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Love/Aggression
Best friends Lily and Zoe fight, separate, reunite, and repeat, each time deepening the belief that the other is the source of their problems. Once Lily, a struggling tattoo apprentice, is exiled from their shared house, she bounces from an artist's fixer-upper, to a cult leader with a harem of subs, to a house shared with the goddess of transfemininity. Meanwhile, rising movie star Zoe becomes more cutthroat by the day in her relentless quest for fame. If Lily can't give up her desire for control, if Zoe can't lay aside her cruelty and ego, they'll never escape their intolerable places in the world. Traversing art, domination, sex, and shape-shifting houses, Love/Aggression is a novel about the indignity of depending on other people, and the terrible cost of trying not to.
264 pages, Paperback
Published May 12, 2024
12 people are currently reading
257 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
December 31, 2024
Fanlove/fangression
The only way to review this book is through fanfiction. The task is so big I must cut it in half, that it may be a tattoo around the midbody where our survival line runs. "The problem is that people act in ways they're not supposed to—" That is the midpoint of the book. A coffeeshop suddenly opens. Take a sip, the shop won't last forever. This book is a murder and I wish it were my idea. I can say that because I am a gay man.
I wrote more on Medium, then heard a couple days later that this book has won Transfeminine Review's Best Debut Author of 2024!
The only way to review this book is through fanfiction. The task is so big I must cut it in half, that it may be a tattoo around the midbody where our survival line runs. "The problem is that people act in ways they're not supposed to—" That is the midpoint of the book. A coffeeshop suddenly opens. Take a sip, the shop won't last forever. This book is a murder and I wish it were my idea. I can say that because I am a gay man.
I wrote more on Medium, then heard a couple days later that this book has won Transfeminine Review's Best Debut Author of 2024!
December 3, 2024
It's really hard to review Love/Aggression without spoiling so much of what makes it incredible. At the heart of this bizarre, fragmented, surreal world is an incredibly human story about our relationships with others. One of the most inventive pieces of trans literature I've ever read; I don't want to say more for fear of spoilers, this is absolutely worth a read.
June 12, 2024
June Martin creates a transcendent world of room mates pushed to the extremes and with that seemingly simple premise produces an incredible book. I can't recommend it enough, it is absolutely everything.
The two housemates fall out and, woven against recognisable USA life, hopes and dreams, absurd fantastical situations ensue. Like one of the art pieces in the story, everything is deliberately broken and then put together in a manner where the familiarity heightens and emphasises how odd, painful and necessary human relationships can be.
It's an awe inspiring achievement and a unique literary novel that cannot be explained, it needs to be experienced.
The two housemates fall out and, woven against recognisable USA life, hopes and dreams, absurd fantastical situations ensue. Like one of the art pieces in the story, everything is deliberately broken and then put together in a manner where the familiarity heightens and emphasises how odd, painful and necessary human relationships can be.
It's an awe inspiring achievement and a unique literary novel that cannot be explained, it needs to be experienced.
July 4, 2024
This madcap novel is such a sugar-rush of situational absurdity, wicked satire, hallucinatory imagery, and maximally burlesque characters that it can be easy to overlook just how meticulously marshalled and deployed its symbols and images are. The novel ultimately forms itself into a prismatic rumination on the bodies which house us and the homes we seek, even as it keeps us merrily entertained along the way.
If you’re interested, I’ve reviewed the book at much greater length on Medium (here is an un-paywalled link).
If you’re interested, I’ve reviewed the book at much greater length on Medium (here is an un-paywalled link).
June 12, 2024
This one is about two trans women, Zoe and Lily, who were friends once but that label is grandfathered in, as their lives take separate trajectories. Zoe is a rising film star; Lily is a tattoo artist. They live together but that living situation becomes untenable, mainly because Zoe is one of the most awful characters I've encountered in fiction lately. Zoe forces Lily out, and Lily moves from one precarious living situation to the next, ending up at her artist girlfriend's place, a cult, and eventually, a sentient house that knows the needs of its residents.
The joys of this book are evenly between watching Zoe be as awful as possible and Lily's magic realist journey through shifting liminal spaces. It's wildly inventive and beautifully written. It's also very true to like. Every queer community I know, where a personality conflict is the difference between a safe and nurturing home and living in a park out of your duffel bag.
The joys of this book are evenly between watching Zoe be as awful as possible and Lily's magic realist journey through shifting liminal spaces. It's wildly inventive and beautifully written. It's also very true to like. Every queer community I know, where a personality conflict is the difference between a safe and nurturing home and living in a park out of your duffel bag.
December 23, 2024
I ended up mainlining the back half of this over the space of a morning because I wanted to see how the hell this was going to end. We have two friends who have the most extreme of love hate relationships going on and end up dragging the people around them into it (who also happen to be a cult leader, various Hollywood fixtures, tattoo artists, and assorted others), played out against one of their attempts to rise to stardom as a trans actress. Was not expecting the cannibalism, it was a fantastic surprise. Highly recommended.
January 25, 2025
This made me cry. 6 stars.
April 27, 2025
incredible, spiralling, worth reading and rereading.
December 5, 2025
Easily most transphobic book I've ever read (complimentary). The perfect balance of insane/evil and funny/touching, but maybe just a little too absurd at times. Probably gonna be one of those great books I can't recommend to anyone in good conscience.
May 15, 2024
Lovers, backstabbers, cultleaders, twinks and bears and insecure baby transes and adulating, manic agents swirl in the peripheries of the kaleidoscope Martin twists this way and that to create ever new, outrageous patterns with the shards of Zoe and Lily's disintegrating relationship.
Great books exist on multiple levels--anyone can read and enjoy LOVE/AGGRESSION, but you will get an entire shape-shifting floor to yourself in this book, as a trans and/or queer reader. This is a take-no-priz'ners dive into the nuances and idiosyncrasies of queer community--navigating emotional needs, stagnation, ambition, frustration, and mutating expectations. The story follows trans women Zoe and Lily, who were the best friends ever until the day came when they were terrifically NOT. Lily just wants to find a quiet place to rest her head, and Zoe won't stop until she's the baddest bitch in the World. What will remain once the ashes settle?
Martin's ability to capture character is top-notch. Parody-of-herself Zoe steals the novel's stage in a way she can never manage to do in her actual acting gigs---but Martin does wonderful justice to all of her characters. Understated Lily's drifty sadness--Elena is the person you want to get stuck on a deserted island with--Nate is a fuckn hoot and the book is worth reading for him alone--CALAMITY?!--Dicks!!!! The shallow, carefully manicured masculinity of Adam and Tevin.
The characters occupy some oddly comforting space between parody, sympathy, and embarrassing realness, richocheting through a Pittsburgian pinball machine that is neither reality nor make-believe. A playfully bizarro character study and a literary snapshot of a certain queer zeitgeist.
I'd love to see this made into a movie!
Great books exist on multiple levels--anyone can read and enjoy LOVE/AGGRESSION, but you will get an entire shape-shifting floor to yourself in this book, as a trans and/or queer reader. This is a take-no-priz'ners dive into the nuances and idiosyncrasies of queer community--navigating emotional needs, stagnation, ambition, frustration, and mutating expectations. The story follows trans women Zoe and Lily, who were the best friends ever until the day came when they were terrifically NOT. Lily just wants to find a quiet place to rest her head, and Zoe won't stop until she's the baddest bitch in the World. What will remain once the ashes settle?
Martin's ability to capture character is top-notch. Parody-of-herself Zoe steals the novel's stage in a way she can never manage to do in her actual acting gigs---but Martin does wonderful justice to all of her characters. Understated Lily's drifty sadness--Elena is the person you want to get stuck on a deserted island with--Nate is a fuckn hoot and the book is worth reading for him alone--CALAMITY?!--Dicks!!!! The shallow, carefully manicured masculinity of Adam and Tevin.
The characters occupy some oddly comforting space between parody, sympathy, and embarrassing realness, richocheting through a Pittsburgian pinball machine that is neither reality nor make-believe. A playfully bizarro character study and a literary snapshot of a certain queer zeitgeist.
I'd love to see this made into a movie!
March 26, 2024
Sometimes a person is a friend, sometimes they're the daughter of a cult leader, sometimes they're the ideal of femininity, sitting in a room daintily eating estrogen pills. But would the ideal of femininity make a very good roommate? Worse, imagine living with someone who wants to be the ideal of feminity but is at best a movie star with a good pout.
When Elena's mirror shards reflect her paintings, the only face shown clearly is the portrait Zoe accidentally smeared the paint on. I'm not certain I'm making sense, but you know what I mean.
If you've ever read a postmodern novel and thought, that was cool but what if instead of cis masculinity this book was about trans femininity, this is the book for you.
When Elena's mirror shards reflect her paintings, the only face shown clearly is the portrait Zoe accidentally smeared the paint on. I'm not certain I'm making sense, but you know what I mean.
If you've ever read a postmodern novel and thought, that was cool but what if instead of cis masculinity this book was about trans femininity, this is the book for you.
March 17, 2025
This is a piece of sharp, genuinely witty narration and an exercise in writing characters that are compelling regardless of how lovable or sympathetic they are. The plot is a journey that seems to take quite a few detours, but by the end all the important bits—character motivations, flaws and their fruits—came together and saw a better resolution than I could've guessed. The surrealist elements in what might otherwise be called lit-fic also mesh nicely with the main characters' personalities and their journeys. On top of all of that, June Martin's skills as a keen observer of human experience and a painter of character portraits also shine through here.
January 12, 2025
Love/Aggression was an unexpectedly weird but enthralling story about two roommates who have a nasty falling out. While the first pages start out as one might expect for such a story, Martin quickly establishes that there will be delightful weirdness up ahead. Each chapter is a quick, snackable read, but I was not able to put the book down for long, as Martin's immaculate pacing of the story kept me hungering to find out what happens next.
July 17, 2024
What does it mean to belong somewhere as a trans woman? Two friends turned rivals travel through surreal apartments, jobs, parties, lovers and acquaintances looking for that ever elusive feeling of being seen and accepted.
This book is full playful imagery mixed in with profound insight making it a breeze to read.
This book is full playful imagery mixed in with profound insight making it a breeze to read.
October 18, 2025
(3.5 rounded up) average roommate situation. that ending was bonkers but narratively satisfying. loved the settings of the coffee shop and the house in the last third. wish there was more about lily’s tattooing as so much of zoe’s arc revolves around her acting career and that was a little more compelling to me than lily’s arc around her relationships
December 24, 2025
started this in september while sitting on the beach and finished it over the past week on a plane. the beginning was interesting enough but only when i picked it back up did i get super invested. the breakdown of zoe and lily's relationship is so compelling and i think the surrealism really worked. very strong.
June 20, 2024
An incredible book about what it's like being surrounded by gay weirdos all the time with an ending befitting a JRPG (just read it). One of the best trans lit books out there, I think. Even though I'm a little biased.
January 20, 2025
A solid banger. Mysterious and magical around the edges in all good ways, about impossible and messy trans friendships, clout gaps, eating estrogen forever, the picaresque of apartment finding. June is great and you should get in on her whole literary deal now please go ahead!
May 8, 2025
one of my favorite things in the book world is how the books authors gush about and the ones they write are often totally orthogonal to each other. June loves boring, bleak, weird books? Well this one is weird but everything else is buckle-up mode.
July 18, 2024
I loved the novel and how it stirred my emotions.tge plot was curated well. I give it a 4 stars because i felt it became a bit too toxic
May 10, 2025
Light 4
October 25, 2025
very cool! zoe is so satisfyingly fucked up. great way to end it. sometimes id zone out on lily chapters but i think thats bc of my brain more than anything
December 19, 2024
Giving this book a five-star rating with the unique caveat that you definitely have to be in the right sort of headspace to wrap your head around it. That's in no way a bad thing: Martin meshes queerness (identity), queerness (relationships), social navigation, and metaphors that gradually, you realize, aren't actually metaphors. The progression with which Martin introduces the reader is straightforward: you meet Zoe, you meet Lily, they're sort of friends (in the "sort of friends" way queer people (especially trans folk) often find themselves with others purely by virtue of that shared otherness). From there, the characters fall apart—in relation to one another; in relation to themselves; and sometimes physically, literally.
This is why I introduce the above caveat. You have to be prepared for the rules of this world to shift at a moment's notice. You have to give yourself to this novel's logic and just say "Okay!"; and when you do, it is mesmerizing.
Small spoilers follow:
Lily and Zoe are friends, kind of. They call each other that, but mostly because it is a grandfathered title. Nothing about the way they interact indicates they are friends from early on. They steal, sabotage one another, spread rumors, gaslight under the pretense of fair third-party counsel, this list goes on. But still, they remain, primarily because Lily has nowhere to go, and Zoe loves having that sort of control, whether or not she'll admit it. At one point, Such is the way of this world's rules.
What I like the most about this story, amazingly, is that in the context of the world, Zoe and Lily are arguably the least interesting people in it. . The characters are incredible, and then there is Lily and Zoe.
For anyone who has navigated queer social circles, this is spot-on. In a bout of introspection, we must admit, that queer folk in their networks can act as though their troubles are the height of what needs attention. This is not their fault necessarily: until recently, the smallest slip-up for a queer person meant homelessness, or loss of friend circles with no fallback, the loss of jobs or prospects, so on. Martin leans into this with the two main characters, who—while trans—have lives much less engrossing than many of the side characters. But engrossing still they are, because we get insight into why they act the way they do, how they operate, and how these choices are informed by their vastly different experiences with queerness. Zoe, who has only gone upward; and Lily, who is trying but overshadowed and unsure how to manage it. Martin's choice to make their lives simpler in this way highlights just how equally transcendental queerness can be for those experiencing each unique iteration of it.
Back to the story: it's good—it is fun, sassy, sad, frustrating; you'll want to wring the necks of some characters even if you understand their motives. My one criticism .
There are also some bangers of quotes in here!
"If satisfaction could be won from being attained, then reason dictated that the satisfaction existed inside her at all times."
"Pity was the least erotic emotion, no matter how many people had sex because of it."
—and many others.
All that to say: read this book. It's a delicious little mix of queer drama and absurdism that doesn't care how you feel about the characters, which makes them all the more real and engaging.
This is why I introduce the above caveat. You have to be prepared for the rules of this world to shift at a moment's notice. You have to give yourself to this novel's logic and just say "Okay!"; and when you do, it is mesmerizing.
Small spoilers follow:
Lily and Zoe are friends, kind of. They call each other that, but mostly because it is a grandfathered title. Nothing about the way they interact indicates they are friends from early on. They steal, sabotage one another, spread rumors, gaslight under the pretense of fair third-party counsel, this list goes on. But still, they remain, primarily because Lily has nowhere to go, and Zoe loves having that sort of control, whether or not she'll admit it. At one point, Such is the way of this world's rules.
What I like the most about this story, amazingly, is that in the context of the world, Zoe and Lily are arguably the least interesting people in it. . The characters are incredible, and then there is Lily and Zoe.
For anyone who has navigated queer social circles, this is spot-on. In a bout of introspection, we must admit, that queer folk in their networks can act as though their troubles are the height of what needs attention. This is not their fault necessarily: until recently, the smallest slip-up for a queer person meant homelessness, or loss of friend circles with no fallback, the loss of jobs or prospects, so on. Martin leans into this with the two main characters, who—while trans—have lives much less engrossing than many of the side characters. But engrossing still they are, because we get insight into why they act the way they do, how they operate, and how these choices are informed by their vastly different experiences with queerness. Zoe, who has only gone upward; and Lily, who is trying but overshadowed and unsure how to manage it. Martin's choice to make their lives simpler in this way highlights just how equally transcendental queerness can be for those experiencing each unique iteration of it.
Back to the story: it's good—it is fun, sassy, sad, frustrating; you'll want to wring the necks of some characters even if you understand their motives. My one criticism .
There are also some bangers of quotes in here!
"If satisfaction could be won from being attained, then reason dictated that the satisfaction existed inside her at all times."
"Pity was the least erotic emotion, no matter how many people had sex because of it."
—and many others.
All that to say: read this book. It's a delicious little mix of queer drama and absurdism that doesn't care how you feel about the characters, which makes them all the more real and engaging.
June 16, 2024
I need everyone in my immediate circle to read this thanks
August 2, 2024
Absolutely stunning book, truly a masterful piece of work.
A complex and beautiful immersive world, and characters that are made all the more real by their absurd and fantastical natures.
Truly wonderful, I loved this. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
A complex and beautiful immersive world, and characters that are made all the more real by their absurd and fantastical natures.
Truly wonderful, I loved this. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
August 4, 2024
Visionary! The mind of June Martin is captivating. In college when I was bouncing around between dorm rooms and shitty student group houses and lovers’ couches while trying to avoid passive aggressive roommate feuds I had the strangest dreams of different bedrooms, different buildings, and the alien and familiar creatures which resided there. June wove a novel of some similar dream-material and I am so grateful to have found it. Her prose is sharp and often hilarious, her characters vibrant and alive. I devoured this book. You will too.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews