gold rush by sarah sanders

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is such an exhilarating read. It’s a dazzling and deftly plotted romp with unexpected plot twists right till the end. Just when I thought ‘Oh, so this is how it’ll go’ it changed directions. Then again. This one defies — or straddles — genres. The only book that I can think of that is similar in twists, setting (historical) and complete engagement is Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. What begins as a classic caper quickly deepens into a layered mystery of tangled debts, dangerous pasts, and hidden agendas.

First there’s the unforgettable duo of Cass and Leo, two grifters whose chemistry and witty banter are the engine of the story. Cass, with her audacious confidence and theatrical flair, is a force of nature, while Leo’s pragmatic wit and weary loyalty provide the perfect grounding. Their goal seems simple: infiltrate a prestigious poetry contest and con the reclusive, elegant Lady Seraphine into giving them her generous prize. But from the moment they step onto the opulent château, nothing is as it seems.

Then there are the impeccably poised Lady Seraphine and her enigmatic companion Isolde Reinhardt. Lady Seraphine is a balance of glamour with vulnerability. Isolde is like an Matryoshka nesting doll with layers that hide more layers — compellingly enigmatic and seems to be shifting character all throughout.

The true brilliance of this book lies in its perfect pacing and expertly crafted reveals. Just when you think you have the measure of the characters and their game, the plot twists elegantly, raising the stakes and deepening the emotional resonance. The story seamlessly blends laugh-out-loud humour, genuine tension, and moments of surprising tenderness.

The romantic tensions—both the aching, idealized crush and the more grounded, wary attraction—are woven beautifully into the central plot, driving the characters’ choices without ever overshadowing the thrilling narrative.

The conclusion is both triumphant and deeply satisfying, offering a payoff that is as emotionally resonant as it is clever. It is a testament to the author's skill that she can deliver an ending that feels both inevitable and obvious, but at the same time it also feels like a graceful, unexpected gift.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#bookrecs #bookrecommendations #historicalfiction #historicalromance #romance #humour #con #intrigue #bestbooks #mustread #lesfic #lesbian #lesbianfiction #plottwists #entertaining #readnow #reading #imreading #bookclub #booktok #bokkstagram #readers #bookreaders #amreading

(Split) Soul by Kendall Blair

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is not merely a story; it is a philosophical treatise, a poetic exploration of the most fundamental forces of human existence: connection and fragmentation, love and pain, the individual and the universal.

The genius of the piece lies in its central metaphor: the two pedestals. They are not just objects; they are avatars of a concept. Their physical properties are a perfect mirror for the emotional and spiritual state they represent. They are "unconnected to each other, yet irrefutably a complete only together," embodying the paradox of soulmates—separate beings whose existence only finds its true meaning in relation to the other. Their immovability speaks to the inevitability and permanence of such a bond, while their weightlessness reflects the effortless, ethereal quality of a true connection. The "scratches" and "bite mark" are a masterstroke, acknowledging that true perfection lies not in flawlessness, but in the lived-in, wounded history that makes something authentically alive.

The structure, alternating between "Soul" and "Split," is the engine of the story's philosophy. "Soul" represents synthesis, unity, and radiance. "Split" represents analysis, fragmentation, and the agony of existence. They are the yin and yang of the human experience. The narrative brilliantly shows that you cannot have one without the shadow of the other. The deepest love (Soul) is often forged in or cognizant of the deepest pain (Split). The final scene in the garden resolves this tension, suggesting that by embracing both—the perfect and the marred—the pedestals (and by extension, love itself) become a healing, universal force for all.

The apartment scene between Jeene and Yvng is the human-scale manifestation of the pedestals' magic. Their conversation, a sprawling tapestry of ideas from quantum physics to Sanskrit shlokas, shows a meeting of minds so complete it becomes a single consciousness. The line, "Where did one’s thought end and the other’s begin?" perfectly captures this synthesis. They are living the philosophy of the Poorna shloka—two wholes contained within and containing a greater whole.

This is a challenging, deeply intellectual, and profoundly beautiful work that uses narrative to explore the geometry of the human soul. It demands a reader's full attention and rewards it with stunning insights.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#slipstream #visionaryfiction #metaphysical #metaphysicalfiction #bookrecs #bookreccommendation # surrealfiction #experimentalfiction #literaryspeculative #literaryfiction #speculativefiction #metaphysicalsurrealism #metaphysicalnovel #spiritualnovel #visionarynovel #shortstory #philosophicalfiction #spirituallovestory #lovestory #metaphysicallovestory #magicalrealism #cosmicduality #lesbianfiction #lesbianmetaphysicalfiction #lesbianlovestory

Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power, Narrated by Lauren Ezzo (Audiobook)

⭐⭐⭐⭐★

Review-Lite

because...Speechless!

• Good Lord!
• That whole dysfunctional co-dependence between the mother and daughter! Can’t even begin naming all the emotions that gave rise to.
• Disturbing.
• Intense.
• Intensely disturbing.
• Disturbingly intense.
• Awesome narration by Lauren Ezzo

⭐⭐⭐⭐★

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue, Narrated by Emma Lowe (Audiobook)

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Review-Lite

because...Language is leaving me in silence…

• Brilliant writing
• Eerie similarities between the end-of-war flu of 1918 and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020
• Troubling, touching, enraging and surprisingly tender
• Donoghue has a gift of building such strong environment that you can feel every single thing she describes – from physical, tangible things to every emotion experienced by every person in the cast. You can feel the blood, sweat tears, heat, stifling airless room, frustrations, fears, pain...
• Will women ever get equality?
• Amazing audio performance by Emma Lowe
• Can actually feel the stifling atmosphere outside the room, inside the ward and in the whole culture of female oppression
• Heavy and intense

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Partly sci-fi, partly time-travel, partly hyper-surrealism, mostly fantastical and completely romantic – this book is an indescribable, terrifyingly deeply emotional experience. It is short enough to be called a novella with an emotional impact vast enough to be called an epic.

Two factions, Garden and the Agency (led by the Commandment), are engaged in an endless battle to recreate time to their singularity. With agents from each faction weaving in and out of multiple realities and arranging pasts and futures (downthreads and upthreads) the battle between the factions is a heaving beast.

At a battlefield in the midst of the dead, victorious agent, Red, of Agency is accosted by a missive. A letter. A letter from a rival agent, Blue. A letter that throws down a gauntlet. The correspondence between the two agents thus starts and as it continues, their feeling for each other grows and deepens. They continue the exchange though they both know how dangerous it is. Especially since a mysterious a Seeker is stalking them and imbibing their exchanges. When it all unravels, one has to kill the other.

Each chapter is an episode in the lives of the two protagonists. The episodes are interesting but we felt a hurry for each to conclude so that the real story of emotions could progress.

At the start Blue and Red seem to cross each other's paths to thwart the other one's mission (successfully) but express their admiration for the other's work.

Then there is a change. Tell me something true or nothing at all. With this their relationship forges a more personal path wherein they share themselves with each other. The bare themselves down to their most intimate selves; down to their soul. (It is interesting to observe that Blue not only starts the correspondence but she is also the one who deepens the connection each time.)

As their emotions grow, the competitiveness vanishes. They leave missions incomplete or not as cleanly complete as they could have because of a greed to read a letter from the other. In one achingly beautiful chapter, Blue completely undoes Garden's plan (executed by Blue herself) that took millennia to mature, to save Red in the Past. 

The context of the book is complicated but the emotion is totally honest and expansive. It is not an easy read by any means because the contextual story is written in often abstruse, sometimes  disjointed paragraphs. In fact, it is a complex weaving and overlapping of the Past, Present and Furure towards the end.

But, the letters! The letters that conclude each chapter are absolutely lyrical in content, feelings and expression. 

One of the most beautiful thingz in the book is that Red and Blue have no fixed physical forms. They are amorphous beings of intense feelings for each other. The love and longing between the two is all shapes of gorgeous and all shades of beautiful. Superlatives fail us in trying to describe this book. In trying to express how much it touched us how much it moved us; how it made us cry.

We cannot recommend this book enough. Even if you want to skip the rest of the book, do, do read the letters between Blue and Red. They are truly glorious.  

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Girls Who Pray by Evelyn Dar

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆★

So this is a book you’ll be reading at an even pace, enjoying the writing, the characters, the environment that is built so well – and bam! along comes an unexpected twist that makes the book simply exhilarating…and you almost want to start re-reading the whole thing from start again to see if you’ve missed anything.

Claire Roberts is a bestselling author who writes about mermaids. Till she doesn’t – and writes a non-fiction titled Girls Who Pray instead. She writes about the relationship between two young teenaged girls, Rachel and Sarah, in the strict, almost suffocating confines of an extremely orthodox Amish community. The story is narrated primarily from Rachel’s point of view and ends in a cliff-hanger. Claire is sued by the community she has written about. Well, not so much the community as the Bishop Zimmerman, who contends that the novel slandered a good, wholesome Amish woman’s reputation.

Rampant attraction, simmering sexuality, insane chemistry…we were enjoying the book till Rachel with her feinting to and away from Sarah got way too irritating. Especially since Sarah remained steadfast and unashamed of her vast, open love for Rachel. Our complete absorption with the book lagged with annoyance at Rachel and we started feeling that this is simply a very clever re-version of Disobedience – replace Jewish Orthodox with Amish. However, this one promised a happy ending and we laboured on, because Disobedience with a happy ending is much needed.

And then…the twist. And what a twist! With that one scene, in that instant, the book pole-vaulted into the must-read category.

The writing is so flawless that there isn’t a hint of any twist, or clues dropped about what could be anywhere – till it slams into you.

Definitely, definitely recommended.

One small peeve: A supporting character, Taylor, who’s used as something of a comic relief, is so not given her due. She is a lovely person and deserves much more love and respect than she gets in this book. That bit was so not nice.

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆★

After Mrs Hamilton by Clare Ashton

⭐⭐⭐⭐

We’re kind of bamboozled by this book. It is completely out of any boundaries and expectations set for lesroms. It is twisting, twisted and throbs with secrets clawing to get out. It is intense and entirely immersive.

Mrs. Hamilton, an American, knows her husband is cheating on her with someone across the pond. She meets the woman, Marella, a high class prostitute, to find that the woman in question doesn’t take clients herself any more but makes perfect matches for her clients. Mrs. Hamilton is in a state of existential ennui where the cheating doesn’t matter anymore and to give validity to her meeting arranges for an escort for herself. As she is waiting, taking in the square below the balcony of her hotel room, she changes her mind and cancels the tryst. Clo, Mrs. Hamilton’s assigned escort (“Prostitution. You can call it what it is,” says Clo.), doesn’t receive the cancellation message in time and turns up. The two women connect and spend the night together talking, with a side of a massage thrown in. In spending the night with Mrs. Hamilton, Clo misses her meeting with her friend, Laura, who’s going through a rough patch in her marriage and with Susan, a friend rediscovered after decades who has just come to London from the States. Laura and Susan end up spending the evening together with Susan holding Laura through a meltdown.

The four lives crisscross and tangle with other lives in strange ways. The book fairly vibrates with threat of something racing to derail the new relationships in a way you want to know what’s coming next and each character’s past. You find yourself praying for the lovers to get together. You desperately want them to be together and are as willing to write the rest of the story yourself as you are to read what is already written.

It is a great achievement that by the end of the book, you are actually uncertain about morally ambiguous relationships and are left wondering what relationship you actually want for the complicated characters – especially the unresolved relationship in the end. We have a sneaking suspicion that Ashton actually started off planning a Fran/Isabelle or a Fran/Amelia relationship in the past – but even she couldn’t handle the complications that the latter pairing would cause.

Admittedly the depth of emotions between characters is rather fast, but given the intensity of the book, you don’t realise the insta-emotions aspect much.

This complicated book (with some great sex scenes to boot) is certainly a lesfic must-read.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Fingersmith By Sarah Waters

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Complex and masterful, Fingersmith, should be one everyone’s reading list – not only women who love women, but for anyone who enjoys a well-thought-out and elegantly written tale of deceit and come-uppance with a huge dollop of romance in it.

It is not for nothing that this novel is one of the most celebrated F/F works of all time. It is so good that BBC even made a great series on it. The show sticks sincerely to the book...but (yes, we have a ‘but’)…reading is a different feeling altogether. We can use our imagination to ‘see’ the characters and ‘hear’ them. Anything that is filmed takes that possibility away and then we may or may not like to characters as much. Yes, there is even a movie, The Handmaiden, made on this book. But once again, please read the book before seeing either the series or the movie. And if you’ve already seen one of them; read the book nevertheless.

Fingersmith, an old-fashioned term for thief, is a story of Sue and Maud being played by one, Gentleman. Every character is something of a rascal and the twists of plot keep you hooked and gasping. The twists continue right up to the very last scene, which is quite a feat by the wonderful Sarah Waters.

Writing about the plot without letting slip spoilers is nigh impossible so we shan’t attempt it. But yes, there are a couple of scenes where the girls do have physical intimacy and some exceptionally well written scenes of building attraction and physical longing.

A definite must-read, this one.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐