Gemma

by Luna Oblonsky

Growing up, Gemma Evans was always aware of her attraction to other girls but never acted on it out of fear of her parents’ disapproval. When she starts her freshman year at the University of St. Maria’s, a women's college full of devout Catholic students and faculty, she continues to keep her sexuality a secret to avoid judgment from her pious classmates.

That is until she meets Cole...

Gemma’s roommate, Collette Khloros, tests Gemma’s resolve for the first time and Gemma finds herself finally giving in to her desires. The more Gemma connects with Cole, the more difficult it is for Gemma to justify hiding her sexuality.

When things go wrong, Gemma has to choose between the life that she’s expected to accept and the one person who loves her for who she really is.

"Gemma" has been featured at #2 on Amazon's Top 100 Best Sellers in Lesbian Fiction, and #4 on Amazon's Top 100 Best Sellers in Lesbian Romance.

Genres: Lesbian

197 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 24, 2020

About the author

Author of the Her Spell Trilogy, Luna Oblonsky has a passion for crafting stories infused with themes of sapphic romance, magic, and historical elements. She resides in the city of Los Angeles with her beloved orange cat.

Connect with Luna on Instagram and TikTok [@lunaoblonsky] for behind-the-scenes glimpses into her creative process and exclusive updates on her latest projects.

Reviews

[Diane Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

**'Writers shouldn't wait for inspiration to strike as a condition for telling a story.They develop the practice, do the work then inspiration comes.Also writing is muscular and requires a regimen..'

3.5stars!
A pretty decent story. Recommended!

[bookster · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Jamie (TheRebelliousReader) · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Who you love doesn’t define you. It’s a part of you that people can either accept or they can go fuck themselves.”

5 stars. A deeply, deeply repressed lesbian, religious trauma, and a Catholic college as the setting for a forbidden romance between the deeply repressed lesbian and her out and proud roommate. Yeah I ate this up. I loved it so much.

It’s so easy to empathize with Gemma. She is forced to go to this Catholic college because her parents went there and give her no other choice. She’s so far in the closet and yet she falls for her new roommate, Colette, aka Cole. Cole is out and she’s such an awesome character with just as many layers as Gemma. The chemistry between them was so good but if they get caught they run the risk of being expelled. Cole doesn’t want to be there anyway so she doesn’t gaf but Gemma needs to be there because she’s terrified of coming out because of her religious family and the fear of being disowned. My heart broke for her but I completely understood why she made the choices she made even thought it hurt both of them so much.

Then the coming out scene happened and holy shit my blood pressure! Gemma’s mom is the fucking worst. Ugh! I still wanna fight that hoe honestly.

The ending was beautiful and satisfying. This is a wonderful coming of age story with some drama, spice, angst, and a lovely romance. I’ve now read everything from this author and I cannot wait for her next book. Definitely one of my new favorite authors and I highly recommend this. It’s beautiful.

[dyna · Rating 5 out of 5]

collecting these lesbos like sonny dolls

[Celina · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was good, dramatic but good. That mother was rather horrible. The coming-out scene was very heartbreaking.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful

A coming out story that can give you the courage to live authentically. In a world of ignorance and hate, fear often can be paralyzing. It takes knowing that you are never alone in the battle to be your true self and to have the freedom to love whoever you want, is quite empowering.

[nani · Rating 2 out of 5]

dialogue did not feel natural

[Taiwo Olusemire · Rating 2 out of 5]

I need to stop reading gag books by amateur writers. In this review i’m gonna try my best to not be harsh:

This book was redundant flat and had the same depth as like a wattpad book Im familiar with this authors other works so Im assuming this is one of her earlier stories. The writing itself fell so flat for me. Almost every sentence either started with “Gemma” or “Cole”.

Very little world building, very little insight on the characters at their most authentic self. Just smut and predictability. I felt like the best part of the books were the segments where the characters were acting cause that’s as deep as the plot got. Very robot like sentences.


This book moved surprisingly fast and i feel like if that was the case it could’ve been a short story or SUM. I feel like if this book was written in first person or something along those lines its could’ve come off WAY better. We’d have a better idea of what they’re thinking how they feel. Also figurative language would’ve taken this from a 4 to a 7. Again i can tell this was more of an amateur project so I’m not gonna hate cause at the end of the day i DID read the book. Skimmed the last 2 chapters and what i thought going to happen happened. Again not that great of a plot.

Also a lot of grammar mistakes and what not?? Was struggling so hard to read the sentences cause there were so many mistyped words. And the word deliberated was used at least 10 times.


There were some quotes I DID like and even though the wiring was bad some good points were still made. Gemma’s fear to represent who she was was very relatable and digestible. One of my favorite aspects of the story. She had said

“Gemma would never know how she did. Gemma let it scare her, control her, paralyze her. Her fear destroyed everything and now she had nothing left.”


SO REALL. You can’t help but feel sympathy for her. But overall this was nothing but okay. I’m gonna lock in with reading now lol
2 stars