I loved this book from the first chapter! It was fun yet angsty and sexy yet sweet.
I adored the goth heroine (who felt like a real goth, not a cartoon goth), the discussion of the parasocial aspects of fame, the burdens of representation, and sustainable fashion. As someone who grew up in Los Angeles, Coming Clean felt very grounded in the city beyond just the Instagramable parts.
This was a fun, fast read with substance. I’ve been working my way through Trihn’s backlist ever since and it hasn’t disappointed!
I’m a sucker for an apologetically prickly heroine with a sweetheart love interest.
Maggie and Aiden are complex relatable characters who balance each other perfectly. I loved how they were attracted to each other’s minds through the online video game they play together and each other’s physical presence in their in-person interactions (even though they didn’t know they were interacting with the same person!)
I also enjoyed how both characters helped each other blossom during the course of the book, backing each other up as they figured out elder care, isolation, questions of sexuality and more. Seeing characters who were in their 40s and 50s tackle these issues and find love was wonderful and refreshing.
From Cathy Yardley, author of Love, Comment, Subscribe, comes an emotional rom-com about two middle-aged gamers who grow their online connection into an IRL love story.
Maggie is an unapologetically grumpy forty-eight-year-old hermit. But when her college-aged son makes her a deal―he’ll be more social if she does the same―she can’t refuse. She joins a new online gaming guild led by a friendly healer named Otter. So that nobody gets the wrong idea, she calls herself Bogwitch.
Otter is Aiden, a fifty-year-old optimist using the guild as an emotional outlet from his family drama caring for his aging mother while…
This is a short read but it packed a punch for me. I love romances between a non-binary person who was assigned male at birth and a cis woman. This is the first one I read and me feel very seen as it’s reminiscent of my own relationship.
I adored the hot, caring, yet awkward one-night stand that becomes so much more. The story overall was full of kindness, coziness, and explored gender euphoria in a lovely way.
After a lifetime of failed relationships, non-binary history professor Sam Bell is committed to a new (non)romantic strategy: Thirst Only. It’s the actual drinking where things get too complicated, where Sam inevitably gets hurt.
Sam is good at being thirsty, though, especially when it's karaoke night at The Moonlight Cafe, otherwise known as Moonie’s to its largely queer regulars. Moonie’s is fun. Comfortable. Safe. Except for tonight, when one by one, all of Sam’s friends abandon them. Disappointed, they prepare to leave. Until their #1 karaoke crush catches their eye...
For Lily Fischer, karaoke at Moonie's is the only time…
Cazzi has been in love with her best friend Patrick forever. He’s the only one who gets her paganism, passion for sex education, and knows her secret. Then she kissed him, ruining their friendship.
Now Patrick is back—until his bandmate throws a wrench in their relationship. Rohan is an ex-boy band heartthrob looking for a comeback. But it's jeopardized when Cazzi inspires him to leave his tempestuous girlfriend, causing a rift between Cazzi and Patrick.
As Cazzi and Rohan grow close, can their relationship survive when the machinations of his ex threaten to expose her biggest secret?
