Sarah Sawyers-Lovett

Tender, by Belinda McKeon, begins with our heroine sunbathing at her friend James’s house, overhearing the pattern of their familial banter. She is a writing and art history major, and James is beginning a career in photography. They become fast friends, bound seemingly by their otherness – Jame is gay and Catherine is from a conservative farming family. Some sort of hunger for new experiences seems to attract them to one another and they quickly become close.When James comes out to Catherine, after she wondered why he hasn’t made a pass at her, her fascination with him grows. He isn’t just […]

Do you remember the first book that changed the way you looked at the world? The one that made you question the status quo and your place in it? For Juliet, a chubby 19-year-old Puerto Rican queer girl from the Bronx, it’s Raging Flower: Empowering your Pussy by Empowering your Mind by Harlowe Brisbane. Juliet comes out to her family just before leaving to intern with Harlowe in Portland. She’s excited to learn more about radical feminism, women’s bodies, and the actual practice of being a badass queer lady, even if it means spending the summer all the way across the country […]

On the surface, Signs Point to Yes (Swoon Reads) is seemingly a fluffy, feel-good romance. The book shifts third person perspectives between that of Jane, her sister Margo, and Jane’s crush Teo. You might never know it from the flowery genre-typical cover, but inside this book is more diversity than you’re likely to find in your average young adult romance novel. Jane blows off an unpaid internship secured by her mom to nanny three girls who coincidentally are the sisters of her long-time crush, Teo. Jane is floundering the year after her high school graduation. Unsure of a college or major, […]