Hello and welcome to the October 2026 edition of the Queer Lit Review! This month, we have two girls falling in love in 1954 America; sapphic love between women who encounter Dracula in 1884; and a fallen god falling in love with a florist.
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Happy Reading!
Title/Author: Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Reviewer: Lo
Summary: "That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other. Have you ever heard of such a thing?" Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. The Red Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre/Sub-Genre: Teen Queer Historical Fiction
Book Format: eAudio
Length: 12 hrs/409 pages
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Lesbian
Content Warnings: Racism & Homophobia
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend?: Absolutely!
Personal thoughts: This book was so heart-wrenchingly bittersweet. The thoughts and feelings Lily voiced in 1954 were frighteningly similar to the ones I had as a baby gay in the late 2010s. I loved how before their queerness was known to one another, what brought Lily and Kath together was their want for freedom from societal expectations; either in the form of piloting airplanes or in the building and computing of rocketships. When their romantic interest and yearning for one another became a main plot, I was ecstatic to see the tenderness in their burgeoning relationship. I really respected Kath’s patience and the grace that she gave Lily. I wish we had gotten a bit more of Kath’s internal monologue and more about her home life, but I understand that the crux of this book was the experience of Lily and the real people like her who had to live and navigate life differently through two parts of their identity. I am very happy we got an epilogue, but I wish we had gotten a bit more of their thoughts and feelings from the interim time between the last chapter and the epilogue. Overall, this was a great read and highlighted a very interesting and real part of history which was the intersection of race and sexuality.
Title/Author: The Brides by Charlotte Cross
Reviewer: Puck M.
Summary: In 1903, psychologist and one-time vampire hunter Sir John Seward begins treating a new patient, whose ailment dredges up nightmares of his past ordeals. In 1884, five women travel across England and the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Mafalda, a Hungarian-English lady, travels with her mother to Budapest to care for her grieving aunt, Reka. Mafalda's lover, Lucy, later follows to support her, together with their former schoolmate Eliza and Eliza’s maid, Alice— a young Catholic burdened with the Sight. When Eliza sickens, the women accept a mysterious noble’s invitation to his castle in Transylvania to take the country air. But what waits for them at Castle Dracula is not healing, and only one of them will become a psychiatric patient in 1903.
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre/Sub-Genre: Horror
Book Format: eBook
Length: 390 pages
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Sapphic
Content Warnings: Period-typical anti-queer sentiment, period-typical racial/ethnic prejudices (though significantly better handled here than in Dracula), violence against women (including some attempted sexual violence), period-typical representations of mental health care (though, again, softened in this novel)
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend?: Yes!
Personal thoughts: Set partly in 1884, some ten years before the events of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and partly in 1903, some ten years after, The Brides is therefore both a prequel and a sequel to the iconic horror novel, focusing specifically on discovering the origin story of the three vampire women first encountered by Jonathan Harker in Castle Dracula and later killed by Van Helsing. Like Dracula, The Brides is an epistolary novel, told through letters, journal entries, and psychiatric notes.
There were a few times where I found myself wondering if some of the characters’ turns of phrase or opinions weren’t a little too modern, especially some of Seward’s journal entries, where his growth into a rather more ethical doctor than he’d been before seemed dramatic to me, even taking into account the ten years that had passed since the end of Dracula. For the most part, however, Cross captures the tone of the Victorian novel very well. Her focus on women’s relationships—the friendship between Eliza and Lucy, the love between Lucy and Mafalda, the complex relationships Mafalda has with her mother and aunt, and all of Alice’s relationships bridging the upstairs/downstairs worlds in her rise from scullery to lady’s maid—enriches and deepens our experience of the world Stoker introduced. In addition, having several of the characters actually be Hungarian ground Stoker’s fantastical (one might say exoticized) Transylvania in actual history. Mafalda often mentions her aunt Reka’s nationalistic leanings in her letters to Lucy, and it is through her nationalism that Dracula first insinuates himself into the women’s circle.
In fact, women’s experiences are central to every part of the plot and their unique vulnerabilities in that time and place are the exact points that place them in supernatural danger. Dracula exploits Eliza’s despair at her childlessness and Mafalda and Lucy’s dread of being separated by marriage. And while Reka’s nationalism allowed Dracula to enter her social circle, she is particularly vulnerable to his machinations due to the scandal of her husband’s death in a duel.
The prequel story is the primary plot, but its interspersal with John Seward’s notes on the events taking place in 1903 serves to ratchet up the tension and suspense for the reader. Seward’s patient is referred to only by her married name, so we don’t know which of the women survives to later have a mental breakdown, which of them become the so-called Brides of Dracula, or what fate awaits the one who isn’t accounted for by those two fates.
This book is a gothic horror novel, and, what’s worse, a prequel to a gothic horror novel, so there is not a happy ending for our lesbian couple here. That said, I found their relationship to be rich and complex, at times tender and at times fraught, like any couple who get together in their school days and don’t have the freedom to grow and change. The overall ending of the book, bittersweet as it is, felt satisfying to me.
Title/Author: Dearly Departed by Chip Pons
Reviewer: Jordan
Summary: Hades, the God of the Underworld, has reinvented himself as Hayden, local funeral director of a small town in New Jersey, where he begins to fall for the local florist after keeping to himself for centuries.
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre/Sub-Genre: Romance
Book Format: Print
Length: 378 pages
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Gay
HEA/HFN: Yes
Content Warnings: Grief
Ratio of Sex/Plot: Several very hot sex scenes but they did not overwhelm the plot.
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend it?: Yes
Personal Thoughts: This was unlike any romance novel I’ve read. Grief is a large aspect of the plot as both main characters, Hayden and Levi, deal with tragic events from their pasts and seek to love and support each other through their trials and tribulations. This was by far my favorite part. It felt like being wrapped up in a warm hug.
The only thing left of Hades in Hayden, are his shadows. Smoky tendrils might be the best way to describe them. No one can see them except Levi but they are able to reach out and touch him and comfort him or even have sex with him, which was both heartwarming and sexy at times. Speaking of sexy, despite there being a couple of kinks that didn't work for me, the sex scenes were definitely hot, especially with Hayden’s shadows getting in on the act and the two men showing how much they cared about each other.
The side characters needed a little more development and backstory, and a little less perfection. Lastly, the breakup—because of course, every romance novel must have a breakup—felt forced. These two men fit together so well and were so supportive of each other, I hoped this book might break the mold. Thankfully, the breakup didn’t last long.
Yes, there were some things that lowkey bothered me, but overall, I really enjoyed this book and read most of it in one day!
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