Taking Up More Than An Inch
Within this inch I am free.
It's a line from V for Vendetta. But it's also a tattoo on the female protagonist Clay Collins’s finger in the Book Tryst Six Venom. The line is referring to a person's integrity. That tiny part of yourself that you hold on to and protect. But for Clay it is so much more than just integrity. As she says, “[It's] to remind me that there’s a piece of myself I hate and love and it drives me nuts, but I need it, because it’s the only thing I look forward to. That place I can escape to in my head where I can have the only thing I want anymore.” For Clay this is where her true self lives. This is where she doesn't change herself for her family, her school or her town. In this “inch” she is not Clay Collins, athlete, student, debutante, perfect, beautiful, amenable member of society. She is Clay Collins, hurt, angry, trying, and desperately in love with a girl.
It’s Pride Month and so naturally I only read stories that centered around LGBTQ+ love stories. Tryst was my first read of the month and I noticed that this theme of freedom was a constant refrain in the books this month.
The books I read were: Tryst Six Venom, a sapphic romance about two girls from different sides of the track. For the Fan’s, a forbidden romance between two step-brothers who make pornographic content together for OnlyFans. In The Long Game, the sequel to Heated Rivalry, two hockey players who have been in love with each other for over a decade, need to decide if they want to come out and have a public relationship. The Pairing, is a food and wine tour through Europe where childhood best friends turned exes rekindle their love. And in Pole Position, two F1 teammates fall in love despite their differences.
From Girl-on-Girl to Boy-on-Boy to Person-on-Person the stories I read all had to do with each character choosing freedom for themselves. For some that was a messy and loud “coming out” process and for others it was simply stepping into themselves and letting all the other noise around them fall away.
In Tryst Six Venom, For the Fan’s, and The Long Game we are dealing with characters who are really struggling with their sexuality. Clay is actively living in the war zone of her own mind, fighting her feelings that keep bubbling to the surface. She even goes so far as to hate Olivia so she can be allowed to feel something for this girl. “I’d happily never love anything if I could hate her my whole life.” Kyran from For the Fan’s, has repressed his sexuality due to a truly horrific sexual assault he experienced as a child and he turns anger and hatred against the person he desires. Shane, in The Long Game, has gotten past the hatred phase in book 1 and now is suffocating in the crippling fear of what others will think about his relationship. For all three of these characters they go through their love stories and realize that their peace will only come with self acceptance and living their lives authentically.
However, for many of the other characters this month their stories were not about “Coming out” or coming to terms with who they are. Instead, they revolved around taking their joy and running with it. The Pairing, by Casey McQuisten, is a story about two characters who are not struggling with their queerness. The book is actually a constant celebration of queer love and sex. These characters are struggling with society’s expectation of success. They are both in lives that are not fulfilling them and are desperately in love with their exes. But verbalizing this truth seems to be next to impossible at first. Their story comes together when they finally take the step and ask for what they want - a life that makes sense for them.
The books I read this month are stories that illustrate how much harder it is to be your authentic self with the added hurdle of loving someone outside society’s expectations. For many queer people the struggle to acknowledge who they love and coming into alignment with who they are can feel like a Herculean task. It takes so much guts to stare down the dragons of heteronormative society. Once you do, there is tremendous freedom that comes with it. I believe that these books are incredibly necessary, because they help those within the community feel seen and those in the binary world to feel a deeper empathy and understanding. Queer stories inspire people to live within more than an inch of themselves.
Book Reviews
Rating system: (this is based on price, just try and come between me and my kindle)
⭐️Library, ⭐️⭐️kindle, ⭐️⭐️⭐️paperback, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️hard cover,
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ special edition
Spice level:
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Oh my God, I didn’t know you could do that!
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Not suitable to read at work
🌶️🌶️🌶️Good Lord!
🌶️🌶️HOT
🌶️ hot
FMC= Female main Character and MMC= Male Main Character
M/M = Two Men
F/F= Two Women
MFM = Two Men One Woman, the men are Not with each Other, the woman is with both.
MMF = Two Men One Women, The Men Are with each Other, the woman is with both.
MMFM = Three Men One Women, two of the men are together, One man is not, the woman is with all three
MMMF = Three Men One women, every one is with everyone
(the same rules apply for FMF, FFM, FFMF, FFFM. And so on and so forth.)
T = Trans or They/Tem Non-Binary)
For The Fans by Nyla K.
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ (M/M)
Avi and Kyran's love story is definitely a unique kind of joy. For The Fans is the story of two young men who become stepbrothers at 16 and who hate each other. They end up going to the same college. They avoid each other like the plague and fight like dogs as soon as they are near each other. But when Kyran's dad’s business goes under and the step-brothers need to find fast cash in order to stay at school they become the most unlikely of business partners. And what better way to make money than creating an OnlyFans account together (An app where people pay for sexual video content). Yes, fucking your step-brother to pay for school is an absolutely wild plot for a story, but my God, was it entertaining! Avi and Ky’s story is an ode to sexual exploration and what can happen when people trust each other and can't fight their hunger for one another. But not only is it a story of sexual liberation, it is also a story that grapples with the emotional turmoil that comes with emotional intimacy. This story is all slutty and fun until real life and real trauma can no longer be avoided. These two characters challenge each other for the entirety of this emotional book. At the same time it had me laughing my ass off.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ (F/F)
I knew that Penelope Douglas's work was wild… I knew it would be shocking, salacious and gripping. But no matter how much you think you know about a book or an author, when you actually get to read the work it’s always SO MUCH BETTER. See, from page one I was blushing. The tension between Clay and Olivia is so thick you feel it coming off the page. It has every stereotype you can think of to make a sexy sapphic story: chaotic southern school girls, rich “good” girl and poor “bad” girl from the wrong side of the tracks, team mates, and a whole lot of unchecked anger and lust. Yeah, it has “captivating” written all over it. This romance was all-consuming, between their love story and the drama that surrounded them, their family and their friends, I simply could not put this book down! And at the end of all the drama and the sex, the story really was about choosing the freedom to break outside the box you are living in.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Long Game by Rachel Reid
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ (M/M)
There are two things to know about me: Ilya Rozanov is one of my favorite characters and book boyfriends of all time, and Heated Rivalry is in my top 5 books of all time regardless of genre. Shane and Ilya’s love story will live etched into my heart for the rest of my life. That is just my truth. I needed them to get that true happily ever after. I needed them to find their peace and Heated Rivalry wasn't enough. The Long Game is the continuation of their story and their true Happily Ever After. This book gets flack sometimes for not being as good as Heated Rivalry or better. But I was not disappointed. Maybe it was the time that I spent between the two books. I don't know. But I can honestly say I am happy with the ending. They are together. I liked that the book circled back and dove deeper in the Rozanov depression. I like that Shane was forced to take a look at the things around him that aren't working and stand up for himself. Heated Rivalry is the better book but that's because what comes after the happily ever after is the real relationship. The in’s and out’s of it. The struggles. The Long Game was a romance book that felt real.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ (M/T)
This book is a love letter to the things that make life worth living. Food, a good view, friendship, travel, and love. This is a book that paints the most sumptuous picture of a food and wine tour through France, Spain, and Italy. Every page of the book was an experience that I would die to have. But this book was obviously more than just a love letter to Europe. It was also a second chance romance. I like a second chance romance fine enough but they are magical when it's a friends-to-lovers-to-exs-to-lover story. My favorite part about KIt and Theo was their childhood together. How their story was rooted in the love that they showed each other as kids before their relationship was about sex. And speaking of sex, this was such a horny book in the BEST way possible. Both characters identify as bisexuals and have a little game they play along the way. So needless to say this book was about flirting, kissing, and making sweet, sweet love all night long. This is the perfect summer book!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Pole Position by Rebecca J. Caffery
🌶️🌶️🌶️ (M/M)
It's been a while since I read an F1 book and it was super refreshing and exciting to be back in the world of motorsports. This story describes the relationship between an older driver and a rookie. It’s a wild child vs. the responsible one trope. Fast cars, sex, and strong feelings is a sure-fire way to a good time. It took me a while to figure out what was different about the story. And then it dawned on me: it felt like it was written by a man rather than a woman (despite the author being a woman). I think it was the way these men talked about their feelings. It was less descriptive and more to the point than the other stories on this month’s list. Using language in this way was probably Rebecca's intention because it helps to define these two characters and the world of racing in a more realistic way. The story was spicy but not overly so. I would say this was actually a good intro book into M/M smut.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
