Why does it happen with sapphic love stories that I feel like you could swap one girl with a guy and nothing would change. Expect maybe the typical conversation about their coming-out.

It is also really hard to describe this feeling in a more tangible way. Because sure, there was no sex scene, then it would be harder to replace the character, but also there is more heteronormativity and less female gaze in a way that is just vibes. And yes, that can be deeply internalised, but then it would also be a very specific experience to fall in love with a woman.

Here, the family part of this book, with the rivalry and competition, was really fun and sweet, but I was a little disappointed that the romance felt more like an afterthought. It was more of a family comedy than a romantic comedy. And then the few romantic parts were just not convincing, maybe? Was there just not enough descriptions of their attraction to a woman or is it a bigger problem?

Is it a thing with bigger publishing houses, like I had the same problem with That Summer Feeling by Bridget Morrissey, that they are supposed to be marketable for a wider group of people? Is it because the author is afraid of getting too much hate if the book is too far off from the patriarchal beliefs? And why do these books feel more juvenile even when the characters are supposed to be adults.

So are these books just not as good (the writing usually is very good) or are they intentionally marketed more towards straight people? What are we thinking?

We have a new app release available on iOS and Android as of this afternoon! Please update your apps to see the following updates (also available on web):

Public Roadmap We get a huge amount of feedback every day, and see all of your chatter in the Pagebound Club about requests and enhancements. One of our core values is transparency, and in that spirit we have released a public Roadmap to show everyone what we’re working on, what we have planned, and what has been released. Everyone can view this roadmap in the footer on web, or in the “more” menu on the app.

Official Feature Requests On the Roadmap, you’ll see a link to Feature Requests. One benefit of joining Pagebound Royalty is that you can submit official feature requests, which we will mark as “approved” or “won't do,” each with an explanation. Once work has started on a request, it will move to the roadmap. Pagebound Royalty members also have the ability to comment and like both roadmap items and feature requests. We have pre-populated the roadmap with things we’re working on through the end of the year, and added our most popular requests to the Feature Request section. While we accept and read feedback from anyone, we do not have the bandwidth as a 2-person team to respond individually; the Roadmap will give everyone the ability to see what’s coming soon on Pagebound, give us a streamlined and efficient way to respond to requests, and the feedback form is still available at support.pagebound.co to anyone.

Giveaways We've been working behind the scenes to put together a Giveaway offering which will go live early 2026. This means anyone on Pagebound will be able to enter Giveaways for physical, audio, and ebooks :) Authors of Pagebound: If you or anyone you know is looking for marketing opportunities, we'd love work with you! Check out https://support.pagebound.co/giveaways to learn more; we'd love if you shared this with your author communities as well!

Other Improvements In addition to various bug fixes, we also added a quick-link when you create a Progress Update (% bar on your home page) to add a comment to update your followers! This is a great place to share personal updates, what you think of the book so far, and quick thoughts (ex. "loving this so far"). The book forums are still the place to start more in-depth discussions relevant to the broader community.

Thanks everyone and happy reading, Jennifer & Lucy 💜💙

any other beautiful people on this beautiful site get semi-debilitating visual snow, particularly when slightly tired and/or stressed? I seemed to have developed it in the past year and it has seriously nerfed my ability to read half the time. Like I’ll open up a book and every single word is vibrating in my vision it is NOT TENABLE OR VIABLE. Anyone got any tips or tricks or are we just switching to audiobooks atp 😭😭😭

UPDATE*** definitely going to a doctor/optometrist at some point soon, but in the interim I am borrowing a coloured overlay from my sister and seeing if that makes any difference. THANK YOU FOR EVERYONES ADVICE I WILL BE DRAWING FROM THIS POOL FOR LONG TERM SOLUTIONS

Does anyone here use StoryGraph and enter their book giveaways? This morning I won seven giveaways in a row, and it just seems too good to be true. I'm wondering if there is some kind of glitch, or if I should go out and buy a lottery ticket today...