Under a Hollow Sky by Wynter SaintClare

Representation: blindness

Genre: science fiction

In the Wake of the Gods by Kent Priore

Representation: bipolar disorder

Genre: fantasy

Love Variations by Victoria Lee*

Representation: multiple sclerosis, autism

Genre: romance

Mother Tongue by Sara Nović*

Representation: Deaf

Genre: memoir

Spur of the Moment by Juliana Smith

Representation: epilepsy

Genre: romance

Seams Like Love by Chrissie Harrison

Representation: chronic illness

Genre: romance

Never Back Down by Luna Peters

Representation: borderline personality disorder

Genre: romance

Smash or Pass by Birdie Schae*

Representation: autism

Genre: YA romance

Never Say Never by Kylie Skye

Representation: ADHD

Genre: romance

Stops Along the Way by Anna Sortino*

Representation: hard of hearing

Genre: YA romance

Pot Shot by Laura Piper Lee

Representation: Crohn's disease

Genre: romance

The Place Between Our Pains by K.J. Ramsey*

Representation: 7+ chronic illnesses

Genre: memoir

Score by Kennedy Ryan

Representation: bipolar disorder

Genre: romance

The Last Resort by Liz Leiby

Representation: migraines

Genre: romance

A Handy Duo by Sarah Madeline*

Representation: anxiety

Genre: romance

*denotes a book with own voices representation and/or an openly disabled author

DISCLAIMERS: I have not yet read these books myself and cannot testify to the accuracy of representation. Please do your own research if you have concerns! I am also sure many of the books that aren't marked with a * also contain own voices rep or are written by disabled authors, but I am only marking those that I am certain are by disabled authors!

I finished The Butcher of Nazareth and I have so many things to say about this beautiful, horrifying book. This book is a five-star read for me. However, with full sincerity, it is very much not going to be for everyone.

I'm going to do something I rarely do and put trigger warnings down so people know what to expect: child loss, blood, gore, religion, violence, pregnancy.

Okay. Now that that's out there, all I want to do is talk about this book. David Scott Hay wrote something unreal. Wholly original. I've never read anything like it in my life. This story is a prequel to the New Testament, told between the Old Testament before Jesus becomes Jesus.

We follow The Butcher who was a participant in the Culling ordered by King Herod. We follow the Butcher through his pain and agony, the death of his infant son, his isolation from his family, his loss of self in his fury and rage. We see the Butcher and his anger at God, his hatred of Jesus, his resentment of faith. Along the way, it's the Butcher who plants the seeds for the death of Jesus in his search to find him and cull the only babe who escaped when his infant son did not.

The Butcher copes with his son's death, his resentment at Jesus for not suffering the same, and the way the world was changing around religion for the Jewish people. His story is of suffering and a never-ending grief felt by a father. Hay wrote the story in an extremely specific way that removes the barrier between reader and anti-hero. You are neck deep in the Butcher's grief with him and there is no escape. You cannot look away and it makes the story a raw, emotional, painful experience for us just like it was for the Butcher.

He rediscovers hope and temptation, the chance to try again, only to have it snatched away and tumble back into despair. We see Mary Magdalene and Nazareth and Jesus and how community is so critical to their survival, success, and emotional growth. Without community, when we isolate ourselves, our grief and anger rule us and turn us into monsters. We need each other to create life and we need each other to navigate death.

This book made me think. It forced me to stop thinking of linear stories and read it differently. The paper texture, the text choice, the margins, all of them play a part in telling Hay's story and I think it is so much richer because of it. The writing is spellbinding, something new in the genre done so expertly I've never read anything like it before. He captures you immediately, then holds you with style that's saturated with substance. It reads like a scream of grief into the earth and sky. A terrible catharsis as if exhaled after holding your breath.

You rarely know what's real and what's imagined, but that isn't the point. The point is to witness the Butcher and what being consumed by his loss has done to him, what it has taken from him because he cannot find a way to atone and forgive and seek comfort in his community. This book is brutal. It's so raw and emotional I never knew if I wanted to cry or gasp or hold my breath. I just knew it was important to be a witness to this spectacle of loss and pray in the end there was a way for the Butcher to find his way home.

5/5. Incredible.

Hi Chanterelle Keepers & Producers

Here's our quarterly update and giveaway🥹 I sent a blog post to all the tiers last week explaining why it's been quieter these last few weeks/months and this is an updated post for you guys.

Updates & Membership Features:

Going forward, I'm hoping to have content exclusively for you guys. What this will look like, I'm not sure yet! I'm definitely a trial and error kind of person and will be experimenting with the posts I make in here. What I know it will include is my lists with more options in them so that you guys get extra books or games that isn't available to everyone🥹

At the moment, I'm moving and still in my recovery stage after my surgery. I'm also starting a new job later this summer and with everything going on, I'm looking for a sustainable way to keep things going with my Bindery! If there's anything you'd like to see, please do let me know🥰

Spring Giveaway:

What with the move, this giveaway is also going to be digital and Digital giveaway won in the last post in April in here so going forward, I do think we'll be sticking to this type of giveaway as it gives all of us flexibility

So this giveaway is running from today, June 17th to June 25th at 11:59 UK Timing next week. I'll be contacting the winner as usual and please always check your spam folder as sometimes emails make their way there.

This Giveaway, you can choose to:

• Bookshop.org or any indie bookshops

• Any small business that do any Cozy Hobbies, Teas or anything to support your slow living

• Steam or Indie Games giftcard

• Really anything within the same theme as above but might not exactly fit! (Feel free to DM/email me to discuss this)

Just fill out the form in here before June 25th and I will be in touch with the winner through email! Good luck to everyone🤎

8/10
Spice - 10/10 🔥🔥🔥

Can't go wrong with Rina Kent and her dark mafia romances. In her newest MM Romance, Kiss the Villain, we follow the story of Gareth, a student and his criminal law professor, Kayden. But wait, did I mention that they both are rivals and want to unalive 💀 each other?

The story is them going against each other but unable to resist the attraction that they both have for each other. They both are so possessive and so twisted, it's crazy ❤️‍🔥. The twist in the second half had my flabbers gasted , in a good way duh. The ending was good. The spice was 🤌

And the tropes - age gap, billionaire romance, student professor, dom-sub, coming out, touch him and die

Trigger warnings - gRape, non-consent kink, mentions of self harm, killing

Thank you so much @sourcebookscasa and @read_bloom for this copy! The glossy finish is 🫶

Author - @author_rina

Keywords : Mafia | Rina Kent | Age gap | Dark Romance | enemies to Lovers | MM romance

Blurb - My darkness meets a darker soul.

I’m a golden boy.
A genius law student, the heir to the Carson empire, and the dutiful son.
Or, at least, that's what it looks like from the outside.
Deep inside, I have the urge to set the world on fire.
I keep these impulses in check, rarely indulging in mayhem.
Until one night of debauchery backfires, and I'm caught by a villain.
I bury the entire ordeal with the rest of my skeletons.
That is, until that night walks into my classroom in the form of my new professor.
Kayden Lockwood.
A criminal who’s teaching criminal law.
I can't expose what he's done without unmasking my secret life.
What I can do, however, is force him to taste the poison he gave me.
In the clash of titans, Kayden and I break and crumble.
And I'm starting to realize this dangerous game may have no winners.

"Leo Bridgers, always slightly oriented to Simran like she's his cardinal north"

GENRE: Romance or RomComFamDram!
RATING: 4.75/5
FORMAT: eBook & physical Arc
Tropes: Meddlesome family, Indian Wedding Hijinks, Family Reunion, Intergenerational grief & yearning, If he wanted to he would

Overall Impression:Literally, just give me more books with Bollywood vibes in them!

Review:
I mean if you put meddling family, Bollywood vibes and wedding drama with Romance in a book, I will DEFINITELY be there for it and this did not disappoint!

Leave and Come Back is such a fun, wholesome & funny story and yet, it's also sad as we dive into Simi's grief and her loss following her parent's death. We get to dive into what it means to move to another country and have to learn a new culture and a new way of living while coping with grief.

Simi's journey takes us through what life is like for her versus her aunt, Veena, both of who share a lot of similarities. They both left and moved to the west and while they are in different generations, we see their struggles and how it all ties together throughout the story. In a way, reading the story isn't just watching Simi slowly heal but also seeing how this impacts her aunt.

And as for how meddlesome her aunt and the family members are, this was SO relatable to my own experience but the older you get, you start to slowly realise what Simi's cousins tell her throughout the story: that every generation and person has a different way of expressing their love and sometimes, you fight but you can't give up on each other.

Oh and Leo & Simi's journey? This was SO cute. I think we definitely get to go on the journey with them but it's more of watching Leo learn about Simi as a person and her life back home while learning about her culture and trying to win her aunt & the rest of the family. I felt that we got to know everyone in the story so well and the focus wasn't just on Simi & Leo alone but rather every family member in a way that wasn't overwhelming!

OH and Operation DDLJ? My god, that was a throwback as I havent watched it in SO long but time to fix that!🤭

I was provided a free advance reader copy and I’m sharing my honest thoughts.

One of my goals this year is to help you spend less time wondering what to read next and more time actually reading.

This week's releases took me everywhere.

I traveled on a twelve-day wilderness trek, fake-married my way across the globe on a reality TV show, got tangled up in Egyptian-inspired court politics, and returned to a small Florida town where long-buried secrets refused to stay buried.

As always, these are just my personal reactions. A book that didn't work for me may end up being your next five-star read, and a book I loved might completely miss the mark for someone else.

Let's get into it.

❤️ Good at Being Alive

Read or Skip: READ

Rating: 4 stars

I went into this expecting a fake-dating rom-com.

What I got was a surprisingly emotional story about grief, healing, and learning how to move forward after losing people you had complicated relationships with.

After the death of her family, Bex inherits half of her father's struggling travel company and is forced to work alongside Theo, her serious and perpetually exasperated British business partner. When an opportunity arises to save the company through a travel reality show, the two agree to pretend to be newlyweds for the cameras.

The fake marriage premise hooked me immediately, but what kept me reading was the emotional depth underneath it.

One of my favorite aspects of the novel was its exploration of grief. Not just grief in general, but the specific kind that comes from losing someone who wasn't always easy to love. The book handles those complicated emotions with a lot of honesty and nuance.

I was also completely invested in Bex and Theo. Their banter is fantastic, their chemistry feels natural, and watching Theo fall for Bex long before he's willing to admit it was easily one of my favorite parts of the story.

Final thought: Come for the fake marriage and travel adventures. Stay for the emotional depth, sharp banter, and surprisingly thoughtful exploration of grief.

🏔️ The Great Outdoors

Read or Skip: READ

Rating: 3.75 stars

This is the kind of romance that takes a character completely out of their comfort zone and then makes you cheer for them every step of the way.

After being dumped for being "too high maintenance," Sadie signs up for a twelve-day wilderness trek through the High Sierras to prove she can handle anything. Enter Thorn, the rugged trek leader who may or may not be exactly what she needs.

What worked best for me was Sadie's character growth.

It would have been easy to make her the stereotypical fish-out-of-water heroine who spends the entire book complaining, but instead she adapts, grows, and learns that she doesn't have to control every detail of her life to be happy.

The romance between Sadie and Thorn is sweet, heartfelt, and develops naturally throughout the journey. Their opposites-attract dynamic worked really well for me, and I found myself rooting for them almost immediately.

The wilderness setting also adds a lot of charm.

Did this book make me want to spend twelve days hiking through the mountains Absolutely not.

Did I enjoy experiencing it from the comfort of my couch and air conditioning? Very much yes.

Final thought: A sweet summer romance with strong character growth, forced proximity, outdoor adventure, and plenty of heart.

👑 The Shrouded Queen

Read or Skip: READ (with one caveat)

Rating: 3.75 stars

The Shrouded Queen came incredibly close to being a five-star read for me.

When a rival clan attacks the palace, Princess Amunet escapes while her maid, Samira, is mistaken for the princess and taken into enemy territory. As both women embark on separate journeys, questions of identity, destiny, power, and leadership begin to emerge.

The Egyptian-inspired mythology immediately pulled me in.

The worldbuilding feels fresh, the political intrigue is compelling, and the magical elements kept me fully invested throughout the novel.

The standout character for me was Samira. Her chapters were consistently fascinating, and I found myself deeply invested in both her growth and the mysteries surrounding her identity.

Unfortunately, I struggled with Amunet's perspective. While I understood what the author was trying to accomplish, I never fully connected with her character and often found myself impatient to return to Samira's storyline.

Thankfully, the strength of the worldbuilding, mythology, and overall plot more than made up for it.

Final thought: If you love mythology-inspired fantasy, hidden identities, political intrigue, and complex female characters, this is absolutely worth picking up. Just be prepared to have a favorite POV.

🔪 Nasty Little Secrets

Read or Skip: READ

Rating: 4.25 stars

This was a debut?!

Because if it is, I cannot wait to see what this author does next.

More than a decade after her brother was convicted of murdering his high school girlfriend, Rose returns to her Florida hometown when her younger sister suddenly disappears. As the search unfolds, old secrets begin resurfacing, and it becomes clear that the past may not be as settled as everyone believed.

This book had me hooked from the very first chapter.

The dual timelines are handled incredibly well, with each reveal adding another layer to the mystery. The combination of family drama, small-town secrets, and long-buried lies kept me turning pages long past my bedtime.

Rose is also a wonderfully complicated protagonist. She's flawed, stubborn, messy, and entirely understandable given everything she's endured.

Final thought: A gripping debut packed with family drama, small-town secrets, strong character work, and enough twists to keep thriller readers happy.

🔪 The Summer Fun Massacre

Read or Skip: SKIP

Rating: 3 stars

This may be my biggest case this year of a book not matching the version I created in my head.

Based on the title, cover, and premise, I expected a campy summer slasher packed with creepy campgrounds, ridiculous camp activities, folklore-fueled horror, and all the chaotic energy of an '80s horror movie.

That is not the book I got.

The novel opens strong, with a gruesome attack, a lone survivor, and the promise of a bloody mystery. For a brief moment, I thought I was about to get exactly the kind of summer horror read I'd been craving.

Instead, the story quickly shifts into a police procedural focused on small-town politics, sheriff's department drama, investigations, and interpersonal conflicts.

Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you enjoy police procedurals, there may be a lot here for you. The problem is that the marketing, title, and premise all led me to expect something very different.

There are absolutely horror elements throughout the novel, including some genuinely gruesome scenes, but they felt secondary to the investigation. I also found myself wishing the folklore and mythical horror aspects had been explored much more deeply. The story introduces some intriguing ideas, then largely pushes them into the background.

I also struggled with the cast. There are a lot of characters, many of whom are law enforcement officers, and I had a difficult time keeping track of who was who. The main character never fully clicked for me either, which made it harder to stay invested in the slower sections of the story.

To the book's credit, it is incredibly readable. I flew through it in just a few sittings because the pacing moves quickly and there's always something happening.

Final thought: If you're looking for a police procedural with horror elements and small-town intrigue, this may work much better for you than it did for me. But if you're hoping for a campy summer slasher packed with campground chaos, folklore horror, and classic horror-movie energy, I'd probably point you elsewhere.

Also Hitting Shelves This Week

Didn't see your next read above? Here are a few other releases arriving today that caught my attention.

🔫 Three Hitmen and a Baby by Rob Hart

If you enjoy found family, action-comedy, and stories that somehow manage to be both heartfelt and completely ridiculous, this one sounds like a blast.

The premise alone sold me: three reformed assassins are tasked with babysitting a toddler while their friend searches for her missing brother. Naturally, everything immediately goes wrong. Add a Russian mob boss, fabricated identities, a police manhunt, and a group of killers desperately trying not to kill anyone, and you've got what looks like a chaotic, high-stakes crime caper.

Pick this up if you enjoy: found family, action-comedy, quirky crime novels, and The Hitman's Bodyguard-style energy.

🌊 Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages by Jenny Colgan

This sounds tailor-made for readers who want comfort in book form.

A mother rebuilding her confidence after divorce. A daughter returning home after her life falls apart. Rescue dogs, seaside renovations, pub quizzes, and a second-chance romance.

Everything about this screams cozy, heartwarming summer read.

Pick this up if you enjoy: women's fiction, small-town settings, family relationships, found community, and uplifting stories about fresh starts.

☀️ The Lake Club by Lina Patton

Give me wealthy people behaving badly and I'm already interested.

Set in an exclusive lakeside country club, this debut follows two women whose lives become increasingly entangled with a charming male nanny. As tensions rise, long-buried scandals begin surfacing and threaten the carefully curated image of the community.

This feels like it could be the perfect beach read for fans of messy people making questionable decisions.

Pick this up if you enjoy: domestic drama, wealthy communities, gossip, scandals, and books that feel like binge-worthy television.

🖤 Such a Lucky Girl by Wendy Heard

When a successful influencer leaves her former best friend behind, a chance encounter with an occult self-help book unleashes something far darker than either of them expected.

This sounds like it could land somewhere between YA horror, social commentary, and supernatural revenge story.

Pick this up if you enjoy: horror with modern themes, influencer culture, dark magic, friendship betrayals, and books with strong Tiffany D. Jackson energy.

🥃 The Pinnacle by Abir Mukherjee

An aging Hollywood actor wakes up beside his murdered wife in a luxury Mumbai apartment.

If that premise doesn't hook you, I don't know what will.

Part murder mystery, part international thriller, part examination of fame and privilege, this one sounds packed with tension. The Bollywood setting also gives it a backdrop that feels refreshingly different from many thrillers hitting shelves right now.

Pick this up if you enjoy: murder mysteries, unreliable narrators, international settings, celebrity scandals, and stories where absolutely nobody is having a good time.

Final Verdict

• 🏆 My favorite of the week: Nasty Little Secrets

• 💔 Most emotionally surprising: Good at Being Alive

• 🏕️ Best summer escape: The Great Outdoors

• 👑 Most intriguing worldbuilding: The Shrouded Queen

If you've read any of these, I'd love to know where you landed. Did we agree? Or am I about to be politely yelled at in the comments?

If you like horror, romance, and sapphics, then boy do I have the book for you. LETHAL KISS by Taylor Grothe (out October 20, 2026) is a horrormance with sapphic characters. It's also a monster romance, which was my first! I'm not generally a romance kinda person, but when you mix it with some horror and mystery, apparently it's right up my alley! Let's get into it.

WHAT WORKED (for me!):

• Characters

  • Marcella is DIVINE omg, step on me please

  • Lacie is adorable but also relatable

• Setting

  • Dark academia? Hell yeah

• Pacing

  • It didn't feel like it moved too fast or too slow!

• Spice

  • Okay so generally smut in published books gives me the ick for some reason but this was soooooo good.

WHAT DIDN'T WORK (for me!):

• Honestly? The only thing that didn't really work for me was the way Marcella called Lacie "little lamb" all the time. That was it. (I'm not a big fan of cutesy nicknames like that, babe works just as well lol)

Thank to Tor Nightfire for the e-ARC which I devoured in April on a business trip. This was just what I needed at that time and I loved every minute of it. I highly recommend for your spooky season line up and please consider ordering it from us!

Till next time!

Happy Tuesday, mis internet amigxs!

We're deep into World Cup fever has taken over Discord. If you're looking for a place to chat during matches, we have a thread lead by Nani and G for every match and it's been a delight to read their recaps and conversations after the matches I miss. And you didn't hear it from me, but you may start seeing some giveaways on Discord very soon.

Speaking of Nani, they have been putting together World Cup content for over a month and I am collaborating with them on Instagram on their posts highlighting books from ALL participating World Cup countries. Be sure to follow Nani (@LibrosMeansBooks) if you haven't already on Instagram.

BOOK CLUB

We're only halfway through June, so a reminder that we're currently reading:

• Fiction: And I'll Take Out Your Eyes by A.M. Sosa

• Nonfiction: Accordion Eulogies by Noe Alvarez

In July, we're going to summer school and reading 2 nonfiction books:

• Main read: P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance by Vanessa Diaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau

• Nonfiction (2 month read): Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer

In August, we're picking up The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and September book polls will be up soon!

Support My Work!

If you'd like to receive an early version of this newsletter and help me as a full-time content creator, you can join for as little as $5 a month!

And, now, onto this week's books!

Translated Literary Fiction

Medea Sang Me A Corrido by Dahlia De La Cerda and translated by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches

YA Novel In Verse

Together We See by Ari Tison (Audiobook)

Middle Grade Fiction

Tangled Roots & Wild Dreams by Angela Velez (Audiobook)

YA Fantasy

The Hero Twins in the Realm of Fright By David Bowles, Charlene Bowles: Fantasy (Tales of the Feathered Serpent #3)

xo,

Carmen

I want to start with an apology. I haven’t been as present here as I wanted to be. The last few months have been heavy in ways that are difficult to summarize: personal struggles, challenges at home, and a depression that has made even ordinary things feel harder than they should. Writing has often happened in fragments, between moments of exhaustion and survival. But even when I’ve been quiet, I’ve been thinking. One idea in particular has refused to leave me alone, circling back again and again until it demanded to be written down.

The timeline planned for our lives was never neutral. Western society teaches adulthood as a sequence: date, partner, marry, buy property, have children, advance at work, stay productive, stay healthy, stay cisgender, stay grateful, and never fall behind. But the shame people carry about being “behind” is not a personal failure. It is social before it becomes personal. People feel behind because they have been measured against a life script built for straight, cisgender, able-bodied, financially stable people with access to safety, whiteness, property, institutional approval, and uninterrupted selfhood.

Compulsory heterosexuality, heteronormativity, ciscentrism, ableism, productivism, and white supremacy work together to create the “approved” adult: straight or straight-passing, cisgender or cis-passing, partnered, productive, financially independent, able-bodied or performing able-bodiedness, and respectable under white social norms. But not everyone started with the same safety, body, resources, rights, family support, racial access, healthcare, or freedom to know themselves. Some people spent years surviving. Some people did not have language for their gender or desire until adulthood. Some people had to choose safety before authenticity. Some people are not late. They were delayed by systems that benefited from their silence. The life script says there is one correct path into adulthood, but what if the path was built to exclude us?

I’m publishing an expanded five-part series on the paid tier for those who want the full exploration, but I wanted to share the heart of it here too.

Compulsory heterosexuality, ciscentrism, ableism, white supremacy, productivism, and the lie of the “correct” life timeline.

The timeline planned for our lives was never neutral.

By thirty, you are supposed to know.

By thirty-five, you are supposed to have chosen.

By forty, you are supposed to have evidence.

A spouse. A mortgage. Children, or at least a clear answer about children. Career growth. Financial stability. A body that works on command. A gender other people find easy to categorize. A relationship structure other people recognize. A life that looks successful from the outside.

Western society is obsessed with the idea that adulthood should arrive on schedule. We are taught that life has a sequence, and every respectable adult should move through that sequence at the expected pace.

Grow up.
Date.
Partner.
Marry.
Buy property.
Have children.
Advance at work.
Stay productive.
Stay healthy.
Stay attractive.
Stay cisgender.
Stay grateful.
Do not fall behind.

You are not behind.

You are queer. Trans. Nonbinary. Disabled. Neurodivergent. Poor. Grieving. Deconstructing. Healing. Racialized. Caregiving. Divorced. Estranged. Starting over. Coming out late. Changing your names. Relearning desire. Rebuilding after trauma. Choosing a life that doesn't look like the one they were handed.

The shame people carry about being “behind” is often treated as a personal self-esteem issue. It is framed as insecurity, comparison, low confidence, or lack of motivation.

But shame is social before it becomes personal.

People feel behind because they have been measured against a life script built for straight, cisgender, able-bodied, financially stable people with access to safety, whiteness, property, institutional approval, and uninterrupted selfhood.

That timeline was never neutral.

It was built from multiple systems working together.

Compulsory heterosexuality teaches people to treat heterosexuality as the default path, whether or not it reflects their actual desire. It trains people to confuse approval with attraction, safety with love, and compliance with identity.

Heteronormativity treats cisgender heterosexual couplehood as the expected center of adult life. It assumes that dating, sex, romance, marriage, parenting, and family should follow a straight, gendered script.

Ciscentrism treats cisgender identity as the norm and trans, nonbinary, genderfluid, and gender-expansive identities as deviations from the expected path. It assumes everyone will identify with the gender assigned to them at birth, move through life under that label, and become an adult in a way others read as properly masculine or feminine.

Compulsory able-bodiedness treats able-bodiedness as the expected and preferred state. It assumes the adult body should work consistently, produce consistently, recover quickly, and avoid needing too much care, rest, adaptation, or accommodation.

Compulsory productivism teaches that worth depends on output. You prove adulthood through labor, efficiency, career progress, financial independence, discipline, and constant improvement. Rest becomes suspicious. Disability becomes failure. Care needs become burdens. A nonlinear life becomes a moral problem.

White supremacy shapes the script by deciding which lives are treated as respectable, mature, safe, desirable, professional, moral, and worthy of protection. It has long organized family, gender, labor, property, sexuality, and citizenship around whiteness as the standard. It rewards proximity to white, middle-class, Christian, cisheteronormative respectability. It punishes people whose families, bodies, cultures, kinship structures, labor, gender expressions, and survival strategies fall outside that standard.

These systems do not operate separately.

They braid together.

Heteronormativity tells you what kind of relationship makes you legitimate.

Compulsory heterosexuality tells you what kind of desire is acceptable.

Ciscentrism tells you what kind of gender makes you believable.

Compulsory able-bodiedness tells you what kind of body deserves respect.

Compulsory productivism tells you what kind of pace makes you valuable.

White supremacy tells you whose adulthood is recognized as civilized, responsible, beautiful, safe, and worthy.

Together, they create the approved adult.

Straight or straight-passing.
Cisgender or cis-passing.
Monogamously partnered.
Married or marriage-bound.
Parenting or planning to parent.
Employed in a recognizable way.
Financially independent.
Able-bodied or performing able-bodiedness.
Gender-conforming enough to avoid discomfort.
Respectable under white social norms.
Always progressing.

The timeline is not a neutral checklist.

It is a sorting system.

It tells people whether their bodies, relationships, genders, families, desires, homes, work, and pace count as adult.

And when people do not fit, the system rarely questions itself.

It asks the person, “Why are you not there yet?”

That question assumes everyone started from the same place, with the same body, safety, resources, rights, identity freedom, racial access, family support, and self-knowledge.

They did not.

Some people spent years surviving homes, churches, schools, medical systems, workplaces, and communities that taught them to disappear.

Some people did not have language for their gender until adulthood.

Some people did not know their desire because desire had been buried under fear, doctrine, violence, or expectation.

Some people had to choose safety before authenticity.

Some people had to care for others before they had space to know themselves.

Some people were never given the option of being soft, rested, protected, believed, or free.

Some people’s bodies changed the plan.

Some people’s families rejected them.

Some people never had generational wealth, housing stability, healthcare access, or a safety net.

Some people are not late.

They were delayed by systems that benefited from their silence.

The life script says there is one correct path into adulthood.

But what if the path was built to exclude us?

What if the shame was never proof of failure?

What if the panic of being behind is what happens when a person starts to wake up inside a timeline that was never designed for their life?

This ended up being a really long essay when I was writing it so I'm breaking it up into five parts, yes five, I have a lot to say, so stay tuned for part two.

There will also be conversations about books in here at some point, because obviously.

I finished The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones and I have... so many things to say. What a book. Incredible. So well written and haunting and creating something totally new in horror books I did not expect. Where do I even begin with this one?

The book is told in epistolary style, a series of journal entries within journal entries. We follow a woman in 2013 researching an old journal she found from a dead great-great-x grandfather of hers. It's about his life as a Lutheran pastor in Montana in the early 1900s and his encounter with a mysterious indigenous stranger named Good Stab.

From there, a cat-and-mouse tale begins.

Between Good Stab and Arthur, Good Stab and the Cat Man, and so many other characters. The web is intricately woven and expertly tied off. Jones is an incredible, thoughtful, emotional writer who makes us contend with a very real history we sweep away in America. What colonizers did for decades to the indigenous tribes in our country is nothing short of massacre, genocide, and annihilation. Not only of the indigenous people, but of everything that made them what they were. Their histories, ways of life, identities... colonizers of the American West in particular shredded and ruined so much indigenous life that the one overarching feeling I carried was shame.

I know that sounds preachy, but Jones deftly shows his reader and fearlessly makes you witness the reality of it all without feeling like it's preaching at you. He understands the complexity of modern racial and ethnic identity, the layers and layers on how we all ended up here in America, and he still unflinchingly says, "Yes, I know this, and still this is the story of my people."

I can't know what it's like to be an indigenous American. I know what it's like to be a descendant of Irish immigrants who came over in the early 1900s and a father who emigrated from the UK in the 1970s, but that's all. Jones gave me the opportunity to walk alongside an indigenous character and see what it was like for them to lose their land, their homes, who they were, their histories... it was heartbreaking and devastating.

And he used a fully reimagined concept of vampires to do it.

Yes. Vampires.

This is a vampire story that makes vampires terrifying again. Drinking blood from animals changes you differently than from humans. The identity he crafts gets weaker and weaker as he mixed blood from his people with colonizers and animals and you see how the blood changes him over time. It was an incredible metaphor for the diluting and loss of indigenous tribes in such a beautifully haunting, visceral way. We listen to Good Stab tell his story and Arthur slowly realize the role he played in it.

Then we see Etsy, his current-day granddaughter, unravel the threads of what he did and why Good Stab decided to tell Arthur his tale. She pulls apart the horror of knowing her kin could be part of this erasure and how she seeks forgiveness and restitution in a way that actually means something. Then we, the reader, are left understanding that what colonizers did to the American peoples can never give the restitution they deserve or require for what was done to them.

Jones shows his readers how the massacre of buffalo was the death sentence of the tribes. The careless, thoughtless ways men destroyed the once-prolific source of life into extinction and how it demolished a nation we claim to love as our own. Too many people don't know about how and why the buffalo were nearly extinct in the 1800s and Jones aims to correct that in this haunting, terrible story.

He made me consider myself, my role in the world, and stare into a national history that I might feel removed from, but is still a part of me whether I like it or not just as the suffering of indigenous people is a part of them whether they like it or not.

Beautiful. Incredible. And my favorite quote should tell you what kind of book you're getting into.

"I was America's worst nightmare. I was an Indian who could not die."

So. Everyone says this is where it starts. Heir of Fire. That's where it gets good, right?

I hate to admit it, but I am going to agree. They're right. The TOG girls are correct. This book grew up the story so much and gave Celaena all the workings of a redemption arc I needed to see to stick with her. This felt like a much more grown up fantasy story where Maas was finally able to break into the pulse of her story.

SJM hit her stride here. There's still some prose and writing choices I personally find clunky or awkward, but that's personal preference and not on her at all. I really enjoyed the new characters so much and the way she split out from Celaena so we could see the broader world and feel more connected to the other characters was handled well.

Her threats feel threatening, her characters are finally coming into their own, and you can just tell she figured out where the heart is in this whole thing. Part of my problem looking back is that to write and communicate strongly you need experiences in the world that teach you more about that. SJM being so young shows because she just doesn't have any experience in the wider world and literally hasn't lived through enough general life to be able to write strongly to any one thing. That's okay! By the time she wrote Heir of Fire, though, she had been at it for a while and was escaping a (self-admitted!) sheltered upbringing that likely impacted a lot of her early writing.

Back to the story. This was way stronger and much more compelling to read. Celaena regularly failed and learned she wasn't really as good as she thought, nor had any of her arrogance been earned. Rowan was a good foil to her because he possesses the competence she thought she had and proved to her she actually doesn't have shit. I prefer to see characters fail and grow, Celaena definitely did in this one. We stop hearing her talk about being the best or how great she is or how fearsome she is and she just tries to find herself outside of a title or a role when she recognizes neither of them mean anything in her new circumstances.

I loved how Dorian actually developed a personality in this one. He no longer reads like whiny wet lettuce and is coming into himself as an empathetic and righteous person. He's learning his morality and what matters to him, which in turn makes him actually expressive and interesting!

This remains a Chaol apologist house, I make no apologies. I will write a bigger thing on him when I'm done so I'll keep this brief. Chaol is also young, people forget that. He's 22. Celaena gets a lot of grace for being young, but he doesn't get the same. 22 is very young. He doesn't know how to process big hurts and changes in a mature way because he is still a young man learning about a world in flux. He reacted poorly to Celaena killing people despite knowing she killed people because he does what every human reader does - he considered her job in the abstract, not the literal. Your partner tells you what they do for work and you form a belief about them in the work context that supports what you know of them in a personal context. Then you see them do their job and you actually understand what it is they do, it changes how you see them or consider their job now that you KNOW-know. Chaol's whole life has been built on what he believed to be immutable truths - magic is bad, Adarlan is good, I have to protect everyone because it's my job. Now, he has to dismantle all of those as someone who can only watch things change and has no role participating in that change. Chaol is the one character who gets the most hate because he's the one character that refuses to let readers escape from human behavior. Chaol is how most regular people and readers would behave and facing that reality jars our suspension of disbelief and so we resent him for making us see ourselves as we are and not who we want to be.

Okay.

Thesis done.

MANON. I loved her so much. She's the RBF queen of this series. I find her compelling and empathetic and human and painfully real for such a brutal upbringing. I cannot wait to see where her arc takes her and how/if she comes back.

Aedion is such a fun addition to the cast. I like him a lot, very fond of him. He's a character I'd crush on so hard if he were age-appropriate. Alas, I am an elder and thus I leave his character for the youths. I like his single-minded sense of loyalty and how his greater cache of memories illustrates more about the old Terrasen kingdom.

I liked seeing Celaena develop her magic and try to learn her roots instead of ignoring or fighting them. Her embracing her identity as Aelin felt natural and organic. I especially liked watching her struggle with the fallout and subsequent depression and anger that something like all of what she's been through would give her. SJM did a pretty good job of showing us the emotional impact instead of letting her just be fine and okay and move on and be so strong it doesn't affect her. I find characters that go unaffected by the human elements of their behavior very bland. She allowed Celaena to fail and grow and learn and I didn't hate it.

I do want to say that I dislike Celaena so much because I was her growing up. Undeservedly arrogant and blind to my own incompetence. It took a thrashing from life to get me out of it and humble myself. I love watching Celaena get drop-kicked by the world because I think its necessary to making her into a good, better person. NOT because I enjoy watching a character suffer.

I'm much more inclined to the series now and am actually looking forward to Queen of Shadows. I like the trajectory and it feels like the story finally has heart. Into the heart of Adarlan we go!