Hello and welcome to the October 2024 edition of the QLR! This month we have a Jewish angel and demon searching for a missing girl, lesbians falling in love over homecooked meals, and a writer falling for her fake girlfriend.
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Happy Reading!
Title/Author: When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb (read by Donald Corren)
Reviewer: Puck M.
Summary: An angel whose name changes depending on its occupation and the demon Little Ash are chavrusas (Torah study partners) and the only two supernatural creatures in a shtetl so small it doesn’t even warrant a name. When the daughter of one of the shtetlers goes missing after emigrating to America, Little Ash and the angel set off to find her. Along the way, they encounter fellow Jewish emigrants, a ghost in danger of becoming a dybbuk, Christian demons, and, once they finally reach New York City, a brewing garment workers’ labor movement.
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre/Sub-Genre: YA Historical Fantasy
Book Format: Audiobook
Length: 9 hours, 3 minutes, 11 seconds (physical hardcover book 400 pages)
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Main characters exude a general undefinable queerness; two wlw secondary characters
Content Warnings: Period-typical antisemitism, period-typical queer-antagonism, murder, violence, unfair labor practices
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend?: YES!!
Personal thoughts: This is the best book of the past couple years for me. I first listened to it on audiobook and Donald Corren’s narration practically oozes Yiddishkeit. I reread it in physical form in order to write this review and it only gets better in the rereading. I’m delighted to write about it here as Elul draws to a close and we approach the High Holy Days.
Sacha Lamb weaves together different POVs into a beautifully cohesive story. You get to occupy not only the heads of the three main characters — Little Ash, the angel, and Rose Cohen — but also their assorted friends, foes, and a few relevant bystanders as well. Each character’s narrative voice is distinct and rich with history, even when it only occupies a portion of a chapter.
The worldbuilding in the book is also top-notch — from the details about angelic and demonic anatomy and magic to the tantalizing hints about the existence of demons from cultures that are not Jewish or Christian. Finally, the ghosts and dybbuks, the Holy Names and creeping sins all serve to enrich the magic in the world while firmly grounding it in Jewish tradition.
And now we come to the true heart of the story: the character relationships. Little Ash and the angel have been studying together for hundreds of years, but it is only on this journey that they come to affirm their importance to each other. And, as a person with several queerplatonic relationships, it is so, so, so important to me that they do this without kissing on the mouth (as the human girls do, eventually). “If you’re wanting to make trouble with me, then certainly I want to make trouble with you” and “If you are going to get yourself in trouble, you have to bring me with you. It feels right, like a mitzvah” are, as far as I’m concerned, the most romantic things any two creatures have ever said to each other.
Rose, also, is a wonderful character— stubborn and selfish and clever and brave. She doesn’t, at first, know why her best friend Dinah’s marriage to a young man feels like such a betrayal, but over the course of the journey she learns not only about the world but also about herself, so that by the time the opportunity for a new relationship, with a young woman in America, comes along, she is ready to welcome it.
And, of course, no Jewish story is complete without a community, a kehilleh. Rose, Ash, and the angel leave theirs behind in the Pale of Settlement. They find each other on the way to America and then make their home among the Jews on Hester Street in the Lower East Side of New York City. They are welcomed in when they first arrive and are able to help their new community stand against factory bosses and violent mobsters alike.
Reading this story (both in audiobook and physical form) felt like sinking into a warm hug, violence and antisemitism notwithstanding. I also appreciated that the story did not stop to explain terms or cultural references. The physical book has a glossary at the back, but the audiobook did not. For me, it felt homey. And for non-Jews, I think it is healthy to experience a culture they have no referents for.
All in all, I cannot recommend this book enough. Go read it immediately! In any form!
Title/Author: She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki; translation by Caleb David Cook; lettering by Phil Christie
Reviewer: Dani
Summary: Food brings two women together in this warmhearted manga series.
Series/Standalone: Series
Genre/Sub-Genre: Manga
Book Format: Physical; Digital on Comics Plus
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Lesbian, asexual spectrum
Content Warnings: Abusive language, homophobia, aphobia, depictions of deipnophobia, vomiting (note: chapters with potentially triggering content have content warnings)
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend?: Yes
Personal thoughts: I am a huge fan of queer slice-of-life manga, and if you add food into the mix, you've likely found my personal recipe for an instant favorite. (See also: my years' long love of the cozy domestic manga What Did You Eat Yesterday? about a gay lawyer who cooks for his hairdresser partner out of love, sure, but mostly to save money.) She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat brings the best of these intersecting subgenres with its gentle pacing, well-developed characters, and comforting depictions of companionship found over shared meals.
The premise starts off vaguely absurd: Nomoto loves cooking, but as a woman with a small appetite living alone, her dreams of making huge portions of food have no reasonable outlet. By chance, she encounters her apartment neighbor, Kasuga, carrying home a large takeout order that she plans to eat all on her own, to Nomoto's extreme admiration. Shortly after, a coworker "compliments" Nomoto's cooking skills on the basis that they'll make her a good wife and mom, and in the existential malaise that follows, she stress-cooks a heaping pile of steak. There's no way she can eat it all herself, but luckily, she now knows just the right person to ask for help.
This over-the-top setup settles into something a little more grounded without losing that initial touch of humor. The series achieves a well-balanced tone, treating its characters' aspirations and struggles with earnestness, while maintaining a wryness about the everyday inequities women experience. Though overall light reading, it also tackles a range of heavier subjects including social anxiety, abusive family dynamics, and discrimination against queer people, all framed by the individual habits and challenges characters have in relation to food.
One of the things I like best about this series is how it takes its time exploring facets of its characters. The relationship between Nomoto and Kasuga is the core of the story, and their feelings develop slowly over the course of the first four volumes. The pair’s social circle expands gradually to include new friends, whose backstories and personal growth arcs add further depth to the narrative. The emphasis here is always mutual understanding and support, because what's better than enjoying food with people who accept you for exactly who you are?
As the series has progressed, I've looked forward to each new volume, and I'm especially interested to see how Nomoto and Kasuga continue to grow within their new partnership in the forthcoming fifth volume. While writing this review, I also learned that the series has been adapted into a live action TV drama. So in the meantime, you'll know where to find me.
Title/Author: Iris Kelly Doesn't Date by Ashley Herring Blake
Reviewer: Logan
Summary: After a horrible one-night stand, Iris Kelly agrees to pose as Stevie’s girlfriend, which might provide her with some much-needed romantic content for her new book, but as they play the part of a happy couple and lines begin to blur, she wonders who will make the first real move.
Series/Standalone: Bright Falls #3
Genre/Sub-Genre: Contemporary Romance
Book Format: Audiobook
Length: 11 hours, 52 minutes
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Lesbian and Bisexual
HEA/HFN: HEA
Content Warnings: Graphic Sexual content, Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, Moderate Vomit, Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Minor Infidelity, Homophobia, Emotional abuse
Ratio of Sex/Plot: 90% plot to 10% sex
Well-Written/Editor Needed: No grammatical editing
Would I Recommend it?: Well…
Personal Thoughts: Okay, so this is the second time I’ve tried to read this book, and I just couldn’t get through it. I got to 67% and just couldn’t deal with it, the MCs both need to work on themselves rather than getting into a relationship. I know SOME miscommunication is necessary in romance but my god these two. I don’t have a problem with Stevie’s anxiety and how it affects the plot. What I do have a problem with is how her friends treat her like a child or like she’s a fragile china doll. Then, there’s Iris’ friends, the characters we followed in the first two books who all but slowly isolate her because their lives have changed and Iris’ has stayed the same, and instead of supporting her or just spending time with her they let her separate herself from them and are being purposefully ignorant to it because they are all in happy relationships and don’t want to deal with her drama.
I know a lot of people really love this book and I enjoyed the first two (Delilah Green Doesn't Care & Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail) but I just couldn’t get into this one. I love Stevie and her characterization but I found Iris to just be insufferable and annoying.
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