I got this book as a giveaway in exchange for an honest review. This is an achingly poignant story about a guy who grows up in a religious household trying to “pray the gay away” for eight years with conversion therapy programs all the while enjoying a very successful career as a social media marketer for the same churches which don’t accept him. He eventually comes to a better place as a queer adult but it’s a long slog to get there and he remains very religious, but within an affirming community and supportive friends. If you’re someone who just can’t stomach people with strong religious beliefs, this one may not be for you, but it probably is for everyone else.

This is a story within a story of a platonic and yet also romantic (bot not sexual) friendship between two women. Remy is dealing with the inevitable aging-and-distancing of her best-friend group and she meets Simone who is pretty closed off but maybe open to being friends. Both women go through a lot in the short course of this novel. Remy is also trying to undo some writer’s block after her first successful novel and decides to write about their friendship.

A graphic novel about two teenagers in their last year of high school who are both interested in food. One works in her parents restaurant. One misses the way her grandmother would make big meals that brought the family together. They meet up during the whirlwind of senior year and the whole “Who is going away to college and who is staying nearby?” uncertainty and begin cooking together and healing some of their unrecognized underlying feelings. Sweet and well-drawn.

This is a graphic novel about why open borders make sense both from an economic perspective (i.e. most immigrants give more to their new country than they receive $-wise) and also by other measures. It traces some of the history of immigration in the United States and shows, using a lot of stats and studies, why fewer restrictions on immigration would benefit the US in a number of material ways and help turn it into a more just society. Not just an essay with pictures.

Another book in the Harbinder Kaur series and, unlike the Ruth Galloway books, this series really doesn’t center the protagonist (a late-30s queer southeast Asian detective in London) as much as I might have liked. It’s a story about a group of popular kids who are some part of a murder in their school days and now it’s 20 years later and... there’s another murder. Plotwise it’s fine, wraps up better than you think it’s going to.

I grew up listening to Gordon Lightfoot and the song he wrote about this tragedy is one of my favorites. This book is about what actually happened before and after the shipwreck with some postulating of what may have happened to cause the wreck. It’s a well-researched, readable book that is very clear about what is known and not known. The author doesn’t speculate, he just lets you know what the facts are, and since so little is known about the actual sinking, it doesn’t turn into a traumafest. It’s a great story about a community and culture with a lot of Great Lakes boat lore tossed in as well.

This book was a “graphic essay.” It’s an overview of the history of abortion rights worldwide, from when abortion was just considered a medical concern, to the currently hyper-politicized fraught topic which it is today. There’s a lot of good information, from an author who is unapologetically in favor of abortion rights and I appreciated the global perspective but it did read sort of like an essay and didn’t make as much use of the graphic medium as I’d hoped. It was nice to get a worldwide perspective on the topic.

Mosher writes Lake Wobegon-type novels about a fictional location in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont “back in the day.” Very evocative of a sense of place and time and the people in that place and time in both good ways and sometimes less-good ways, heavy with nostalgia. This one is more of a collection of shorter stories all with the same narrator with slices of life from when he went to live with his grandparents between the ages of six and 18.

A novella by Scalzi which is short and goofy and a good time. If you liked Kaiju Preservation, you’ll probably like this story of a woman who does constitutent services on a future Earth where the district she is living in is minority-human so there are a LOT of different things to take into account when you’re helping various people of various species help solve their civic problems. Humorous and a quick read, not a lot happens but there’s a satofying and amusing story arc and a good solid ending.

Harrow keeps getting better. This is a story about a legend and the person writing the story about the legend while also becoming part of the story. It’s got time loops and female knights and some academic drama and a mean old queen (and a misunderstood horse) and a lot of ruminations on the nature of freedom and of love. How do you tell the story of a people? How do you perfect that story, if it wasn’t quite right? Hard to talk about without spoilers. Treat yourself.