Hello and welcome to the November 2025 edition of the Queer Lit Review! This month we have a look at queer Hollywood history, toxic lesbian vampires, and a trans teen reawakening his passion for music with new friends after a family tragedy.
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Happy Reading!
Title/Author: Sick and Dirty by Michael Koresky
Reviewer: Laura
Summary: Korestsky looks at queer/queer coded Hollywood films from the 1930s and 1960s when such content was heavily censored by the Hays Code. He reflects on the position these movies had in culture at the time and discusses how even the more controversial titles can have value today.
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Subject/Topic: Hollywood
Book Format: Physical Book
Length: 307 pages (275 pages without bibliography/index)
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend?: If you’re interested in the topic.
Personal Thoughts: I love Old Hollywood history, so at its core this is a book that should have been very interesting to me. And oftentimes it was! But sometimes I found it slow and other times I thought it could have been organized better. Overall I enjoyed reading it, but it did take me longer than usual to get through it.
Koresky frames his history of queer cinema in the Golden Age of Hollywood through two adaptations of Lillian Hellman’s play, The Children's Hour: 1936’s heterosexual love triangle drama, These Three, and 1961’s more explicitly queer, The Children's Hour. There is enough to talk about just with regards to Hellman’s life, the play itself, and the history of the film adaptations, and I ultimately felt this would have been a more successful book if it had just been a history of The Children's Hour. These were the most interesting chapters of the book for me, which I think was a mix of them being the best developed chapters and of me loving the 1961 adaptation (despite its flaws).
Similarly, I felt that many of the other chapters might have worked better as their own book, or in a book that was a collection of film-specific essays (or even a podcast!) instead of an attempt at a historical narrative. For example, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope is a film that I find very interesting (and have been meaning to revisit) and would make a great article, and the history of Tennessee Williams’s many Hollywood adaptations could easily fill a book. There were also some chapters that felt a bit out of place, like the one on Judy Garland, who is a gay icon but didn’t necessarily act in queer coded roles.
If you, like me, love reading about Old Hollywood and are a fan of some of the films covered in this book, I do think it is worth reading! But it is definitely the type of nonfiction book where you have to be very interested in the subject in order to enjoy the book. I also think it might be a difficult read if you haven’t seen the movies that are discussed in detail.
Title/Author: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
Reviewer: Tali
Summary: Three lesbian vampires, from 500 years ago to the near-present, become entangled in a web of relationships that will draw them inevitably toward a confrontation.
Genre: Vampire fiction, Fantasy
Format: Physical book
Length: 544 pages
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Lesbian main characters, bisexual and gay side characters
Content Warnings: Violence and killing, sexual assault (incl. marital rape), abusive relationships (incl. domestic violence and stalking), misogyny
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend?: Kinda
Personal Thoughts: Though Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a hefty hardcover, clocking in at 544 pages, I found it to be a surprisingly quick read. The incidents flow well together, the prose is polished and clear, and I found myself bingeing through this book in just a few days, never feeling like I was bogged down or slogging through.
However, upon finishing the book, I realized that what I had just read felt thin and insubstantial. The three characters at the heart of the novel were flat and one-note, with repeated flashbacks and anecdotes hammering the reader with the same motivations and traits over and over. The historical settings, similarly, were thinly sketched. The portions of the story set in 1500s Spain felt more like midcentury America with a Renaissance coat of paint, and a brief stopover in Regency England brought to mind Bridgerton with blood-drinking. The novel also had little to add in the way of vampire lore, and longtime vampire fiction fans will not find many fresh ideas in its take on the undead or their plight of immortality.
This novel was recommended to me, by friends and on social media, with the catchphrase “toxic lesbian vampires.” While that pitch intrigued me, I found that the execution didn’t really live up to my hopes. The “toxicity” in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil felt trite, as if the author were ticking boxes from a pop-psych checklist of an abusive relationship. There’s nothing here resembling the Byzantine mind games of Interview with the Vampire or the campy, soap-operatic fun of Buffy or True Blood.
In short, while Bury Our Bones... was a breezy read that passed the time well enough, I found very little that engaged me on a deeper level, stuck with me afterward, or broke new ground. I might recommend this book for diehard vampire fans who feel starved for sapphic representation, but for most readers it can be skipped.
Title/Author: The Ghost of You by Michael Gray Bulla
Reviewer: Ana
Summary: Caleb, a trans teen at an arts school, hasn’t been able to write a song in months. He’s still grieving the death of his older brother due to a drug overdose earlier in the year – and ever since the funeral, he’s been haunted by a cat that only he can see. When his songwriting teacher assigns a group project, Caleb gets paired with Emmett, a local punk band’s nonbinary lead singer. The two discover that they have more than a passion for music in common, and Caleb has to decide what he wants his life to look like in the wake of his family’s tragedy.
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre/Sub-Genre: Teen Fiction/Romance
Book Format: Print
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Trans, non-binary, queer
Content Warnings: Death, grief, substance abuse, underage drinking and smoking, sexual abuse of a child, grooming, gender dysphoria, misgendering (challenged), friendship troubles
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend?: Yes!
Personal thoughts: It took me awhile to read this book – to be honest, I wasn’t sure whether it would make me cry – but I’m so very glad I decided it was time! Despite the heavy subject matter, The Ghost of You also contains a considerable amount of humor and sweet moments. I adore Caleb’s family, both found and biological. Michael Gray Bulla does a fantastic job writing realistically messy but lovable teens!
This book is also filled with nods to tarot, the sense of community at house parties, the writing process, cat ownership, and punk music (yes, the title is indeed taken from a My Chemical Romance song). For me, seeing so many of an author’s own passions makes for an even more enjoyable reading experience. It creates an even stronger sense of personality! I’m already excited to read whatever Bulla writes next.
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