Where Shadows Meet
Patrice Caldwell
Wednesday Books, 2025, 320 pages
$20.00

Reviewed by Mandee Loney

Where Shadows Meet by Patrice Caldwell is a young adult novel perfect for lovers of vampires and those looking for a Black lesbian romantasy. Though the book falls into the YA category, it deals with some adult themes, as described by the author:

“Please know that this story contains depictions of blood (including the drinking of blood), death (including that of multiple family members), kidnapping, psychological abuse, murder, systems of oppression (pulling from my family’s history in the American South and the use of enslaved Black people as disposable labor but of course unfortunately relating to many different people across the world), and violence of all sorts. There’s also a character who has self-harmed and the showing of, and reference to, those scars. The actual self-harm occurred years prior and is not depicted.”

While these themes can be heavy, each develops both characters and plot. One character, Najja, experiences multiple deeply traumatic events that spur her into action, and Caldwell handles each instance with care and makes sure to not glorify them. Caldwell’s family history adds another layer to the text, as this history informs the world Caldwell creates.

The story follows the point of view of three main characters: Favre, Leyla, and Najja. A fourth character, Thana, appears in many of Favre’s chapters, but does not have any written from her perspective. Caldwell hooks readers immediately with a captivating fairytale-esque narrative of two young goddesses meeting in an enchanted forest. Favre, who is a touch naive, encounters Thana, who seemingly has ulterior motives.

The narrative then skips to over a thousand years later, when we are introduced to Najja, a girl born with the gift of prophecy, and Leyla, soon to be Queen of the Mnaran vampires. In the first half of the novel, Caldwell’s focus is the careful development of each character with nuanced personalities.

The plot can be somewhat difficult to follow at times, as there are frequent shifts between both time and characters’ points of view. However, readers who untangle the timeline will be rewarded with rich parallels between the pair of characters in each time period. Caldwell juxtaposes the somewhat toxic relationship between Thana and Favre with the blossoming relationship between Najja and Leyla, prompting readers to question—what should someone sacrifice in the name of love?

While the pacing of Where Shadows Meet feels a little off-kilter at times, Caldwell has crafted a compelling premise with room to build on the foundation of this mythical world. This sapphic take on the vampire origin story plays the incredibly important role of centering Black lesbian characters in a genre that often excludes them.

Mandee Loney interned with Sinister Wisdom and is continuing her pursuit of a career in editing and publishing.

The Lamb
Lucy Rose
Harper, 2025, 336 pages
$22.39

Reviewed by Sydney Minor

Lucy Rose’s debut novel, The Lamb, blends elements of folktale, horror, and coming-of-age genres to craft a deeply original story about cannibalism and what it can metaphorically represent. The use of cannibalism as a metaphor in art and literature dates back to Greek mythology and early modern literature, but it has experienced a resurgence in recent years with works like Yellowjackets, Bones and All, Fresh, A Certain Hunger, and Tender Is the Flesh.

I approached the novel with some skepticism, concerned it might be derivative or capitalizing on a trend. Instead, I found it to be one of the most allegorically rich interpretations of this trope.
The story follows Margot, a young girl living on a homestead near the wilderness, raised in a household where cannibalism is the norm. Her mother, Mama, takes in strays—lost and wandering travelers—makes them comfortable, then kills them to use as food. When another woman, Eden, stumbles upon the homestead and embeds herself into the family, the dynamic Margot is used to begins to shift. As the story unfolds, tension builds toward an inevitable conclusion.

Both Margot and Mama grapple with inner conflicts that linger throughout the novel. Margot begins to question the morality of Mama’s actions, while also confronting her own emerging sexuality. Mama, on the other hand, struggles with her identity as a mother and the tension between that role and her personal autonomy. These internal battles are reflected in their relationships with consumption. Margot, for instance, eats a strand of her crush’s hair, hoping it will keep her close, while Mama’s relentless hunger mirrors her desire for independence and selfhood.

The novel also offers a compelling exploration of the theoretical concept of abjection. Coined by philosopher Julia Kristeva and often used in horror analysis, abjection refers to the human response of horror or disgust when faced with a breakdown in meaning—typically when social order collapses or the boundary between self and other disintegrates. These boundaries form the foundation of identity, morality, and stability, so their dissolution provokes deep psychological discomfort.

Cannibalism is perhaps the most taboo, and therefore abject, subject in horror. To make it more palatable or comprehensible, narratives often depict the cannibal as animalistic or the victim as less than human. The Lamb employs both: Mama sees her victims—the strays—as subhuman, while Margot increasingly views Mama as monstrous for her actions.

The most powerful aspect of the novel is the atmosphere and setting that Rose constructs through deliberate ambiguity. Much like a fairytale, The Lamb takes place in an unspecified time and location—an ambiguous part of England. The homestead feels otherworldly in its descriptions, yet occasional references to televisions or telephones snap the reader back to a recognizable reality. About a quarter of the book occurs at Margot’s school or during her bus rides, further grounding the story and amplifying its tragedy through contrast with the everyday world.

The novel is also highly readable. With around seventy chapters, each only three to five pages long, it’s easy to move through quickly—I finished it in about two days. While this structure may reflect a broader cultural shift toward shorter attention spans, it also builds a strong sense of momentum and looming dread as the story progresses.

The Lamb is a dark, genre-defying, and thought-provoking novel that will keep you on edge from beginning to end.

Sydney Minor (she/her) is a New York-born, London-based writer and musician currently interning with Sinister Wisdom. She recently completed her undergraduate studies at the Royal College of Music and will begin a master’s in musicology at Cambridge University this autumn, with a focus on the intersection of queer studies and twentieth-century opera. You can find more of her ramblings regarding music, art, and culture on her Substack, Salome’s Veil.

In Thrall
Jane DeLynn
Semiotext(e), 2024, 272 pages
$17.95

Reviewed by Lindsey Blaser

“Of course not, my dear, every quiver of your feverish sensibility holds me in thrall (143).”

Jane DeLynn’s In Thrall is a delicious read charting the affair between a budding lesbain and her English teacher in 1960s New York. While the inappropriate dynamic of the pair’s relationship is the hook, it’s far from the purpose of this novel.

Our hopelessly tragic protagonist, Lynn, is a timeless representation of many queer women’s experiences. Dismaying moments of forgetting to breathe, not being able to eat her Milky Way breakfasts anymore, and inexplicably being drawn to someone no one else understands—are niche experiences that broadly hold familiarity for the vast majority of queer youth.

The novel avoids delving into the intricacies of the couple’s relationship, especially their sexual encounters, and focuses instead on transferrable moments of Lynn’s queer adolescence. Lynn speaks only of unsavory experiences with her clumsy boyfriend, Wolf, so that all we read is of jamming fingers and coercion. When Lynn and Miss Maxfield enter the bedroom, it feels like a curtain closes, and the reader is left with a privacy which feels respectful, non-sexualized, and tender.

Miss Maxfield, having multiple student affairs in the past, is most objectively a predator. But it doesn’t feel that way as you read it. DeLynn wrote a novel in which bits of their interactions feel special and Miss Maxfield seems nurturing, which is conflicting as a reader. One is left to wrestle with the question of whether or not any part of their relationship is endorsable. And of course, it isn’t. Why the women are even attracted to one another is a mystery, feeling underdeveloped and vague, as if some otherworldly force is drawing the two together. What is it Lynn even likes about her? What do we, as readers, even like about Lynn?

Quippy remarks with her friends, an unbreachable wall up with her parents, and new vocabulary flaunted as soon as she learns it, are features that make Lynn relatable. The reader regresses to feeling like a teenage girl, especially one unraveling her sexuality. Lynn jumps to tragic extremes, finds her boyfriend disgusting (yet keeps him on the side), and panics when she reads fear-mongering homophobic texts. Basking in a tragic hero state, she believes a life of loneliness, crew cuts, and wearing green on Mondays is all that awaits her as lesbian. It’s almost healing to read this in 2025 and say, “My dear. . . ” alongside Miss Maxfield. How good things will become for us all!

Therein lies the draw to Miss Maxfield, someone who can offer assurance that Lynn’s identity isn’t life-ruining. She is someone who we, as twenty-first-century readers, view as a lifeline, while Lynn toys with the idea of throwing herself off a roof. Miss Maxfield is a voice of queer reason, giving Lynn grounds to believe it is more than okay to be gay. I just wish she was 16, too.

Lindsey Blaser holds a bachelor’s degree in Critical Diversity Studies from the University of San Francisco, and is a Sinister Wisdom intern based in New Jersey.

I Hope This Helps
Samiya Bashir
Nightboat Books, 2025, 144 pages
$18.95

Reviewed by Beth Brown Preston

Seven years after Field Theories—Samiya Bashir’s third poetry collection which won the 2018 Oregon Book Award for Poetry—comes her recent work in I Hope This Helps. Bashir’s work, both individual and collective, has been published, printed, and performed across America and abroad. Samiya Bashir is a poet, librettist, performer, and multimedia artist. Her honors include a Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, Oregon’s Regional Arts and Culture Council Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature, and two Michigan Hopwood Poetry Awards. She currently serves as the June Jordan Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.

Bashir has edited magazines and anthologies of literature and visual arts. In 2002, she cofounded Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization and writer’s festival for LGBTQ+ writers of African descent. Also, she served as an executive director of Lambda Literary from 2022 to 2023 where her mission was to elevate the work of LGBTQ+ writers, affirm the value of their stories, and advocate for queer and trans writers.

I Hope This Helps explores the metamorphosis of the artist despite the despair brought on by isolation and the limits of our social realities: time, money, work, and widespread global crises. Her poems raise the question: “What can it mean to thrive in the world as it is?” Both within and extending beyond traditional academic settings, Bashir’s work creates, employs, and teaches a restorative poetics, turning her moments of painful experience into triumphs of witness, healing, and change. Her meditation reveals her vulnerable inner life and how she has evolved into an artist.

Bashir knew at the age of eight that she wanted to become a writer. She taught herself how to read early and started keeping a journal. Both of her parents were public school teachers. She was encouraged by her grandfather’s nephew, who was a journalist, to begin writing. Other early influences on her work were hearing June Jordan’s “Poem About My Rights” in 1991 and 1992, and the murder of Rodney King.

Subsequently, Bashir learned the importance of community among writers. She has said about the writer’s life: “If there's any utility to being a poet. . . it’s our job. To help people articulate what’s happening. And know they're not alone in the articulating of it.”

To Bashir, “The poem itself is something alive—not just existing on the page.” Bashir has invested time in the theater and her operas and installations have traveled throughout the country. “Awareness,” she says, “is the chief motivation to art. You can be distracted and miss it. We’re taught to be distracted.” We have been distracted from attention to the fates of certain populations. “When you’re talking to people of color you must have to acknowledge trauma.”

In I Hope This Helps, Bashir’s work benefits from her well-rounded artistic perspective. Her poems thrive in the form of typographies, cartographies, musical scores, and photographs (e.g. the poems “Negro Being” and “Freakish Beauty,” (102-103). Other poems in the collection draw on Bashir’s lifelong practice of journaling. The poem “Letter from Exile” highlights her sojourn in Rome after winning a coveted prize:

“I am still, in theory, one of two 2019-20 Rome Prize Fellows in Literature. The year marked the 125th anniversary of the American Academy in Rome: a rare two-poet year. Bold and brilliant Nicole Sealey holds the second prize.”

“We are, together, the Academy’s first Black women Literature Fellows. Ever. Being a Negro First™ just feels so last century” (50).

This prose poem startles the reader with its insistence that the poet’s stay in Rome under the auspices of the prize, during the pandemic, was a form of exile, an expatriate experience both physical and intellectual.

Of the Italian language she writes in the poem/journal:

“The Venetian etymology of ciao is one of enslavement. Whether coming or going one said schiavo: I am your slave. This was, I guess, in case someone forgot” (53).

And of her return to the States she writes:

“Most days America screams to anyone who’ll listen how it hates me so much it would rather kill us all than let me live” (55).

The poet Erica Hunt has written of this new collection: “What do we do to live and thrive—as Black people, joyous and queer, new neighbors and strangers, our full humanity—dwarfed in the shadows by towers of power, distraction, and fear? Bashir’s poetry leans into these questions using her superpower—pausing to listen—over-hearing and hearing over—‘hearing’ under and rewriting, reinscribing her Journey—through the ‘twinkle textured disco ball Jenga set’—and shows the reader how creative power fuels us to begin again. And again.”

Beth Brown Preston is a poet and novelist. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Writing Program of Goddard College, she has been a CBS Fellow in Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bread Loaf Scholar. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in many literary and scholarly journals.

Lesbian Styles in Cinema
Vicki Karaminas and Judith Beyer
Edinburgh University Press, 2025, 192 pages
$120.00

Reviewed by Atlanta Tsiaoukkas

Looking at the countless publications on queer cinema and costume, it is surprising that until this year a comprehensive survey of the lesbian aesthetic in cinema had not manifested, and, as such, Vicki Karaminas’ and Judith Beyer’s Lesbian Styles in Cinema offers a timely investigation of lesbian cinema and queer fashion history. Working across a vast array of films from the 1929 German silent Pandora’s Box (Pabst) to last year’s Love Lies Bleeding (Glass), Karaminas and Beyer examine style on screen as a gateway through which to explore expressions of ‘lesbian subjectivity,’ ultimately concluding that contemporary cinema, with its loosened grip on gender binaries, increasingly troubles the established conventions of lesbian style.

Moving through lesbian film history, the sheer number of films included in this relatively short volume is both impressive and perhaps overambitious—some films receive a level of passing attention that may disappoint, and few receive the extensive critical analysis that, when executed, offers the work’s most exciting insights. Lesbian Styles in Cinema begins with coming-of-age narratives, particularly examining masculinity and femininity in lesbian cinema. Chapter two moves on to stories of seduction, continuing the theme of masculinity as a distinctly visible expression of lesbian style. Chapters three and four turn to biopics and period dramas, though the line between these is a fine one that is not drawn out sufficiently to justify separating the chapters into two. The subsequent chapter on crime thrillers is undoubtedly the most expansive, especially where the styling of queer femme fatales speaks to a lesbian visual pleasure. Chapter six focuses on the central implication of Karaminas’ and Beyer’s argument, that contemporary lesbian cinema, such as Bottoms (Seligman) and Drive-Away Dolls (Coen), disintegrates the butch-femme dichotomy in favour of androgyny.

The generic approach taken in Lesbian Styles in Cinema limits the efficaciousness of Karaminas’ and Beyer’s narratives, obscuring their most stimulating observations. The sporadic discussions of colour, for example, across films such as Blue is the Warmest Colour (Kechiche), Blue Jean (Oakley) and Vita & Virginia (Button), suggest a pattern that would have benefited from extended thematic analysis rather than passing references across various chapters. The same could be said of discussions on school uniform, where the analysis of Collete’s uniform in both reality and the biopic would have made most sense alongside the first chapter’s exploration of Olivia (Audry) and Mädchen in Uniform (Sagan)—a missed opportunity to compare and contrast the uniform as a lesbian style symbol. My hope is that scholars notice the patterns laid out by Karaminas and Beyer and take the initiative to explore them further.

The ostensible aim of Lesbian Styles in Cinema is to demonstrate how “film uses lesbian style to construct characters that appeal to lesbian, queer and mainstream audiences in studio films and independent cinema” (5). Such a distinction would have benefited from greater extrapolation, as would Karaminas’ and Beyer’s preference for lesbian over other more inclusive terms such as sapphic or queer, in light of the fact that many of the characters featured in the text’s ‘lesbian cinema’ do not explicitly identify as such. Similarly, the project of lesbian style in cinema would have been bolstered by a more comprehensive understanding of the oft-repeated descriptor, androgynous, which is applied broadly and unevenly throughout the analysis. Whilst definitional disputes and gender spectrum discourse may be tedious at times in academic literature, a greater level of specificity when discussing concepts such as ‘lesbian’ and ‘androgynous’ may have brought more nuance into the discussion of lesbian cinema and style.

While Lesbian Styles in Cinema would have benefited from a narrower focus that attended more closely to the theoretical issues of gender expression and lesbian identities, this timely intervention is undoubtedly a boon for the study of lesbian and sapphic identity and style in cinema. Karaminas and Beyer have effectively demonstrated the richness of lesbian cinema and its scope ripe for further investigation of the nebulous yet distinctive lesbian style.

Atlanta Tsiaoukkas is a UK-based writer and researcher currently working towards a PhD on queer Victorian schoolgirls and their homoerotic friendships. Find her on Instagram @aatlanta_aa

Living at Night
Mariana Romo-Carmona
Spinsters Ink, 1997, 257 pages
$8.00 (used)

Reviewed by Mel Oliver

Living at Night brings us into the intimate and brutal world of Erica García, a young, working-class Puerto Rican lesbian navigating life in a white, suburban Connecticut institution. Through clear, honest prose, the novel exposes the violence of care systems, where patients are heavily sedated—their bodies regulated and recorded with cold precision—yet remain defiantly human. Erica’s role as a worker within this system reveals not just the cruelty of institutional control but also the ways women of color survive, adapt, and quietly resist within oppressive structures. Though Erica cannot save everyone, she comes to a pivotal understanding: she can reclaim her own life.

This story deeply resonated with me, as two of my aunties spent decades working in hospice and state-run institutions similar to the one described in the novel. Their labor—quiet, often invisible, and profoundly gendered—carries emotional weight and historical silence. Reading about Erica felt like reading about them, and I couldn’t help but wonder what liberation they might have imagined for themselves had they encountered this book, not just in terms of sexuality, but in terms of self-worth, bodily autonomy, and the possibility of a life beyond survival. One of my aunts, a Christian lesbian, has endured abuse in both heterosexual and same-gender relationships. I see now how she may have clung to her work not just out of duty, but in search of the care she herself was denied, perhaps imagining that love and tenderness might be found in the act of caregiving. My other aunt, who left an abusive marriage and retired from institutional work, may have found a rare form of agency and control in that setting, something the rest of her life never offered.

I grieve the silence between them, the solitude they endured. If only they had known their shared pain could be a bridge, not a wall. This novel is more than fiction—it is a mirror for the generations of women who have labored, loved, and lost in silence. It invites us to imagine what liberation might look like for the caregivers, not just the cared-for. And it insists that working-class women, especially queer women of color, deserve stories that reflect their complexity, their courage, and their right to be seen.

Mel Oliver is a Black Indian (Choctaw heritage with Munsee roots), environmental educator, poet, researcher, and lover of crafts, dogs/dingos, and music! https://melsorbit.carrd.co/

Lowest Common Denominator
Pirkko Saisio, translated by Mia Spangenberg
Two Lines Press, 2024, 312 pages
$23.00

Reviewed by Jules Gellert

Lowest Common Denominator is a fictionalized memoir from the well-known Finnish lesbian author and actor, Pirkko Saisio. As part of her Helsinki trilogy, Saisio tells the story of her early childhood as the only child of communist parents in the years following World War II, as well as the Winter and Continuation Wars between Finland and the Soviet Union. Through the eyes of the young narrator, readers see her confusion in trying to understand the adults around her and concepts such as religion, gender, and class. The story also jumps to the narrator in the present day, which follows her as she copes with her father’s death. This book functions like a stream of memories, bouncing between the past and present and different views of the self. Saisio explores her self-image through her character in the novel, playing with the first- and third-person points of view, almost as a voyeur to her own thoughts and memories.

Translated by Mia Spangenberg, Lowest Common Denominator is written beautifully and fluidly. Though the pace is slow and sometimes contains anecdotes that I did not find particularly useful or interesting, the book overall uniquely captures the narrator’s childhood and its connections to her adult life. The original title of the book, Pienin yhteinen jaettava, literally translated as “smallest common factor,” might better represent the young narrator’s experiences as a foundation for her adult self, depicted as a more conventional—though lesbian—woman and mother. Saisio discusses gender and sexuality through her childhood gaze, from her learning about Jesus, who “isn’t a man or a woman” (p. 200), to her devotion to Miss Lunova, an announcer at the amusement park. Despite the lack of a more explicit exploration and focus on gender and sexuality, for readers interested in a very personal book about childhood amid political crises and a slowly changing culture—especially regarding the status of women—it is definitely worth the read. Though the book is approachable, I recommend doing a quick read on the political climate of this time period in Finland to better understand the driving forces behind the story.

Jules Gellert is currently a master’s student in Helsinki and a Sinister Wisdom intern for the summer of 2025. She spends her time reading, studying, and making art.

Hungerstone
Kat Dunn
Zando, 2025, 336 pages
$28.00

Reviewed by Sydney Minor

“What is a monster but a creature of agency?” (237). This is the central question posed by Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone. A retelling of the 1872 lesbian vampire novella Carmilla, Dunn’s novel takes the gothic and sapphic essence of the original and expands it into a fully-fledged, well-rounded work that draws the reader in with its elegant prose and brooding atmosphere.

The novel follows Lenore, an aristocratic woman burdened by past tragedy and discontent in her present life and marriage. When she travels north, to Sheffield, to prepare her husband’s manor for a hunting party, she encounters a mysterious woman named Carmilla, who has suffered a carriage accident. As their relationship deepens, Carmilla challenges Lenore to confront what she truly desires—and demands that she pursue it. The further Lenore falls under Carmilla’s spell, the more the border between agency and monstrosity blurs, leaving the reader to ponder what is right and wrong in the case of revenge, liberation, and forbidden love.

Dunn skillfully explores the dichotomy between fear and desire, using the constrained agency of Victorian women as a lens through which to examine sapphic longing. Lenore’s character wants more in life; she wants to have more power than presiding over houses, staff, and guests, but she also feels a longing that is deeper, more personal, and more taboo. The novel includes questions of repression, identity, and whether reclaiming control over one’s life—especially as a woman in a patriarchal world—can ever be free from violence.

At times, the novel suffers from over-explanation, particularly concerning Lenore’s backstory and how it informs her current behavior. The occasional flashbacks often feel out of place, not adding much to the story and occasionally interrupting the narrative momentum. Additionally, the supporting characters can feel one-dimensional, serving more as props than participants. However, this also allows Carmilla’s seductive and enigmatic presence to stand out as a true highlight, drawing the reader in just as she draws Lenore in.

Rich in atmosphere and emotional complexity, the novel oozes with darkness, longing, and seduction, making Hungerstone a worthy and haunting successor to the Carmilla story.

Sydney Minor (she/her) is a New York-born, London-based writer and musician interning with Sinister Wisdom. She recently completed her undergraduate studies at the Royal College of Music and will begin a master’s in musicology at Cambridge University this autumn, with a focus on the intersection of queer studies and twentieth-century opera.

Queer Communion: Religion in Appalachia
Edited by Davis Shoulders
University Press of Kentucky, 2025, 168 pages
$19.95

Reviewed by Allison Quinlan

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him” (James Baldwin, 1962).

From the start, this collection makes clear a shared experience of being harmed by the people we love the most, in the name of God and love, and the complications that arise when you continue to love the people who seem to swing between loving you and hating you. Each work in the compilation wrestles with what it means to have faith, both in God and the people around us, beginning with, “effectively all rural queer Appalachians and Southerners have loved people who hated them—or at least parts of them, parts that can’t be divided out” (x). While Queer Communion leans more into a positive connection with faith, it doesn’t shy away from harm either; it just shows ways in which people have re-shaped or found a different way of worship, which I appreciated.

The collection reiterates the idea of making one’s religion in nearly every segment, piecing together queerness with Appalachian identity, religious views (from Catholicism to strict protestant evangelicalism), and how this “holiness” exists apart from exclusionary beliefs. Davis Shoulders writes, “I attend a church of my own making. At any place where a sense of knowing is felt” (128). And Jarred Johnson says, “Faith seems like it should be life-transforming, not a set of strictures by which to abide” (118). Savannah Sipple defines love and holiness well, writing:

There are moments in our lives when we know we’re confident in the person we are, in the things we know to be true about ourselves. . . What would my grandmother say about this granddaughter of hers who now has a wife, who now has a love whose arms open wide enough to call me home? I’d like to think she’d call that holy (13).

I agree that faith is about finding a place of honesty, where one can be fully themselves. Julie Rae Powers calls queerness “spiritual in its own right” (21). The theme of queer acceptance is constant in the collection; for example, John Golden’s piece begins by discussing baptism as a moment of queer acceptance, which I appreciated for its beautiful symbolism.

Golden’s work took an interesting turn, though, when they told a story about arguing with a right-wing man, and in a moment of anger, told him he’s removed from the grace of God. Later, they expressed regret, and I was a bit conflicted. Hateful people tell queer folks all the time that God condemns them. Why should this hateful guy get mercy? I suppose it’s complicated. Golden’s piece forces you to sit with the question of whether anyone gets to say who’s beyond redemption.

Conflict is part of what makes the collection so wonderful, though, because it’s honest and, in many cases, doesn’t tie everything up neatly. It recognises the pain of religion, deep and complicated that it is. Some of the essays lean into faith and find peace in it, while others walk away from it entirely. The collection makes space for both. Mack Rogers’ piece offers insight into how a faith that emphasises control and worship, conditional love, and operates as a tool for manipulation can impact us. Then, it compares this religious control with defining one’s own joy. Emma Cieslik sums up the conflict well, writing, “many queer people like myself feel the same urgency of ‘choice’ or being pushed to ‘decide’ between living as their authentic selves and drinking the Kool-Aid of the church” (45).

I finished the work with the takeaway that each author had built something sacred for themselves, even in spaces where they were told they didn’t belong. Shoulders describes the struggle of situating Appalachian identity given others’ exclusionary beliefs, saying, “They’ve imagined it to be a place where a person like me shouldn’t belong” (132). And yet every author has dispelled aspects of those imaginings. Appalachia is and always has been a space where everyone belongs; the people who hate don’t get to define God, the land, and who is welcome, no matter how hard they might try.

Allison Quinlan is a nonprofit manager in Scotland, originally from the rural southern United States.

Sunburn
Chloe Michelle Howarth
Verve Books, 2023, 288 pages
$16.99

Reviewed by Jules Gellert

Sunburn is a coming-of-age story set in 1990s rural Ireland, following Lucy as she faces her love for her friend Susannah over the course of several years. The catalyst of her infatuation is spending time with Susannah the summer before their final year of school, a summer spent sunbathing in the yard of Susannah’s absent parents’ home. By the end of the summer, the two girls are unable to deny their interest in each other. They begin a secret relationship that slowly deteriorates as they prepare for the rest of their lives.

When Lucy’s mother catches the girls together, Lucy begins to publicly date her best friend, Martin, to prove to her mother that she is “moving in the right direction” (229). Lucy finds herself forced down the same pipeline her mother and every other woman she knows has gone through. She must choose whether to follow the well-trodden path of domesticity in order to preserve the conditional love of her mother, friends, and community, or to follow her love for Susannah.

While Sunburn covers topics perhaps overdone within the queer coming-of-age genre, such as the role of religion and guilt in self-acceptance, Howarth dives much deeper both through her excellent writing and her discussion of the impact of shame on those outside the individual experiencing it. In making her choices between Susannah and Martin, or her own happiness and the path set before her, Lucy wounds everyone around her. She tries to walk a tightrope between these options, but by trying to make everyone happy and avoid pain and rejection, she becomes selfish. Howarth explores these ideas through a perfect combination of tender, intense, and occasionally unsettling inner dialogue. Lucy’s love for Susannah is not sappy, but all-consuming and incredibly honest. For some readers, this may be a bit off-putting—but for many, it will make the story more sincere and profound.

Lucy’s story requires patience, like that which a good friend offers. Following her story is painful and frustrating, but also deeply moving. As a reader, you might struggle with the characters in their questions such as: what is love worth and worth losing? Sunburn is a distinctive story about choices, shame, and love, perhaps best summarized by Susannah in a letter to Lucy: “I’ll marry you if you get past all the shame of being with me” (98). Despite the young age of its characters, this book is mature and good for anyone who wants to experience the overwhelming intensity and honesty of a first love.

Jules Gellert is a master’s student in Helsinki and is a Sinister Wisdom intern for the summer of 2025. She spends her time reading, studying, and making art.