#avery curran

Aardvark Book Club is one of my favorite book boxes, and the biggest reason is that they always include diverse books by diverse authors. Every month, they always have at least one queer book in their monthly selections, but this month they've got three!

Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian

Cat Sebastian’s long-awaited foray into contemporary romance! A witty, emotional, and deliciously slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance between two costars on a popular sci-fi television series.

Simon and Charlie, actors on a long-running sci-fi show, can’t stand one another. Charlie is impetuous, outgoing, and basically feral, and Simon thinks he should have stayed in reality television where he belongs. They’ve spent the better part of a decade quarreling over the spotlight and pretty much everything else, and everybody in the industry knows it. Now that Simon’s contract is finally done, he can move to New York, start fresh with work he actually likes, and get away from Charlie.

Simon’s only problem is that people might assume he’s been pushed off the show due to being impossible to work with. And he is kind of difficult to work with. He doesn’t get along with people—unlike Charlie, who somehow tricked everyone on the show into adoring him despite some outrageously bad on-set behavior during the show’s first season. Simon would rather never have to see Charlie again, but reluctantly agrees to stage a very public friendship during the short time before he moves. When Charlie has to leave town to deal with a family emergency, this means Simon comes along. Their road trip brings Simon to places he would never have willingly chosen to visit—and he finds he’s actually not having a terrible time.

[Romance, LGBTQIA+, Includes a Dog | 3/5 Open Door Spice]

The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan

A devastating love story. A bewitching twist on history. A blood-drenched hunt for purpose, power, and redemption.

In 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears most: the terrible Beast of Gévaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake.

Sebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel – who takes payment in living hearts – it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.

Now, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse.

[Debut Novel, Fantasy, LGBTQIA+, Includes a Dog]

Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

The untimely death of a student at a girls’ boarding school marks the first in a haunting series of escalating supernatural events, and uncovers buried truths of teenage repression, queer desire, and the everyday horror of coming of age.

In 1928, Emily Locke’s final year at the isolated Briarley School for Girls is derailed when Violet, the school’s brightest star (and a cunning beauty for whom Emily would do anything), falls to her death on her eighteenth birthday. Emily and her buttoned-up rival Evelyn are, for once, in agreement: Violet’s death was no accident. There’s an obvious culprit, the French schoolmistress with whom Violet was getting a little too close—they only need to prove it.

Desperate for answers, Emily and her classmates turn to spiritualism, hoping for a glimpse of wisdom from the great beyond. To their shock, Violet’s spirit appears, choosing pious Evelyn as her unlikely medium. And Violet has a warning for them: the danger has just begun.

[Debut Novel, Gothic, Horror, LGBTQIA+, Coming of Age]

Books I Read in 2026: Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

Adult Fiction Rowan Brighton Brown‘s WHITE TRASH WITCHCRAFT, a queer Appalachian horror in which a recent graduate spurns all her inheritance—the penchant for pills, the blood-soaked family farm, and the ancient magic—until infectious iron rusts through the community and she must choose which monsters to slay and which to become, to Alexandra Aceves at Holiday House, in a nice deal, for…

Owned?: No, library Page count: 336 My summary: Briarley School For Girls, 1928. A bright, popular girl falls down a stairwell and dies. Emily Locke, Violet's best friend, knows it is no accident. She just needs to prove it. One of the other girls lends her a book on spiritualism, which leads them to a strange incident. Could Violet's spirit be warning of future dangers to the girls? Who was behind her fall? And why is all the food in the pantry rotting? My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Weird horror books! I just love me a weird horror book, and I've been on a bit of a kick lately. This is a relatively new book, which sounded intriguing just on the premise. Mysterious deaths, the shadows of Empire, spiritualism, and a haunting…what's not to love here? And overall, I found it to be a pretty solid novel. There's a creepy, unsettling atmosphere throughout; both the alienness of the upper-class boarding school environment almost one hundred years ago to the modern reader, and the things that are happening in the school which are getting the girls into more and more danger. While I thought there were some aspects of this book which could have been treated a little better, I think that overall it's a spooky story with something to say about Empire, Britishness and British values, and how we treat one another. I really enjoyed it!