sweetie
emily // 28, USA, big fan of the queer and the strange š«¶
533 points
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My Taste
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sweetie commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
1d
Looking for book recs
I'm looking for some fantasy/ sci-fi leaning books that talk about complicated relationships with your mother. For some reason I feel like I need some sort of pain ! Thanks
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sweetie commented on sweetie's review of Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined
1d
spoilers
sweetie
Jan 12, 2026
Jan 12, 2026
2.0
Enjoyment: 2.0Quality: 0.5Characters: 2.5Plot: 0.5
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View spoiler
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sweetie commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
1d
How many books on your physical TBR?
I got bored and decided to add a "bookshelf" tab to my reading spreadsheet, catalogue every book I own & mark if I've read them or not.
I was absolutely not expecting the number to be so high!! I always thought I was good at reading the books I buy, but my TBR books are higher than my finished books.
I have 117 unread books š¬ It's definitely given me a kick to start focussing on reading those. But I'm curious, does anyone have more than that? Or do you stay on top of it & keep your numbers down?
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sweetie commented on a post
3d
Post from the Flashlight forum
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sweetie started reading...
3d
The Hexologists (The Hexologists, #1)
Josiah Bancroft
The first book in a wildly inventive and mesmerizing new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where magical mysteries abound and only one team can solve The Hexologists.
The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.
Ā
But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cakeāgoing so far as to wedge himself inside a lit ovenāthe Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent anti-royalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people.
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Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darkness, hope from the hopeless, Iz and Warren Wilby are ready for a case that will test every spell, skill, and odd magical artifact in their considerable bag of tricks.
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sweetie wrote a review...
5d
I LOVE when a debut novel from a brand new author is able to totally sweep me off my feet like this!! Right away I was invested in the story, the main character was easy to root for (maybe a little too easy) and the pacing was fast and exciting. This is one of those books that was just insanely entertaining, made it easy to visualize the scenes and kept me guessing about what would happen next. Were there issues with the worldbuilding being a little too open-ended? Sure. Do I wish we'd learned more about literomancy and actually seen these magic poems on the page? DEFINITELY. There were some clear shortcuts taken in the execution here, but I was honestly so wrapped up in the story that I didn't mind.
The writing was perfect for this book: simple enough to eat up quickly, but still providing enough description to make the scenes vivid and with enough poetic lines here and there to satisfy the part of my brain that thought this was going to be more lyrical than it was. I can definitely see why this is a crowd-pleaser, it's not going to be a favorite book of all time but it's one I feel comfortable recommending pretty broadly. Overall, really strong for a debut and makes me excited to see what the author does next!!
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sweetie TBR'd a book
5d
Hemlock
Melissa Faliveno
A woman haunted by a dark inheritance returns to the woods where her mother vanished, in this queer Gothic novelāa butchĀ Black Swan. Sam, finally sober and stable with a cat and a long-term boyfriend in Brooklyn, returns alone to Hemlock, her familyās deteriorating cabin deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods, where her mother disappeared years before and never returned. But a quick, practical trip takes a turn for the worse when the rot and creak of the forest starts to creep in around the edges of Samās mind. It starts, as it always does, with a beer. As Sam dips back into the murky waters of dependency, the inexplicable begins to arrive at her door in the forms of a neighbor who leaves no trace, a talking doe who sounds just like Samās missing mother, and a series of mysterious gifts that might be a welcome or a warning. And as Samās stay extendsāas the townās grip on her tightens and her body takes on a strange new shapeāthe borders of reality begin to blur, and she senses she is battling something sinisterāwhether nested in the woods or within herself.Ā Hemlock is a carnal coming-of-addiction, a dark sparkler about rapture, desire, transformation, and transcendence in many forms. What lives at the heart of fearāanimal, monster, or man? How do we contain a threat that may come from within? And how can we reject our own inheritance, the psychic storm thatās been coming for generations, and rebuild a new home for ourselves? In the tradition of Han KangāsĀ The Vegetarian, Hemlock is a novel of singular style, with all the edginess of a survival story and a simmering menace that glints from the very periphery of the page.
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sweetie TBR'd a book
5d
Japanese Gothic
Kylie Lee Baker
In this lyrical, wildly inventive horror novel interwoven with Japanese mythology, two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds.October, 2026: Lee Turner doesnāt remember how or why he killed his college roommate. The details are blurred and bloody. All he knows is he has to flee New York and go to the one place that might offer refugeāhis fatherās new home in Japan, a house hidden by sword ferns and wild ginger. But something is terribly wrong with the no animals will come near it, the bedroom window isn't always a window, and a woman with a sword appears in the yard when night falls.October, 1877: Sen is a young samurai in exile, hiding from the imperial soldiers in a house behind the sword ferns. A monster came home from war wearing her fatherās face, but Sen would do anything to please him, even turn her sword on her own mother. She knows the soldiers will soon slaughter her whole family when she sees a terrible a young foreign man who appears outside her window.One of these people is a ghost, and one of these stories is a lie.Something is hiding beneath the house of sword ferns, and Lee and Sen will soon wish they never unburied it.
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sweetie TBR'd a book
5d
Green and Deadly Things
Jenn Lyons
For fans of S.A. Chakraborty, Robin Hobb, and Martha Wells's Witch King, a page-turning standalone fantasy of necromancy and magical mayhem from Jenn Lyons, the acclaimed author of The Ruin of Kings. Centuries ago, necromancy almost destroyed the world. Thatās how history remembers it. History remembers it wrong. Mathaiik has studied all his life to join the sacred order of the Idallik Knights, charged with defending their world from the forces of necromancy and the grim witches who practice it. Only vestiges of that cursed magic remainānothing like the fabled days of the Grim Lords, the undead wizards who once nearly destroyed the entire world. Until monsters once more begin to wake. But something about them is even whole forests coming alive and devouring anyone so foolish as to trespass, formerly peaceful animals mutating into savage carnivores... as if the land itself has turned upon humanity, in a riot of chaotic magic the Knights quickly prove powerless to stop. Itās a good thing, then, that the Grim Lords were never truly destroyed. One of their number sleeps below the Knights' very fortress. And when an army of twisted tree monsters attacks the young initiates in his charge, Math decides to do the he wakes her up. This is only the beginning of his problems. Because said necromancer, Kaiataris, knows something history has forgotten. The threat of this wild magic is part of a cycle that has repeated countless life after death, chaos after order. And if she and Math canāt find a new way to balance the scales, this won't just be the end of the world as they know it, but the end of all life, everywhere.
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sweetie TBR'd a book
5d
Almost Life
Kiran Millwood Hargrave
'Hot, smart and completely captivating - this is a truly luscious love story' - Daisy Buchanan, author of InsatiableA love story that will last a lifetimeErica and Laure meet on the steps of the SacrĆ©-CÅur in Paris, 1978. Erica is a student, relishing her first summer abroad before beginning university at home in England. Laure is studying for her Ph.D. at the Sorbonne, drinking and smoking far too much, and sleeping with a married woman. The moment the two women meet the spark is but their encounter turns into far more than a summer of love. It is the beginning of a relationship that will define their lives and every decision they have yet to make . . .Erica and Laureās love story spans decades, marriage, children, secret trysts, and the agonizing changes ā both personal and political ā that might mean they can be together, after all. But when life brings them within touching distance again, will they be brave enough to seize a future together?Almost Life is a story of longing for the paths not taken, and the almost lives we live.
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sweetie TBR'd a book
5d
The Red Winter
Cameron Sullivan
A devastating love story. A bewitching twist on history. A blood-drenched hunt for purpose, power, and redemption.In 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears the terrible Beast of Gevaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake.Sebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel ā who takes payment in living hearts ā it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.Now, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel dāOcerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse.But Gevaudan is not as he remembers it, and Sebastianās unfinished business is everywhere he looks. Years of misery have driven the people to desperation, and France teeters on the edge of revolution. Sebastianās arcane activities ā not to mention his demonic counterpart ā have also attracted the inquisitorial eye of the French clergy. And the Beast is poised to close his jaws around them all and plunge the continent into war.Debut author Cameron Sullivan tears the heart out of history with this darkly entertaining retelling of the hunt for the Beast of Gevaudan. Lifting the veil on the hidden world behind our own, it reimagines the story of Europe, from Imperial Rome to Saint Jehanne dāArc, the madness of Gilles de Rais and the first flickers of the French Revolution.āCharming, haunting, ambitious, and a great deal of fun.ā āT. Kingfisher, New York Times bestselling author of A Sorceress Comes to CallāA gorgeous tangle of history and fresh-made myth, The Red Winter is my platonic ideal of a the moment I was done, I went looking for Sullivan's backlog and let out an actual howl of despair upon realizing there was nothing yet. You'll eat this one up.ā āCassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened TeethAt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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sweetie is interested in reading...
6d
The Red Winter
Cameron Sullivan
A devastating love story. A bewitching twist on history. A blood-drenched hunt for purpose, power, and redemption.In 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears the terrible Beast of Gevaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake.Sebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel ā who takes payment in living hearts ā it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.Now, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel dāOcerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse.But Gevaudan is not as he remembers it, and Sebastianās unfinished business is everywhere he looks. Years of misery have driven the people to desperation, and France teeters on the edge of revolution. Sebastianās arcane activities ā not to mention his demonic counterpart ā have also attracted the inquisitorial eye of the French clergy. And the Beast is poised to close his jaws around them all and plunge the continent into war.Debut author Cameron Sullivan tears the heart out of history with this darkly entertaining retelling of the hunt for the Beast of Gevaudan. Lifting the veil on the hidden world behind our own, it reimagines the story of Europe, from Imperial Rome to Saint Jehanne dāArc, the madness of Gilles de Rais and the first flickers of the French Revolution.āCharming, haunting, ambitious, and a great deal of fun.ā āT. Kingfisher, New York Times bestselling author of A Sorceress Comes to CallāA gorgeous tangle of history and fresh-made myth, The Red Winter is my platonic ideal of a the moment I was done, I went looking for Sullivan's backlog and let out an actual howl of despair upon realizing there was nothing yet. You'll eat this one up.ā āCassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened TeethAt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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sweetie TBR'd a book
6d
One Bad Night & Other Stories
Isabel Armiento
Horror lovers everywhere, get ready for... ONE BAD NIGHT.
In āTwo Observers of the Slaughter Rites on Gannet Island," an anthropologist and his wife travel to the remote Gannet Island to observe a mysterious yearly ritual.
In āMy Lithopedia," a woman learns that she had an unborn twin sister, extracted as a stone baby during her late motherās autopsy and decides to keep it.
In āLady Jawbone," Lilou is trapped inside a nightmarish phosphorous match factory, when a strange new arrival offers her a way out.
In āA Necromancerās Guide to Reconnecting with Your Ex," the ghost of Roxanne's rock-and-roll ex asks her to resurrect him, forcing her to confront what it means to truly let go.
In āRed Tide," a woman running from her past finds work at a small-town aquarium, where she encounters the "spectre fish," a carnivorous mer-creature of local lore.
In ā47 Pineview Way," an anxious mother drops off her son at his first sleepoverābut the next morning, the house where she left him has disappeared.
In āA Meditation on the Existence of Certain Cutlery (There is No Spoon)," Commander Janna Field is on a covert mission to the lunar south poleāor is she?
In āOne Bad Night," Steck, an aging, lonely man becomes fixated on a sinister green parrot after it seems to predicts the death of his beloved dog.
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sweetie TBR'd a book
2w
The Great Work
Sheldon Costa
An alchemist and his young nephew hunt down a legend in this profound and unsettling speculative Western, for fans of Karen Russell and Victor LaValle.Alone in a frontier town in the nineteenth-century Northwest, Gentle Montgomery is grieving his best friend. Liam was an alchemist, killed when he tried to capture a creature that shouldnāt a giant salamander that drives men mad. When Gentleās teenage nephew Kitt arrives at his doorstep, the two set out together to track the monster down, so they can use its blood in an alchemical formula that will bring Liam back to life.It's a hard and haunted journey. The salamander produces surreal nightmares and waking dreams of a blighted, burning future. And Gentle and Kitt soon find themselves pursued by a bloodthirsty hunter, a sadistic judge, and a doomsday cult, all of whom have their own plans for the river monster. Armed with nothing but Liamās alchemical notebooks, they must not only find the salamander but learn to understand itāand the terrifying visions it causesābefore itās too late. And as Gentle struggles to comprehend the creature, his lost friend, his nephew, and his fellow seekers, it becomes clear that the Great Work of the alchemists may pale in comparison to the small work of human connection.Sheldon Costaās dark, vivid, and strangely hopeful debut novel is a supernatural adventure through the wilderness of friendship and the rotten heart of the early American empire.
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sweetie commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
2w
What is the last book you read that really scared you?
I've been craving a good scary read but I'm way too indecisive. Give me your worst!
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sweetie wrote a review...
2w
This is a hard one to wrap my head around: sometimes engrossing, sometimes confusing, always gorgeously written. I didn't know anything about the Pinochet dictatorship before picking this up (the U.S. education system loves to gloss over the awful governments we've backed throughout history), and the book does a great job of immersing you in its time and place even with no prior knowledge. The Queen of the Corner was also an interesting main character to follow, lonely and sad but also deeply romantic to the point of delusion (I was definitely wondering whether some scenes were even happening, or if they were just her fantasy). I did find the POV switches and the dialogue hard to follow at times, but I think that's partly because I read parts of this in much tinier chunks than I would've liked and was constantly having to lock in and then check back out. The writing overall was insane though, the prose was stunning and I almost never felt any awkwardness in the translation. I can see why this is considered a modern queer classic and I can definitely see myself returning to it and getting even more out of a reread.
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sweetie finished a book
2w
My Tender Matador
Pedro Lemebel
Centered around the 1986 attempt on the life of Augusto Pinochet, an event that changed Chile forever, My Tender Matador is one of the most explosive, controversial, and popular novels to have been published in that country in decades. It is spring 1986 in the city of Santiago, and Augusto Pinochet is losing his grip on power. In one of the city's many poor neighborhoods works the Queen of the Corner, a hopeless and lonely romantic who embroiders linens for the wealthy and listens to boleros to drown out the gunshots and rioting in the streets. Along comes Carlos, a young, handsome man who befriends the aging homosexual and uses his house to store mysterious boxes and hold clandestine meetings. My Tender Matador is an extraordinary novel of revolution and forbidden love, and a stirring portrait of Chile at an historical crossroads. By turns funny and profoundly moving, Pedro Lemebel's lyrical prose offers an intimate window into the mind of Pinochet himself as the world of Carlos and the Queen prepares to collide with the dictator's own in a fantastic and unexpected way.
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sweetie is interested in reading...
2w
The Last Contract of Isako
Fonda Lee
Get ready to be blown away by this searing standalone space opera where corporate samurai fight beneath merciless stars, and death is always a mere breath away.
Isako is a legendary swordswoman, but every legend has to come to an end. When her long-time client unexpectedly retires, she plans to follow--to walk out into the frozen wasteland of their planet with her head held high and her family enriched by her legacy. But when a competitor offers her a final mission, it's one she can't refuse. Soon, she's thrust deep into a world of corporate espionage, duty-bound duels, and shadowy secrets. What she uncovers will change humanity's existence in the stars forever.
The Last Contract of Isako is the space opera you didn't know you needed: corporate samurai... in space. This is the first adult science fiction novel from the award-winning author of Jade City.
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