A note on today’s topic: some fonts don’t match in the title, and the size difference is mismatched. You want to know what is worse? Some of them are unreadable, whether or not you have dyslexia. Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl, who has a new weekly topic.
June 9: Books with Handwriting on the Cover (Or fonts that look like handwriting. Titles, subtitles, covers with letters on them, etc.)
Goodreads Blurb:
Our Lady of Perpetual Deflection is a razor-sharp, gut-punch of a novel about one transmasc teen caught between a Catholic closet and a truth too loud to stay buried.
Cheramie Lane knows how to smile small, dodge questions, and never say the thing out loud. Raised by two loving but worried dads and trapped in a school obsessed with virginity, virtue, and visibility, he’s mastered the art of deflection. Until Tine shows up—a girl with buzzed hair, duct-taped cleats, and no patience for pretending—and suddenly, survival isn’t enough.
Told in fierce, poetic prose and unfiltered humor, this is the story of trying on names, dodging hymns, entering the boys’ bathroom by accident (or not), and learning that you don’t have to bleed to be real—you just have to begin.
If you’ve ever felt like a “he” stuck in a “she,” like a soul misfiled in the wrong folder—this book sees you.
Amazon Blub:
At seventy, William Barrett finally admits the truth he’s hidden for a lifetime—he’s gay. Widowed and estranged from his children, he escapes to Twilight Harbor seeking a fresh start. When he stumbles into Books & Buoys, he meets Henry Mason, a compassionate bookstore owner who’s been alone since losing his partner to AIDS twenty-eight years ago.
As William learns to navigate coming out in his seventies, Henry must decide if he’s brave enough to risk his carefully guarded heart again. Together, they discover that it’s never too late for authenticity, courage, or love—no matter how much time was lost.
A tender romance celebrating second chances, chosen family, and the transformative power of living your truth.
Goodreads Blurb:
A new essay collection from Samantha Irby about aging, marriage, settling down with step-children in white, small-town America.
Irby is turning forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and is courted by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife and two step-children in a small white, Republican town in Michigan where she now hosts book clubs. This is the bourgeois life of dreams. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with “skinny, luminous peoples” while being a “cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person,” “with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees,” and hides Entenmann’s cookies under her bed and unopened bills under her pillow.
Goodreading Blurb:
When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother Emma Jean tells her bewildered daughter, “You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain’t what you was supposed to be. So, from now on, you gon’ be a boy. It’ll be a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it, and this’ll be over after while.”
From this point forward, Perfect’s life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events—while the rest of his family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment.
Goodreads Blurb:
It was the beginning of the end of the world but not everyone noticed right away.
New York, late 80s. The AIDS crisis has taken hold and the world is on the brink of imploding. Ronald Horne, an entitled property tycoon, lords over the city. Kate, a successful artist, lives in Manhattan with Peter, her husband and fellow creative. She’s having an affair with Molly, a younger gay woman who, when she’s not working a dead-end job, is caring for sick friends.
At one of many funerals during an unbearably hot summer, Molly learns about Justice, the guerrilla activist group fighting for people with AIDS. She immediately signs up. Kate isn’t so sure. And Peter is by the changes he’s seeing in his city, its inhabitants, and most crucially, his wife. Soon the trio learn that a tragedy of this kind not only warps our closest relationships but how anger – and its absence – can make the difference between life and death.
Goodreads Blurb:
Dr. Coral Winters is most herself at forty-five feet below the surface — graceful, certain, alive. On land, she’s a different story. When a new safety regulation forces the socially awkward marine biologist to accept a dive supervisor, she expects interference. She gets Nico confident, warm, and annoyingly perceptive about everything Coral tries not to say out loud. As their underwater partnership deepens into something neither planned for, a grant deadline threatens to end Coral’s reef conservation research — and her reason to stay. A tender slow-burn romance about a woman who can measure coral recovery rates to three decimal places but has no framework whatsoever for falling in love.
Goodreads Blurb:
With warmth and humour, Elizabeth Lovatt reimagines the women who both called and volunteered for the Lesbian Line in the 1990s, whilst also tracing her own journey from accidentally coming out to disastrous dates to finding her chosen family.
With callers and agents alike dealing with first crushes and break-ups, sex and marriage, loneliness and illness (or simply the need to know the name of a gay bar on a night out), this is a celebration of the ordinary lives of queer women.
Goodreads Blurb:
On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today.
Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day.
Adam Silvera reminds us that there’s no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable day.
Goodreads Blurb:
Marcus was fourteen the first time he saw two boys holding hands.
It took him six more years to say the words out loud.
At fourteen, Marcus Martinez watches two strangers walk through a mall in small-town Pennsylvania, and something inside him shifts. But wanting something and living it are not the same. Not when being different means being alone.
Six years later, Marcus is in college.
He’s met Owen.
He’s found the Pride Center.
He’s built a life where he can finally breathe.
But there’s still one truth he hasn’t faced.
The one he has to say at home.
When Marcus finally comes out, the words won’t come.
His mother says them for him while he sits at the kitchen table, crying and apologizing for who he is.
What follows isn’t rejection.
It’s something quieter. Something harder.
Awkward dinners.
Careful words.
Love that doesn’t know how to reach him anymore.
Goodreads Blurb:
A bloody past haunts him. A devastating present calls him back…
Nao hides from his violent past in the Japanese mob by opening a teahouse in Japan’s cultural center, Kyoto. His past comes flooding back when he discovers a gravely injured man with a tattooed chest, a bloody knife, and a Korean business card.
Saehyun would’ve died if not for Nao’s help. He knows nothing of his savior’s connection with the local mafia, but Saehyun has his own secrets. He commands the Korean mafia, the mortal enemy of Nao’s former syndicate.
As Nao and Saehyun grow closer, so does the strength of the Korean mob. A shocking murder pulls Nao back into a past he’d all but abandoned. War is looming, and Nao must choose between protecting Saehyun or avenging the honor of his old mafia family.
Blood Stained Tea is the first book in the The Yakuza Path series. If you like complex characters, blood-soaked violence, and twists you won’t see coming, then you’ll love Amy Tasukada’s gritty crime masterpiece.