Author: Patricia Elzie

Our heroine is a Black rapper who goes by the moniker Duchess. The nods to reality in this book are heavy-handed, and it’s absurd in the most delightful way. Duchess (her real name is Dani) is always on the move working, whether it’s as a performer or with her own skincare line, Mela-skin. In fact, there are some major corporations interested in partnering with her line.

Of course, there are people getting in Duchess’s way. One of them is Samantha Banks, a pop star who keeps riding on Duchess’s coattails and creating beef where there is none. Duchess has tried to ignore her but the bad press is getting in the way of her success with Mela-skin. Another person who is getting in her way is her manager, who keeps trying to play up Duchess’s sexuality as if she is a one-dimensional character, and he’s keeping her from expanding and from accepting some amazing opportunities.

Our hero is Prince Jameson, grandson of the Queen of England. Prince Jameson has been able to mostly stay out of the spotlight and do what he wants, shrugging royal duties to instead be a philosophy professor at a university. Unexpectedly, the Queen volun-tells Jameson that he will be the forward-facing royal for a benefit concert in honor of his deceased grandfather. Jameson is at a pub when the royal project manager asks him to name some musical acts that should be in the concert. He only listens to long-dead composers so he pulls aside a lad at the pub and asks his opinion and the lad names Duchess. Jameson submits her name, sight unseen.

He eventually looks up her music videos and he is simultaneously incredibly turned on and also thinking he may have made a mistake in including her in the benefit concert for his deceased grandfather. Still, he will be an absolute gentleman and do his best to give her a lot of space because he could very easily fall into debauchery. His plan would have worked, too, if she didn’t show up early and he had to host her at his estate for the couple weeks before the concert.

This book is incredibly steamy and has explicit, open-door sex scenes. Content warnings for racism and discussion of the death of a parent.

Luna O’Shea just got fired from her job as the incredibly proficient executive assistant of a practically useless CEO. She did not see this coming, and the HR person’s “reasons” had the pungent odor of anti-trans microaggressions. She desperately needs someone to talk to, and since her roommate Simone isn’t home, Luna decides to go to where she was working so they can talk in person.

Simone is a chef and is working on the set of an upcoming reality cooking show. While Luna is at the place where they will be filming, a moody trans man with a vape and a French accent goes storming through asking every woman around if they’d pretend to be his girlfriend for 15 minutes. He offers to pay any takers one thousand dollars and he seems desperate. Luna ends up being the one to do it and so she hops on a video call with this guy’s grandfather, who just happens to be a wildly famous French chef. The grandfather is suspicious why his grandson and Luna’s fake boyfriend, Jean-Pierre Dominique Gabriel Aubert-Treffle, is in New York. Jean-Pierre decides a fake girlfriend is the best excuse and so Luna gets looped into the chaos.

Apparently, Jean-Pierre’s entire inheritance depends on a test, which is a passable recreation of his grandfather’s famous French cuisine menu. Upon learning that Jean-Pierre has a girlfriend, the grandfather says that she should also have to take part in this cooking test. Once they hang up the phone, Jean-Pierre asks Luna to continue this farce through the cooking test and in turn, he will pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The biggest catch? Jean-Pierre is absolutely terrible at cooking and Luna is pretty bad at it as well. Luna, however, is an optimist and not about to turn down such a large amount of money. They quickly discover that while they’re both transgender, how they view the world and their places in it are wildly different and it leads to a number of arguments. That makes the fact that they fall for each other surprising to even them.

While this book is related to Chef’s Kiss by the same author, it totally works as a standalone. It is hilarious and sexy and wonderfully queer.

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Adina Walker goes to Edgewater Academy, a prestigious private school full of rich and mostly white students. Adina is neither. Edgewater Academy was founded by the Remington family, and Adina is in the same graduating class as the Remington heir, Pierce Maxwell Remington IV.

The book starts on graduation day, just after the ceremony, and Adina is seething with anger. Her best friend, Toni, the other Black woman in her class, is trying to cheer her up by inviting her to go to the bonfire that night. Something happened during the school year when Adina lost her cool, and her former “friend” Esme made sure that Adina’s admission to Yale was rescinded.

The Remington family puts on a competition after graduation called The Finish. A group of young women is hand-picked by the family to compete for two weeks at their estate. The winner basically gets the world handed to them. The Remington family could get Adina’s spot at Yale back in a single phone call.

Adina doesn’t want to go to the bonfire or really see any of these clowns she graduated with ever again, but Pierce is going to be there, and if anyone can get her an invite to compete in The Finish, it’s Pierce. She finds him, and they have a furtive conversation, but before Adina can ask him for an invite to The Finish, they are interrupted and make their way back to the group. Adina’s following actions surprise Pierce, and he starts to see Adina in a new light, though Pierce’s brother, Graham, advises against even considering inviting Adina to The Finish. The girls who get picked for The Finish are always white and extremely wealthy.

The next morning, Adina receives a personal invitation from Pierce Maxwell Remington IV himself for Adina to take part in The Finish. Twelve girls are chosen to prove their vigor, valor, and ambition to the Remington family. The winner receives infinite opportunity and support from the Remington family. When Adina arrives at the competition, her cell phone and connection to the outside world is taken for the two weeks of the competition. It is not what she expects. It is much, much more horrifying than she ever imagined.

If you’re a reader who enjoyed The Hunger Games, then you really need to get your hands on this book. Content warnings for racism and a lot of violence.

Jo Koy is a household name in many Filipino American homes. He is a stand-up comedian and if you, like me, have read many comedian memoirs you know they can be real, real dark. Jo Koy describes his father as the poster boy for white America. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, he met Jo’s mother while in the military and stationed overseas for the Vietnam War. Jo’s mother was born and raised in the Philippines and she would travel around as the business manager for Filipino bands that would go from base to base and give concerts.

Jo talks about growing up on different military bases as his family moved around before finally making a home in Tacoma, Washington. He also talks about the struggles of being an immigrant kid with a demanding mother and trying to fit into a place not known for its diversity. It’s a memoir and so of course, there is a lot about his family and the stories are also about growing up with three siblings, a single mom, and a mostly-absent father.

Woven through all of this is the constant thread of Jo’s desire to be a stand-up comedian. He was born in the early ’70s and he talks about listening to stand-up on cassette tapes and eventually convincing his mother to get HBO, which was the main source of stand-up comedy in the 1980s.

Jo was not good at school, he was terrible at driving, and he was the worst at holding down a job but he didn’t care, because all he wanted was to be on stage. His mother wanted him to have a full-time desk job with benefits and even at the end of the book I’m not entirely convinced she is 100% behind his career, even though he’s really successful. He definitely tells the story of how he finally got on stage, repeatedly bombed, repeatedly got on stage again, and hustled hard to get where he is.

Sometimes when I read a memoir by a comedian, I feel a bit let down because I can tell their comedy is best behind a microphone and not necessarily in a book. This book, though, I laughed a lot in every chapter even though there is also some incredibly difficult content woven throughout.

Content warning for violent schizophrenia, child abuse, verbal and emotional abuse, and violence against a person with mental illness.

In the 2050s, after the U.S. government really crapped the bed when it came to its pandemic response, other countries closed their borders to folks from the U.S. This made the folks in the U.S. upset because freedom or whatever so the government teams up with big private companies to really get a move on with a space colony they refer to as The Colony.

All of the wealthy in the U.S., mostly white people, go off to space and leave everyone else behind to deal with poisonous air and other awful environmental catastrophes. Of course, those who went to The Colony can’t just leave people alone so the people still in the U.S. on Earth are being over-policed by robots. Also, The Colony is still just absolutely gutting the resources that are still left, such as literally tearing down houses and taking the bricks among other things.

The folks still in the U.S., mostly Black and Brown, have been doing the best they can with what they have been left. What is going on in the book is a direct reflection of what goes on in Black and Brown neighborhoods in reality when these neighborhoods are victims of gentrification. After turning everything to garbage and flying off to space where the next couple of generations get kinda cyborged out, people start coming back to Earth from the Colony. They wait for the Black and Brown people in the houses on Earth to get foreclosed on or evicted and then the Colonizers move back. With wealthy folks coming back, there are now domes built so that there can be clean air for them, etc.

This novel is told through many interwoven vignettes of folks both from the Colony who are manifest-destiny-ing their way back to the United States and folks who were left behind and the generations after them. Yes, it is sci-fi but I think what really grabbed me about this book is that it felt so close. So within reach, not that this world is something I would want to grab. It just feels so possible and that made it both a mesmerizing and terrifying read.

Content warnings for rape, violence, police violence, and racism.

It’s the middle of the night and there seems to be some kind of pied piper situation where there is music that is enchanting and luring away all the children of a village. Someone cries out about the children being stolen and then the book takes us elsewhere.

It is the morning of the Harvest Festival which is also the day that Abeni celebrates her birthday. She is 12, not yet grown, but almost. After she gets ready, she goes outside and her mother tells her the story of her birth, which Abeni is tired of hearing. When Abeni’s mother was pregnant with her, it was a very dry season and there hadn’t been much rain. They were worried about the pregnancy and the village healer sent Abeni’s father to see the old woman. Most of the adults call her the old woman but the children of the village call her a witch. She lived in the forest and hadn’t come to the village in a long, long time. She gave Abeni’s father a ritual to perform to help bring Abeni out and apparently it worked because Abeni was born and also, it rained for the first time in a long, long while. Because of this, folks in the village call Abeni “little rain bringer.”

The Harvest Festival begins and it’s fun and exciting and loud until suddenly, everyone falls silent. The witch has come walking out of the forest toward everyone. She had warned them to leave, that something very dangerous is coming but the adults in the village did not take heed and they’re basically ignoring her. She tells them she can no longer protect the village and she has come to collect her payment for protecting the village all these years. Her payment is to be one of the village’s children. The villagers deny her this and say they will protect themselves and start gearing up for war. Abeni’s mother goes to try to negotiate with the witch and ends up saying that the witch can take Abeni. The village is suddenly under attack by terrifying creatures that snatch up all the adults and lure away all the children. The witch is only able to save Abeni.

And this is just the beginning.

This is a historical romance that takes place primarily in the southern United States in the late 1870s, and race and racism are very much a part of this book. This is technically the third book in Jenkins’s Women Who Dare romance series, and as someone who has only read this book in the series, I can tell you that To Catch a Raven totally holds its own without having read the two other books first.

I am an absolute sucker for a book that has a con artist as the main character. This book not only has that, but it has an entire family of con artists, and each person is an absolute delight. First, outside of this con artist family, we have a father and son in Boston: Harrison and Braxton Steele. They are well-off Black men, as Braxton’s maternal grandfather had a fleet of merchant ships. Braxton is used to comfort and he is a tailor, and Harrison is a painter and illustrator.

Well, Harrison’s past has come back to cause some trouble. Before Braxton’s mother, he was in love with a woman named Hazel Moreau. Hazel, like her mother, her siblings, and now her children, was an incredibly talented con artist. When Hazel and Harrison were together, Harrison would produce incredibly good counterfeit paintings that they sold. At present, a detective has threatened Harrison (and Hazel, who is still living down in New Orleans) with arrest unless they convince their respective children to help pull a heist to recover something that was stolen.

Hazel and Harrison haven’t talked for decades, but suddenly he and Braxton find themselves in Hazel’s home in New Orleans, meeting with Hazel and her daughter, Raven. The detective has told them that a copy of the Declaration of Independence has been stolen, but the detective knows who has it: a former Confederate official in South Carolina. The detective wants Braxton and Raven to pose as husband and wife, go work for this man and his wife disguised as a chauffeur and housekeeper, and find (and steal) back the copy of the Declaration of Independence. Apparently, this Confederate official and his wife only hire Black people as servants because they like to feel like they are still owning enslaved people. So, you know, terrible all around.

Braxton is a goody-two-shoes and super judgmental of the life that Hazel, Raven, and their family lead, but he will do anything to keep his father out of the penitentiary. Raven finds Braxton absolutely insufferable. This animosity and tension does not last long, and things definitely get spicy. There is a good helping of sex on the page as well as some very touching acts of kindness that made my heart melt.

This is part of the absolutely lovely nonfiction comic Quick & Easy Guides collection. The author & illustrator, A. Andrews, is a disabled cartoonist. They make it very clear that they are neither a doctor nor a sex educator, but they have plenty of lived experience as a sexually active disabled person.

Disabled people are the largest minority group in the United States and make-up an estimated 20% of the population. That being said, many disabled folks are sexually active, and there aren’t nearly enough resources for disabled people on how to have sex that is pleasurable, comfortable, and safe. Not only are there not enough resources, there aren’t even enough conversations around sex and intimacy for disabled folks. This book hopes to open the door a bit wider, knowing that disabled folks remain less likely to receive adequate sex education and sexual healthcare at the same time as being more likely to experience trauma and stigma around sex. As mentioned in the title, this is a quick and easy guide. It does not get very deep and detailed, but it’s a wonderful starter for conversations and exploration. It’s written in a super casual, conversational tone that I really appreciate.

The author talks a bit about how they are defining disability and then some common myths about disabled bodies. I love that the author starts with communication as the main contributor to having sex that is enjoyable. This is true for all people, disabled or not, but for disabled folks interested in having sex, there may be more people to be talking to than just their partner or partners. Sometimes a conversation needs to be had with a personal care attendant, for instance, to arrange furniture or pillows before date night. Another example may be a conversation with your healthcare provider about contraception.

There’s practical information beyond communication in this comic as well about positions and toys and lube and more. The primary audience for this book is disabled people, but honestly, this is a fun, informative read for anyone. The artwork has a wide range of bodies and genders and skin tones and it’s wonderful.

I want to put the content warnings up front: violence, sexual assault and battery, abuse, child abuse, more violence, murder, infant death, and most importantly, the premise of this is that there is a pandemic that kills a lot of people, if not most people. Some of it is a little too on-the-nose, which is extra fascinating because this was first published in 2014.

In the prologue, we have an instructor who goes by the title Mother Ina, and there are six teenage boys referred to as scribes. Each year, a group of scribes is chosen to copy The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, which is actually a cycle of 19 journals. The bulk of this book is told via these journal entries and prose. The writer (the unnamed midwife) is a Physician’s Assistant at the University of California at San Francisco in the labor and delivery department. There is a fever caused by some kind of virus that is taking people out, mostly cisgender women and children. Live births come to a stop, including many stillborns, and the people who were giving birth usually didn’t make it either. The hospitals are overrun and people are dying in hallways. Like I said, this book is so on the nose that I clenched my jaw the entire time I was reading it.

Our protagonist succumbs to a fever while she is at the hospital. She wakes up maybe days or even weeks later to find everyone around her dead. Grabbing what medical supplies she can, like antibiotics, some birth control, and syringes, she heads to her apartment and quickly learns that it is not only unsafe but especially unsafe for women. She ends up disguising herself as a man and realizes she needs to get out of the city. There are just bands of men roaming around, almost hunting. At one point, she meets up with a group that has women in collars and chains and not in the kinky consensual way. She bargains for some time alone with the women, as if she is just a guy going to have sex with them, and she then tells the women she is also a woman and she gives them some birth control. So then she goes about like some man-murdering birth control vigilante and it is amazing, taking the lives of some men who are hunting women to keep them as sex slaves.

Shireen Malik has just broken up with her girlfriend, Chris, and she is not handling the breakup well. Shireen’s parents own a donut shop called You Drive Me Glazy across from Chris Huang’s parent’s donut and bubble tea shop. Both sets of parents have taken the rivalry to really petty levels and they have no idea that Shireen and Chris were dating, much less broke up. Shireen’s best friend Fatima is in Bangladesh visiting family for the summer so while she tries to video call as often as possible to offer support, it’s just not the same as if she were back home in Ireland with Shireen.

While Shireen is still rattled from the breakup, she learns that she has been accepted as a contestant on the first-ever Junior Irish Baking Show. You Drive Me Glazy has hit a rough patch financially (business is decidedly not booming) and Shireen hopes that going on the show will help get her parent’s donut shop back on its feet. Being on the show is also a step in Shireen’s plan to someday open her own bakery.

Shireen is an incredible baker and there’s a real possibility that she could win at this competition but of course, nothing is that easy. Her ex-girlfriend Chris has also been accepted as a contestant and is quite determined to win. In addition, there’s Niamh, a rather cute contestant on the show who not only has her eye set on winning the competition, but also it seems, she has her eye on winning Shireen’s heart.

This book is an absolute treat full of delicious puns and sticky situations. Each chapter’s title is delightful and the names that Shireen comes up with for the exciting donut flavors at her parents’ shop rival the punny names Bob Belcher gives his burgers of the day in the show Bob’s Burgers.

Content warning for racism, fatphobia, microaggressions, and outright aggressive Tweets.