I cannot in good faith recommend this book to anyone. However, I will admit that it grabbed my attention and didn’t let go for all 116 pages. I really enjoyed the slow-burn prose, even if the content was, um, well… I won’t spoil it.

To be honest, I’m a little at a loss for words here. This is a difficult book to review. Did I particularly enjoy it? I’d hesitate to say that, if only to not end up on some kind of government watch list. However, I try to judge art by whether it accomplishes what it sets out to do, not by whether I personally enjoyed the experience. I don’t believe art owes us comfort. Characters can be unlikable and stories can be deeply fucked up because sometimes the point is to make you sit with something ugly. Art imitates life, etc., etc.

I respect a story that can provoke a visceral reaction out of me, even if that reaction is disgust. I finished reading this about half an hour ago and my stomach still feels a little squeamish. (And I’m no lightweight!) But despite its — for lack of a better word — bizarre twists and turns, it really is a chilling examination of a life on the margins of society and does have some interesting commentary on what we consider waste.

If you’re a horror fan, I say it’s best to go into this book as blind as possible, but I’ll reiterate: This is for real freaks only! You’ve been warned.

If you’re not a horror fan but your curiosity is killing you, I have your spoiler alert right here:

But let me be clear: reading (or listening to) a plot summary is not the same as reading the book. You’ll never get the same experience from a summary that you would from actually reading a book. There are just some things that have to be experienced firsthand.

HOWEVER!

I get that not everyone is into transgressive horror or experimental fiction, and I understand that human curiosity is inevitable. If it’s not your genre, there’s no harm in skipping it. I would never say that reading any of these books is as necessary as, say, a literary classic... but if you saw my post about a weird book and thought “I would never read this,” but you’re still kinda like... but what happens? This is for that specific situation.

It’s always better to experience things for yourself, but if curiosity is really killing you about a niche horror novel, I’ve got you.

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

Philosophers have debated free will for centuries, and there are essentially three schools of thought: determinism (everything is predetermined), libertarianism (we have total free will), and compatibilism (somehow both?). Based on these authors below, I have to say I’m starting to lean toward libertarianism (philosophically, not politically…). These books are proof that free will exists and that some people are using theirs to create the most unhinged narratives imaginable — and I fully support their right to be weird as fuck!

Some books play it safe. These books say fuck that. No premise is too weird, too specific or too unhinged. So the next time someone tells you that there are no original stories left, just hand them one of these.

Walking Practice by Dolki Min

A horny, shapeshifting alien crashes their spaceship into Earth and has to learn how to be human to survive. Unfortunately, they also have to eat to survive and it just so happens that humans taste pretty damn good.

“What does it mean to be a woman? Among other things, it means that you have to decorate yourself and act like a woman. No one has ordered me to do so; I willingly take on the responsibility. For if the performance is not carried out properly, I am nothing more than a monstrosity. It is imperative that I am not seen as a monster. My work and my life depend on it.”

Everything you learned in your high school English class? Go ahead and toss that out of the window! This book takes traditional syntax and says, I don’t know her. I’ve never read a book like this before. (Take a shot every time I say this! Blackout Edition.)

Vibe check: 👽🔪🫦
Read this if: You want body horror meets cultural commentary.

Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva

The year is 2272 and capitalism has destroyed the planet so badly that one of the only livable climates is Antarctica, which of course, has become a tropical holiday destination. Our protagonist is a little boy who has the deadly dengue virus and is getting bullied at school because of it.

“Life or cash? But what is life without cash, or, even worse, cash without life?”

You had me at “mutant mosquito boy goes to school.” ❤️ This is some extreme satire on capitalism that is built on pandemic destruction, something that is hitting a little too close to home these days. This story never goes where you think it’s going to. There are many parts I loved, but dare I say… this may have been too weird for me?

Vibe check: 🦟🏝️😵‍💫
Read this if: You want an absurd, anti-capitalist, revenge sci-fi.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

A traveling carnival family deliberately breeds their children to be freaks — using drugs, radiation, whatever it takes — so they can be the main attractions. Our narrator is an albino hunchback dwarf, and if you can believe it, she is the least interesting sibling. This book certainly isn’t for everyone, but no jury in the world could convict this book of not being one of a kind!

“They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born.”

Vibe check: 🎪😬🤡
Read this if: You want family drama that makes your own look relatively normal. Or you really loved AHS Freak Show.

Monstrilio by Gerardo Samano Cordova

A grieving mother keeps a piece of her dead son’s lung in a box. She feeds it and it turns into a little bat boy that she raises. Any questions? Don’t be fooled by this off-the-wall premise, though. This book is deeply moving and a really beautiful exploration of grief.

“Wouldn’t that have been a groundbreaking discovery, someone bringing a creature to life solely with their own grief and a prodigious unwillingness to let go?”

Vibe check: 🦇🫁💔
Read this if: You like your grief narratives with a touch of queer body horror.

Hard Copy by Fien Veldman

A woman falls in love with her printer. Personally, I have beef with my printer, so this could never be me. This book takes an office object — functional, dull, meant only to reproduce — and turns it into an object of desire. Hey, everyone has their coping mechanisms for the toll of capitalism.

“Every office worker is just a little puppet, and when the puppet breaks or gets mangled in the machinery gears, well, that’s no problem at all for the office system. The office is really just a machine like me, its staff easily replaceable components. People tend to overestimate their own value and importance, but I understand that this is crucial for the employee’s psychological motivation. Only if they feel this way will they show up for work, day in, day out.”

Listen, when you are committed to reading weird books, eventually you’re going to stumble into ‘girl falls in love with printer’ territory. I don’t make the rules. I first listened to this as an audiobook and I highly recommend it. When we get a POV switch in the last few chapters, this book really had me looking at my appliances a little differently. 👀

Vibe check: 🗄️🖨️🫦
Read this if: You’ve ever had a weird work crush.

Lobster by Guillaume Lecasble

A lobster survives being cooked while on board the Titanic and gives a human woman her first orgasm. What else do you need to know?

“Go back to being a lobster?! After all he had been through, even if Jules were to put him back in the water the very thought of rocks, seaweed, and the markings of the depths filled him with horror. He had tasted the light of human living and he could no longer do without it.”

I don’t know how to explain why, but this is something only a French person could write. I’m obsessed with the idea of someone reading this novella and thinking, “More people need to read this. I simply must translate!” I’m glad they did.

Vibe Check: 🦞🚢💦
Read this if: You ever wondered what happened to all of the uneaten crustations that were on the Titanic.

I Will Rot Without You by Danger Slater

I really had to push past my katsaridaphobia with this one! I’m not even really sure how to explain this one. Basically, Ernie has just gone through a breakup and his life is a mess. Literally. His apartment is being overrun by sentient mold and cockroaches. But then he meets his neighbor Dee. It’s a love story, but don’t go running to the romance section of your local bookstore. This book explores the dark intensity that love can take — loss, anger, possessiveness.

“Cockroaches fill up my life like raindrops in a reservoir.”

It’s hard to truly recommend this book, but if you can push past all of the grossness — and there’s a lot of it — this is actually a rather beautiful story. Sometimes love is gross.

Vibe Check: 😷🪳🤎
Read this if: You’re really good at compartmentalizing your phobias and don’t mind some truly bizarro fiction.

Got any other recommendations? Let me know!

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

While I have enjoyed reading in the past, I do suffer from being addicted to My Phone. (I’m kinda unique in that way!) Traditionally, I would be thrilled to have read 10-15 books a year — which, don’t get me wrong, considering about 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate, reading anywhere between 1 to 1,000 books in a year is worth celebrating — but last year, I read 56! And not that I have to prove anything to any of you, but they were mostly physical books and they varied in size, genre and medium. Again, not that it matters BITCH! (Sorry to get so aggressive. The continued discourse on reading has made me very agitated. Must we discourse on everything?)

I attribute my recent uptick in reading to a few tweaks I’ve made in the last twelve months. These small changes have completely changed my reading habits, and now I am imparting my wisdom onto you all. So, here are my tips for reading more books. (And if you can figure out how to not be insufferable about it, do let me know!)

1. The biggest thing that helped me read more was setting a rule that I have to read at least one page before I go to bed. Just one! I can doomscroll and watch Real Housewives all I want, but before I close my eyes, I need to read one little page. Since doing this for the last 12+ months, I can tell you that I have never once only read one page. What typically happens is that I either get really into the story and stay up until the wee hours of the morning, or I tell myself I can at least make it to the next chapter. (I love it when my Kindle tells me how many minutes it will take to finish a chapter. It’s like, really bitch? You can’t make it for seven more minutes?) Even if you do only make it through one page, that’s still one page closer to finishing the book! After all, this is a hobby, not a race.

2. This may seem counterintuitive, but stop reading a book if you don’t like it. We are not in school anymore. No one is forcing these books on you! It may seem obvious to some, but I always felt pressure to finish every book I started. Otherwise, what was it all for! But the reality is, if you don’t like the book, you’re simply not going to be inclined to pick it up. By dropping the books that aren’t doing it for me, I am freed up to read the ones I’m actually excited about. (This is another great reason to rent from the library instead of buying. I have zero shame in DNF’ing a book because that shit was free.) There are way too many books — good books! — out there to be wasting time on the ones that don’t resonate with you.

3. This is more of a preference and may be related to my short attention span, but I prefer to read several books at a time. (No, not like this.) I don’t have a strict system, but I typically like to have one literary fiction (meaning more character-driven and/or complex), one “fun” fiction (meaning more plot-driven and/or less complex), and one nonfiction (because I like to learn!). And if there’s a good celebrity memoir out there, I may throw that on as an audio as well. Having various books at my disposal — god bless my Kindle! — I can pick up a book according to my mood. Sometimes I’m too tired to think about the overarching themes of a story. Sometimes I just want to turn my brain off and read a slow burn about two people who hate each other but are really in love. And while a non-fiction may take me longer to get through, I never feel bogged down by it because I have my other books to keep me chugging along.

4. And lastly, did you know you can read short books? Me either! Not every book has to be War and Peace for it to “count.” Not that you should choose short books only to reach your reading goals (who are you trying to impress?), but when I say I read nine books in January, it may help to know that one of those was a graphic novel, three were under 200 pages, and another three were romance books I could read with half of my brain turned off.

Even though reading goals are a pointless metric, as they don’t take into account length or complexity, I have chosen to increase my reading goal to 60 for the year anyway. To keep it fun and flirty for myself, I’m going to be doing these seasonal reading recaps I’m calling In Da (Book) Club. And yes, I am very proud of that name. No dress code required. 😎

If you want to follow my reviews, you can find me on Pagebound. ✨ I’ve been trying to move away from Goodreads, and so far this has been my favorite alternative. It’s woman-founded, they have no AI-driven features, and they aren’t influencer-focused. I’ve been describing it to everyone as Goodreads meets Reddit.

the setlist:

Here are all the books I read in January and February:

The Stalker by Paula Bomer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Coin by Yasmin Zaher ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Everything Dead & Dying by Tate Brombal ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Common Goal by Rachel Reid ⭐️⭐️

Shy Girl by Mia Ballard ⭐️

Open, Heaven by Sean Hewitt ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Role Model by Rachel Reid ⭐️⭐️

The Long Game by Rachel Reid ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cleaner by Jess Shannon ⭐️⭐️

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Boyfriend Material - Alexis Hall ⭐️⭐️

The Best Dog in the World by Alice Hoffman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Come Closer by Sara Gran ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Evil Genius by Claire Oshetsky ⭐️⭐️⭐️

vip section:

These books made it past my velvet ropes and were given the incredible opportunity to overpay for a bottle of vodka with sparklers on it!!!

Everything Dead and Dying is a five-part series that I got an advance copy of. I’m not usually a comic book kind of gal, but I could tell it was about zombies and, well, I’ll pretty much consume anything that is zombie-flavored. I was rooting so hard for this queer little undead family! A family can truly look like anything. 🫶🏻

Open, Heaven is just, ugh (complimentary). I adore Seán Hewitt and the way he writes. He really captures perfectly how mortifying it is to have a crush on someone in this book. Because I loved this so much, I dusted off 300,000 Kisses from my shelf afterward. It’s an anthology of various examples of queer love throughout history.

Perfection was another banger for me, as it is a satire on a very specific type of person in the 2010s. (White hipster millennials who work remotely reading this book: “Wait, is this fucking play about us?”) A lot of this book really hit a nerve and I will be reevaluating my personality next quarter. I can’t wait to read this again in five years.

ur scaring the hoes:

bro quit being transgressive ur scaring the hoes

As I was putting this together, I decided to search the psychology behind why people love horror, and the first thing I read was the phrase benign masochism. I kind of love it. I think I’ll name my daughter Benign Masochism. 🩷 No, basically, consuming horror media is just a safe way for people to satisfy their curiosity about the more disturbing aspects of human nature. Okay, duh!

The Stalker isn’t scary in the traditional sense, though it does get pretty gnarly on those last couple of pages. But you’re sooo ready for it to happen that you don’t even care! This book is terrifying because it lets you into the mind of an entitled, white man. *shudders* I have no idea why or how the author got in the headspace to write this but I thought it was pretty impressive. Read at your own risk, this is the worst guy you can ever imagine.

Come Closer is your classic woman-gets-possessed, but I think it may have one of the best opening chapters I’ve ever read. She unknowingly delivers a note to her boss calling him a “c*cksucking f****t…” Yep, that’ll do it!

And obviously Everything Dead and Dying is included in this section because it’s zombies, so you know, gore and all ‘at.

crying in the club:

I don’t know why I’m crying in the club right now

I probably got the most misty-eyed at Everything Dead and Dying. No spoilers, but again, it’s zombies. You know the drill… Also, The Best Dog in The World, because, dogs. I couldn’t even get past the introduction without ugly crying.

not on the list:

Unfortunately, I had to call the bouncer on Shy Girl by Mia Ballard, Among Friends by Hal Ebbott and Scammer: Director’s Cut by Caroline Calloway.

I may have written the cuntiest review ever on Shy Girl. It was very Tyra Banks “I have never in my life yelled at a girl like this” coded. I wanted to DNF this every other page, but ultimately, I have FOMO and I wanted to know what was so “insane” about it. I didn’t find it overly fucked up, but I’ve seen all three Human Centipede movies, so don’t take my word for it. Put simply, this book has an interesting premise, but unfortunately, neither Mia nor ChatGPT has the writing chops to pull it off. I would love to read a version of Shy Girl written by somebody else one day.

Among Friends was just kind of… weird. I found the writing and dialogue to be very confusing. But then again, it’s supposed to be about male friendship, so I guess confusion makes a lot of sense. I got to the part where the friend who is going through a midlife crisis sexually assaults his longtime friend’s teenage daughter. That’s when I said okay that’s enough of that. ✌🏻 DNF!

I got an advanced copy of the new audiobook version of Caroline Calloway’s Scammer, which she is calling the “director’s cut” — and just like the four-hour director’s cut of The Lord of the Rings, I don’t need it. It’s a really fun idea to combine an audiobook with a podcast-style conversation, but I just don’t find Caroline charming enough to put up with it. I’m a chronically online millennial white woman who reads The Cut, so if this book isn’t for me, then I’m not sure who it’s for… DNF!

walk of shame:

I am deeply ashamed to say this, but… I didn’t really like Wuthering Heights. 🙈 Although it seems like that is a pretty common first take. A lot of people have told me that it’s worth reading more than once. The good news is I was able to enjoy the new movie because I didn’t have a strong attachment to the source material! Life can be so beautiful when you don’t go into something expecting to hate it. ❤️

I am surprised how many people reject this as a romance. Sure, it’s not in line with other books in the genre, but you can’t say it isn’t romantic. Like, being so in love with me that you want my ghost to haunt you until you go insane? Makes sense to me! Some of y’all lack goth sensibilities and it SHOWS! 💀🥀 Romance doesn’t always mean sane or healthy — just look around at some of your toxic-ass relationships!

My other walk of shame is not necessarily one I’m ashamed about, but like, I spent many years being a literature snob, so I’m kind of eating crow right now by loving the Game Changer series. I am reformed! Because I enjoyed those so much, I was inspired to pick up Boyfriend Material when I saw it available at the library. Did I find the writing very annoying? Yes. Did I still enjoy it? Yes… and what about it?? I have Husband Material and Father Material already on the docket. 🫡

encore!

Some may say, “There are so many books out there, why would you waste time on ones you've already read?” Well, today I’m starting my political campaign that we should all be re-reading more books that we liked. Maybe you were too busy trying to figure out the whodunnit to notice all the foreshadowing. Maybe you were reading it at 2 a.m. and missed the symbolism because you were half-asleep. Or maybe you've just lived more life since your first read, and suddenly a character's decisions hit different. Like, I’m not the same person I was in 2011 when I first read The Hunger Games! For one, my frontal lobe is fully developed and I’ve somehow become even more radicalized.

Now, I’m not here to shit on a beloved book series (who am I kidding, let’s not put it past me), but Collins really bonks us over the head with the themes here, huh? I get that this is intended for YA audiences, but damn, trust your readers to pick up on a little subtext… That being said, I’m geared up for Catching Fire next month!

last call:

Welp! The year has been off to a great start. I surprised myself with 9 books in January — that might be a record for me! I think the cold weather inspires the aesthetic of bundling up under my duvet with a book. (lol oh no, that’s giving divorced middle-aged mom. “I love to curl up with a good book!”)

Since last year, I’ve been trying to expand my horizons (ugh) and read various genres. So, I found myself ping-ponging between heavy literary fiction that made me feel things and comfort reads that let me tune everything out. But I didn’t forget to sprinkle in some horror books in there as well. (I’m complicated, but I’m not that complicated.) I started to ask myself if there was a throughline in any of my book choices, and so far all I’ve got is that I’m reading what I want, when I want. Cheers to that! 🍸

pregame:

Here are some books I’m looking forward to starting in the upcoming months!

screen time

Don’t let all of the books fool you, honey! I still managed to get plenty of screen time in these last couple of months. Sometimes, after a long night at the (book) club, you need a full day in front of a screen to recover from the hangover. Here are the movies I watched in January and February:

Is This Thing On? (2025) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

No Other Choice (2025) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Housemaid (2025) ⭐️⭐️

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sorry to Bother You (2018) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wake Up Dead Man (2025) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Send Help (2026) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Plainclothes (2025) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Hunger Games (2012) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wuthering Heights (2026) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Pillion (2025) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Passages (2023) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2026) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
*Not a movie, but it felt appropriate to include.

When I haven’t been reading or watching movies, I’ve also been enjoying my new hyperfixation hobby — playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. I’m embarrassed even saying that because it’s like, ew, what am I, guys’ girl? But then I’m like, wait, why do men get cultural ownership of pushing buttons on a controller? Can’t a girl roam historically accurate Ancient Greece with a giant spear without betraying her femininity??

unpopular opinions

I liked Emerald Fennell’s reimagining of Wuthering Heights — sue me! — and not that I have to prove anything to anyone, but I have read the book, and I even studied English literature in college. I feel as though I can both critique Fennell’s choices and still recognize that she has an eye for visual storytelling. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, of course, but I find a lot of the online discourse around this movie to be untethered to reality — that the film is the death of art, that Emily Brontë is rolling in her grave, that the Brontë estate needs to sue, that Fennell is a “figurehead to the literacy crisis” …I am begging y’all to get a grip. By liking a movie, I am somehow admitting to being illiterate, or like, contributing to the downfall of society? Damn, can’t a girl just catch a vibe!

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you come across any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tags: Non-Fiction, Essays

How many tears did I cry reading this book? The limit does not exist. I started reading this in my bed, at night, alone, because I knew I would be crying. A collection of essays about people's relationships with their DOGS? Yep, I'm bawling. This was a very sweet collection of stories and perfect for anyone who has ever loved a dog.

Shout out to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC! I will be purchasing a physical copy of this for myself and all my dog-loving friends.

Anyone who knows me knows that Maisie is more than just my dog. She’s my soul dog — née, my soul mate! I like to joke that I carried her for nine months and that she was an easy birth, a perfect baby. She slept through the night! Never cried! But just like a surprise pregnancy, she was not in my plan.

I was supposed to get a greyhound. A retired racing dog from the race tracks near Galveston. I had put in an application, had a phone screening with the rescue and even drove an hour to meet the available hounds. I have always loved sighthounds — elegant, quiet, low-maintenance. They felt like the perfect dog for me. It’s crazy to think that in another timeline, I would probably be sitting here with a 60-pound noodle quietly resting on my sofa instead of a scruffy ball of attitude insisting, not only on being in my lap, but on being held up close to my chest so that her head can rest on my shoulder, making it nearly impossible to work. It’s crazy to think that in another timeline, I could have known peace.

Despite wading knee-deep in the adoption process, I wasn’t fully convinced that now was the best time for me to get a dog. It was 2019, I had just been laid off and was working a temp job that a.) was not paying me what I was promised and b.) I absolutely hated. It felt irresponsible to take on a huge financial and time commitment like a dog. But as they say, you’re never ready to become a parent! As I was considering the greyhound adoption, a close friend, Chelsi, messaged me that their rescue dog was pregnant. Without even a second thought, I said, “I’ll take a puppy.”

The thing with mutts is that there is really no telling what they will look like. We tried to figure out what combination of breeds these puppies could be. Surely some mix of a chihuahua. Maybe a little poodle. Some dachshund? We really had no idea. For the next several weeks, I was Googling every possible combination of these breeds and more to try and get a sense of what I would be getting. For the record, none of these images were even remotely close to what I got. In fact, the dog that sits before me looks nothing like the dog I brought home seven years ago. Once, on a dating app, a guy thought I had three dogs because I had several photos with Maisie during her various puppy stages. She has had many eras.

I wish I could say that I saw the six puppies and knew immediately that she was mine. That we locked eyes and the heavens opened up, raining down rainbows and chicken jerky as we rode off together to start our new life. No, much like newborns, puppies don’t start getting cute until a couple of weeks in. Not to sound too much like Cruella DeVile, but they pretty much all looked like little black rodents to me (respectfully). After a week, Chelsi started sending me videos and photos of the puppies, claiming that she knew which one was mine. “She’s the quietest one,” she said. I took her word for it.

Leading up to bringing her home, I did my due diligence. I read The Art of Training Your Dog by those monks in New York. I ordered a hot pink crate with a matching fluffy bed. I bought high-quality puppy food, treats, collars, leashes, toys. Much like a first-time parent, I had all of these big ideas on how I would raise my puppy. She’ll be crate-trained and perfectly socialized. She'd come when called and only bark when appropriate. And she most definitely was not going to sleep in the bed. You can see where this is going, I’m sure.

That first night, I placed her in the hot pink kennel next to my bed and turned off the lights. She whined and cried. I tried to remind myself of what the baby puppy books said, how important it is to ignore the persistent crying so that they learn to self-soothe. I needed to be strong! I lasted all of three minutes before pulling her into bed with me. Seven years later, and Maisie hasn’t slept in a crate (let alone self-soothed) a day in her life. To this day, that hot pink kennel is collecting dust in my storage unit.

From that moment on, I was pretty much her bitch. She slept on the bed, she jumped on the couch, and she refused to eat any of the expensive, human-grade dog food I bought. I even resorted to sprinkling shredded cheese on top, and still, nothing! Like a new parent, I was desperately consulting the ancient texts (Reddit) to find out why my otherwise healthy puppy wasn’t eating. Basically, I concluded that she was just a picky bitch. (Ugh, our parents were right, karma really does come back once you have kids of your own. All those years of only eating chicken nuggets had finally come to bite me in the ass.) She also managed to escape every blockade I put in her way. Before leaving for work, I would craft a small fortress, leaving her just enough room to sleep, eat and go potty. And every day, I would come home to find her greeting me at the door. I eventually gave up and let her have free range of the whole place. To her credit, she always peed on the pad and I never came home to anything chewed up. She’s not some kind of animal.

After allowing her a few weeks to acclimate to her new home, I invited several friends over to meet the new baby puppy. I sat on the floor so she could curl up in my lap. Just imagine, four grown adults circling around me, oohing and aahing at a three-pound puppy, with me looking up at them, smiling like a proud new mother recovering from a C-section. Maisie, of course, wanted nothing to do with them. To this day, she pretty much wants nothing to do with anyone or anything other than me. And most days, I feel the same about her. I can’t say I’m the only dog owner to feel this type of bond with their dog, but I can say with certainty that not every dog owner has a bond like ours. It sometimes feels like we have our own language. I understand every whine, huff and bark, and even though she acts like she doesn’t, I fully believe she understands every word I say. I often think back to a specific interaction while walking around the park one day. A man stopped me to say, “I want to let you know that I can tell your dog loves you very much.” We weren't doing anything out of the ordinary. Maisie wasn't even looking up at me. But he saw it anyway, like some kind of dog whisperer who could sense an invisible tether between us, even as a stranger.

I know ‘real’ parents of ‘real’ children may scoff — relax, put your weapons down, I’m not claiming raising a puppy is the same — but all I know is that from the second I held her in my arms, it was game over. I imagine this is as close as you can get to feeling unconditional love without having a human child. It’s hard to imagine loving anything more than this. It almost hurts. It almost makes you wonder if it’s even worth it. To love something so deeply, knowing that it can’t last forever. (Perhaps those non-dog-people are on to something…) I tell Maisie all the time that I won’t live a single day longer than her, and I always mean it. This version of me, the one with a borderline unhealthy co-dependent relationship with a 13-pound menace, will cease to exist. The version of me that has to live on without her will not be the same. A part of me will be gone, leaving me with a scruffy hole in my heart.

I am hopefully several — several! — years away from that. (Science willing!) But that’s the thing with pets, we love them fully knowing that it can’t last forever. I try to remember that every time she begs for the last bite of my dinner or wants to clean my ice cream spoon. Or when she wakes me up by licking directly up my nose. Or when she climbs up behind me to rest across my shoulders and quietly whine in my ear while I’m driving. Or when she aggressively nudges me in the middle of the night because she wants to sleep under the pillow I am already lying on. Because one day I know I’d give anything to have her do it again. She may not be the perfect dog, but she’s perfect for me.

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you come across any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

For those who aren’t familiar, each of these books covers a different couple within the same professional hockey universe — except for books #2 and #6, which both center around Ilya and Shane. They can be read as standalones (again, with the exception of #2 and #6), but all the characters are intertwined throughout. They are spicy, but I’ll admit, there were several moments I was surprised by how much of an emotional reaction they got out of me.

Game Changer, #1

⭐️ - DNF

So, right off the bat, I fear I have flown too close to the sun. This was practically illegible.

This reads like fanfiction (derogatory). Weak characters, weak dialogue, and perhaps worst of all, the sexy bits weren’t even that great?? I was willing to skim through some cringe if it was hot enough, but it just didn’t add up for me. I had to DNF this one, which is sooo tough because Scott-Kip supremacy! ✊🏻 I have to hand it to the show because they did these two much better justice than this book did. I really cannot believe this is sold for $18.99 at Barnes and Noble… I almost stopped reading the entire series right here, but the community encouraged me to keep going. So, I soldiered on. 🫡

Heated Rivalry, #2

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Now that I’ve gone back to the first book, it’s actually quite impressive how much Rachel’s writing improved between just these two. Not saying she’s the voice of a generation or anything, but at least the characters made sense and the dialogue was more realistic than the previous book. I decided to bump it up a star.

More of my thoughts on Heated Rivalry here:

Tough Guy, #3

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Dare I say… I liked this more than Heated Rivalry?? There’s just something about the whole opposites attract thing that really got me! While HR was all about the rivals-to-lovers arc (which, don’t get me wrong, who doesn’t love that?), Tough Guy was more of a sweet, rekindled-friends-to-lovers vibe. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I would totally fall for a Ryan type. What can I say, I love boys who are big and sad! Like many hetero-leaning women, I too am plagued with “I can fix him”-itis. Careful, it’s contagious. 😷

Common Goal, #4

⭐️⭐️

These two freakin’ idiots! This book falls under the “idiots in love” category, which, for those who don’t know, is when two characters are in love but don’t realize it. The two characters are experiencing the same internal dialogue, but refuse to recognize that they are on the same page. It’s the "wow, I love him so much, but he's too amazing and there’s no way he'd ever be into me" type shit. It’s incredibly frustrating. I mean, these two fully hook up in the name of “practicing” and still don’t realize they like each other? Whatever! It does make it pretty satisfying when they finally cut the bullshit and admit they are madly in love with each other 96% in.

I will say I can totally see myself getting a blackout brunch with Kyle and having a great time. He had my ass laughin’! Anyway, I enjoyed this one but not quite as much as the last two.

Role Model, #5

⭐️⭐️

I find it really charming that each book in the series offers a different trope — we have strangers to lovers, enemies to lovers, opposites attract, age gap/miscommunication, and now, grumpy/sunshine.

Despite doing the right thing in calling out his best friend’s behavior, Troy’s life has seemingly fallen apart — he is hated by the league and the fans, has been traded to a losing team in Ottawa, and now his reputation is tarnished after being friends with a homophobic rapist for all these years. Oh, and his secret boyfriend just broke up with him and is already engaged. To put it lightly, Troy is grumpy. Enter Harris, who is the opposite of Troy in every way: friendly, cheerful, chatty, goofy, and most importantly, openly gay.

It was very sweet watching Troy transform from a closed-off, angry loner to a happy team player willing to stand up for what he believes in. It’s a good reminder that doing the right thing isn’t always the easiest choice, but surrounding yourself with the right people can make all the difference.

We also get a lot of Ilya cameos since he is the Ottawa team captain. Love that guy!

The Long Game, #6

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Alright, well, turns out I could read these boys do just about anything. What can I say? I love my two gay boyfriends! 🫶🏻

This follow-up on their relationship was pretty much how I would expect it to go if this were real life. No one likes being a secret, and the idea of keeping your relationship a secret until you’re both retired was never going to work. Especially for Ilya — he has moved to Ottawa and essentially has no family, has lost contact with his old friends, cannot return to his home country, has moved from a great hockey team to a terrible hockey team, and still, he can’t tell anyone about the one good thing he has in his life. None of this is Shane’s fault, but this would break even the strongest of us! Ilya’s journey with his mental health and watching them navigate their relationship through all of this was kind of emotional.

Despite this series being categorized as idealistic, I actually found Shane and Ilya’s character development pretty realistic. As I’ve mentioned, Rachel’s writing greatly improves throughout the series, and Ilya may be the best, most well-rounded character she has. I love Ilya’s witty quips and cocky attitude, and we see plenty of that in this book, but I also appreciated getting this entirely new side of him as well — his kind-hearted, generous, sentimental side. I’m really looking forward to watching this all play out in season two!

My one complaint: why the fuck would you get married to Diamonds by Rihanna?

Don’t let these lower star ratings fool you — I enjoyed these! I just have a strict rating rubric for myself, and what are we if we don’t have structure, ya know? I like to think of each rating as its own bookshelf, and despite really enjoying this series, I’m just not sure I can put Tough Guy and Pride & Prejudice next to each other. However, they were a lot of fun and I can see myself sprinkling more like them into my personal reading curriculum in the future. See, I said “curriculum” — I’m still an intellectual!

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, that’s between me and God. 💋

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Tags: Contemporary, Literary Fiction,

We’re back to our regularly scheduled programming: books about unhinged women! I’m not exactly sure I enjoyed this book, but I definitely admire it. It took me a bit to get the hang of the narration style (short, choppy, compulsive), but once it clicked, I flew through it.

The Coin follows an unnamed Palestinian woman with impeccable style as she pursues a dream that previous generations have failed at: to live and thrive in America. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys in New York and befriends a homeless swindler. She becomes entangled in a Birkin resale scheme, a hustle built around bags whose value “increases, year by year, regardless of poverty, of war, of famine.” Our narrator accumulates luxury, all while remaining acutely aware of the suffering happening all around her.

For the narrator, her designer clothes and luxury goods function as cultural markers. These objects promise access to an elite, socially protected world, and she understands exactly what these objects are meant to communicate. Her inherited Birkin bag becomes a powerful symbol. It’s a product deliberately made scarce, making its value sustained through exclusion. By carrying one around, she is signaling to those around her that she is successful, aspirational and legitimate. This novel suggests that in New York, social status resides less in what you are than in how you are perceived. In a city where the narrator is more aware of her skin color than ever before, her Birkin becomes a shield against certain biases.

“I came from a place where a bag could never have power, where only violence spoke. And suddenly I had something that others wanted to possess, I was a woman who others wanted to embody. Well, it was just a bag, let’s not exaggerate. But sometimes the smallest detail is a portal into another world.”

Then we meet Trenchcoat, the homeless swindler she befriends after noticing him wearing the Burberry coat she discarded on the street. He drags her into a Birkin reselling scheme, making for an excellent critique of class aspiration. He wears a Burberry trenchcoat (rescued from the trash) and a fake Rolex watch. He knows the codes perfectly — how to dress, how to behave in the Hermès store, how to signal belonging. Like the narrator, he understands that status is something you curate and project. Consumer culture offers the illusion that identity can be purchased, and for a moment, it almost works…

What Trenchcoat ultimately doesn’t have is the social infrastructure to support these signifiers. It doesn’t matter that he knows the codes or that he looks the part. Without class legitimacy, his costume will always collapse. (Re: him being a homeless swindler.) Unlike Trenchcoat, the narrator is not bluffing. She actually has the money to support the lifestyle she leads. She can afford these status symbols and access to these spaces, and yet, they still fail to fully protect her. The Birkin bag may elevate her, but it cannot erase race, history, and inherited trauma.

The titular coin is another dense metaphor: both a shekel, Israeli currency, and a British pound, carrying the weight of colonial history and displacement in her home country. The narrator believes she swallowed it as a child and is now lodged in her lower back — unreachable, rendering her perpetually “unclean.” Her fixation on cleanliness reminds us that women are culturally coded as inherently impure. They are only acceptable if they are disciplined in suppressing any trace of animality — shaving, plucking, deodorizing, erasing any evidence of being anything other than “clean.” Cleanliness becomes both a moral obligation and a survival strategy. And as a woman of color, her self-disgust intensifies now that she lives in a society where whiteness is equated with virtue.

“These days, even the most hideous monsters can become desirable with the right makeup and surgery. I resented this, of course, because it was unfair to women who possessed natural beauty. And yet I knew that if I were to be truly natural, unwashed, and unshaved, I would be untouchable, unbearable to look at.”

Despite what we are led to believe, capitalism will not resolve these anxieties. In fact, it feeds off of them! The narrator’s luxury purchases and compulsive CVS hauls aren’t frivolous, but desperate. Each purchase promises a cleaner, more acceptable self. But the relief never comes, and it never will. Instead, the system reinforces the very shame it claims to alleviate. Capitalism promises that we can all transcend class through consumption, but it’s clear that only some are allowed to fully transcend.

These luxury status symbols don’t grant belonging. They only confirm it if society already believes you belong. Imagine two women with the same designer handbag. One is a stay-at-home mother, her kids in private school, living in an upper-class neighborhood. The other is a barista with student loans who saved diligently for the same bag. Despite the object being identical, the social reading is not. For the first woman, the bag confirms what people already assume. For the second, it raises suspicion. It’s pretty well known that a lot of wealthy people carry counterfeit luxury goods despite being able to afford the real thing. Because why not? They won’t be questioned on whether or not their items are real, and you might as well save yourself tens of thousands of dollars. They’re rich, not stupid! On the other hand, less affluent people will always be scrutinized even when their items are real. Authenticity matters far less than presumed legitimacy. The elite get the benefit of the doubt; everyone else has to prove themselves endlessly.

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tags: Horror, Comic Book, LGBTQ

Full disclosure: I don’t know much about comics. I remember once this guy let me borrow his copy of Watchmen and then asked me every day for months if I had finished it. I never did… So I couldn’t tell you how Everything Dead and Dying fits into the broader canon of graphic novels or where it lands stylistically within the medium.

What I do know a lot about, however, is zombies. I can’t get enough of the stuff! Seriously, I’m one of the few elite soldiers who finished the entire Walking Dead series despite every brain cell telling me it’s time to let go. I’ve pretty much seen every iteration of a dystopian zombie apocalypse you can think of, and I can confidently report that the genre has pretty much been picked clean to the bone. Will that ever stop me? Nope! So when I saw this beautiful cover of a guy milking a zombie cow, it certainly piqued my interest.

After just one issue, this story had me by the ankles. I was already rooting hard for this queer little family. (Not only are there two dads, but two-thirds of them are undead. A family can truly look like anything. 🫶🏻)

Jack Chandler lives quietly on a farm with his zombie husband and adopted daughter (also zombie). He spends his days tending to his crops and maintaining the routine of not just his family, but the entire neighborhood, for over a decade. What immediately sets this dystopian story apart is that the apocalypse has already happened, and at this point, the zombies aren’t that much of a threat. There really isn’t a lot of violence in Jack’s day-to-day… that is, until the outsiders arrive and all hell breaks loose.

Plenty of dystopian stories gesture at the idea that “whoa, actually, humans were the real monsters all along,” but this series feels more specific than that, way beyond the usual do-what-it-takes survivalism. Most zombie narratives align us with the scavengers: a ragtag group on the road, just looting abandoned buildings in the name of survival. But here, we see a flipped perspective. It is the outsiders who stumble upon Jack’s peaceful town and deem it unnatural. To me, this story touched on the human impulse to eliminate what doesn’t belong. In a matter of hours, they destroy this neighborhood completely, along with the family living at its center. In trying to preserve their own version of humanity, they annihilate someone else’s.

This begs the question, who gets to decide what a life worth living looks like? There is an assumption that survival must conform to familiar structures, and there is something quietly radical in how Jack chooses to live among the undead. He allows them to be as they are while still being loved. In a genre that often revolves around restoring order and humanity, this story offers something else — acceptance. As a gay man in a rural farming community, Jack already knew what it meant to live differently long before the world ended. He already understood isolation, judgment and the work required to build a family outside of the traditional scope. The apocalypse simply gave him another reason to protect a life the world insisted shouldn’t exist.

Shout out NetGalley and Image Comics for the ARC. All thoughts are my own, for better or worse. (I said what I said!)

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, that’s between me and God. 💋

This book is certainly a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing, which was made painfully obvious when looking at the reviews on Goodreads. (I just know when a book’s ratings alternate between 5-star and 1-star reviews, I gotta get my paws on it.) After reading it, I’m not surprised by this. Our narrator isn’t exactly likable. She is contradictory, impulsive, and will most definitely make you say, “what the fuck is she doing?” But that’s what you get when you prioritize interiority over likability!

Despite giving it four stars, I will admit this book lost me a few times. There is one part in particular that I really wish I could have filed a complaint against. (IYKYK… 🚽🩸) But I always appreciate a wild ride and this was… certainly that.

This book had me thinking about how much of womanhood feels like insider information. Motherhood. Marriage. Menopause. (MMM, flip it around, Wicked Wicked Witch!) It’s not like these are fringe experiences; in fact, they are the most common transitions in a woman’s life. And yet, it seems as though many of us arrive at them with little preparation. The whole time I was reading, I kept wondering why there seems to be so much gatekeeping in womanhood. Isn’t the female experience hard enough with all the capitalism and patriarchy??

Marriage, for example, is often sold as an endpoint for women. It is the ultimate goal, isn’t it gals! Just look at all the women around you in their happy marriages! They love the emotional labor! In All Fours, our narrator’s dissatisfaction with her marriage isn’t framed as a dramatic betrayal or even any outright disagreements. She doesn’t villainize her partner. (If anything, she kind of villainizes herself…) The takeaway that I got was more about how limiting the structure of marriage can be, and how oftentimes it is less about conflict between you and your partner, but rather a matter of inertia.

Motherhood can also be romanticized almost to the point of dishonesty. Not saying that the miracle of birth isn’t amazing, but up until recently, it seems as though a lot of the gritty details were withheld. (Like, what do you mean you ripped your asshole open?) I get it, you don’t want to scare women out of pushing the human race forward. (Too late.) But this book made me think about how that kind of silence can backfire. When we don’t talk about the trauma of birth or the full range of emotions that come with motherhood, anything less than ecstatic starts to feel like a moral failure. Nothing about giving birth and motherhood looks easy. It’s okay to complain just a little bit.

And then there’s menopause. I’ll admit, I have practically given zero thought to menopause. Why would I? It is always framed as some vague thing that happens waaay down the line. I’m not sure I even really knew what it was outside of ‘woman stops giving birth’ and the occasional hot flash. All Fours made me more aware of the massive biological and psychological upheaval that all women go through at a certain point. It’s strange that something as universal and inevitable is discussed as if it were niche. It is almost as if women fully understood what awaited them with all of these major life events, they might insist on a different system altogether… Patriarchy works best when suffering is reframed as your purpose in life!

I haven’t quite reached these stages of womanhood yet, but All Fours felt a bit like an unsettling preview. This feels like a book I might want to revisit in ten years, just to see how differently it lands. Until then, I’ll sit with it and let life catch up.

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you see any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

If you have made it this far without ever reading Animal Farm, it is time to reopen the schools! This book is required 👏🏻 fucking 👏🏻 reading! 👏🏻

The last time I read this was probably in high school, and if I know my teenage self, I barely paid attention. (I won’t get too into it, but I was a particular kind of annoying student who never did their assignments, yet still managed to get As. I aced a book report once by reading the back cover and just kinda wingin’ it.) But around this time last year, I wanted to squeeze in one more book before the new year, so I picked up this little number.

There really is no other way to say it: this book is brilliant. It’s almost absurd how much Orwell manages to pack into just 140 pages. All without making it intimidating or difficult to read, I might add! It is masterful how he was able to turn dense political critique into something akin to a children’s story, ensuring that his message would be impossible to miss and accessible to anyone, regardless of age, class, reading level, etc. It is the reason why this book has been in the cultural conversation for decades (and why it still shows up on banned book lists…). Orwell really understood the concept that if you want an idea to make an impact, simplicity is often the key.

“In fighting against man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices.” — okkkk foreshadowing vibes…

At its core, Animal Farm is an allegorical fairy tale about the dangers of authoritarianism, and is a reminder that even the noblest of causes can be subverted by power and greed — a warning we somehow keep ignoring.

There are a lot of obvious things I could state here, but I’ll let you do that work on your own. What I will say is that Animal Farm remains relevant eighty years later because, for some reason, human beings consistently believe that we are too enlightened to fall for the same patterns of the past. (History repeats itself, yada yada yada.) We like to believe that everyone in the past was primitive and that we are so much more sophisticated, more informed, and more resistant to manipulation than they were.

Téa Obreht says it best in her introduction in the 75th anniversary edition:

“We grow bored with the lessons of the past. […] We tell ourselves, that the past is not only the past, but already ancient history. Things can never get as bad as they once were because, unlike those who came before us, we are good people who know better than to let it happen again. […] The notion that western countries are clever and strong enough to both recognize and resist the group of total totalitarianism is a dangerous myth.”

One could say that the most dangerous part is not a tyrannical leader, but rather the belief that we would be able to recognize tyranny before it arrives.

What Animal Farm does a terrifyingly good job of illustrating is how easily language can be emptied of meaning and repurposed to justify just about anything. In the story, the pigs do not seize control through brute force alone. They do so by slowly altering and twisting the words that the other animals have grown to trust — equality, freedom, loyalty. Manipulation does not require stupidity or malice. It simply needs authority and a listening public that is exhausted. On the farm, the animals are tired. They are busy. They are hungry. They want to believe that someone else is keeping track of the details, and that their hard work will ultimately pay off as promised. As the pigs slowly begin to rewrite history, they rely on the deeply human tendency to doubt our own memory when faced with a confident voice telling us otherwise.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

We like to believe that propaganda only works on people who are ignorant or hateful, but as Animal Farm insists, intelligence is not a defense. No one is immune to manipulation, no matter how well-educated or well-intentioned one may be. The animals didn’t lose their freedom overnight because tyranny does not arrive at one’s doorstep fully formed — it arrives sounding incredibly reasonable. Reassuring, even! By the time the truth becomes painfully obvious, the language needed to name it has already been taken away…

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

A few years ago, I read Mona Awad’s book Bunny, sort of an Instagram darling amongst weird girls who like to read. It was indeed weird. I loved it. So when I read the synopsis for Rouge — “Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut” — I knew I would be in for a wild ride. I am not a Disney Adult, so I had to brush up on what Snow White was even about in case I needed to pick up on any parallels. The crux of it is this: it is a dark mother-daughter psychodrama rooted in beauty and envy. So, yeah, look forward to that.

Fairy tales have long reinforced Western beauty standards, so it makes sense that the author would be inspired by them here. Our main character’s name is Belle, as if her mother imposed an identity centered around beauty right from birth. Throughout the story, Belle is fixated on her appearance and constantly feels inadequate because of her looks. The irony here is that Beauty and the Beast’s Belle is a poster child for inner beauty and resilience, while this Belle chooses to seek external perfection at the expense of self-acceptance and peace.

“Didn’t you envy? Didn’t you want? A mirror is only a mirror, Belle. It only ever reflects back what we desire and long for.”

Just as a note: I really enjoyed how in the original Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, the Evil Queen does not drop dead, but is forced to dance herself to death in red-hot clogs. Slay, mama! 💃🏻

The beauty industry is ripe territory for horror. There is a cult-like nature that is easy to tap into. There are rituals, hierarchies, secrecy, and of course, what every good cult needs: promises of transformation. Despite this story having magical and surreal elements, I found that there was little exaggeration. It is truly haunting the lengths people (women) will go to achieve and maintain beauty…

As readers, there is zero indication that Belle is ugly. (No such thing as an ugly woman!!) She is half Egyptian, so we can at least assume her features are darker than her mother’s and the blonde girls she grew up with, so the racial element of the story is clear. Since white and bright is the beauty standard, Belle assumes she must be the opposite: ugly. As a teen in the early 2000s, the standard was tall, coked-out-thin, and blonde. I was 0 for 0, so I can relate.

This story resonated with me on many levels. Trust, I was a young woman during the beauty YouTube boom of 2015-2016. I was watching every beauty influencer, buying every foundation, lipstick, and blush they were “obsessed with.” I followed all the makeup routines in hopes of looking just like them. Then I realized it wasn’t about the makeup, it was all about the skincare! So I of course had to turn my wallet towards serums, tonics, and essences instead. I was a recent college graduate, barely making above minimum wage, and I was a VIB Rouge member at Sephora. Beauty comes with many privileges, so it is easy to get spellbound by its promises… However, if you allow yourself to go down this kind of rabbit hole, you can best believe that self-hatred is only a hop, skip and a jump away!

You should be kinder to yourself, she says to me softly, her eyes staring right into my eyes. Like they know. They know exactly how cruel I can be.

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, that’s between me and God. 💋

Alright, I was curious… and guess what? I HAD FUN! Rachel, you crazy girl. I don’t know how to explain it, but this is something only a woman could write.

Despite waxing poetic about my reading taste earlier, I will admit that I occasionally dabble in a little fanfiction*. (And I know a lot of y’all do too, so don’t even play with me!) It’s a new thing I’ve picked up, which is actually an amazing and beautiful thing to do at age 34. Over the summer, I read a hockey fanfiction — something if you had asked me even a year ago if I would ever do, I’d spit my cold brew all over you. It was hot and sweet and I started texting my friends that I suddenly love hockey. Cut to a month ago, when I heard whispers of a gay hockey romance airing on HBO. I thought to myself, “omg that psychic told me I was a master manifestor and she was right!” I manifested this. Little did I know that hockey romance is a huge genre. (Horny Canadians, I was unfamiliar with your game…)

* Personally, I don’t include fanfiction in my reading taste because I place it in a separate box in my mind. It’s like watching television for me. I’ll read my “real” book and then watch a few episodes (chapters) before bed. My threshold for their quality is lower because a. It’s free, b. No publisher or editor is reading them with a critical eye, and c. These people write simply for the love of the game. I respect it. (Although I really should count some of them toward my reading goals. Why this shit longer than War and Peace??) And if I’m being completely honest, some of these works are legitimately better than published books I’ve read… but that’s another topic!

One may wonder, why are the majority of gay romances written by women? And why the hell are they so good at it? I had to sit on that for a while, but ultimately my conclusion is that the romance genre is simply dominated by women in general, both as writers and readers. Books like this are literally intended for female audiences. The reason it appeals to so many women could vary, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because they like to see men being romantic and attentive without having to insert themselves into the narrative. (Also, it’s hot.) With a M/F romance, it’s difficult not to center yourself and it goes without saying, but they are largely — how do you say? — insanely unrealistic. (I’m sure the gay ones are too, but I wouldn’t know! Therefore, I can live in ignorance.) I get that the fantasy of it is the point. But I read George R.R. Martin, so, unless there’s a head on a damn spike and a map I can’t understand, I don’t need that kind of fantasy.

I don’t think it’s good for the hetero female psyche to read too much about “perfect” men and relationships. It sets idealistic expectations and leads to disappointment when your husband actually can’t pick you up and flip you around with one arm. Not that straight men couldn’t learn a thing or two about being attentive partners, but alas, men are people too, which means they have flaws. One flaw being that they can’t smash you into a mattress six times in a row. (Dammit, every now and then I accidentally back myself into a men’s rights corner. 🙄) I’m certainly not knocking these M/F romances but, ya know, it’s important to stay grounded.

There is also a big distinction between M/M stories and queer stories — both are valid but if you’re looking for a book that explores and portrays the gay experience, one that is intended for a queer audience, you’ll probably be disappointed picking up one of these M/M books. In the same way that I wouldn’t pick up a cover like this expecting a deep, nuanced take on a woman in her relationship. (Although Mad, Bad and Dangerous in Plaid is an absolutely genius title. I wish I had thought of that. I’m imagining myself in my 60s opening up a fabric shop. It loses my husband money every month, but he knows it makes me happy.)

(Ugh, I feel the annoying need to defend myself and say I do read a lot of books about the queer experience, written by queer authors. I’m a motherfuckin’ ally! But those don’t have bouncing in them, so they’re less fun to write about.)

Anywho, back to Heated Rivalry. Look, are there ways this could have been improved? Yes. Would I have loved a little more character development before we got straight into 🐬💦? Yes. Was there an opportunity for a stronger message about homophobia in professional sports? Of course! But no one said this was the Next Great American Novel. In order to keep the integrity of my rating system, I do have to give it a 2, but if I’m rating it on a fun scale, hell, let’s give ‘em 5!

I do feel the strong urge to start watching hockey, but I have a feeling I’ll just be disappointed when they don’t all start making out on the ice. :/

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

With the rise of “bookfluencers,” it has become incredibly easy to get swept up in the hype. I recently read a book against my better judgment because someone I liked on YouTube gave it four stars. The book was… something. To each their own, but after decades of reading, I know exactly what I like and what I don’t like. And I can confidently say I don’t like books where a character endures unspeakable trauma for no reason other than to fall in love with their abuser… No judgment. (Okay, a little judgment. Y’all toxic!) I like to call most of these “popcorn books”. They’re fun! They’re easy! They give you the satisfaction of calling yourself a reader! And believe me, I like to eat popcorn for dinner as much as the next gal, but I can’t have it every night.

Despite what some may think, reading is not a monoculture. Just because we’re both at a Barnes and Noble on a Tuesday afternoon does not mean we read the same things. You cannot just ask someone random for a book recommendation... To be clear, there is no wrong way to read and if you read for joy, that is completely valid. Who am I to judge someone who reads for escapism? Read your fairy-monster-sex books! Fuck if I care! Read fifty books with the same redemption arc! Go girl, give us nothing! In my opinion, reading is better than not reading. But before I take your book recommendation, I’m going to need to know what kind of reader you are.

Ring the pretentious alarm! She’s going off! 🚨

I am not a comfort reader. I generally* don’t read for escapism. Some may wonder, why read devastating things when we can just look out the window? Well, reader, some of us are plagued with a psychological itch that can never be scratched. I am always looking to uncover some profound truth about life. I have an impulse to explore things that are not easily explained. I want a book to completely change the way I think, and if it’s really good, change the way I live. I’m sorry if this comes across as being an intellectual snob. Curse my big galaxy brain. 😔

*I say generally here because I don’t mind a little fluff on occasion. Like, I just read Heated Rivalry last week and had a blast. Zero emotional excavating required! Just pure gay longing and boning!

Earlier this year, I took this Read Your Color quiz. I believe it really sums up the different types of readers nicely. (Not that an internet quiz could ever define me. I’m an enigma!!) I’m happy to report that my results were pretty well-balanced, but my clear tops were blue and purple, with orange trailing shortly behind.

The blue highlights my desire for interiority and emotional depth. I always say I value characters over plot. Trust me, I have loved many books where nothing fucking happens. A woman wanders a deserted alien planet. A woman takes sleeping pills for an entire year. A woman stays in a motel thirty minutes away from her family. (I rarely read books with male narrators, sorry.) But what I get from these stories is access to an internal world: what a character is thinking, what they’re feeling, how they justify themselves. I love characters that are morally ambiguous and slightly unsettling. They are flawed, but in a way that most of us are. Rage, grief, desire, envy, boredom — these are easier to reflect on when you’re looking in from the outside.

I’ll never know what it is like to watch civilization collapse around me, but I understand the uncertainty of the future. I’ll never know what it’s like to abandon my family, but I understand the desire for change. I’ll never know what it is like to lose a son, harvest a piece of his liver, and have it turn into a freaky little bat boy, but at some point, I will know grief.

The purple explains my tolerance for strangeness. I love weird ass books, y’all! I don’t really care for black-and-white, right-and-wrong storytelling. It’s exciting to read books that challenge the norm and allow you to stretch your imagination. A girl falls in love with her printer? Let’s see where this goes! A sex-crazed, gender bending, human-eating alien? Yeah, I’ll take it. A mutant mosquito boy goes to school in a dystopian future where the only livable place is Antarctica, which of course has become a tropical holiday destination? Say less! I like when a book reminds you that free will exists.

And then there is orange, which accounts for my fondness for transgression. I am a horror fan, but don’t ever confuse that with me wanting to be shocked just for shock’s sake. What I am interested in are books that can push something to the absolute limit — violence without justification, revenge without redemption, grief without closure, etc. A book that makes me say, “I really hope they never make this into a movie…” I have a high tolerance for intensity, so I respect a book that removes the usual guardrails. Let’s just say I am very comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Saying all of THAT to say: when I rate a book, I am not being objective. These ratings are deeply biased and align with my own personal interests. (My stars, my rules!! 💋) So, if I give your favorite book two stars, you can take that up with God!

⭐️

Did not finish it. A scam. A crime against humanity. Inspires me to write my book because I guess anyone can get published these days. I would not recommend this to anyone.

⭐️⭐️

Finished, but reluctantly. Weak writing. Weak characters. Maybe there is a broader theme if I squint? This is basically “I see what you tried to do, but it’s a no for me.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the baseline for all books. Did I finish it? Yes. If someone asked me if I liked it, would I say yes? Yes. Will I be thinking about it later? Not really. I would recommend this to most people. It probably already has a development deal to become a movie, and yeah, I’ll be seeing it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is a book I really enjoyed. Great writing. Great characters. I love the themes and/or feelings it evokes. I can already see myself rereading. I would recommend this to people who align with my tastes.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A masterpiece. Changed my way of thinking. Offered a perspective I had never considered. Will talk about it with anyone who will listen. Has major personal and/or cultural significance. I will not only recommend it, but buy you a copy for your birthday.

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

Hot dog lovers, this one’s for us! If you’ve ever dreamed of eating your way across America in search of the perfect hot dog, Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus is going to hit you right in the sweet spot. Jamie practically lives out my dream as she embarks on a self-proclaimed “Hot Dog Summer” — traveling the U.S., tasting every style of hot dog she can find, and asking one of life’s big questions: what really makes a great hot dog? Along the way, she dives into the history, culture, and quirks of America’s favorite mystery meat. It’s funny, thought-provoking, and packed with fun facts. (And some not-so-fun facts...)

Famously (well, at least among those who know me), hot dogs are one of my favorite foods. Even during my 13 years as a vegetarian, I still had the occasional hot dog as a truly guilty pleasure. Now that I’m no longer a vegetarian (a topic for another time), I can indulge in hot dogs with zero restraint. (Though I still need a tiny dose of cognitive dissonance...). It’s the eternal gag with the hot dog: “What’s even in those things anyway?!” When I was a vegetarian and felt guilty about eating a hot dog, someone would always say, “It’s not like it’s real meat anyway!” which felt both reassuring and horrifying.

As a kid, I would only eat my hot dogs if they had “black lines” on them, meaning perfectly charred from the grill. That preference remains unchanged in adulthood. It’s all about the right “snap!” on the first bite, paired with a pillowy-soft bun. And for an “upscale” dog, I’ll never turn down a bacon-wrapped, specifically from a greasy street cart after a late night. Raw Dog certainly forced me to reckon with the darker side of the hot dog, while also making me crave one more than ever. 🌭

A Few Things You’ll Learn Reading Raw Dog:

• The difference between a hot dog and a sausage (and a frankfurter and a wiener…).

• How the hot dog’s ancestry stretches back roughly 2.5 million years ago.

• The first cookbook published in the 13 Colonies was written by a woman and has the first published recipe for “katchup”.

• The cultural impact of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and how Roosevelt basically called him the early-1900s equivalent of a “liberal snowflake cuck”… At least we got the FDA out of it!

• That ordering a filet mignon is not morally superior to eating a hot dog.

• The surprising backstory to Auntie Anne’s. (Spoiler: it’s giving Christian girlboss!!)

• More than you’ll ever want to know about MLE (Major League Eating) and the racism (and don’t forget sexism!) that exists in the world of hot dog eating contests — shocker!

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

Ah, the feminine urge to murder your former lovers and eat their organs. 💕Imagine a successful female food critic (cool), who has a lot of sex (very cool), and occasionally murders and eats men (admit it, cool!). Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger had me hooked from the start, and there were many moments when I couldn’t put it down. I fear this is a book I must make my entire personality… I support women’s rights and their wrongs!

At first, it’s easy to dismiss Dorothy’s dining preferences as purely metaphorical; a pointed commentary on gender, power, and consumption. But about halfway through, I began to wonder what exactly the “moral ambiguity” was in this story. Obviously, there’s nothing morally ambiguous about murdering and eating your exes. (I do not endorse this behavior, no matter how rad it is.) But once we meet her longtime lover in his butchery, it all clicked for me. We, as readers, were meant to grapple with our own choices. (Ugh, I hate when I have to do that!) Dorothy may be a ruthless killer, but aren’t we all complicit in some form of immorality simply by being meat-eaters? We toss nicely packaged, sanitized hunks of meat in our grocery carts, without thinking once about the bloody horrors that had to happen for it to get there. Dorothy’s actions are extreme, sure, but at the end of the day, we’re all just eating flesh. This book doesn’t appear to preach about this, as the author is not a vegetarian herself, but rather provides us with some food for thought. The author challenges us to think about what we are willing to stomach to get what we really want.

There are a lot of issues with industrial meat farming, and I do believe that vegan/vegetarianism is the only realistic way to eat more ethically. If you’re able to raise your own livestock, or legally hunt, and you use every bit of those animals down to their last tuft of hair, then you can say you are an ethical meat-eater. Otherwise, our food choices may be tastier and possibly even healthier, but they are not more ethical. Personally, I have given vegetarianism a try; I was one for 13 years. (As I like to say, “I put in my time.”) But after more than a decade, and now with the constant threat of humanity collapsing, I finally just said fuck it, pass me a chicken strip. Like Dorothy, I have simply resigned to live a life of immorality…

“…our language loves a cannibal. We don’t just win at sports, we kill the other team; we demolish them; we devour our opponents. To express our appreciation for a baby’s cuteness, we say we could eat her up. When we have sex, we ravish our lovers, nibble their ears, lick their vulvas, or swallow their cocks. Gleeful, we banquet on flesh.“

Aside from the whole eating people thing, this book also asks: why don’t we acknowledge women’s homicidal rage? You don’t often hear about female psycho- or sociopaths — well, I suppose you do, they just aren’t labeled as such. As with all things patriarchal, this blind spot of not recognizing that women, in fact, do have the capacity to experience rage and anger benefits no one. For example, we can’t assume that a woman will immediately be overwhelmed with love and that her instinct to nurture will suddenly kick in simply because she gave birth. Millions of mothers have put their children through unspeakable horrors, and every time we are shocked as if it were the first time anyone has ever heard of such a thing.

But violence is not something we associate with femininity; we like to believe that women are natural caregivers. We are reluctant to acknowledge that there are female humans capable of severe evil… Delphine LaLaurie, a New Orleans socialite who tortured and murdered enslaved people in her home. Diane Downs, who shot three of her children so she could have her affair unencumbered. Darya Saltykova, a Russian noblewoman who tortured and murdered her servants, specifically young women, and allegedly bathed in their blood…

“You who call women the fairer sex, you may repress and deny all you want, but some of us were born with a howling void where our souls should sway.”

I hope this doesn’t come across as me stating that violence is liberating when a woman does it, because I’m not. But there is something a little patronizing about only allowing women to be victims or saints. By denying women the full spectrum of human capacity — including cruelty, rage, and destruction — we infantilize them. This book sits with the uncomfortable truth that if we’re standing on the fact that women and men are equal, that includes the fact that women can be evil too.

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋

As a food lover, how could I resist a book titled Butter? When I heard it involved a “female chef who’s a serial killer,” I was sold. My first thought when I saw food + murder, my mind went straight to Sweeney Todd. I wondered if there was going to be some weird cannibal tie-in? It’s disturbing, but I must admit, I was intrigued… If you’ve ever watched any media on how chefs operate, especially high-end ones, it’s actually not too far off from a serial killer. Extremely meticulous, with a sense of perfectionism that is borderline scary. Some of these chefs are giving Patrick Bateman vibes, for sure. The difference is that those are all men. (The psycho-seeming ones, I mean.) With this book having a female protagonist (or antagonist, I don’t know, I support women’s rights and women’s wrongs), I was anxious to discover what brought her to that point. I love female rage! Before even reading a single word, I assumed that whoever she killed deserved it. What can I say, I’m a girl’s girl. Sorry!

But as it turns out, Butter by Asako Yuzuki isn’t that kind of story. It was less about murder (boo!) and more about the exploration of food, misogyny, and the societal pressures placed on women (still scary!). This book was marketed as a crime thriller, which is really unfair to those picking this up expecting, well, a crime thriller. This book is actually more of a reflection of food and society, told exclusively from the point of view of a journalist trying to interview the already-locked-up killer. Despite it not being what I was expecting, I still enjoyed it. I appreciated how straightforward the theme was — misogyny as it relates to women and food, their weight, and their role as a homemaker.

“There is nothing in this world so pathetic, so moronic, so meaningless as dieting.”

Butter does play a starring role in the book, both literally and metaphorically. We learn that Kajii, our food-loving, man-killing antagonist, lives for butter (relatable), often splurging on the fancy imported stuff when she wants to treat herself (also relatable). She refuses to diet, denies herself nothing, and is unapologetic about her love of food, which is rebellious in its own way. A woman after my own heart. (Well, except for all the murder.)

Butter, specifically French butter, is an indulgent ingredient. With a higher fat content and less water than your average grocery store butter, it’s creamier and packs way more flavor. It is indulgent in both taste and calories, and in this story, it is also indulgent physically, as we learn early on that there is a shortage, and monetarily, as our main character splurges on the imported butter that costs significantly more. While Kajii has very conservative views related to women’s roles in society, she is actually pretty feminist in the way she lives. She says women should be as indulgent as they please. She is anti-diet culture and refuses to deny herself anything. Queen shit.

“For what purpose, exactly, do you want to lose weight? Are you worried about not being attractive to men? Because in that case, you have nothing to fear. Men are naturally attracted to shapely, full-figured women. When I say men, I’m of course referring to real men, who are emotionally mature, affluent, and capable of generosity. Men who favour women with bodies like skinny children are the ones with no confidence in themselves. They’re without exception servile, sexually and emotionally immature, with no capacity for financial generosity, either.” — Damn, get her Jade.

You know how restaurant food always tastes better than what you can make at home? More often than not, it’s probably because the chef is using such an insane amount of butter that you couldn’t even fathom using yourself. Good butter transforms everything it touches. It’s no wonder that it becomes the gateway food for Rika, the journalist determined to understand Kajii. Throughout the book, her meals become richer and more decadent, described in a borderline erotic way. For Rika, food slowly starts to become more than just sustenance; it becomes pleasure.

I think anyone who’s ever been told to sacrifice themselves for someone else will relate to this story. It’s a reminder that sometimes you just need to buy the good butter, savor every bite and let yourself live. I recommend picking up a copy of Butter and treating yourself to some toast slathered in the good stuff.

Thanks for reading, dolls! And if you find any typos, they were a creative choice. 💋