so i've gotten back into reading (for fun that is), so i've been searching high and low for lesbian (or at least sapphic i guess) books on twitter, reddit, goodreads, and the deepest, darkest pits of zlib my favorite digital library :).
no corny cover/title/desc (cheese = good corn = bad, this distinction is very important), aka it gives the book rack at the grocery store; no age gaps; no generally unfavorable reviews; nothing TOOOO long because what do i look like reading something with 700+ pages.
i've already gotten through a few books, and i really don't feel like making an individual post every time i finish one, so i thought that i would just compile them all into one big masterpost. 'LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLUB' - MALINDA LO
4.5/5

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father–despite his hard-won citizenship–Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

no matter what platform i looked on, this book was always mentioned and the description caught my attention, so i was excited about it. i really related to lily, particularly to her journey discovering her lesbian identity, which mirrored a lot of my own experience. i loved the relationship between lily & kath and the exploration of lesbian bar culture, which i personally would like to see more of in lesbian historical fiction over yet another story set in some victorian/golden age/whatever era. one thing i also enjoyed was the author's note which listed the inspiration behind the book and all the sources that were used, i thought that was really nice and it also gave me some more books to read!
a couple things holding me back from giving 5 stars: the storyline with the (potential?) youth communist group & lily's dad was never really mentioned again except when lily and shirley had their fight, which was i thought was a little odd because it's the first major thing that happens in the book; kath is kinda flat, the only things we really know about her is that she likes planes and has an older lesbian friend named jean; i think the flashback scene of lily's parents going on a date was pretty unnecessary, i think that wasted space that could've been used later on to have a flashback scene of the moment kath mentioned was when she started having feelings for lily, or at the very least knowing what had actually happened during/after the raid?
overall i absolutely LOVED this! it very much lived up to the hype in my opinion, and i definitely wanna get myself a physical copy!

---

'SHE GETS THE GIRL'- ALYSON DERRICK AND RACHAEL LIPPINCOTT
2/5

Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus. But when Alex, fresh off a bad (but hopefully not permanent) breakup, discovers Molly’s hidden crush as their paths cross the night before classes start, they realize they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex volunteers to help Molly learn how to get her dream girl to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she’s not a selfish flirt. That she’s ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can’t deny Alex knows what she’s doing with girls, unlike her. As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they’re the ones falling…for each other.

everywhere on twitter i looked people were RAVING about this book so i said fuck it why not. the only beef i have with this book is the fact that some of the writing is just flat-out BAD. in one scene, alex is taking molly to some rugby tryouts where her crush would be, molly didn't know where she was being dragged to (alex only told her to put on comfortable clothes) so she jokingly says that she wants to skip the weight loss part of their makeover, which for some reason sets alex off and she goes on one of the funniest rants of all time:

“You know what, Molly? I know I’m fucking pretty, and yeah, I like to flirt maybe a little too much, but I’m not the self-absorbed, shallow bimbo that everyone thinks I am. That you seem to think I am.”

and there's also natalie, alex's girlfriend, who, at the end of the book, turns into the cookie cutter mean girl, straight from a 13 year old's wattpad fic.

Natalie interrupts me with a snort and rolls her eyes. [...] “Don’t go thinking you’re anything special,” she says. “It’s clear you’re just a lost little puppy looking for attention. And Alex will give it to anyone… for a while. That’s just Alex.”

"[...] I'm always doing something wrong in your eyes." Natalie snorts, and a twisted smile creeps onto her face. “And what? You think it’ll be better with someone else?”

other than that, i think this book just wasn't to my tastes. the romance scenes did nothing for me; i didn't really feel alex and molly as a couple. but i did like the side plots about the girls and their moms. that's about it.

---

'LOVE AND OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS' - MISA SUGIURA
3/5

When Nozomi Nagai pictured the ideal summer romance, a fake one wasn’t what she had in mind. That was before she met the perfect girl. Willow is gorgeous, glamorous, and…heartbroken? And when she enlists Nozomi to pose as her new girlfriend to make her ex jealous, Nozomi is a willing volunteer. Because Nozomi has a master plan of her own: one to show Willow she’s better than a stand-in, and turn their fauxmance into something real. But as the lies pile up, it’s not long before Nozomi’s schemes take a turn toward disaster…and maybe a chance at love she didn’t plan for.

this was ok. just like sgtg, i preferred the storyline of nozomi and her grandmother to the romance. but unlike sgtg, i actually thought the romance scenes were pretty cute, i just didn't root for the couple is all. the characters are suuuper trope-y and unmemorable (i literally had to go searching for their names because i forgot who was who 💀): willow's entire personality is makeup and clothes and her (ex/)gf, dela is just that trope of "jerk bad boy in a leather jacket but then you see him in an alley with an abandoned kitten and realize he's not actually that bad", arden's personality is also makeup and clothes and being rich, and nozomi is the plain jane socially awkward main character. at the end of the book, nozomi thinks that owning up to what she did (while respectable) means that dela and arden should automatically forgive her and that she's entitled to some happy fairytale ending, so then i found myself actively rooting against her. even after the whole shitshow that happened she doesn't stop to think about why what she (and willow) did was wrong, and she only really apologizes just to get with dela real quick before she went back home. guys plz reply with the tags!!! 👇👇 #deladeservesbetter #nozomi_OUT
tbh this all really boils down to the fact that i'm just not the target audience for this book, i think it's fine if you remember that it's just something cute for the kids. i rounded up my original 2.5 to a 3 for baby gay me, because the fake dating + the "looks tough but is actually a softie" trope butch love interest was quite literally the book of teenage leon poseur.neocities.org's DREAMS.

---

'RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE' - RITA MAE BROWN
0/5

Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America. Molly Bolt is adopted by a poor Southern couple, Carrie and Carl, who want a better life for their daughter than they've had. Molly does too, but she has different ideas about how that will unfold.

aw man, where do i even start with this? listen, i know "something something different times" but i knew that this probably wasn't going to be ~politically correct~ -- and if that had bothered me then i wouldn't have gone reading it in the first place -- but this was just... odd, in every way. this is gonna be a long one, buckle up.
first of all, the amount of incest is just utterly ridiculous; it was not just once or twice but THREE different instances of incest. as if the multiple scenes of cousincest weren't enough, we then have to read about a 16 year old girl telling molly that she believes that her own mother (we'll get to her later) finds her attractive and then expresses a desire to have sex with her. molly tells her not to do it, but only because her mother has a weird kink. she also feels the need to clarify that she thinks incest is totally cool (trust me, we can tell) as long as you're over the age of 15 and "consent", and says that parents and children not viewing each other sexually is "antihuman".

"Yeah, parents get freaked out about everything. Mom must have a heavy case of repression going, because she’ll never deal with the fact that she digs my body.”

second is all the plain lesbophobia. when molly arrives in new york, she meets a gay man, calvin, who takes her to a lesbian bar in hopes that she'll meet a woman who would be willing to let her crash on her couch. the very first person she meets is a butch named mighty mo, who molly calls a moron (after mo simply saying "you must be new around here") and says that she would beat up if she were not smaller than mo. when mo leaves, she then goes a classic rant about butches being wannabe males:

“That’s the craziest, dumbass thing I ever heard tell of. What’s the point of being a lesbian if a woman is going to look and act like an imitation man? Hell, if I want a man, I’ll get the real thing not one of these chippies. I mean, Calvin, the whole point of being gay is because you love women. You don’t like men that look like women, do you?”

unsuccessful in her quest, she leaves the bar and says this gem, when calvin asks if she'll be staying out:

"[...] Don’t worry about me. It’s too cold for rapists to be roaming the streets. Anyway at least they won’t ask me if I am butch or femme.”

BUT WAIT! that's not all! what would the lesbian book to end all lesbian books be without everyone's favorite lesbophobic trope: the lesbian who tries to turn straight women?! molly meets an older woman named polina who she immediately becomes obsessed with. long story short, molly ends up forcing herself onto polina, saying that she secretly wants it. they continue to sleep together for a while until a fight breaks out between polina and her daughter (mentioned earlier), alice, after alice tells polina that she's also been sleeping with molly.
lastly, even if we ignore all the problematic elements -- even the ones i didn't bother going into detail about, like the use of every single racial slur ever created, and the fact that molly repeatedly has sex with men throughout the book for no reason -- the book is simply not well written. molly is super popular, super smart while everyone else is a fucking idiot, and the most irresistible woman on earth since (almost literally) everybody she meets wants to sleep with her. despite showing her life from age 11 to her mid 20's, she literally does not change at all; absolutely no lessons are learned.
honestly i really did enjoy the first few chapters of this book but it just went downhill so, so quickly. truly a few hours of my life that i will never get back.

---