Truly one of the all-time great modern queer romances. It's true that this book is full of lesbian yearning, but it's also incredibly hopeful in its ending which is rare for a book like this. It's a story of gender envy, the power of owning your own identity and narrative, and embracing the sexual aspects of your sexuality.

It's also incredibly hot, written in a pragmatic and delicate way that only a queer person could have written. It's a beautiful meditation on butch identity and the way that good sex and good queer friends can provide gender euphoria. It's so tactile I could feel the heat steaming off the grass and the satin of Mrs. S's skin. Truly beautiful literary fiction.

There are a lot of reviews talking about 'nothing happens' or its 'slow', but tbh I think that's a true skill issue. There is so much to dissect in this book and so much being said in every sentence. The tension is so rich and thick it's delicious.

you know how they recently created an entirely new genre called cozy fantasy? well i’m gonna start a new one called cozy horror and make this the top of the list—and not because it is cozy in a feel-good sense; quite the opposite, actually—but because i so delicately relate to the pressing anxieties lathered in this book like warm shampoo through untangling hair. i see myself embroidered in the discomfort and the brutal reality of dysfunction, and it’s not to make me feel like a stitch out of place, but as a welcome disturbance. i feel at home in the horror, and that is something not all books set out to achieve—to show you a mirror and tell you it’s okay to look. you are still yourself even in the darkness.

all that to say it was deeply personal for me and i enjoyed it very much. this book is invaluable as a cultural asset, touching upon themes of racism, systemic injustice, loneliness, beliefs, and undiscovered identity, all wrapped tightly in fear and exposed one by one like laying out your meal on a picnic table, waiting to be devoured. except it’s dark and your companions are the forgotten ghosts that the system was built to ignore, ghosts who had a name once. this book is a platform for them.

i gasped, cried, slammed the book and went to sleep angry, laughed silly, stood in the corner of my room and dislodged myself from reality. you name it, i’ve been there 😀👍🏼

kylie lee baker has created a gruesome, yet tantalizing story for me and all the others who have 0-2 friends, the youngest sibling whose decisions are somehow always chosen for us, who kin courage the cowardly dog, who still use masks in 2026. she has become my new fave author (this is my second book of hers!). what she does, she does well, and i’m seated for all of it 😌