora-Ish is a genre-bending work that interrogates the colonial forces lurking in our families, schools, and deep within ourselves. It's pages are a warm hug to those on the margins and a loving admonition not to be fooled by the "friendlier" faces of empire. The academy will not save us. Assimilation will not save us. Sethi urges us to accept nothing short of the crumbling of walls, the eraducation of borders, and the total liberation of the land from the river to the sea. For fans of "Palestine 1492" and students of Franz Fanon, Audre Lorde, W.E.B. Du Bois, bell hooks, and Edward Said.

Content Warnings: Discussions of structural and interpersonal violence

Legally classified as property of "The Company," Murderbot has hacked its own governor module to pursue the freedom to ignore bad orders and binge every serial drama it can download. Armed with razor-sharp sarcasm – and literally gun arms – Murderbot is the reluctant nonbinary, asexual, it/its hero we didn't know we needed. It is grumpy, socially inept, and utterly heartwarming as it learns what it means to see itself as a person 🥹

This is the kind of book series that introduces you to a motley crew of characters who soon begin to feel like real-life friends. You will celebrate their wins, and mourn their losses. You will wish you too could traverse wormholes on a sentient spaceship with a serious attitude problem.

Content Warnings: action movie level violence, slavery and indentured servitude, a fuck ton of f-bombs!

A beautiful collection of nature essays that wears its tender, nerdy heart on its sleeve! This exploration of deep sea life and mixed-race queerness is perfect for lovers of Why Fish Don't Exist, Undrowned, and The Brilliant Abyss.

Content Warnings: sexual violence, domestic violence, disordered eating, animal death

In some ways Shesheshen's problems are not very relatable. I'll wager that few of us have personally battled the urge to lay parasitic eggs inside of our partners, or have been forced to dodge homicidal in-laws. But underneath her grotesque exterior, Shesheshen is any of us asking to be accepted in our fucked-up entirety. This tender ace romance between polar opposites is equal parts humorous and healing. I came for the shapeshifting shenanigans, but stayed for the gentle ways only survivors of abuse can make each other feel truly seen.

Content warnings: mild body horror, parent death, child abuse, fucked up sibling relationships

Airplane Mode pokes thoughtfully at the assumptions and supremacies underlying the tourism industry, troubling distinctions of tourist vs. traveler vs. migrant, and observer vs. observed. Habib delivers her critique with the knowing wink of someone who deeply loves the subject matter and sees herself in even the cringiest tourist impulses. This engrossing text made me confront the origins of the passport (spoiler, it's not great!), the "ugly American" sins I have perpetrated abroad, and the forces of human nature that motivate each cramped, stuffy journey through the sky. 

Content warnings: discussions of colonial violence including slavery and indenture

Acting was never McCurdy's dream; she wanted to write. This talent shines as she deftly lends humor and aching compassion to otherwise stomach-churning details of abuse and disordered eating. Part nostalgia-tinged polaroid of a skinny-jean-clad moment in the zeitgeist, part real-life horror story, I'm Glad My Mom Died is ultimately a cathartic declaration of humanity from a person who was raised to be a product. 

Content warnings: child sexual abuse, graphic discussions of disordered eating, hoarding disorder, parent death, cancer

The unusual structure and literary devices in the book, including a sizable portion written in second person perspective, punctuate Kincaid's searing indictment of 1980s western exceptionalism and the forever extractive relationship between the Caribbean and the global minority. Don't reach for this book if you're hoping for solutions or pacifications. But if you're wrestling with your relationship to the tourism industry, perhaps as a traveler yourself and/or a cog in a tourism-based economy like Asheville, "A Small Place" is guaranteed to give you big feelings. What you do with those feelings is entirely up to you...

Content warnings: discussions of colonial violence including slavery

Ever had a string of bad luck so improbable you start to wonder what otherworldly forces are plotting against you? Lucky Day follow the most compelling duo since Scully and Mulder as they pull at the threads of a grand conspiracy. It's a cosmically good romp that only enhances Tingle's explorations of more sobering concerns such as bisexual erasure and what we lose when 'the ends justify the means.' Also, as someone who reads a lot of great horror, the kills we get in this book are straight up B A N A N A S!

Content Warnings: gore, animal death

A trans pregnancy horror for a post-Roe world, You Weren't Meant to Be Human pushes the boundary of what is publishable. I'm not going to sugar coat it, this book is disturbing and gross. Even an iron-stomached horror fanatic will feel a lurch when White goes *there.* But even as White serves up platter after platter of ghastly cosmic horror, he reminds us that the truly terrifying will always be mundanely, achingly human.

Content Warnings: Self harm, pregnancy, birth, domestic violence, bugs, sexual violence, pretty much everything

Set in 1960s Harlem, this noir thriller follows a furniture salesman wrestling with his commitment to remaining on the straight and narrow, while his path is increasingly filled with twists and disreputable turns. The narration is full of shrewd observations about a city that is crooked to its core, introducing us to a cast of deliciously unsavory characters. I loved the subtle humor -- witty repartee between characters and a protagonist who can't help but wax poetic on the value of a sofa or dining room set, even in the most dire circumstances. Big bonus for a crime novel: no copaganda to be found!

Content Warnings: gun violence, addiction, overdose, mentions of police brutality

The best contribution to the conversion camp cannon since "But I'm a Cheerleader!" Any skeptics of meme king Chuck Tingle's debut horror novel will have to eat their words, or perhaps regurgitate them in a cloud of flies...

Camp Damascus is not a one note experience, and Tingle expertly balances the bitter taste of ✨religious trauma✨ with the sweetness of first love, friendship in the face of the greatest odds, and the most satisfying "fuck around and find out" moment in literary history. 

Content Warnings: homophobia, ableism against an autistic character, religious trauma, emotionally abusive parents, gaslighting, mild to medium body horror, death, bugs