F/F

C-
The Golden Enclaves

The Golden Enclaves is the third in a duology (yes, you read that right) about a deadly, dangerous version of Hogwarts which exists in a universe where magic is more curse than blessing. Novik dumps readers straight into the action from where the last book left off and the story will not be coher ...

B
Amor Actually

Note:  The sensuality rating of these stories ranges from Kisses to Burning If you liked the movie Love Actually but wished more of the characters had gotten happy endings, Amor Actually, which re-imagines every plot thread from the movie, might be the anthology for you. Like the original, the c ...

A
Girl, Serpent, Thorn

Nothing will make you relate to the heroine of Girl, Serpent, Thorn more than months of life lived during an unceasing quarantine.  Soraya, too, is forever stuck in her own palace on the pain of death – and the deaths of those around her. But the tale Bashardoust weaves for the reader is enchanti ...

C+
Maggie Terry

Former NYPD officer Maggie Terry, freshly sprung from rehab although un-liberated (mostly) from a drug and alcohol addiction, has settled into life as a private detective.  She hasn’t given up her cigarettes yet, and she’s not about to settle in to a life of calmative contemplation.  Her only ...

A-
My Lady's Choosing

If you were a fan of the old AAR Purple Prose Parody contests, with their send-ups of genre tropes and in-jokes, then have I got a book for you. My Lady’s Choosing is a mature-audience’s romance version of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories of ‘80s childhoods, and I highly recommend it for ...

B+
Carmilla

Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an illusion of a moment but the young lady, who just at that moment opened her eyes. Carmilla was actually first published in 1872 some twenty-six years before the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and is a Victorian Gothic lesbi ...

B-
Beneath the Waves

Although I am in real life quite afraid of the sea and prefer to stay out of it, I think the best part of Beneath the Waves is the setting. We spend a lot of time in the water, on a boat, on an oil rig, in a city on the bottom of the sea, and I loved this closeness to it a lot. It’s fascinating as ...