Claire Stevens's Blog

Tom Rasmussen finds themselves straddling two camps, that of their Northern, working class family for whom marriage is the centrepiece of life, and as a male-bodied, non-binary queer in a relationship with a man.

Through journeys to wildly different weddings ranging from the most traditional to the unrecognizably unorthodox, visits to wedding planners, interviews of the much-married, those who have questioned their decision to marry over lockdown, or those who would never consider matrimony, these incisive witty and often moving essays look at marriage as an achievement, a compromise, a selling-out, and a practical solution. They examine what marriage means, along the whole spectrum of sexuality, for the working class, the middle class, the upper class and what the future looks like for marriage, the most historic and universal of institutions.

Can Tom have the wedding of their dreams in a white Vera Wang dress while their family dabs at their eyes around them - or is it appropriate to reject this heteronormative ritual? Is there a way to reconcile the two without letting either down? And moreover, can any of us with any sense, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, justify it? What is marriage good for - and if the answer is absolutely nothing, why are still so obsessed with it? 

Thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this book.

I read the author's other book - Diary of a Drag Queen - last year and was really looking forward to this book.  It definitely delivered.

The book is part memoir, part interview, part discussion piece and it talks about what marriage - traditionally a heterosexual construct - might mean nowadays not only to the straights, but also to LGBT+ people, non binary people and polyamorous relationships.  There are plenty of interviews with people from across the sexuality and gender spectrums that showed how marriage was or wasn't something they felt able to engage with.

The author has a dilemma in that they come from a background where all their friends and family are or are getting married and they kind of want to marry their boyfriend, but at the same time they don't want to buy into an institution that has traditionally has been exclusionary and just generally not great for anyone who isn't a cishet dude.

The author has such a sharp turn of phrase - I loved it.  Even though at times there was some repetition as to his dilemma ('I want to get married.  But I don't believe in marriage.  But I want to get married.') the text never felt stale.

I think they key audience would be anyone who doesn't place as cishet on the gender/sexuality spectrum, but really I'd recommend this for anyone.

4 stars

Two people. Infinite lifetimes. One impossible choice.

Thora and Santi are strangers in a foreign city when a chance encounter intertwines their fates. At once, they recognize in each other a kindred spirit—someone who shares their insatiable curiosity, who is longing for more in life than the cards they’ve been dealt. Only days later, though, a tragic accident cuts their story short.

But this is only one of the many connections they share. Like satellites trapped in orbit around each other, Thora and Santi are destined to meet again: as a teacher and prodigy student; a caretaker and dying patient; a cynic and a believer. In numerous lives they become friends, colleagues, lovers, and enemies. But as blurred memories and strange patterns compound, Thora and Santi come to a shocking revelation—they must discover the truth of their mysterious attachment before their many lives come to one, final end.

Thanks to HarperVoyager and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this book.

I loved this book.  It started strong and didn't let up until the end.  I can't even remember what made me request it on NetGalley, but I'm so glad I did.

Thora and Santi both live in Cologne in Germany.  When the book opens, they meet at a party, but very soon afterwards Santi dies.  And so begins countless cycles of Thora and Santi meeting, living and dying in Cologne, always as different people to their previous lives.  Sometimes they are siblings, sometimes parent and child, sometimes married.

So I was only a few chapters in before I started speculating: magic or sci-fi.  Obviously I won't give the game away by telling you how they keep meeting, but trust me: it's good.

Quite apart from the great plot, this book also has characters you can really believe in.  Admittedly, the author has countless lifetimes to paint these people, but still they really come across as fully formed people.  

This book has the wows and the feels and I can't wait until it's published so that I can talk to other people who've read it.

5 stars

Everyone likes Humaira "Hani" Khan—she’s easy going and one of the most popular girls at school. But when she comes out to her friends as bisexual, they invalidate her identity, saying she can’t be bi if she’s only dated guys. Panicked, Hani blurts out that she’s in a relationship…with a girl her friends absolutely hate—Ishita "Ishu" Dey. Ishu is the complete opposite of Hani. She’s an academic overachiever who hopes that becoming head girl will set her on the right track for college. But Ishita agrees to help Hani, if Hani will help her become more popular so that she stands a chance of being elected head girl.

Despite their mutually beneficial pact, they start developing real feelings for each other. But relationships are complicated, and some people will do anything to stop two Bengali girls from achieving happily ever after.

This was a pretty cute story about two girls who decide to fake-date so that one of them can get her friends to recognise her bisexuality and so that the other can be voted head girl at school. 

When I started reading this book I was hoping for a light, fluffy f-f fauxmance, and in some respects that's what I got. There’s an unbelievably tenuous fauxmance pact (seriously, is this something that gets taught in Author School??), some Mean Girl friends, MCs that hate each other to start with before developing the feels ... 

The story goes deeper than just a fluffy fauxmance, though. There are family dynamics, expectations, sibling rivalry. The two MCs are queer, so they’re both trying to work out what queer means for them against the backdrop of their Bengali community in Ireland and the book did a really good job of highlighting how all experiences are different. 

I did like Hani and Ishu, but I didn’t love them. Hani needed to woman up to her rubbish friends - I didn’t care that they’d been friends since primary school, they were toxic. Ishu was ok I guess, but really prickly and I wasn’t convinced by her desperation to be head girl. 

All in all though this was a sweet book and better than your run of the mill queer fauxmance. 

Thank you to Hodder and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. 
4 stars

All The Things She Said (named after the *very* memorable 2002 song by t.A.T.u) is an exploration of 21st century queer culture and shows how lesbian and bi culture has started to infiltrate the mainstream.

So first, the good bits:

I loved the author's writing style.  Factual, but conversational, like you're having a chat with a mate and they're telling you about her specialist subject, but not in a patronising way.  I think sometimes journalism skills don't translate into book-writing skills, but in this case they did.

It was super inclusive and included conversations with trans and NB folk.  Yes, please.  More of this.

Also, that it focuses on UK queer culture.  There is not enough of this around.  Americans are lovely, but I'm not American and their mainstream culture and queer culture is just different from ours so this was really refreshing to read.

OK, so I do not understand the author's obsession with mullets.  Seriously?  Mullets??  The impression I got was that mullets are this ubiquitous must-have style for the modern lesbian.  Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not!  I'm as old as dirt and I can remember Pat Sharp's scary mullet on Art Attack in the eighties; it wasn't a good look then and I don't care how many hot women decide to go 'business up top, party at the back' - it will never be a good look.

The only thing that stopped this being a five star read was that the viewpoint it was written from was purely personal.  And I totally get why this is - there are as many experiences of queer culture as there are queer people so to cover everyone's experience would have been impossible.  However, I thought from the blurb that this would be written from a broader point of view.  The author's experiences are very different from my own, so ultimately I didn't find myself going 'Yes yes!  Me too!' as I was reading, like at all, (see above re. mullets).

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for a review copy of this book.

4 stars

I will freely admit that I have a healthy streak of snark running through me, but ultimately I think I'm a kind, well-adjusted, hopeful person.  What I'm saying is that I don't think I'm utterly soulless.

It's important to point this out, because I know my dislike of this book will make a lot of people grasp their pearls in horror.  This book was just too saccharin for me though. 

Chock full of twee Instagram  inspirational quotes, it reminded me of when Ross and Rachel got a male nanny to look after their kid: And people will cry, 'It's for KIDS.  Think of the KIDS'  I am thinking of the kids, and you don't get children to be kind and hopeful  by  reading them a book about being kind and hopeful.  You embed this behaviour in them by modelling it to them.  

I just have this picture in my head of some investment banker dad coming home from a long day of screwing people out of their pensions to read this to his kid in bed, while the modern-slavery maid vaccuums the house and mum drowns her sorrows with a bottle of red in the clinically-spotless kitchen.

Also, I think I'm the only person on Goodreads who didn't like the art.  It made my eyes hurt.

2 stars (being generous - see?  I am a nice person)

Stuck in a dead-end job, broken-hearted, broke and estranged from her best friend; Violet's life is nothing like she thought it would be. She wants more - better friends, better sex, a better job - and she wants it now.

So, when Lottie - who looks like the woman Violet wants to be when she grows up - offers Violet the chance to join her exciting start-up, she bites. Only it soon becomes clear that Lottie and her husband Simon are not only inviting Violet into their company, they are also inviting her into their lives.

Seduced by their townhouse, their expensive candles and their Friday-night sex parties, Violet cannot tear herself away from Lottie, Simon or their friends. But is this really the more Violet yearns for? Will it grant her the satisfaction she is so desperately seeking?

Creepy, grubby book about creepy, grubby people having lots and lots of really boring sex with each other.  The MC reminded me of Bella Swan from Twilight.  She has a difficult relationship with her parents, who sound emotionally abusive, so she 'falls in love' with an older married couple and joins them in their grim-sounding sex parties.  Basically it was just a load of sex scenes that sounded like they'd been written by a fifteen year old boy whose entire understanding of sex derives from watching really cheap porn, held together with a plot with holes you could drive a tractor through, populated by a cast of characters I could have cheerfully punched.  There was a mildly redeeming bit at the end and if it wasn't for that I would have given it one star.  Not recommended.

2 stars

[image error] ***ARC provided by Netgalley and Oni Press in exchange for a review***

Aw, this was so darn cute!

Cheer Up is a fairly short, super cute graphic novel about two MCs, a people-pleasing trans girl and her anti-social lesbian ex-best-friend who re-bond over cheerleading. Cheerleading isn’t the forum I’d expect two diverse characters to show up in - admittedly my knowledge of American high school cheerleading is derived from YA books and Glee, but I always thought that cheerleading was basically like the opposite of diversity? Maybe things are changing though, because the cheerleading team in this book were very inclusive. 

The plot covered a lot of ground in relative few pages - there was sexuality and gender, family dynamics, romance, microagressions, consent, sexual assault as well as a pretty good plot that didn’t dip into preachiness. I think there was a danger this book could have become like an after school special on Isn’t Inclusivity A Good Thing, but it managed to avoid doing that. The characters visibly grow and develop too, which I wasn’t expecting for such a short book. 

4 stars

Wounded and betrayed, after being dumped by her girlfriend, Ally makes off to her dad’s in Sheffield with the one thing that might soothe the pain and force her ex to speak to her again: Emily's cat, Malcolm.

Back home and forced into a 'date' by their parents, Ally and her first ever beard, Jeremy, come up with a ridiculous plan to win their exes back... to revenge-run a half marathon. Given neither of them can run, they enlist the support of athletic, not to mention beautiful, Jo. But will she have them running for the hills... or will their ridiculous plan pay off...?

Oh wow, I loved this book so much!  So many f-f novels I read are American, and they’re perfectly lovely, but the thing they lack (obviously) is a British sense of humour injection and British cultural references. And this book had those in spades. 

There were points when I thought Ally was a bit childish, and I didn’t really see what Emily had done wrong (apart from the cheating) in dumping her, but on the whole I liked her. I especially liked her friendship with Jeremy (yes yes yes to taking KeepCups of wine into the school disco you’ve been drafted into helping out at). 

The plot rocked along quite nicely and kept me reading when I was supposed to be doing other things which is always a good sign. I especially liked the tension not coming from the fact that Ally is gay, and that that wasn’t even an issue. 

I’d definitely recommend this one and yes please to more British humourous lesbian novels, please, publishers!

5 stars

I’ve been waiting so, so long for this book to come out and it totally didn’t disappoint!

​This is the story of Lily and Kath, two girls living in fifties San Francisco, who visit the Telegraph Club, a gay club where a charismatic male impersonator performs. America in the fifties was not a great place to be gay and Lily and Kath have to keep their relationship and their visits to the Telegraph Club a secret. On top of this, Lily is Chinese-American and what with the rise of communism in China and the extreme terror of communism in America, she faces a lot of pressure on this front as well.  Aah ... racism and homophobia. A winning combination. Like moonlight and music.  

I thought the plot was great, with just the right amount of tension to keep things moving along but without getting melodramatic, and the two MCs were just lovely and so so right for each other. Swoon. 

5 stars

[image error] Christened Reginald Dwight, he was a shy boy with Buddy Holly glasses who grew up in the London suburb of Pinner and dreamed of becoming a pop star. By the age of twenty-three, he was on his first tour of America, facing an astonished audience in his tight silver hotpants, bare legs and a T-shirt with ROCK AND ROLL emblazoned across it in sequins. Elton John had arrived and the music world would never be the same again.

I listened to this on audiobook and it’s narrated by Elton and Taran Edgerton, who plays Elton in Rocketman. The narration was fantastic and complimented the book so well. I always knew Elton had had a spicy old life, but I hadn’t realised exactly how spicy!  Typical day in the life of Elton at his spiciest went along the lines of: ‘Got up at midday. Wrote Candle in the Wind. Massive bowl of cocaine. Princess Margaret and Ringo Starr came over for tea.’

He’s famously cleared up his act now and is living in domestic bliss with Davis Furnish and their two sons, and although that part of the book is interesting too, the best bit is the sex drugs and rock n roll years. Obviously. Also, I didn’t buy the bit where Elton tries to tell us in all seriousness that the parents at his sons’ school don’t bat an eyelid when he comes to pick them up in the afternoon. Seriously? If he showed up at my kids’ school, he would be met with a rousing chorus of ‘OH MY GOD IT’S ELTON JOHN!!!!’

5 stars