When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

“That’s the key to doing stuff you’re scared of. You gotta run at it.”
★★★★☆

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey is a contemporary YA fantasy with a cast of incredibly diverse, memorable characters that will stay with me for a long time.

This book promised queer witches, a sapphic romance plot, and healthy female friendships. What’s not to love? The cast of characters and their interpersonal relationships were very well developed, and the six witches were complex, fully realized individuals. Gailey also found a solid balance between being plot driven and focusing on character development, which made for a compelling and engaging story that I devoured in a single day. 

Admittedly, I did have a few gripes about this story, but they’re more about my own personal likes and dislikes than a reflection of the author or story. My main issues were with the romance plotline, because I’m not a huge fan of extended mutual pining and I largely prefer Enemies-to-Lovers over Friends-to-Lovers.  Overall, I enjoyed the book enough to order a physical copy for myself after reading the ebook via Scribd, and I still highly recommend checking out When We Were Magic!

 Synopsis:
Keeping your magic a secret is hard. Being in love with your best friend is harder.

Alexis has always been able to rely on two things: her best friends, and the magic powers they all share. Their secret is what brought them together, and their love for each other is unshakeable—even when that love is complicated. Complicated by problems like jealousy, or insecurity, or lust. Or love.

That unshakeable, complicated love is one of the only things that doesn’t change on prom night.

When accidental magic goes sideways and a boy winds up dead, Alexis and her friends come together to try to right a terrible wrong. Their first attempt fails—and their second attempt fails even harder. Left with the remains of their failed spells and more consequences than anyone could have predicted, each of them must find a way to live with their part of the story.

Final thoughts: When We Were Magic is the queer witch girl gang novel we want and deserve. 

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When We Were Magic At a Glance:
Genre: Contemporary YA Fantasy
Themes/Tropes: Slow burn, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining
LGBT Rep? Yes! This book features multiple queer/sapphic characters of varying identities, and a slow burn f/f romance plotline.
Own Voices? Yes!
Content Warnings (CW): Death/murder (unintentional, but still), body horror 

 

The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite

“They don’t let you have anything whole, you know. If you don’t follow the pattern. You have to find your happiness in bits and pieces instead. But it can still add up to something beautiful.”
★★★★☆

Like many other reviewers, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m generally not a historical romance reader, but after reading so many glowing recommendations on various platforms, I decided to give The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite a shot. To be fair, I’ll give almost anything with positive sapphic representation a try, but rarely do I fall in love with these shot-in-the-dark novels the way I did with Lady’s Guide. 

In fact, this novel and the relationship it chronicles was so engaging and well written that I was shocked (and disappointed, because now I have to wait for the second Feminine Pursuits novel to come out instead of binging the rest of Waite’s books) to discover that Lady’s Guide appears to be Waite’s first foray into f/f romance, because the story was devoid of the pitfalls and tropes that many first time f/f authors often fall prey to.

Synopsis:
“As Lucy Muchelney watches her ex-lover’s sham of a wedding, she wishes herself anywhere else. It isn’t until she finds a letter from the Countess of Moth, looking for someone to translate a groundbreaking French astronomy text, that she knows where to go. Showing up at the Countess’ London home, she hoped to find a challenge, not a woman who takes her breath away.

Catherine St Day looks forward to a quiet widowhood once her late husband’s scientific legacy is fulfilled. She expected to hand off the translation and wash her hands of the project—instead, she is intrigued by the young woman who turns up at her door, begging to be allowed to do the work, and she agrees to let Lucy stay. But as Catherine finds herself longing for Lucy, everything she believes about herself and her life is tested.

While Lucy spends her days interpreting the complicated French text, she spends her nights falling in love with the alluring Catherine. But sabotage and old wounds threaten to sever the threads that bind them. Can Lucy and Catherine find the strength to stay together or are they doomed to be star-crossed lovers?”

Final thoughts: As I said, I’m typically not a big fan of historical fiction or straight up romance novels. Lady’s Guide is both, but I was really glad I decided to give it a chance anyway. This is a fairly quick and easy read, perfect for when you’re in the mood for something light hearted and steamy!

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Lady’s Guide At A Glance:
Genre: Historical Fiction/Lesbian Romance
Themes/Tropes: Rich Girl/Poor Girl, Breaking the Glass Ceiling, Friends to Lovers, Coming Out, Age Gap (< 10 years)
LGBT Rep? Yes! Both of the romantic leads are WLW, with allusions to other sapphic characters/relationships.
Content Warnings (CW): None that I can think of!

(Note: This was meant to be the first post on my blog, but then the plague happened and everything got all topsy-turvy. Hope you enjoyed the review anyway – this is truly a gem of a book!)

Poptastic by Victoria Holmes

“Why do lesbians have so many feelings?” (★★★★☆, 4/5)

Don’t let the cover and synopsis fool you – Poptastic isn’t your run of the mill, fluffy celebrity romance, and, at least in my opinion, that’s a good thing! I went into Poptastic expecting a quick, lighthearted read, something totally unlike the dense, dark fantasies I’ve been reading as of late. The majority of the story fit within those bounds, but it goes to some dark places (see content warnings at the bottom of the post).

Victoria Holmes’ debut novel, Poptastic, follows Julia, a lesbian in her late twenties stuck in a job she hates. Julia spends most of her time scrolling through the sapphic dating app Kiss’er, worried that she’s already dated all the available lesbians in London. The official synopsis already focuses heavily on the bridesmaid and celebrity dating aspects, so I wanted to talk about some of the less publicized aspects of the novel, because they were the things that really sold Poptastic for me. However, the synopsis is important for context, so I’ll go ahead and share it here:

“Bridesmaiding is a tedious business at the best of times, but as Julia discovers, the task is particularly cumbersome when one of the brides is your ex and her fiancée won’t stop sulking about it.

With the wedding threatening to dominate everything for the rest of the year, a bewildering embrace with a devastatingly attractive pop star offers a welcome distraction. Dating Krisha catapults Julia away from the paltry concerns of dress fittings and hen dos, but it also takes her away from her friends, and directly leads to her most disastrous fuck up yet. Much to her surprise, she discovers that embracing the role she’d accepted so reluctantly might just be exactly what she needs.”

To me, Poptastic was primarily a story of personal growth more than anything else. From the very beginning of the book, Julia is rapidly headed towards a self-destructive breakdown. She drinks entirely too much, accomplishes nothing at work despite repeated warnings, and treats her friends like shit. For the first half of the book, I hated her, because she reminded me of myself before I got sober. I just wanted to shake her. Julia’s “relationship” with popstar Krisha Mistry made me profoundly uncomfortable, because I could see right through Krisha’s intentions from the get go and it drove me crazy that Julia couldn’t (this is just another point to Holmes in the realism category, though).

Eventually, Julia crashes and burns, hitting rock bottom. It was the moment I had been waiting and hoping for the entire book, and was worried I wouldn’t get, more from bad past experiences with books than anything Holmes did wrong. Reading as Julia suddenly became self-aware and tried to right her wrongs was honestly refreshing. Even more refreshing was the fact that her friends didn’t make it easy for her – Julia tried at least a dozen times to apologize to her best friend Kit, and the two were only finally able to make up after a shared traumatic experience (that I won’t go into because of spoilers). 

In the latter half of the novel, Julia almost made a few questionable decisions that I worried would unravel all of her hard won progress, but changed her mind before she could do anymore lasting damage. The ending of Poptastic was sweet and wholesome and wonderful and made the entire wild emotional rollercoaster of the novel worth it. 

In closing: this isn’t the review I expected to write, because Poptastic turned out not to be the novel I expected to read. If you’re not a fan of romance novels and find yourself tempted to give this one a pass, I’d urge you to at least download a sample. There’s so much more to this story than meets the eye. Holmes knocked it out of the park with the realism here, an – as a former alcoholic/all around nightmare of a person – I heavily related to both Julia’s toxic behavior and her transformation from garbage person into reliable friend and girlfriend.

A big thank you to Victoria Holmes for being the first author I don’t know personally to send me an e-ARC for review! I look forward to reading your future novels!

Poptastic is available for pre-order here, and will be out May 7th!

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Note: Please pay special attention to the content warnings listed below. Though Holmes handles the sensitive topics well and with respect, Poptastic does include some potentially triggering content, so read with care! ❤

Poptastic At a Glance:
Genre: Romantic Comedy, Lesbian Romance
Themes/Tropes: Friends to Lovers, Celebrity Dating
LGBT Rep? Yes – nearly everyone in this novel is gay. Julia’s best work friend is literally the token straight person.
Content Warnings (CW): Intimate partner violence (emotional and physical abuse), fairly graphic suicide attempt, drug use/overdoses