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Sapphic Book Club
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You Don't Have a Shot by Racquel Marie
Valentina “Vale” Castillo-Green’s life revolves around soccer. Her friends, her future, and her father’s intense expectations are all wrapped up in the beautiful game. But after she incites a fight during playoffs with her long-time rival, Leticia Ortiz, everything she’s been working toward seems to disappear.
Embarrassed and desperate to be anywhere but home, Vale escapes to her beloved childhood soccer camp for a summer of relaxation and redemption…only to find out that she and the endlessly aggravating Leticia will be co-captaining a team that could play in front of college scouts. But the competition might be stiffer than expected, so unless they can get their rookie team’s act together, this second chance―and any hope of playing college soccer―will slip through Vale’s fingers. When the growing pressure, friendship friction, and her overbearing father push Vale to turn to Leticia for help, what starts off as a shaky alliance of necessity begins to blossom into something more through a shared love of soccer. . . and maybe each other.
Genres: contemporary, romance
Order from Blackwell's and get free worldwide shipping!
Listen to the book on audiobooks.com here!
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Please consider supporting the blog by gifting me a book off my wishlist if you're able to!
With my love for books that's the only way I'd ask for support, plus purchasing the books helps the authors as well!
If you're not able to do so, then keep supporting the blog by reblogging and spreading love for sapphic books! 💜
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The Politics of Love by Jen Jensen
Is it possible to love across the political divide?
Shelley Whitmore is a successful attorney, working on behalf of her Evangelical parents' faith-based organization, championing conservative values of individual liberty and limited government. Everything's totally fine, except that it really isn't. Shelley manages depression and crippling anxiety because of the secret she can never reveal: she's gay.
Rand Thomas is a psychotherapist, transgender rights activist, and political liberal. Widowed and struggling with her wife's toxic parents, Rand isn't going to allow herself to love again.
When Shelley and Rand meet in Manhattan, neither one expects to find that the other is exactly who they need.
Genres: contemporary, romance
Order from Blackwell's and get free worldwide shipping!
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Author Spotlight: Talia Bhatt
We're excited to highlight Talia Bhatt, author of the current club read Dulhaniyaa. Read on to hear how her identity and experiences informed her writing, and how queer love is a jailbreak.
“Desi trans lesbian” feels, sometimes, like an ephemeral identity.
I am situated nowhere transhistorically and barely transculturally, having to borrow the language, social trappings, and forms of identification of the nation(s) that colonized and impoverished mine to even express my embodiment and positionality coherently. In a world where Afsaneh Najmabadi can pose the question “Is any one of you a lesbian?” to a room full of Iranian transsexual women and get blank stares, as she relates in Professing Selves, or where Deepa Mehta notes in her groundbreaking lesbian romance Fire that Hindi lacks even a word to express the concept of a woman loving another intimately, romantically, carnally, I am unmoored and unfixed, an anomaly because I dare to imagine my transsexuality independent from men.
“Woman are for men”, assumes every culture with harsh patriarchal contradictions—which does not entirely exclude the West—and trans women doubly so, since the abhorrence of non-heterosexual modes of living and social organization leads many from cultures like mine to presume that a woman would only transition to be with a man. A profound loneliness dogs my very existence, alerting me to the wispy shadows of a shrouded past that barely had a record of women like me prior to the midpoint of the 20th Century, only whispers and rumors and sensationalist gossip scrawled in academic journal by Esther Newton, alluding to the idea of a “man” that, having availed of hormones and surgical interventions, now sleeps with lesbians—the scandal.
No ancestors that are mine to claim.
Dulhaniyaa is not a particularly melancholy book, though a certain pensiveness pervades the opening chapters. There a story within the story written in subtext, in allusions and word choices and snippets of dialogue, that Esha and Billu and Dolly and others are aware of: my homeland, my motherland, my culture and my nation and my state—it is not a place for queer women. It is certainly, emphatically, not a place for a trans woman who fancies herself still attracted to other women, or even indelibly non-binary in a way. Women like us have no names, no pasts, and almost certainly no futures within the narrow confines of the constructed and stifling heterosexual hegemony.
A reviewer was kind enough to sum up Dulhaniyaa for me better than I ever could, stating triumphantly that “Queer love is a jailbreak.” It’s a quote that has stuck with me both for how simply it states a core theme that I certainly labored to convey without necessarily consciously meaning to, as well as for how profoundly vast and unencompassable the prison I find myself in is. My shackles are Time and Language itself, my cell the land I was born in, my wardens its people. I am a refugee in a sense that many, many queer and especially trans people tend to be, evicted and disowned and erased from hearth and homeland.
I wrote Dulhaniyaa because someone broke me out of that cell. She saw the woman I was as well as the woman I could be, and helped me bridge the gap between the two. She is now my wife.
Queer love is a jailbreak. Get your pickaxes ready.
#wlw books#booklr#lgbt books#contemporary#book recs#sapphic books#diverse books#desi#bollywood#trans author#guest post
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Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May
On Crow Island, people whisper, real magic lurks just below the surface.
Neither real magic nor faux magic interests Annie Mason. Not after it stole her future. She’s only on the island to settle her late father’s estate and, hopefully, reconnect with her long-absent best friend, Beatrice, who fled their dreary lives for a more glamorous one.
Yet Crow Island is brimming with temptation, and the biggest one may be her enigmatic new neighbor.
Mysterious and alluring, Emmeline Delacroix is a figure shadowed by rumors of witchcraft. And when Annie witnesses a confrontation between Bea and Emmeline at one of the island's extravagant parties, she is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where the boundaries of wickedness are tested, and the cost of illicit magic might be death.
Genres: historical, fantasy, romance
Order from Blackwell's and get free worldwide shipping!
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The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus
Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she’s going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor’s daughter. Audre’s grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets of her own) tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won’t lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. “America have dey spirits too, believe me,” she tells Audre.
Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels–about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness that’s plagued her all summer. Mabel’s reverie is cut short when her father announces that his best friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner.
Mabel quickly falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But their romance takes a turn when test results reveal exactly why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer and suddenly it’s Audre who is caring for Mabel as she faces a deeply uncertain future.
Genres: contemporary, romance
Order from Blackwell's and get free worldwide shipping!
Listen to the book on audiobooks.com here!
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A Country Girl's Heart by Dena Blake
Kat Jackson is successful despite her estrangement from her parents and the loss of her wife. She's resigned to live alone while struggling to maintain her dream ranch. When she falls for weekend cowgirl DJ Callahan, she soon fears all she knows to be true may be a cruel façade developed for her own protection.
DJ Callahan is a corporate lawyer who lives in the moment, never limiting herself to any one relationship. When DJ arrives at the Jumpin' J Ranch, she has no plans to become involved with Kat, let alone open the door to her own past, which bubbles just below the surface, threatening to destroy her entire existence as a "big city lawyer." Having everything she could ever want in life, twice, is something Kat never expected. When she gets a second chance at love, following her heart will prove the hardest decision of all.
Genres: contemporary, romance
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Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall
It is the year 1814 and life for a young lady of good breeding has many difficulties. There are balls to attend, fashions to follow, marriages to consider and, of course, the tiny complication of existing in a world swarming with fairy spirits, interfering deities, and actual straight-up sorcerers.
Miss Maelys Mitchelmore finds her entry into high society hindered by an irritating curse. It begins innocuously enough with her dress slowly unmaking itself over the course of an evening at a high-profile ball, a scandal she narrowly manages to escape.
However, as the curse progresses to more fatal proportions, Miss Mitchelmore must seek out aid, even if it means mixing with undesirable company. And there are few less desirable than Lady Georgianna Landrake—a brooding, alluring young woman sardonically nicknamed “the Duke of Annadale”—who may or may not have murdered her own father and brothers to inherit their fortune. If one is to believe the gossip, she might be some kind of malign enchantress. Then again, a malign enchantress might be exactly what Miss Mitchelmore needs.
With the Duke’s help, Miss Mitchelmore delves into a world of angry gods and vindictive magic, keen to unmask the perpetrator of these otherworldly attacks. But Miss Mitchelmore’s reputation is not the only thing at risk in spending time with her new ally. For the rumoured witch has her own secrets that may prove dangerous to Miss Mitchelmore’s heart—not to mention her life.
Genres: historical, urban fantasy, romance
Order from Blackwell's and get free worldwide shipping!
Listen to the book on audiobooks.com here!
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Fishwives by Sally Bellerose
On a cold winter day when eighty-nine-year old Regina and ninety-year-old Jackie―who met in 1955, an era when women were rounded up and jailed simply for dancing together or dressing like a man―manage to get themselves out of the house. With the help of TJ and Ramon, two young men from their working-class neighborhood in Western Massachusetts, they tie their long-dead Christmas tree to the top of their car and, using a screwdriver in place of a broken gearshift, slowly make the drive to the dump.
This is also the day when everything changes.
In the course of the day, memories are triggered, and their history as a passionate, devoted, but troubled couple at the intersection of historic cultural and political change unfolds via scenes from the past: their first meeting during a police raid on the bar; Regina’s epiphany that she could truly love a woman; Jackie’s persistent infidelity and gambling; a nomadic life often lived apart in the early years as they run away from landlords who discover their secret, toward jobs and a sustainable life, sometimes away from, but always back to each other; the Kennedy assassination, a backdrop to one reconciliation; Jackie’s efforts to convince Regina to marry, Regina’s saying yes.
Genres: contemporary, romance
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The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich by Deya Muniz
Lady Camembert wants to live life on her own terms, without marriage. Well, without marrying a man, that is. But the law of the land is that women cannot inherit. So when her father passes away, she does the only thing she can: She disguises herself as a man and moves to the capital city of the Kingdom of Fromage to start over as Count Camembert.
But it’s hard to keep a low profile when the beautiful Princess Brie, with her fierce activism and great sense of fashion, catches her attention. Camembert can’t resist getting to know the princess, but as the two grow closer, will she able to keep her secret?
A romantic comedy about mistaken identity, true love, and lots of grilled cheese.
Genres: graphic novel, fantasy, romance
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People Like Us by Dana Mele
Kay Donovan may have skeletons in her closet, but the past is past, and she's reinvented herself entirely. Now she's a star soccer player whose group of gorgeous friends run their private school with effortless popularity and acerbic wit. But when a girl's body is found in the lake, Kay's carefully constructed life begins to topple.
The dead girl has left Kay a computer-coded scavenger hunt, which, as it unravels, begins to implicate suspect after suspect, until Kay herself is in the crosshairs of a murder investigation.
But if Kay's finally backed into a corner, she'll do what it takes to survive. Because at Bates Academy, the truth is something you make... not something that happened.
Genres: contemporary, romance
Order from Blackwell's and get free worldwide shipping!
Listen to the book on audiobooks.com here!
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Monstersona by Chloe Spencer
After her parents' divorce, 16 year old Riley Grishin is forced to move from Portland, Oregon all the way to Little Brook, Maine, a small town that serves as the headquarters for Titan Technologies, an international tech laboratory. Having left her friends and father behind, Riley spends most of her days running through the woods with her dog Tigger, and eavesdropping on her classmates-in particular, the gorgeous, but very strange, Aspen Montehugh.
On the night of the homecoming game, Riley wakes up to find her town on fire, terrorized by an unseen monster. With flames spreading rapidly, Riley and Tigger have no choice but to pile into her beat-up pickup truck and flee. Speeding out of town, they come across the only other survivor: Aspen.
When Riley and Aspen finally reach safety, they realize something far more sinister is afoot. According to the news, all other Titan Tech laboratories on the East Coast have been attacked. And even worse, they're being followed by an SUV with blacked out windows. With all air travel grounded, Riley has no way to fly back to her dad, so she and Aspen embark on a cross country road trip, all the while pursued by men with guns, mad scientists, and the monstrous truth. Slowly, Riley realizes something's not quite right with Aspen, which puts her feelings for her-and her own humanity-to the ultimate test.
Genres: urban fantasy, horror, romance
Order from Blackwell's here and get free worldwide shipping!
Listen to the book on audiobooks.com here!
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Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour
When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner.
When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. When Sara's old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose, they must decide if their love is more powerful than their pasts.
Genres: contemporary, romance
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A Heart This Big by Cheyenne Blue
Australian country girl Nina Pellegrini runs a program for city kids to experience a taste of rural life at Banksia Farm. But when a child is hurt and a lawsuit threatens, Nina is determined to find the best legal assistance to help her save the farm.
Enter high-flying lawyer Leigh Willoughby, whose city world is far from the farm’s chaotic mix of kids and animals. She certainly doesn’t have time for small cases that don’t pay or farm visits that wreck her cool—and her clothes.
Still, the warm-hearted Nina and her challenging, twelve-year-old daughter, Phoebe, are awfully hard to say no to. What on earth has she gotten herself into?
Genres: contemporary, romance
Order from Blackwell's and get free worldwide shipping!
Listen to the book on audiobooks.com here!
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The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.
But when the Eastwood sisters--James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna--join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.
There's no such thing as witches. But there will be.
Genres: historical, fantasy, romance
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Seeking Approval by Rachel Spangler
When Emery Pembroke returns home after her father’s untimely death, she’s shocked to learn her mother has been named CEO of the family’s green energy business instead of her. Faced with a directive from the board to prove her stability and community commitment, she sets out to bolster her credentials by finding a woman of the right social standing to woo and marry. Enter Arden Gilderson, the wealthy, socially anxious daughter of one of the area’s most prominent families, who has admired Emery from afar for most of her life. Overwhelmed by the sudden attention, Arden vows to overcome her nerves long enough to enjoy herself for once in her life. Against all odds, the two women find they share not only an immediate sense of attraction and quirky sense of humor, but also the ability to offer one another balance and perspective. However, their unique and unexpected bond is tested as social and family pressure come crashing in from all sides.
Opposites might be enough to attract, but can Arden and Emery sustain each other as perceptions of who they’ve always been clash with who they must become?
Genres: contemporary, romance
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Swipe Right by Tagan Shepard
Kieran Hall has never been lucky in love. She married her high school sweetheart only to have him leave when she came out as pansexual. Then there was the rebound relationship that turned serious. It wasn’t long before they were out the door, too. For years Kieran avoided any attempts at finding the next person to break her heart, building a life that was comfortable but lonely. That loneliness finally pushes her to give dating another shot. The only problem is, without freshman homeroom or a chance meeting in a bar, she doesn’t know how to meet someone new.
With the help of her best friend, Penelope, Kieran takes the plunge into the intimidating world of dating apps. It’s just as bad as she knew it would be, but Pen is always there to pick her up and dust her off after another disaster. In fact, hanging out with Pen quickly becomes her main motivation to keep swiping right.
When one of her dates suggests that maybe her dating problems stem from her feelings for her best friend it leads Kieran to wonder, could love have been right there in front of her all along?
Genres: contemporary, romance
Order from Blackwell's here and get free worldwide shipping!
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