It’s been a weird, transitional year filled with an exciting variety of stresses and challenges… but hot damn, did I have some excellent fiction to carry me through it. Below are my favourite books I read in 2022, from funky queer sci-fi to uplifting teen rom-coms.
As of next year, I’ll be moving across to Story Graph for all my book-cataloguing needs! Send me a friend request if you’re on there~
Continue readingFiled under Alex Reads
What in the world is a marketing demographic? They’re something that often seems so simple, so based in real-life logic about how humans grow and experience things, that sometimes you can forget how constructed they are. And how much our idea of what is suitable for a demographic of young people—or, even what a young person is—can vary from person to person, publisher’s office to publisher’s office. Where are those lines drawn, and who is holding the pen? Is it authors? Is it agents? Is it marketing departments? Is it a confusing disaster with no concrete answer??
Continue readingFiled under Archetypes and Genre
I stare in awe at the massive buffet of toppings: fresh fruit, cookie dough, Oreos, sprinkles in every color imaginable. My one-size-fits-all paper cup is already filled to the brim with cookies-and-cream frozen yoghurt, but now it’s bound to overflow. My forearm is practically sore from scooping by the time I reach the end, and I glance up to see Molly has added only one small scoop of Rice Krispies on top of her strawberry yoghurt, like an actual psychopath.
“Of everything, you get THAT?” I shake my head. “No wonder you don’t have a girlfriend.”
She rolls her eyes and jabs me with her elbow, giving me a Really, Alex? look that I’ve become all too familiar with over the past two weeks.
Only this time, there’s a trace of a smile underneath it all.
Premise: Molly and Alex could not be more different, yet when they end up at the same college party they realise they have something crucial in common: they’re both trying to impress the respective girl of their dreams, and they’re both falling flat on their face. Alex makes a proposal: she’ll use her charisma and wit to help Molly woo Cora, the girl Molly’s had a goofy unrequited crush on since high school, thus proving Alex’s good nature to her reluctant girlfriend, Natalie. Nothing about this plan can go wrong, and they definitely won’t fall in slow-burn, unlikely love with each other along the way.
Rainbow rep: a central f/f couple, both IDing as lesbians; multiple other sapphic characters in the ensemble cast
Content considerations: alcoholism; emotionally immature parents; brief depictions of casual sexual harassment and victim blaming
I have been known to be a sucker for a good ol’ fashioned matchmaker plot.
But no matter how much you love the taste of corn, a corny rom-com cannot carry on its premise and tropes alone: it needs characters you can believe in and get attached to, so you’re compelled to stick around and watch their affection for one another grow and fall into place. That, I reckon, is where She Gets the Girl, written by wife and wife duo Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick, shines.
Continue readingFiled under Alex Reads
The Afictionado 