Janiene Julia

This review contains mild spoilers for Betty, and mentions of sexual abuse.
I haven’t quite been able to stop talking about this novel since I turned the final page, because Tiffany McDaniel’s Betty might be one of the saddest books I’ve ever read. It tells a somewhat fictionalised version of her mother Betty’s childhood in the foothills of the Ohio Appalachians, mostly in the fictitious town of Breathed. Little Betty Carpenter is born to Alka Lark and Landon Carpenter, a white woman and a Ch...

Content warning: physical and emotional abuse, and eating disorders.
I’m Glad My Mom Died is a 320-page-long headfirst deep dive into former actress Jennette McCurdy’s troubled and complicated relationship with her late mother, Debra, who died of cancer in 2013. I’m Glad My Mom Died is beyond gripping, and is full of genuinely jaw-dropping moments. It’s incredibly real, and a profoundly honest look at Jennette’s relationship with her mother for what it was, and the long-lasting impact it has ...

a rich resource that allows Nigeria’s queer women to speak their truths as honestly, as openly, and as safely as they can. A collection of first-person narratives collated in response to the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, it is a decidedly critical, determined stab at the many forms of erasure Nigeria’s queer women contend with.
CONTENT WARNING: This review contains brief mentions of homophobia and rape.
In 2014 the Nigerian government passed the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which a...

The Doloriad, was riveting – I couldn’t put it down – but mostly in the same way that you can’t take your eyes off the carnage of a train wreck; despite the blood and the gore, it’s a struggle to look away. This is a book about a profoundly sadistic family, power, sexuality, and the fall of man (or one woman – in a twisted, roundabout way). There’s no ending in which the violence depicted feels warranted. The novel ends without any real happiness, or justice, and is even lacking in what I would consider a concrete, definitive ending to the story it told. Yet The Doloriad felt like a good boo…

Trigger warning: discussion of eating disorders and weight stigma.
Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed was like a literary emotional rollercoaster for me, and while I hate actual rollercoasters, I think I enjoyed this one more than I would’ve expected. The book follows Rachel, a lapsed Jewish woman with a restrictive eating disorder who meets Miriam, a plus-size (or in Broder’s words, zaftig) practicing Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her family’s Yo!Good yogurt store that Rachel frequents on her lu...

Trigger warning: discussion of eating disorders and weight stigma.
Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed was like a literary emotional rollercoaster for me, and while I hate actual rollercoasters, I think I enjoyed this one more than I would’ve expected. The book follows Rachel, a lapsed Jewish woman with a restrictive eating disorder who meets Miriam, a plus-size (or in Broder’s words, zaftig) practicing Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her family’s Yo!Good yogurt store that Rachel frequents on her lu...

Trigger warning: discussion of sexual assault and rape.
On the cover pictured above, Lisa Taddeo’s Animal is described as a ‘raging, funny and fierce thriller’ by the Financial Times. In my honest opinion, it is probably only two of those things, and it is certainly not funny. Taddeo’s debut novel follows Joan, a thirty-seven year old woman who flees from New York to Los Angeles after her (married) ex-lover Vic kills himself in front of her as she’s out for dinner one night. Now, in the swelt...

Rainbow Milk is Paul Mendez's semi-autobiographical debut that follows Jesse McCarthy, a gay Black man born in the West Midland as he explores his sexuality against the backdrop of the Windrush Generation, religious doctrine, and homophobia as he is kicked out of his home after being outed. Jesse struggles with this displacement, eventually running away to London, immersing himself in the gay nightlife there and becoming a sex worker. Like Jesse, Paul Mendez is a gay Black man of Jamaican her...

I once saw this book described as a ‘literary horror’ in a Goodreads review online, and immediately thought that no other phrase aptly described the kind of story this is.
Our Wives Under The Sea is author Julia Armfield’s debut novel, coming after her critically acclaimed collection of short stories Salt Slow. It follows wives Leah and Miri in the wake of Leah’s return from an unexpectedly long underwater research trip. She was meant to be gone for three weeks, but weeks turned into months, ...

Eliza Clark’s debut novel Boy Parts follows Irina: a twenty-something Newcastle native and a fetish photographer of young boys. She’s endlessly tall and skinny, with red hair and a young Priscilla Presley look to her. Recently put on paid leave from her part-time bartending job, after a young boy’s mother slaps her for putting racy photos of him on her website (she thought he was in sixth form but his older brother’s passport said otherwise, didn’t it) Irina soon falls into a black pit filled...

Luster, which is author Raven Leilani’s debut novel, follows Edie – a twenty-three year old Black artist struggling to survive on her painfully low salary at a publishing house in New York. She avoids the many men she’s had sex with at the office, including her ex-boyfriend Mark, and comes home every evening to a cockroach-infested apartment. The novel is a deep dive into Edie as a young woman, her past and desires, as well as her increasingly complicated relationship with Eric Walker, an old...

I Who Have Never Known Men is the first book by Belgian author Jacqueline Harpman (1929-2012) to be translated into English (2018). Originally published in French in 1995 under the title Moi qui n’ai pas connu les hommes, this is an incredibly profound dystopian science-fiction novel that I was utterly impressed by. Having been so engrossed by Harpman’s work here, this review is an attempt to capture its greatness, which is partly philosophical in nature, without revealing too much. At one po...

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo seems to have taken the internet by storm recently, a few years since its 2017 release. Its cover, a bronze woman in an elegant emerald-green dress and a short crop of bright blonde hair, is practically engrained in my brain. For several months before I actually found the time to read it, I saw that shiny green dress everywhere: on publishing Twitter, where publishing hopefuls and editors alike tend to congregate, and where the avid readers and reviewers are:...

Migrations is Australian author Charlotte McConaghy’s debut novel, and it is an incredibly emotive and beautifully-written tale of journeys, both necessary and dangerous, both human and animalistic. I came across Migrations on the increasingly influential platform that is BookTok, a particular side of TikTok dedicated to the world of books.

Love Orange, hailed as a ‘vivid comic cocktail about a modern American family,’ is translator Natasha Randall’s debut novel. The book chronicles the lives of the Tinkley family: a traditional, all-American, white, Christian suburban family living in a stereotypical cul-de-sac in the town of Bentonville. Parents Jenny and Hank relocate from the city with their two young sons: twelve-year-old Jesse and eight-year-old Luke in 2014 into an Arts and Crafts home. A year later…