subparsunlight

they/them • embodying sufjan stevens’ “futile devices”

1687 points

0% overlap

My Taste

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Elvedon

Edited

Thoughts from 5%

I love how much real talk this novel has about being a trans woman, so specific that it's clear the author is trans herself. It feels natural and multi-layered, unlike some novels I've read by cis writers who include trans characters on purpose, turning the trans experience into a political token instead of a reflection of humanity, flawed and complex.

I read an interview with Dinan that included a question about representing trans characters, touching on this very point:

Some sections of the media have abhorrent views of trans people. With this in mind, how cautious are you about how you present your trans characters?

I want to offer full and complex characterisations of trans people: I’m not in the business of trying to convince anyone that trans people are deserving of basic human rights. I can’t cater my work to people who don’t have a basic level of empathy for trans people. To write with the goal of converting transphobes feels like a fruitless exercise and too much of a burden. My work is not for them.

A couple examples of this complex characterisation I've noticed so far:

"Carla and I are friends, in the sense that we're both trans and therefore vaguely supportive of each other on social media."

"To protect my soul, I refuse to scroll through profiles [on dating apps], waiting for men to like me first so I can wield the ax. The experience is otherwise too degrading. My profile already says that I'm trans."

It's subtle, but after reading a handful of cis-authored stories with trans characters, I can tell Dinan has chosen authentic characterisation over politically-minded representation, and I really appreciate her honest writing!

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subparsunlight

Jun 13, 2026

5.0

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

and the award for “first book to make me cry this year” goes to!!!!

wow, i really didn’t expect to love this book as much as i did! “disappoint me” is such a painfully thoughtful exploration of the complexities of building relationships as a trans woman, and how the weight of our past informs the ways we form connection with others. the depth of the themes she explores were so much more profound than what i was anticipating— i think because of the variety of different voices and perspectives, which feel so raw and real. dinan’s writing is also just so fun!! especially with her alternating chapters between vincent’s past and max’s present. definitely recommend going into this one blind! had my jaw dropping several times.

subparsunlight started reading...

A Lesson in Vengeance

Victoria Lee

Felicity Morrow is back at Dalloway School. Perched in the Catskill mountains, the centuries-old, ivy-covered campus was home until the tragic death of her girlfriend. Now, after a year away, she’s returned to graduate. She even has her old room in Godwin House, the exclusive dormitory rumored to be haunted by the spirits of five Dalloway students—girls some say were witches. The Dalloway Five all died mysteriously, one after another, right on Godwin grounds. Witchcraft is woven into Dalloway’s history. The school doesn’t talk about it, but the students do. In secret rooms and shadowy corners, girls convene. And before her girlfriend died, Felicity was drawn to the dark. She’s determined to leave that behind her now; all Felicity wants is to focus on her senior thesis and graduate. But it’s hard when Dalloway’s occult history is everywhere. And when the new girl won’t let her forget. It’s Ellis Haley’s first year at Dalloway, and she’s already amassed a loyal following. A prodigy novelist at seventeen, Ellis is a so-called “method writer.” She’s eccentric and brilliant, and Felicity can’t shake the pull she feels to her. So when Ellis asks Felicity for help researching the Dalloway Five for her second book, Felicity can’t say no. Given her history with the arcane, Felicity is the perfect resource. And when history begins to repeat itself, Felicity will have to face the darkness in Dalloway–and in herself.

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17h

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

Victoria Schwab

From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger. This is a story about hunger. 1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets. This is a story about love. 1827. London. A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined. This is a story about rage. 2019. Boston. College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge. This is a story about life— how it ends, and how it starts.

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subparsunlight

Jun 13, 2026

5.0

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

and the award for “first book to make me cry this year” goes to!!!!

subparsunlight finished a book

Disappoint Me

Nicola Dinan

After a rough tumble and maybe-serious head injury, a disillusioned trans poet falls for a charming corporate lawyer in a love story that grapples with the explosive ghosts of relationships past, romantic and familial, from the Lambda Award-nominated author of Bellies, Nicola Dinan “Fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife.” Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. With a lifetime of dysphoria and fuccbois rattling around in her head, Max is plagued with a deep dissatisfaction during what should be the best years of her life. After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First things first: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent, a corporate lawyer and hobby baker, whose trad friendship group may as well speak a foreign language, and whose Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman. This uncharted territory may have rough terrain, but Vincent cares for Max in a way she’d long given up on as a foolish fantasy. Yet Vincent is carrying his own baggage from his gap year in Thailand a decade prior: an explosive entanglement with a mysterious, gorgeous traveler. Voice-driven, warm, and poignant, Disappoint Me is an exploration of millennial angst, race, trans panic, and the allure of bourgeois domesticity that asks if we are defined by our worst mistakes.

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14h

Concerning My Daughter

Hye-Jin Kim

When an ageing mother allows her thirty-something daughter to move into her apartment, she wants for her what many mothers might say they want for their child: a steady income, and, even better, a good husband with a good job with whom to start a family. But when Green turns up with her girlfriend, Lane, in tow, her mother is unprepared and unwilling to welcome Lane into her home. In fact, she can barely bring herself to be civil. Having centred her life on her husband and child, her daughter’s definition of family is not one she can accept. Her daughter’s involvement in a case of unfair dismissal involving gay colleagues from the university where she works is similarly strange to her. And yet when the care home where she works insists that she lower her standard of care for an elderly dementia patient who has no family, who travelled the world as a successful diplomat, who chose not to have children, Green’s mother cannot accept it. Why should not having chosen a traditional life mean that your life is worth nothing at all?

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22h

The Lantern of Lost Memories

Sanaka Hiiragi

From acclaimed Japanese author Sanaka Hiigari comes a heartwarming, life-affirming novel about a magical photo studio, where people go after they die to view key moments from their life—and relive one precious memory before they pass into the afterlife. The hands and pendulum of the old wooden clock on the wall were motionless. Hirasaka cocked his head to listen, but the silence inside the photo studio was almost deafening. His leather shoes sank softly into the aging red carpet as he strode over to the arrangement of flowers on the counter and carefully adjusted the angle of the petals... This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaki, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard. Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time—to see their entire life flash before their eyes via Mr. Hirasaki's "spinning lantern of memories." We meet Hatsue, a ninety-two year old woman who worked as a nursery teacher, the rowdy Waniguchi, a yakuza overseer in his life who is also capable of great compassion, and finally Mitsuru, a young girl who has died tragically young at the hands of abusive parents. Sorting through the many photos of their lives, Mr. Hirasaki also offers guests one guests a second a chance to travel back in time to take a photo of one particular moment in their lives that they wish to cherish in a special way. Full of charm and whimsy, The Lantern of Lost Memories will sweep you away to a world of nostalgia, laughter, and love.

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23h

Disappoint Me

Nicola Dinan

50%

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The Brides

Charlotte Cross

Before Dracula, there were The Brides. . . 1903. Sir John Seward, survivor of Count Dracula’s murderous campaign ten years before, takes up a post as a psychiatric doctor at an Oxford public asylum. There, a new patient arrives whose traumatic experiences resurrect horrors John has spent a decade trying to forget. 1884. Mafalda Lowell journeys from London to Budapest to care for her recently widowed aunt Reka. She uncovers the chilling truth about her uncle’s death, and writes to her secret love Lucy North for comfort. Chaperoned by former schoolfriend Eliza and lady’s maid Alice, Lucy travels across the continent to be with her beloved. Only Alice, beset by nightmares and terrifying visions, notices the strange black-clad man who seems to follow them wherever they go. When Eliza is struck down with a mysterious wasting illness, her doctor orders her to take the healing waters of Transylvania, a journey with devastating consequences. There was meant to be four . . . A dual timeline novel, told through letters, diary entries, psychiatric reports, that places women at the centre of literature's most famous vampire story.

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Disappoint Me

Nicola Dinan

40%

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When the Tides Held the Moon

Venessa Vida Kelley

With lush illustrations and buoyant prose, Venessa Vida Kelley blends historical fantasy with epic romance at the turn of the 20th century in this unforgettable New York fairytale of queer identity and found family. Benigno “Benny” Caldera knows an orphaned Boricua blacksmith in 1910s New York City can’t call himself an artist. But the ironwork tank he creates for famed Coney Island playground, Luna Park, astounds everyone, especially the eccentric sideshow proprietor who commissioned it. Benny’s work earns him an invitation to join the show’s eclectic crew of performers—his first welcome in the city—and share in their astonishing secret: the tank Benny built is a cage for their newest exhibit, a living, breathing, in-the-flesh merman stolen from the banks of the East River under a gleaming full moon. The merman is more than a mythic marvel, though. Benny comes to know Río as a clever philosopher, an observant traveler, and a kindred spirit more beautiful and compassionate than any human he’s ever met. Despite their different worlds, what begins as a friendship of necessity deepens to love, leading Benny’s heart into uncharted waters where he can no longer ignore the agonizing truth of Río’s captivity—and his own. A cage is no place for a merman to survive. Though releasing Río means betraying his new family, bankrupting their home, and losing his soulmate forever, Benny must look within for the courage to do what’s right, and find a love strong enough to free them both.

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You X Me

Ayla Vejdani

Love finds a way-through dating apps, shared playlists, inherited recipes, and sweat-soaked dance floors.In this interconnected collection of modern sapphic stories, six singles navigate the beautiful chaos of finding romance across cosmopolitan cities from Los Angeles to Montreal. Noura swipes right on Luna with a little help from her friends. Maryam and Nilou fall hard after a meet-cute in the copyshop. Paz and Ale rediscover each other, and rehash a decades-old heartbreak. Each story stands alone as a perfect escape, but together they weave a gorgeous tapestry of connection. Hot, hopeful, and unapologetically glamorous, You x Me celebrates love between queer women and nonbinary people of color, in all its sparkling, complex, and irresistible forms.

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Disappoint Me

Nicola Dinan

15%

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Little Mushroom: Judgment Day

Shisi Shisi

"Until the day humanity falls." In the year 2020, Earth's magnetic poles disappeared and humankind was nearly wiped out by cosmic radiation. Within the span of a hundred years, living creatures began to mutate and devour each other while the remaining humans, numbering in the tens of thousands, struggled bitterly in their man-made bases. In the Abyss, home to the mutated xenogenics, there lived a sentient little mushroom. Because it had been nourished by the blood and flesh of the deceased human An Ze, not only did it take on a similar-looking human form, but a similar name as well: An Zhe. An Zhe is determined to go to the human base to search for his spore, which had been harvested by humans. Once there, however, he faces the omnipresent risk of discovery and certain death as he tries to keep his non-human nature hidden from the Judges, whose responsibility is to inspect for and eliminate xenogenics like himself. And of all the Judges, Colonel Lu Feng is the most perceptive and merciless--as soon as he determines that someone is a xenogenic, he will execute that person on the spot. But An Zhe's mutation goes undetected by Lu Feng's eyes, and so a tale of humans and xenogenics unfolds...

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The Last Girl Scout

Natalie Ironside

The past lies like a nightmare over the world.Two hundred years after the War when atomic fire rained from the skies and burned the world to cinders, human civilization has had time to rebuild within the burned-out husk of Old America. But the old terrors of the past still persist, and while some work to build a better world, others still dream of reclaiming the glory of the Old World.In southern Appalachia, political commissar Magnolia Blackadder is sent on a mission into the irradiated Exclusion Zone of Old DC, where an evil that humanity thought it had vanquished centuries ago is waking up and rebuilding its strength. Along the way, she meets a strange woman with terrible secrets and an unspeakable past, and as they forge a bond and brave the terrors of the wasteland together, she learns that some demons are not so easily exorcised, and that some stones are better left unturned. In this her debut novel, award-winning author Natalie Ironside delivers a new vision of the post-apocalypse, a tale of adventure, terror, love, and that most basic and most powerful of all human desires: Freedom.

subparsunlight commented on a post from the Founder Announcements forum

jenniferPagebound

Wrapups are live on the app! [06/10/2026]

Very excited to share that Wrapups are live on both iOS and Android apps! Please make sure your app is updated to access this new feature!

Head to the Stats tab on your profile and look for the "Generate Wrapup" button. You'll see we have 7 different wrapup views (2 extra for Royalty members) with customization options. You can also change the color scheme for your wrapup!

We hope you love this new feature and are excited to see you share on socials - tag us @pagebound.co :)

For the next few weeks we'll be working on some Roadmap requests and quality of life updates. You can check the roadmap by clicking the link in the footer on web or on the app, clicking the link in the hamburger menu (the three lines next to the logo in the navbar).

If you're enjoying these new updates, we'd be so grateful if you left us a review on the app store. This helps us reach more readers so we can continue to pump out updates! And a huge thank you to our Royalty members who support our work - the stats features have been a large load on our servers, and we've been able to upgrade them thanks to your contributions!

Happy reading, wrapups, & Pride, Jennifer + Lucy 💙💜

PS: If your wrapup data doesn't look correct, you can edit the format and page/minute totals for a read in the same place you edit read dates. To power the pages/minutes per day chart, make sure you've logged pages/minutes/% for each day you read

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subparsunlight commented on demon's review of My Darling Dreadful Thing

demon

Jun 10, 2026

4.5

Enjoyment: 4.5Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.5Plot: 4.5

🧟‍♀️

🪦

🏳️‍🌈

[experienced via audiobook]

the intermingling of mental health, gothic horror, and undead creatures is not groundbreaking by any means, but i found myself entertained by the book from start to finish. van veen manages to also sprinkle in toxic sapphic romance, doomed yuri, depictions of racial adversity through deep-rooted colonialist mindset, obsessive co-dependency, and of course, childhood trauma.

the atmosphere was deliciously dark, a pale background to an otherwise colorful main character who experiences the world with her darling creature, the one who helps her in enduring the worst parts of the life she was forced to live. i loved that the creature used to scare her before she figured out how to love her and that they became inseparable to a fault.

the relationships in this story were magnetizing. overall, this book was full of desire—desire for love, for family, for security, for safety and well-being. one mission in this life is to find someone who can understand all that you are and all that you can be, despite who you were, and van veen shows how it is worth it to find someone you can bare yourself to, be naked in truth and sincerity.

i also enoyed the delicate way they presented one of the characters, a southeast asian living in a european country and navigating life through this lens while her race is not even the only thing that differentiates her from the people around her. i would argue she was the more interesting character in the book.

i found myself at the edge of my seat after the midway point. i thought it was genius how the story was told in different parts and we get the narrator's POV as well as an outsider perspective so we as readers can question whether we trust the narrator/MC, having a different angle to view the story as it's being told. i especially loved the narrator's creepy, high-pitched and scraggly voice for ruth. would love to read another one of van veen's works.

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