in libris libertas

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Oni Press for giving me early access to this wonderful graphic novel! It's called Ladies of the Knight by Fiona Marchbank, and truly, it is excellent.

I didn't know, going into this, that the concept of the Knight (Serafina) and her Squire (George) had originated on Tumblr. However, as I started reading, I got an inkling of recognition, and eventually found the original art of the characters on Tumblr, posted by the author something like 12 years ago. Imagine my delight! I was so excited to find that a whole story about the Knight and the Squire now existed. George is everything that can be expected of her age: awkward, eager, and ecstatic to be a squire. Serafina, on the other hand, is grumpy, caustic, and incredibly bored as a knight.

So of course, when Serafina's wife makes her take on George as her squire, they clash. This is very much a typical grumpy-mentor-meets-enthusiastic-protege story. Serafina and George learn how to exist together, and develop a very warm and caring friendship in addition to their teacher-and-student situation. The two of them have their ups and downs but the story makes it clear that Serafina is the knight to teach George, and George is exactly the squire Serafina needs.

I loved how the politics of the knighthood was explored throughout the story - it doesn't exactly map onto how things worked in medieval times in our world, it's much queerer and feminist - but it still had a whole system designed for the world in which the story takes place. Knights perform for crowds every week, in jousting, archery, and other pursuits, and George has a whole journey of learning which things she and her other squires excel at.

The art, of course, is stunning to look at. Fiona Marchbank does some very interesting things with colour and negative space in some panels, and overall the images are very cohesive. The character designs are excellent too - nobody is identical or suffers from same face syndrome, as one often finds in mainstream comics and graphic novels. Each character is distinctive not just in appearance but in personality, too. It really makes for an enjoyable, well-rounded experience.

A huge thank you to Melissa Brayden for providing an ARC of Make Your Move in exchange for review.

First of all: wow. I will have to admit I was a little hesitant going into this book - I absolutely love watching Formula 1 with my friends, and over the past few years have developed pretty strong opinions about the sport. I need not have worried! It is so, so obvious just from the first few chapters that the author really did her research with regard to racing, the different series, and how her main character Reese Maddox could move up into the world of F1.

I absolutely loved Reese as a character. She's fiery, a little hotheaded, and extremely competitive, which all make her compelling - and she has the bravado to match it, which makes her a fantastic romance protagonist. While this book doesn't go into the small details of superlicence points and the like, Reese has a very believable career progression: she goes from karts, to working her way through the feeder series, and then after some drama in F2 ends up in Formula Next, which is this universe's answer to the F1 Academy. Reese is so passionate about racing that it is so obvious that on the track is where she belongs, and this makes for some nice conflict with her love interest, Sloane.

I enjoyed the exploration of trauma and mental health that this novel did with our other protagonist, the driver-turned-mentor Sloane Foster. Sloane is driven, practical, and a little bit of a perfectionist. So when she can't control her anxiety when it comes to racing…well, there's a bit of a clash. But Melissa Brayden handles it with such care and compassion, it really makes Sloane and her struggles feel real. At no point is Sloane judged or brought down by her very real ordeal in being trackside again.

This book has quite a few laugh-out-loud moments (especially when The Starting Grid, Reese's best friends from Formula next, are involved) and also some incredibly heartwrenching, edge-of-your-seat moments. It was exactly what I'm searching for in a sapphic romance: a nice balance of actual plot while still containing the perfect romantic elements. Honestly, the plot involving Reese's racing career was so good, sometimes I wanted a little less of the romance! Okay, I'm kidding about that, mostly. But this is a damn good story, and it's so well told.

The final pages indicate this is the first in a series. I absolutely cannot wait for the next book. I want to know what else The Starting Grid are getting up to, I want some more peeks in at Reese and Sloane's life together, and I really, really want to see how Cassidy is doing in future books. She was easily my favourite character.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of Summer Official by Rebekah Weatherspoon for review.

I think this book may have been written specifically for me. It is exactly to my tastes. It is absolutely everything I have ever wanted in a YA novel, and I do think if I had read it in my teens instead of my twenties it would have immutably altered my brain chemistry.

For the first few chapters of this book, I wasn't one hundred percent sold on the premise: brooding emo skater girl Heaven teams up with bubbly influencer's daughter Saylor to start her social media for her future tattooing career. It was unique, yes, but I wasn't sure the two leads were going to mesh well as characters. Fortunately, I was wrong. Heaven and Saylor complement each other perfectly. As they grow closer, it becomes more and more obvious they're two sides of the same coin, two halves of one soul. Which seems like a crazy statement to make about a high school romance, but seriously, Rebekah Weatherspoon's writing is so good, so convincing, that I do genuinely believe these teenage girls are meant to be.

Also, I absolutely loved that even though this is a super warm book with a lot of heart, it's not without conflict and it's not super fluffy. There's a few different conflicts: the girls defining their relationship, Saylor's issues with her mother and sisters, Heaven's struggles at gaining exposure as a future tattoo apprentice, both girls reckoning with being mixed race while gaining (sometimes negative) online exposure. The story manages to be grounded and realistic but still comforting without being saccharine.

I also really enjoyed the extended cast and the relationships the girls had with them! Heaven's parents are delightful, quirky, and supportive, Saylor's are complex and flawed but still loving, and their shared friend group is a cast of characters - if the author writes more books set in this universe, I'd love to read them. The skate church, the tattooist culture, the queer joy: I just love it all.

Thank you to NetGalley and Carina Adores for an ARC of this wonderful book! This week I read More Like Enemigas by Stephanie Hope.

I had a lot of fun with this one - it promises hijinks and hijinks abound as Isabella, a restaurant owner, and Valentina, a talented chef (and Isa's childhood best friend) fall in love over the course of a week at their mutual friend's wedding. There are complicated family secrets, mixed emotions, and a lot of fun to be had throughout the course of this story. The wedding is set at a picturesque summer camp where the girls (except Isabella) went every summer as children.

Surprisingly, for a romcom, this is largely a story about grief: Isa lost her father to an illness a few years before the story starts, and she's never reckoned with the emotions of it. She steals her father's journal from her mother and spends much of the story poring over it, trying to discover the big family secret that almost tore their family apart fifteen years prior. By her side is Maria, her beloved cousin, and Valentina: the beautiful former best friend she had a falling out with fifteen years ago. Isa battles her grief and her intense desire to make her late father and still-living but largely narcissistic mother proud.

She and Valentina dance around each other as the aforementioned hijinks about: rafting in the river, paddleboarding, stealing the rings, trying to sabotage the wedding, trying to save the wedding, and so much more. All the while, Isa discovers that there is room in her life not just for her late father's restaurant, but for love, too. And together, they solve the mystery that has plagued them for years, that nearly tore apart their extended family at Isabella's quinceanera all those years ago.

As this was an ARC, I didn't hold it against it that there were a couple of structural issues with the story, or that I spotted the occasional rogue typo or mistake. It was still a fantastic read, and Isabella's journey from insecure daughter to proud restauranter is so fun to experience. There is a lot of emotion, a lot of drama - truly, this is an incredible soap opera in book form - but also a lot of love. The ending is absolute perfection, not only because it gave me as a reader exactly what I wanted, but also because it largely felt earned: Isa truly goes through the wringer to get her happy ending. There are so many characters to love, and even better, there's a few characters that are easy to hate, too. However, Stephanie Hope, the author, ensured that there were no flat villains. Everyone is three dimensional, with clear motivations.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for providing a digital ARC in exchange for review.

When I first heard of King Love by Samantha L. Valentine, I was excited. A sapphic romance that explores gender presentation and drag, set in Australia? It felt like all my dreams were coming true. Getting approved for the ARC was even more exciting: I would get the opportunity to read and review it early!

I liked a lot of what this book tried to do. I enjoyed the gender exploration and drag storyline, although sometimes it felt like the story was trying to inform the reader about sexuality and gender instead of just letting the characters exist as they were. I thought the romance was very sweet – Maya and Callie were very cute together. The supporting cast was fun but not very memorable. Callie’s mother was by far my favourite character: a sweet, gentle, kind woman who only wanted what was best for her daughter.

However, I did find the plot slow-going at first, whereas the romance seemed quite fast comparatively. Maya and Callie fell for each other fast, and I wasn’t quite convinced by the development of their feelings – but as a romance reader I tend to prefer slow burns, so that’s likely just my preference colouring my perception of their romance.

The lesbian ex drama was perfect, however. Lesbians are always weird about their exes: whether they stay friends, coworkers, or never speak again. The ex in question tries to actively sabotage Callie and Maya, both professionally and romantically, and it was kind of fun to have a character to hate. Ultimately, I felt kind of sorry for her. She wanted what she had already rejected, coveted Callie simply because she couldn’t have her and someone else was interested. It was dramatic and ridiculous but added some much-needed external conflict relationship.

The final act of the story moved quickly, but I have to say I didn’t enjoy it all that much. The resolution was a little too quick, a little too fairy tale perfect. They forgave each other way too quickly (although, what drove them apart was ridiculous and they knew it, so maybe that was warranted.) Honestly, I found myself enjoying the background relationship of John the paramedic and Callie’s mother more in the final act than anything. Callie’s mum deserved to be happy, and it was nice to see her find someone.