Here at Page Turner Magazine we love books. With every turn of the season, there’s a book sure to keep us turning the pages. While school is out for most of us, we have a little more time to catch up on our to-be-read (TBR) lists. Here’s a list of summer themed reads collected by Page Turner Magazine’s staff that you may want to add to your own TBR pile, if you haven’t already.
Sonora Reyes delivers a clear, compelling, and hilarious narrative of protagonist Yamilet’s (Yami) high school experience as a mostly-closeted queer brown outsider in their debut novel, The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School. During an interview with the National Catholic Reporter, Reyes says, “In writing [my book], I wanted to explore what a happy ending could look like in Catholic school.”
Be prepared to get sucked into Yami’s perspective. With an opening line of “Seven years of bad luck can slurp my ass,” how could you not? Yami’s voice feels wry and charming, and with chapter titles like “Thou Shalt Not Trust a Two-Faced Bitch,” and “Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Capitalism,” I found myself smiling and laughing often.
Reading is a healthy and entertaining activity to do. It trains your brain and immerses you into an entirely new world. But every now and then, something small and bothersome grabs your attention over the story itself, like a pet peeve. —Patrick Edinger
Reading Pet Peeves. The relentless discomforting itch that prods in the back of a reader’s brain and won’t relent. These could occur for any specific reason; it depends on the reader. Below is a list of my personal pet peeves when reading.
From the title, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, we already know this isn’t going to end well. However, the cover is misleading. We’re met with bright, springy pastels and Laura Dean and Freddy embracing each other. We are made to believe that Laura Dean and Freddy could possibly work it out, so why does Laura Dean keep dumping Freddy? According to author Mariko Tamaki, she “always liked the idea of an ex-ex-girlfriend story, about the girl that got away and then shows up a week later with a smile like nothing happened,” and her relationships when she was younger “weren’t fairy-tale girl-meets-girl, girl-finds-true-love-type things. They were a mess.” (https://www.latimes.com)
And we all know how messy teenage love can be—especially the break ups. Even if you haven’t been broken up with repeatedly by the same person, a breakup is a breakup, and you can’t help but obsess over that person you still love who doesn’t seem to love you anymore. And no one understands this better than Freddy, Laura Dean’s now ex-girlfriend.
Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) board president Jeffe Kennedy is a hybrid author of Fantasy and Romance novels, who has won the prestigious RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America (RWA) and was finaled twice. She has received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award.
Fantasy and Romance author Jeffe Kennedy graciously shared her advice for aspiring novelists in Part 1 of our Q&A. Now, in Part 2, we asked the prolific author’s perspective on self-publishing, the growing—and potentially extremely lucrative—market for writers, particularly in the genre or popular fiction space.