Wild Shrew Literary Review (WSLR) is Sinister Wisdom’s online book review project. To complement the longer list of suggested books available for review, each month we feature a selection of books being released that month. If you would like to write a review, or if you would like to be added to the WSLR email list to receive the monthly complete book list with book descriptions, please email the WSLR editor, Chloe Berger, at chloe at sinisterwisdom dot org.


February 2026 Featured Books:
1. The Soulmate Strategy: My Imperfect Plan to Conquer Heartbreak by Corey Seemiller
2. Our Diaries, Ourselves: How Diarists Chronicle Their Lives and Document Our World by Betsy Rubiner
3. Joe the Pirate by Hubert, illustrated by Virginie Augustin
4. Out of the Loop by Katie Siegel
5. She-Wolf by E.K. O’Connor
6. Belonging to the Air by Avery Irons
7. The Admiral’s Daughter by Alyson Root


Book descriptions:

The Soulmate Strategy: My Imperfect Plan to Conquer Heartbreak by Corey Seemiller: A soul-searching LGBTQ memoir about one woman’s attempt to plan her way to happily ever after—only to realize that healing, self-discovery, and love happen in their own time.

Days after Corey’s breakup, a photo of her ex wrapped in the arms of another woman goes viral on Facebook. Confronted with this gleeful boast about “happily ever after,” Corey, a forty-something-year-old lesbian, decides that she can’t live in a state of perpetual loneliness, plagued with the burden of her own failure in finding happiness and love.

Armed with her meticulously crafted checklist, Corey embarks on a mission to heal, move on, and find “the one.” But no matter how many items she checks off her list, or how faithfully she follows the sage wisdom of psychics, her breakup coach, and the legendary rapper Eminem, her hope in finding her one true love begins to fade away—until she’s suddenly torn between two.

Now, with her heart unexpectedly on the line, Corey must find out what she really wants—and where her true happiness lies.

Our Diaries, Ourselves: How Diarists Chronicle Their Lives and Document Our World by Betsy Rubiner:: A love letter to the art of the diary and to the people who write—and read—them

Featuring iconic diary keepers like Audre Lorde, Virginia Woolf, Alison Bechdel, and Taylor Swift

We know what it was like to be an out lesbian in 19th-century England, what the inner world of a young girl in hiding looks like, and what the earliest internet users’ favorite websites were, in part, because of diaries. Our Diaries, Ourselves is a joyful deep dive into this time-honored tradition of preserving who we are.

From Marie Curie to Taylor Swift, this book illustrates how keeping a diary helps us to understand ourselves and our world. Tour Italy’s “City of the Diary,” Pieve Santo Stefano, which boasts a diary archive, museum, and annual festival. Discover how women have used diaries for centuries as canvases for self-expression and self-care and as tools of resistance in a patriarchal society. Travel through time and across cultures, from renowned figures to ordinary people, for glimpses of their lives—different yet comfortingly familiar.

Our Diaries, Ourselves is a treasure trove of social history, feminist rebellion, and personal reflection. This book celebrates the vibrant and varied ways we live our lives and the stories we choose to tell about them. And it reminds us of a uniquely human need that transcends time, language, and technology: to see and be seen, remember and be remembered.

Joe the Pirate by Hubert, illustrated by Virginie Augustin: Beautifully illustrated in black & white by Virginie Augustin (with a single sequence in color), this album tells the life story of Marion Barbara ‘Joe’ Carstairs (1900-1993), a wealthy British power boat racer known for her speed, eccentric lifestyle, and gender nonconformity.

Life is too short to be bored.

It’s the true story of a little girl born in 1900 in London, who “already felt queer in the womb.” Growing up, she circumnavigated the globe, started a company of girl-driven taxis, went to war, broke speed records in boat races, reigned as an enlightened monarch on an island in the Bahamas, her best friend and confidant was a doll.

Living several lives, she had several names. At birth, she was called Marion. Then at 5 years old, after a fall from a camel, she chose the pseudonym of Tuffy. Finally, it is very quickly in the first name Joe that she really recognized herself. And it was as a man that she forged her reputation and created her legend. . . A lover of competition, speed and female conquests, Joe Carstairs lived a life faithful to her character: explosive, impulsive and eccentric. Follow the destiny of a wealthy woman with incandescent charm, full of unshakable confidence and for whom life was one long bonfire.

Hubert’s first and only biopic, Joe the Pirate, is a spirited, twirling, scathing and uninhibited graphic novel, like a Billy Wilder film. Inspired by the clear line of Yves Chaland, Virginie Augustin has once again reinvented her style, without sacrificing any of the formidable efficiency of her storytelling or her science of staging.

Out of the Loop by Katie Siegel: She spent two years in a time loop. Now she’s ready to solve a murder. And maybe grab a bagel.

For the past two years, Amie Teller has been stuck in a time loop. Each day, she wakes up, and it’s September 17. Same day, same weather, same people, same conversations. Until one day, it’s September 18, and Amie is free.

Before she can celebrate, Amie learns her neighbor was murdered the day before—the day Amie has lived hundreds of times. Amie knows she has to help; nobody knows yesterday like she does. But acclimating to her new nonrepeating life proves to be more difficult than expected. How does one resume their life after a time loop, anyway?

Assisted by an ex-girlfriend who wants to make their friendship work and a grumpy neighbor who spends his days building Rube Goldberg machines, Amie sets out to track down who killed (and killed and killed and killed) Savannah Harlow.

Readers who love time loop novels, amateur sleuth mysteries, and original takes on classic tropes will love Out of the Loop.

She-Wolf by E.K. O’Connor: In ancient Scandinavia, a land beset by monstrous creatures and legends, Beowulf is warrior of extreme renown. Born in battle and shaped by steel, she has spent years proving that strength is not solely a man’s domain.

When the halls of Heorot threaten to buckle under the horror of a monstrous creature known as Grendel, Beowulf answers the call.

As she battles creatures of nightmare, she finds herself drawn to a queen who she should slay for the good of the realm, a woman whose heart holds both solace and peril.

In this sapphic retelling of the Old English epic, Beowulf fights not just for victory, but for the right to wield her own destiny, defend her love and stand toe to toe against monsters that lurk in the dark.

Belonging to the Air by Avery Irons: Honest “Bird” Bennett is a young Black girl with a hunger to learn what lies beyond the walls she shares with her mother, Maddy, and her grandmother, Odelia. Their home is governed by the hum of Maddy’s sewing machine, echoes of Bird preparing supper, and Odelia’s stories of times past. The women live in Bennettsville, Illinois, a freedmen’s town established by Bird’s great-grandfather, where rural life pulses with church song and where peace is fragile with the neighboring white town, Tuckersville. As Bird comes of age, she must reckon with turbulence at home and with what it means to fall in love with a childhood friend. As an adult, rejecting a life of self-denial, Bird spreads her wings and plants roots in Harlem. After a decade of growth and loss, she is summoned back to Bennettsville to confront her family and her past as Tuckersville residents try to drive their Black neighbors from their land.

In Belonging to the Air: A Novel, author Avery Irons imagines stories of resilience among Black Queer folks during the early 20th century. This skillfully woven narration follows one family’s intergenerational experience of the Great Migration—from an escape from slavery, through the settling of a freedman’s town, and to one young woman’s journey to New York City and back. Irons’ evocative and lyrical prose builds a world in which complicated characters try to care for one another in a country that does not care about them. The novel's dialogue jumps off the page and rings with a truth that lingers.

Among the novel’s cast of characters are a blind matriarch, a healing herb woman, and queer lovers. History talks to and through itself as elders confront youngsters and as racism shapeshifts in rural and urban settings across the decades. Belonging to the Air requires that readers think about how the United States’ constructions of race, love, and freedom have—and have not—changed over time, demanding that we consider the wisdom of our inner selves while we listen to that of our elders.

The Admiral’s Daughter by Alyson Root: : A sapphic romance set on the high seas

An arrogant sailor who never sticks around.
A guarded journalist who doesn’t trust the Navy.
One reckless night turns into months at sea. . .

Royal Navy able rate River Dawson never drops anchor in the same harbor twice—especially when it comes to women. With a reputation as the fleet’s heartbreaker, she lives for no-strings seductions and swift departures. But when her latest redheaded fling turns out to be the Admiral’s daughter—and her new crewmate aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth—River’s easy-come, easy-go lifestyle hits rough waters.

Cleo Carter has sworn off sailors. After years of watching duty outrank family—and suffering one heartbreak too many—she’s done with sea life. But when she’s assigned to cover one of her father’s ship, Cleo finds herself trapped on board with the one woman she should’ve left on shore.

As scandal brews and sparks ignite below deck, River and Cleo must decide if their chemistry is just a shipboard fling—or the start of something worth risking everything for.

Perfect for fans of sapphic romance, forbidden love, and sharp banter.