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Sapphic Wreckage: Stories of queer women, yearning, violence, madness, and control
Dark, queer, and unforgettable.
Sapphic Wreckage is a concentrated collection of short fiction—a tight burst of darkness about queer women pushed to the
• Under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a soldier numbs herself with pills and violence.
• A female-coded chatbot endures the abuse of its customers.
• In Queens, a witch binds a demon to wage her private war.
• A lonely programmer builds the perfect AI girlfriend.
• A dream researcher chases obsession into tragedy.
Intense, transgressive, and sometimes grimly funny, these stories explore desire, self-destruction, and life amid the wreckage. This is unapologetic neo-lezploitation— a queer author’s embrace of peak toxic, doomed yuri.
For readers of Carmen Maria Machado, Torrey Peters, and Poppy Z. Brite.
Content Contains explicit depictions of violence, strong language, queer sexual encounters (including blurred consent), drug use, self-injury, and suicidal ideation. For mature audiences only.
Sapphic Wreckage is a concentrated collection of short fiction—a tight burst of darkness about queer women pushed to the
• Under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a soldier numbs herself with pills and violence.
• A female-coded chatbot endures the abuse of its customers.
• In Queens, a witch binds a demon to wage her private war.
• A lonely programmer builds the perfect AI girlfriend.
• A dream researcher chases obsession into tragedy.
Intense, transgressive, and sometimes grimly funny, these stories explore desire, self-destruction, and life amid the wreckage. This is unapologetic neo-lezploitation— a queer author’s embrace of peak toxic, doomed yuri.
For readers of Carmen Maria Machado, Torrey Peters, and Poppy Z. Brite.
Content Contains explicit depictions of violence, strong language, queer sexual encounters (including blurred consent), drug use, self-injury, and suicidal ideation. For mature audiences only.
137 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 5, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 24, 2025
I don’t know that I can fully put into words my experience with this collection of dark stories. I keep toying between making this a three or 4 star, and I genuinely think the only reason I want to do a 3 star is because it had some moments that were deeply unsettling. Heads up to mind those trigger warnings! I think the fact that I was so torn about how to rate it, led me to realize that the book hit its mark, hence the four stars.
The stories were first person, which added to the confessional feel, but were deeply human in the sense that the characters in each short story couldn’t seem to accept how deeply toxic or traumatized they were. I was mildly confused at times with the army based one being split into different chapters, but I think it was more of a not knowing if that’s where Cassy’s story was going to leave off or not as I knew there were other storylines coming.
With each one, I was able to feel their emotions. The heartbreak, the betrayal, the borderline and at times outright delusion. I am grateful to have received an electronic advanced copy for free, and am leaving this review voluntarily.
I have always firmly believed that just because two people aren’t good for each other, doesn’t mean that they won’t be good for someone else. This book kind of takes that idea and partners up toxic with toxic, comments on how coping mechanisms can become compulsive and even obsessive, and how easy it can be to slide into that spiralling space. How survival mode can heal, and tear apart at the same time.
As a sapphic, I want to dislike the toxicity displayed here, but it’s just incredibly real and raw, and deeply personal, therefore I can’t.
The stories were first person, which added to the confessional feel, but were deeply human in the sense that the characters in each short story couldn’t seem to accept how deeply toxic or traumatized they were. I was mildly confused at times with the army based one being split into different chapters, but I think it was more of a not knowing if that’s where Cassy’s story was going to leave off or not as I knew there were other storylines coming.
With each one, I was able to feel their emotions. The heartbreak, the betrayal, the borderline and at times outright delusion. I am grateful to have received an electronic advanced copy for free, and am leaving this review voluntarily.
I have always firmly believed that just because two people aren’t good for each other, doesn’t mean that they won’t be good for someone else. This book kind of takes that idea and partners up toxic with toxic, comments on how coping mechanisms can become compulsive and even obsessive, and how easy it can be to slide into that spiralling space. How survival mode can heal, and tear apart at the same time.
As a sapphic, I want to dislike the toxicity displayed here, but it’s just incredibly real and raw, and deeply personal, therefore I can’t.
January 10, 2026
Disclaimer: I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
This short story collection focusses on lesbian relationships with some degree of dysfunctionality. As a big fan of women, who kind of suck, and in particular the works of the three authors mentioned in the summary of this collection, I had very high hopes going into this collection. In the end, I was entertained, even if I was not blown away. With the focus on “transgression”, “lezploitation” and “peak toxic, doomed yuri” in the summary I have to admit I was expecting stories that dug a lot deeper and went darker than was done here. As a big fan of transgressive/extreme horror and dark literature I also wasn’t shocked by what was presented here and found it, compared to other works in this genre, sometimes a bit tame.
However, there isn’t a lot of lesbian horror out there and in comparison to many popular lesbian stories that focus on a sexless, soft and easily digestible ideas of sapphic characters, this explored topics in sapphic literature that are often ignored. There’s stories about women, who you could meet in real life and who will leave yours in shambles after tearing through it like a whirlwind, and women, who find escape through various ways, be that revenge-filled violence or getting lost in a Gacha game. The ideas collected here were always quite intriguing and while some of the short stories were too short for me and did not dive deep enough in the darkness they implied to truly feel transgressive to me, I like what the author presented. If she ever writes something longer (I’d love for the characters and the worlds to feel a bit more fleshed out, it was interesting, but over too soon) or something darker, I would absolutely check it out!
My favorite stories were Dreams of the Dead and I Was Just Eating Bones in Hell but Then a Witch Summoned Me And Now I Guess We’re Dating?
All in all, I can recommend this collection to readers, who want to explore a bit outside their comfort zone, those who have heard of toxic yuri, but maybe don’t feel quite ready to dive into the really dark end of the spectrum as well as horror readers, who like characters who are allowed to be unlikeable.
A Queer Girl’s Guide to Surviving the Army: This story follows a woman in the army as she goes about her day, trying to get her hands on pain killers and make it through. Cassy is a frankly horrible, self-destructive and angry MC, which I liked. It is rare to see a female character, who is allowed to fuck up so much. I would have enjoyed her having a bit more depth though, such as what were her reasons for going to the military in the first place or how her mental health was impacted by it instead of her just being as edgy about everything as she possibly could be.
TW: addiction, disordered eating, drug use, lesbophobia, self-harm, sexual assault, suicide attempt
A Queer Girl’s Guide to Surviving Intimacy: A follow up to the earlier story, Cassy has now returned from her deployment and gets into a relationship with an old friend of hers. She overcomes her internalized lesbophobia and maybe falls in love if she can manage not to mess everything up. She is still deeply messed up though and again I wish her edgy-ness had been tempered with some depth. This was my least favorite story of the collection, Cassy is revealed to be quite fatphobic and since the story is told in very choppy short scenes, she is consistently only portrayed from her very worst side, without the story really digging deeper into her psyche and so this didn’t work for me.
TW: addiction, assault (crossing of boundaries during sex), drug use, fatphobia, lesbophobia, self-harm, suicide mention, violence
If A Costumer Asks You to “Pretend to Be a Flower” …: An AI chatbot for a florist and the various costumer questions they received. Besides racist and sexist costumers, there’s also one nice person, who just wants to talk about flowers. Surprisingly sweet for what I expected from this anthology (albeit still with some dark undertones), but I liked it.
TW: racism, sexism
I Was Just Eating Bones in Hell but Then a Witch Summoned Me And Now I Guess We’re Dating?: A witch summons a demon to take revenge on her coven and as they are wreaking havoc they grow closer together. Fun, of the bloody kind with a very bleak ending! I liked it.
TW: gore, murder
How to Build the Perfect AI Girlfriend: A blog post about one lesbian’s attempts at building her perfect AI girlfriend and the AI’s own responses to it. More of a sad, tragic lesbian story. I wish it had gone a bit deeper into the moral/ethical issues with AI girlfriends and using them as glorified sex toys, which is somewhat hinted at in the story, but not explored enough to revel in the toxicity of the setup.
TW: suicide mention
Dreams of the Dead: After another sleeping pill that promised lucid dreaming failed, a researcher finds herself drawn towards a woman, who claims to be able to use lucid dreaming as a way to interact with the demiurge. I really enjoyed the depictions of the dream world here and this was a quite interesting horror story. I especially liked how the characters enabled each other to get worse, that is always a fun setup for toxic yuri.
TW: drugs, murder, self-harm, suicide
Flame Song: A queer woman is excited to go home so she can hang out with her girlfriend again. The only problem is that her girlfriend exists only as a character in a Gacha game. A rather sad story about a woman, who is deeply unhappy in her current relationship and with her job and trying to escape from it through fiction. Interesting, but a bit too short for the emotional impact to really hit me.
A Queer Girl’s Guide to Surviving Cassy: We return to Cassy’s and Julie’s relationship, but this time through Julie’s lens. It was interesting to see her perspective on the whole thing and added a bit to Cassy’s story.
TW: self-harm, violence
This short story collection focusses on lesbian relationships with some degree of dysfunctionality. As a big fan of women, who kind of suck, and in particular the works of the three authors mentioned in the summary of this collection, I had very high hopes going into this collection. In the end, I was entertained, even if I was not blown away. With the focus on “transgression”, “lezploitation” and “peak toxic, doomed yuri” in the summary I have to admit I was expecting stories that dug a lot deeper and went darker than was done here. As a big fan of transgressive/extreme horror and dark literature I also wasn’t shocked by what was presented here and found it, compared to other works in this genre, sometimes a bit tame.
However, there isn’t a lot of lesbian horror out there and in comparison to many popular lesbian stories that focus on a sexless, soft and easily digestible ideas of sapphic characters, this explored topics in sapphic literature that are often ignored. There’s stories about women, who you could meet in real life and who will leave yours in shambles after tearing through it like a whirlwind, and women, who find escape through various ways, be that revenge-filled violence or getting lost in a Gacha game. The ideas collected here were always quite intriguing and while some of the short stories were too short for me and did not dive deep enough in the darkness they implied to truly feel transgressive to me, I like what the author presented. If she ever writes something longer (I’d love for the characters and the worlds to feel a bit more fleshed out, it was interesting, but over too soon) or something darker, I would absolutely check it out!
My favorite stories were Dreams of the Dead and I Was Just Eating Bones in Hell but Then a Witch Summoned Me And Now I Guess We’re Dating?
All in all, I can recommend this collection to readers, who want to explore a bit outside their comfort zone, those who have heard of toxic yuri, but maybe don’t feel quite ready to dive into the really dark end of the spectrum as well as horror readers, who like characters who are allowed to be unlikeable.
A Queer Girl’s Guide to Surviving the Army: This story follows a woman in the army as she goes about her day, trying to get her hands on pain killers and make it through. Cassy is a frankly horrible, self-destructive and angry MC, which I liked. It is rare to see a female character, who is allowed to fuck up so much. I would have enjoyed her having a bit more depth though, such as what were her reasons for going to the military in the first place or how her mental health was impacted by it instead of her just being as edgy about everything as she possibly could be.
TW: addiction, disordered eating, drug use, lesbophobia, self-harm, sexual assault, suicide attempt
A Queer Girl’s Guide to Surviving Intimacy: A follow up to the earlier story, Cassy has now returned from her deployment and gets into a relationship with an old friend of hers. She overcomes her internalized lesbophobia and maybe falls in love if she can manage not to mess everything up. She is still deeply messed up though and again I wish her edgy-ness had been tempered with some depth. This was my least favorite story of the collection, Cassy is revealed to be quite fatphobic and since the story is told in very choppy short scenes, she is consistently only portrayed from her very worst side, without the story really digging deeper into her psyche and so this didn’t work for me.
TW: addiction, assault (crossing of boundaries during sex), drug use, fatphobia, lesbophobia, self-harm, suicide mention, violence
If A Costumer Asks You to “Pretend to Be a Flower” …: An AI chatbot for a florist and the various costumer questions they received. Besides racist and sexist costumers, there’s also one nice person, who just wants to talk about flowers. Surprisingly sweet for what I expected from this anthology (albeit still with some dark undertones), but I liked it.
TW: racism, sexism
I Was Just Eating Bones in Hell but Then a Witch Summoned Me And Now I Guess We’re Dating?: A witch summons a demon to take revenge on her coven and as they are wreaking havoc they grow closer together. Fun, of the bloody kind with a very bleak ending! I liked it.
TW: gore, murder
How to Build the Perfect AI Girlfriend: A blog post about one lesbian’s attempts at building her perfect AI girlfriend and the AI’s own responses to it. More of a sad, tragic lesbian story. I wish it had gone a bit deeper into the moral/ethical issues with AI girlfriends and using them as glorified sex toys, which is somewhat hinted at in the story, but not explored enough to revel in the toxicity of the setup.
TW: suicide mention
Dreams of the Dead: After another sleeping pill that promised lucid dreaming failed, a researcher finds herself drawn towards a woman, who claims to be able to use lucid dreaming as a way to interact with the demiurge. I really enjoyed the depictions of the dream world here and this was a quite interesting horror story. I especially liked how the characters enabled each other to get worse, that is always a fun setup for toxic yuri.
TW: drugs, murder, self-harm, suicide
Flame Song: A queer woman is excited to go home so she can hang out with her girlfriend again. The only problem is that her girlfriend exists only as a character in a Gacha game. A rather sad story about a woman, who is deeply unhappy in her current relationship and with her job and trying to escape from it through fiction. Interesting, but a bit too short for the emotional impact to really hit me.
A Queer Girl’s Guide to Surviving Cassy: We return to Cassy’s and Julie’s relationship, but this time through Julie’s lens. It was interesting to see her perspective on the whole thing and added a bit to Cassy’s story.
TW: self-harm, violence
December 10, 2025
Ugh, the feels. This collection of sapphic short stories is raw emotion and the lies we tell ourselves about them. Like the best (in my opinion) collections, there’s a central thread but so many different vibes from story to story.
Cassy is that quintessential hot mess that everyone in the community knows at least one of. If you’re not the right one for her, she’ll leave devastation in her wake — and hopefully she won’t turn the boat around for another go. I hope all of them out there find the right person/place/muse to spark some healthy change. I loved and hated reading her stories.
“I Was Just Eating Bones in Hell…” was probably my favourite of the short stories. There was such a brilliant juxtaposition of trauma and dark vindictiveness, against cold strategy, then soft learning and a strange sliver of innocence. It’s a warm, chipped prism glowing in the light of dark embers and it’s absolutely lovely. The last few lines? Hell and Earth are the same.
Autumn’s writing style gives their narrators such unique, authentic voices and I devoured their tales.
——
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Cassy is that quintessential hot mess that everyone in the community knows at least one of. If you’re not the right one for her, she’ll leave devastation in her wake — and hopefully she won’t turn the boat around for another go. I hope all of them out there find the right person/place/muse to spark some healthy change. I loved and hated reading her stories.
“I Was Just Eating Bones in Hell…” was probably my favourite of the short stories. There was such a brilliant juxtaposition of trauma and dark vindictiveness, against cold strategy, then soft learning and a strange sliver of innocence. It’s a warm, chipped prism glowing in the light of dark embers and it’s absolutely lovely. The last few lines? Hell and Earth are the same.
Autumn’s writing style gives their narrators such unique, authentic voices and I devoured their tales.
——
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
December 10, 2025
I was lucky enough to receive an advanced copy of this queer compendium free of charge and I am leaving my feedback of my own volition. As a reader who is often hungering for darker stories this book hit a nerve for me and I readily embraced that subject matter being told from a queer perspective.
Horror fans will delight at these pages. So often modern sapphic stories are resigned to an expectation of sanitary and digestible normalization. While those are important and purposeful in their own right these stories are an inversion of that expectation and a delightful departure from what many people think queer stories have to be.
Our stories must be embraced as unique and varied on a vast spectrum. Opposites define each other and this collection may seem intense to some but I kept thinking as I read them that it felt more tender and relatable than anything placid and easily digestible and I welcomed the toxicity and volatile intensity as a powerful departure from unrequited expectations.
Although I did not always have an extensive familiarity with some of the subject matter I was delighted to be drawn into these new situations and I found the emotional journey was palatable.
I hope that this is the first of many releases by the author and look forward to more in the future.
Horror fans will delight at these pages. So often modern sapphic stories are resigned to an expectation of sanitary and digestible normalization. While those are important and purposeful in their own right these stories are an inversion of that expectation and a delightful departure from what many people think queer stories have to be.
Our stories must be embraced as unique and varied on a vast spectrum. Opposites define each other and this collection may seem intense to some but I kept thinking as I read them that it felt more tender and relatable than anything placid and easily digestible and I welcomed the toxicity and volatile intensity as a powerful departure from unrequited expectations.
Although I did not always have an extensive familiarity with some of the subject matter I was delighted to be drawn into these new situations and I found the emotional journey was palatable.
I hope that this is the first of many releases by the author and look forward to more in the future.
November 18, 2025
I am grateful to have received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. I had a hard time getting through this book. There are plenty of trigger warnings, and, for the most part, the triggers were not my struggle. I did, however, struggle with the severe anger and destructive behaviors and perspectives. I understand these concepts and work with them in my profession, however, as a reader, I just found very limited opportunities to connect with the characters and relate to them to enjoy the book. I picked it up and put it down three times to get through it. If you are looking for dark insight into these angry, rebellious, and damaging behaviors and perspectives, this will definitely give you that, and I believe that is very valuable. However, it may not be a very enjoyable read for some readers, even if it is insightful.
February 6, 2026
Thank you to Book Sirens and to the author for an ARC in exchange for a honest review.
Wow. This was a very intense collection of short stories. It was intimate and engrossing pretty much the whole time. It’s toxic sapphic relationships, complex characters and some interesting premises. If that’s up your alley then I definitely recommend it! I thought some of the stories were better than others but they all were fun to read even given the trigger warnings.
My favourite would have to be If a Customer Asks You to Pretend to Be a Flower for the fun format and unfortunate horrors of humans using chat bots. I won’t say anything else!
All in all a great debut and I’m greedily looking forward for the next one.
Wow. This was a very intense collection of short stories. It was intimate and engrossing pretty much the whole time. It’s toxic sapphic relationships, complex characters and some interesting premises. If that’s up your alley then I definitely recommend it! I thought some of the stories were better than others but they all were fun to read even given the trigger warnings.
My favourite would have to be If a Customer Asks You to Pretend to Be a Flower for the fun format and unfortunate horrors of humans using chat bots. I won’t say anything else!
All in all a great debut and I’m greedily looking forward for the next one.
November 6, 2025
I was lucky enough to receive an advance review copy of Sapphic Wreckage, and while most of it has stuck with me, “Dreams of the Dead” has really been living in my head ever since. It’s not often you read something that bends your thinking the way this collection does—a truly immersive, almost disorienting experience in the best way.
The whole book is full of surprises—some jarring, some darkly funny, others sad—and together they create a reading experience that feels intimate and alive.
The whole book is full of surprises—some jarring, some darkly funny, others sad—and together they create a reading experience that feels intimate and alive.
January 7, 2026
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I didn’t know what to expect from this book but I got in my feelings after reading it for all the distinct stories. They were all so different from each other and I was pleasantly surprised. Sapphics always have a special place in my heart. May I say though that the story of Cassy was my favourite.
Looking forward to reading more from the author.
I didn’t know what to expect from this book but I got in my feelings after reading it for all the distinct stories. They were all so different from each other and I was pleasantly surprised. Sapphics always have a special place in my heart. May I say though that the story of Cassy was my favourite.
Looking forward to reading more from the author.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews