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NonfictionMemoir

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This

Review by Natalia Berry

In her memoir-in-essays, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: (But I’m Going to Anyway), Emmy-nominated comedy writer Chelsea Devantez recounts her rise to success through a series of moments that range from comical to harrowing. She came up in Chicago’s highly competitive improv club The Second City, whose alumni list boasts everyone from John Belushi to Tina Fey. Eventually, Devantez became the head writer of The Problem With Jon Stewart, but the road there was not easy. She toiled for years in the grueling improv/comedy industry. Often when opportunity knocked, like one to create a television show, things never quite panned out. According to TV execs, she was too ethnic or not ethnic enough; too funny or not funny enough.

Devantez is no stranger to finding humor in the absurd and traumatic around us. Growing up in a family that was often tumultuous, and at the mercy of her mother’s romantic partners, Devantez learned how to make even the most difficult situations comedic. There were bright spots amid her personal and career woes: other women. Throughout I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This, Devantez shows how she couldn’t have made it in the business or in life without the complicated women and girls who surrounded her. From Devantez’s mesmerizing comedy partner who broke her heart, to the gossipy adversary she aptly names Shitbitch, to her ever-supportive mother who often struggled to free herself from abusive men, each taught Devantez something critical about the world and herself.

Devantez excels at exploring the interiority of her mind while conjuring a colorful cast of characters. As her career and life develop, she’s inspired by drag queens, evangelizing Mormon girls, cruise ship theater troupes and the memoir of comedy legend Rachel Dratch. Readers will also appreciate her frank discussions about money. In the memorable “Roger Roger,” Devantez proudly calls herself “glamorous trash” and examines the true cost of not benefiting from nepotism. Her adept critique extends beyond her lack of “a cousin who had a cousin who had a cousin who knew the accountant for Jennifer Aniston” but truly considers the reality of how race and gender play into comedy success. How does one “make it” in Hollywood—or anywhere—when you aren’t the type of person who usually does?

In I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This, Devantez answers this question and many others with acute honesty as she romps through personal embarrassments, traumas and triumphs, often proving that success is not only measured by what you do, but by who joins you along the way.

Comedy writer Chelsea Devantez romps through personal embarrassments, traumas and triumphs in her memoir, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This.
Children's & YAYA FictionYAGraphic Novels & Comics

Homebody

Review by Emily Koch

Theo remembers feeling uncomfortable with how the world saw them from a very young age. Frustrations built up, from boys assuming that they couldn’t play chess to being forced to cut their own hair because hairdressers always insisted on more feminine looks. But experiences in art school, at comic-cons and playing tabletop roleplaying games, plus countless searches on the internet, led Theo to realize they feel most at home identifying as nonbinary.

Homebody, by debut author Theo Parish, is a delightful, beautiful graphic memoir celebrating the journey they took to discover their gender identity. Reading it feels like receiving a warm hug. Parish dedicates Homebody “for you, whenever and however you need it,” offering frequently interspersed epiphanies anyone can hold on to, such as “living authentically in a world that takes every opportunity . . . to squeeze you uncomfortably into a box of someone else’s design . . . is the most radical act of self love.”

Parish generates gorgeous imagery through a color palette of pinks and blues, sometimes blending the colors together. Shades of joyful pink illustrate Theo’s moments of gender euphoria. The most striking time Parish uses purple is in a full-page introspection about moments when they felt . Throughout the memoir, Theo is drawn with a literal house for their body, as an extended metaphor that is both powerful and charming.

This title truly matches the sweet nature and adorable, expressive illustrations of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, while being exceptional in its own way as a nonfiction offering. On the first page, Parish lists facts about their life before even mentioning that they’re nonbinary: In this vein, while Parish includes musings concerning general transgender and nonbinary identity, Homebody is first and foremost a memoir centered around Parish’s specific coming of age in England. Still, through this deeply personal exploration of gender identity, many who traditionally have been left out of narrative storytelling may see their own experiences reflected, as Parish “[shines] a beacon of hope to those yet to flourish.”

 

Homebody is a delightful, beautiful graphic memoir celebrating the journey Theo Parish took to discover their gender identity.
NonfictionTravelLifestyles

Hot Springs

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

In her immersive and beautifully photographed debut, Hot Springs: Photos and Stories of How the World Soaks, Swims, and Slows Down, Maine-based photojournalist Greta Rybus ushers readers to 23 soaking spots worldwide via 200-plus images of ethereal landscapes, ruddy-cheeked bathers, striking architecture and even a blissed-out monkey. 

The book is steeped in steam and serenity, conveying the author’s lifelong reverence and enthusiasm for these “geological marvel[s]” that “giv[e] us a sense of belonging to each other and the earth.” From Mexico to Iceland, Japan to India, Alaska to Italy, Rybus shares fascinating details about each spring’s historical, cultural and spiritual significance, and reflects on their interconnectedness with the communities surrounding them. 

She visits springs both energizing and restful: In Portugal, a volcanic fissure only safe at low tide speaks to “the part of us that seeks out the thrilling, the tumultuous, the electrifying,” while the brutalist architecture of Switzerland’s Therme Vals creates a “meditative, inward, and connected atmosphere.” 

Whether they’re looking for a vacation destination or their next book to savor in the (hot) bath, readers are sure to join Rybus in marveling at “What a miracle a hot spring is: an earthly riot, a terrestrial bonus, an unexpected geologic twist!”

Steeped in steam and serenity, photojournalist Greta Rybus’ Hot Springs is perfect for those looking for a vacation destination or their next book to savor in the (hot) bath.
Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

Goddess of the River

Review by Noah Fram

The Mahabharata is among the most complex epic poems ever written. One of the most foundational and influential pieces of literature in history, this masterpiece of ancient India has been translated, analyzed, deconstructed and reconstructed countless times. In the afterword to Vaishnavi Patel’s reimagining of the poem, Goddess of the River, the author states she has not attempted to complicate an already complicated narrative. Instead, Patel simplifies it by centering on one key relationship within the Mahabharata: that between the river goddess Ganga and her mortal son, Devavrata, who will become Bhishma, one of the poem’s iconic heroes. In doing so, Patel distills the mythic fall of the Kaurava family into a deeply personal and painfully human tragedy, one where the defiantly chaotic mother and her dogmatically lawful son are doomed to always struggle against their own natures.

Goddess of the River is beautifully crafted. Patel moves between Bhishma’s childhood and the end of his life with limpid fluidity, never losing her cohesive narrative structure. No shift in time is without purpose, no dramatic irony is unintentional. Aside from Ganga and Bhishma, virtually every other character is static, each emblematic of their own particular mythological trope. This narrow focus is not a detriment; rather, it only highlights Ganga and Bhishma’s complex relationship and how they come to resemble each other despite their seemingly opposite natures.

Read our starred review of ‘Kaikeyi’ by Vaishnavi Patel.

Goddess of the River has an intriguing moral ambiguity that readers familiar with the Mahabharata will recognize. None of Patel’s characters are truly good or evil. They all have clear goals, with some being motivated by principle and others by selfishness or caprice. Goddess of the River is a messy story about messy people and even messier gods, all just trying to make the best choices they can to make those they care for proud of them. Thus, Patel makes despite Ganga and Bhishma eminently relatable despite their larger-than-life natures: While neither can fix everything that’s broken within their world, they can at least do some things right along the way.

In Goddess of the River, Kaikeyi author Vaishnavi Patel reimagines the Mahabharata with an intriguing moral ambiguity.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Godwin

Review by Michael Magras

Soccer, like life, may be a beautiful game, but as in life, part of the beauty relies upon a key ingredient: cooperation. Introduce disharmony and the luster is tarnished. Readers will find plenty of corrosion in Godwin, Joseph O’Neill’s intellectually challenging new novel centered, at least ostensibly, around the world of football.

Godwin shifts between two narrators. The first is Lakesha Williams, one of the co-founders of the Group, a Pittsburgh cooperative for science and medical writers who want to be self-employed without the insecurity of freelancing. She’s dealing with an HR issue regarding writer Mark Wolfe, who got into a scuffle with a security guard and gave too-honest feedback to a client who didn’t receive a grant. Mark is a misanthrope who fantasizes about a future “when our kind no longer roams Earth and we shall at last have some peace.”

Mark is also our other narrator. In his private life, he lives with his wife, Sushila, and has a half brother named Geoff, a slippery character and aspiring sports agent who lives overseas. Geoff contacts Mark with an unusual request: He wants Mark to come to England and help him find Godwin, a “special prospect” from somewhere in Africa whom Geoff wants to sign.

These two seemingly disparate stories converge in satisfying ways and include characters who may at first seem secondary but take on greater significance, among them a French scout who may know where Godwin is; Mark’s mother, who he feels robbed him of an inheritance; and a Group member who ingratiates herself into a position to affect the collective’s operations.

Netherland, O’Neill’s brilliant 2008 book, was not just a story about a Dutch expat protagonist’s incipient passion for cricket but, more than that, a commentary on postcolonialism. Similarly, while the search for a soccer player is the engine of Godwin’s plot, the book is really about power: those who have it, those who don’t and those who scheme to get it. O’Neill’s excellent novel builds to a cynical ending that may not comfort, but it’s an undeniably appropriate finish to a story of what can happen when idealism snags on the lure of capitalism.

The search for a soccer player is the engine of the plot, but what Godwin is really about is power: those who have it, those who don’t and those who scheme to get it.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Fire Exit

Review by Arlene McKanic

What can you say about Charles Lamosway, the protagonist of Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit? He’s not a particularly happy man. Though he has a few friends and is devoted to his difficult mother, he’s essentially lonely. A white guy with ties to Maine’s Penobscot Nation, Charles lives right across the river from the reservation. From his side of the river, he can see the house of his ex-girlfriend Mary and their adult daughter, Elizabeth, across the water. Elizabeth, raised by Mary and Mary’s husband, Roger, doesn’t know that Charles is her father. Charles thinks it’s time for her to know, as he puts it, “that her blood is her blood.” Indeed, he’s desperate for her to know.

Charles’ mother, Louise, is elderly and racked with dementia. But she has never been well. Even when Charles was a child she’d be overwhelmed by periods of such intense depression that she’d spend days in bed, cut off from Charles and her husband, Fredrick. As with Elizabeth, Fredrick wasn’t Charles’ biological father. Yet he’s not as intent on finding out about his own bio-dad as he is determined to make Elizabeth find out about hers. Then he discovers something about his daughter that makes him more determined than ever.

Fire Exit is Talty’s first novel, following his 2022 short story collection, Night of the Living Rez. It is beautifully written, sometimes funny, often heartbreaking and hopeful against all odds. This reviewer couldn’t help but think of the stories of Raymond Carver. Like Carver’s, Talty’s characters are working class, bedeviled by money troubles, drink, mental illness, lousy parents, estranged kids and difficult relationships. But in Talty’s writing, the particular history and context of the Penobscot Nation are always present. One reason Mary doesn’t want Elizabeth to know about Charles is that she wanted to raise her as a Native, supported by a community and traditions that Charles just couldn’t provide. As he puts it, “I knew and still know what it was like to both not belong and belong, what it was like to feel invisible inside the great, great dream of being.” This is a moving, humane book.

Morgan Talty follows up Night of the Living Rez with Fire Exit, a beautifully written novel that is sometimes funny, often heartbreaking and hopeful against all odds.
Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Fiasco

Review by Laura Hubbard

Bounty hunter Cynbelline “Cyn” Khaw is best known for ruthlessly killing a ship full of slavers. But before that, she was Bella, a disgraced constable on a backwater planet whose cousin was kidnapped by the infamous Abyssal Abductor and dropped into an oceanic trench when their family couldn’t pay the ransom. So when a scion of one of the galaxy’s most powerful families recruits Cyn to rescue her daughter from the same kidnapper, there’s no way Cyn can refuse. Even if the job means going home to a family that’s clueless about her career. Or if it means joining up with the crew of the Calamity, whose hospitality she infringed upon during a previous mission and whose well-muscled and entirely too perceptive medic she can’t get out of her head. As she chases down the shadows of her own past, Cyn must learn how—and whom—to trust if she is to capture the Abyssal Abductor and gain justice for her family.

Fiasco is a delightful mix of space noir and romance, combining an adrenaline-fueled tale of justice and the search for closure with a compelling love story. Some of the tropes within Constance Fay’s second novel may feel familiar to those who love the genre (a ragtag crew, a well-worn spaceship, a ruthless bounty hunter), but Fay refuses to color inside the lines. While the novel’s action and high-impact chase scenes are brilliantly wrought, so too is Cyn’s inner life. Far from being a stock character, she springs from the page with her struggle to trust others and Fay’s visceral depictions of her traumatic past. Cyn is a woman obsessed with doing the right thing who will go above and beyond for those she loves. But Fay doesn’t make her heroine a superhero: Rather, Cyn’s shortcomings (and there are many, from her squeamishness around combat to her flighty nature) make her all the more compelling. A perfect mix of kinetic action, romance and mystery, Fiasco is heady, anxiety-inducing and—above all else—endlessly entertaining.

A perfect mix of kinetic action, romance and mystery, Constance Fay’s sci-fi romance Fiasco is endlessly entertaining.
RomanceContemporary Romance

Experienced

Review by Eric A. Ponce

A romance is all about the final payoff: After pages of will-they-won’t-they teasing, readers anticipate the moment when everything falls ecstatically into place and our lovers end up together. Kate Young’s Experienced takes this model and twists it, leading readers on a wholehearted, fun exploration of dating and love in the 21st century. After her girlfriend Mei suggests they take a break so the newly-out Bette can casually date and get the full single experience, Bette goes on an awkward odyssey of first dates. Her journey is silly and relatable, and stays away from romance cliches—although that isn’t to say that the book doesn’t end happily.

Bette tries to be chill about the break. After a bit of confusion and hurt, she decides the best course of action is to actually get some dating experience. With her roommate Ash and Ash’s token straight-guy boyfriend Tim, Bette begins crafting her dating app profiles. They choose the best pictures—though Ash and Tim have to convince Bette that she really does look hot in some of them—and write cool, ironic responses to the prompts. Soon after, Bette starts dating a lineup of strange, sexy characters running the gamut of British lesbian baddies. The most memorable is Bette’s first date, Ruth, a PhD student and experienced casual dater who gives Bette the recipe for success and, in a twist of fate, helps her realize what she really wants from a relationship.

Chapter titles that count down to the date when Bette and Mei are supposed to get back together lend Experienced a sense of anxiety and longing that will be all too familiar to 21st century daters. Young’s charming British English pairs with a young millennial’s quirky, anxious interiority for a fun, surprisingly profound read. Romantics, if you’re lonely or even if you’re happily in love, this novel will be a treat. 

Kate Young’s charming British English paired with her young millennial protagonist’s quirky, anxious interiority makes Experienced a fun, surprisingly profound read.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionFamily Saga

Familiaris

Review by Alden Mudge

It has been 16 years since David Wroblewski published his bestselling first novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. An elemental tale of family strife in Wisconsin’s north woods, Edgar Sawtelle charmed readers with its depiction of the effort of multiple generations to create a magnificent breed of dog that was both companionable and wise. The novel garnered rave reviews in national publications, was an Oprah pick and has been called a modern day classic.

Wroblewski’s second novel, Familiaris, shares many of the characteristics—positive and less so—of his first. The new novel leaps back two generations to tell the story of John Sawtelle, who, with his wife Mary and the men he manages to cajole into his enterprises, develops the first generations of the amazingly sensitive dogs.

We meet John in 1919 when he is about to get fired from his job at the Kissel Automotive Company in Hartford, Wisconsin (an actual manufacturer). Recently married to Mary, John has found a farm for sale near the town of Mellen on a puppy-related excursion north. John is a self-designated efficiency expert, with a love of detail he puts to use throughout his life as a dog breeder. After being fired in dramatic fashion, he convinces his pal Elbow, a master tinkerer and woodworker, and his frenemy Frank, an addicted, wounded veteran, to join Mary and him in pursuing his next big idea on the new farm.

The rest of Familiaris unfolds over 980 pages, sometimes with storm and thunder. There is, for example, an electrifying depiction of an epic forest fire in Wisconsin (an actual event) that involves the birth and survival of Ida, a magical sprite who intervenes at crucial points in the tale. In other passages, the story feels becalmed, drifting on a light jocular tone until the wind again rises. In the lulls, questions arise. Would Mary really be so jaunty as the lone woman amid all the angst and testosterone of the early years in Mellen? Why do the couples’ sons drop into the story from nowhere as fully formed high school graduates?

Though at times there seems to be something missing, prompting one to wonder if a future volume will reveal more, the energy Wroblewski draws from his love of the landscape and history of Wisconsin, his birth state, transmutes into enough high voltage narrative and inventiveness to keep readers with him through flatter moments.

David Wroblewski’s second novel, Familiaris, leaps back two generations from The Story of Edgar Sawtelle to follow John Sawtelle and his wife Mary as they develop the first generations of an amazingly sensitive breed of dogs.
FictionLiterary FictionGothic Fiction

Enlightenment

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Sarah Perry’s new novel, Enlightenment, opens on a late-winter Monday in 1997 in the office of the Essex Chronicle, a small newspaper in the English town of Aldleigh. Fifty-year-old Thomas Hart, who’s been quietly writing about literature and ghosts for 20 years, needs to write something new, his boss tells him, suggesting astronomy—the Hale-Bopp comet will soon be visible. That same day, Thomas receives a letter from the town museum with new information about the Lowlands ghost, who’s rumored to haunt the nearby Lowlands House, and who may be a 19th-century astronomer from Romania named Maria Vaduva. These two events will send Thomas on a quest to fill in the details of Maria Vaduva’s life and work.

Intertwined with Thomas’ story is that of 17-year-old Grace Macaulay, who’s linked to Thomas through their Baptist church; Thomas has also helped raise Grace after her mother died in childbirth. Grace stumbles into her first love, which sets off a series of complications that will rupture Thomas and Grace’s friendship. The story follows the two over the next 20 years, landing on pivotal moments for both.

But this plot description does little to give a real sense of Enlightenment. Despite its contemporary setting, the novel has a 19th-century feel, with an omniscient voice and a narrative peppered with letters, newspaper columns and (fictional) historical documents. And while it’s partly a ghost story, with an occasionally Gothic feel, Enlightenment is also a novel about the love of astronomy. There’s a feminist story, too—that of Maria Vaduva, the neglected 19th-century astronomer—woven around Thomas’ and Grace’s stories. But mostly, this is a novel about friendship and belonging, the grief after a friendship is lost and the difficult path to forgiveness.

Many of Perry’s sentences are startlingly beautiful, creating an atmospheric sense of setting and character. If some of Enlightenment’s goings-on are a bit elliptical, and if some secondary characters feel a little wispy, not quite coming into focus, that too seems part of the novel’s aim and its charm. There’s a hint of the literary romance and mystery of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, though Enlightenment is more playful. Wide in its scope despite its narrow small-town setting, this gentle but insistent and inventive novel will tug on you in surprising ways.

Sarah Perry’s inventive, atmospheric novel Enlightenment has a 19th-century feel despite its contemporary setting, with a hint of the literary romance and mystery of A.S. Byatt’s Possession.
Children's & YAYA FictionYAGraphic Novels & Comics

The Deep Dark

Review by Emily Koch

Magdalena Herrera has a lot of responsibilities. On top of trying to finish high school, she works a part-time job and is the sole caregiver for her grandmother. Mags has a lot of secrets as well. She’s hooking up with a girl who has a boyfriend. And every night she disappears down a trapdoor in her house, and emerges drained in more than one way.

Then her childhood best friend, Nessa, shows up for the first time in a decade, and starts asking questions the Herreras don’t want anyone to ask. What’s more, Nessa is stirring up feelings that Mags long ago accepted people in her family can never have. But Nessa has secrets, too, and the girls are about to learn the hard way that secrets thrive best in the dark.

The Deep Dark is a moving and eerie graphic novel exploring identity, generational trauma and queer love. Molly Knox Ostertag takes the successful elements of her previous books, The Girl From the Sea and The Witch Boy trilogy, and elevates them. Her characters are complex and nuanced, and their dialogue is natural and impassioned. Ostertag expertly interweaves magical realism and mystery into what is also an adorable love story.

The art is stunning, with expressive characters and the beautiful setting of the Southern California desert. Ostertag twists typical comic conventions, coloring the present almost exclusively in black and white, while the flashbacks are in full color, making it apparent that Mags’ life has been in shades of gray since Nessa left. Page gutters are black during night scenes, intensifying the creepiness. Throughout, Ostertag’s dynamic illustrations elicit emotional responses; for example, panels get progressively smaller during a moment of panic, literally creating tunnel vision.

The Deep Dark leaves some questions unanswered, but that’s the point: A conflict as intricate as the one in this story cannot be wrapped up neatly. But as Ostertag discusses in her author’s note, this graphic novel follows the “first careful steps of unraveling,” and you’ll root for Mags and Nessa to keep taking those steps.

The Deep Dark is a moving and eerie graphic novel exploring identity, generational trauma and queer love.
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Challenger

Review by Alice Cary

Adam Higginbotham’s international bestseller, Midnight in Chernobyl, chronicled the disastrous 1986 nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine that was caused by a Soviet program plagued with a toxic combination of unrealistic timelines and dangerous cost cutting. His new book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, describes a surprisingly similar catastrophe that very same year, this time at the hands of NASA: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger that killed all seven people aboard. Hefty, compelling and propulsive, Challenger overflows with revelatory details.

Reading this book is like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion. One can’t help but hear a drumbeat of dread while getting to know the astronauts—Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee and Michael Smith—and their families. Details will stay with readers long after they close the book: McAuliffe’s appearance on The Tonight Show, her husband’s increasing anxiety at launch time, the horror and disbelief of the families as they watch their loved ones die, the grim details of the recovery efforts and the attempts of professionals both to warn against the mission and to bring to light why it failed.

Among the latter is engineer Roger Boisjoly, who, over a year before the explosion, wrote a memo voicing fears to senior management, stating, “It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action . . . we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch facilities.” Unbelievably, in the hours just before the mission commenced, Boisjoly and a team of 13 other engineers unanimously advised against the launch, yet their concerns were not even voiced up the command chain. After the explosion, physicist Richard Feynman sought to bring clarity to the commission tasked with investigating the tragedy. The scientist noted that “the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product to the point of fantasy.”

Higginbotham excels at delineating not only the science, technology and history of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, but also the bureaucratic snafus and mismanagement that led to the catastrophe, including economic pressures and a nonstop race to get people into space. As with Midnight in Chernobyl, Challenger proves Higginbotham is a master chronicler of disasters, demonstrating an unflinching ability to pierce through politics, power and bureaucracies with laser-sharp focus.

Challenger proves Adam Higginbotham is a master chronicler of disasters, piercing through politics, power and bureaucracies with laser-sharp focus.
FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

Blessings

Review by Laura Sackton

Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s debut novel is a quiet but profoundly moving coming-of-age story about a young gay man in mid-2000s Nigeria. It’s an at first straightforward novel that deepens as it progresses, building toward an ending befitting its protagonist—a young man continually moving through different versions of himself.

Blessings opens in 2006 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. When Obiefuna’s father catches him in a moment of tenderness with another boy, he immediately sends him away to boarding school. Life at school is strictly regulated and often violent. Older boys abuse and terrorize the younger boys without consequence. Obiefuna, fearing that his sexuality may be discovered at any moment, does what he thinks he has to in order to survive.

Though the novel continues to follow Obiefuna through his early years at university, his time at the boarding school takes up the most space and carries a hefty emotional weight. At times it may feel as if the story drags, but the beautiful and complicated third act reveals that Ibeh knew exactly where he was going all along. He captures the uneven importance of memory and experience, the way certain events can haunt a life without our knowledge. Obiefuna’s relationships to himself, his family, his lovers and his country change dramatically over time, a shift that Ibeh weaves almost invisibly into the prose.

Interspersed between chapters from Obiefuna’s point of view are ones told from his mother Uzoamaka’s perspective. These feel less immediate and vivid, but do add a poignant narrative layer, giving readers a glimpse into what goes unspoken between mother and son.

Blessings is an excellent work of queer fiction, full of characters who are neither good nor bad, but simply human beings in constant flux. Ibeh writes cruelty onto the page alongside tenderness, crafting scenes of domestic gay love with the same attention and detail he gives to scenes of emotional and physical violence. He offers us a precious glimpse of the world as it truly is for so many queer people: not tragic, not perfect, not all suffering or all joy—but worth living in and telling stories about.

Blessings offers a precious glimpse of the world as it truly is for so many queer people: not tragic, not perfect, not all suffering or all joy, but worth living in.

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