Hello and welcome to the September 2025 edition of the Queer Lit Review! This month we have a history of gender diverse athletes, a vampire searching for other vampires, and a supernatural entity taking over a teen's body.
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Happy Reading!
Title/Author: Let Us Play by Harrison Browne and Rachel Browne
Reviewer: Laura B.
Summary: Harrison Browne (a transgender man who formerly played professional women’s hockey) and his sister Rachel (a journalist), look at the history of gender diverse athletes in sports, the unfair challenges they have faced, and what the path forward could look like.
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Subject/Topic: Sports
Book Format: Physical book
Length: 201 pages
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend?: Yes!
Personal Thoughts: This is a short book, but it packs a lot of information in without being overly dense or academic. It also nicely balances Harrison’s own thoughts and history with the stories of other individuals to give a broad picture of what life is like for gender diverse athletes. I think that Harrison’s connection to the material combined with Rachel’s journalistic knowledge ensure that the book fights back in a clear and easy to understand way against discrimination, false equivalencies, and other talking points that people use to create fear surrounding gender diverse athletes.
Obviously this topic is very relevant right now, and it is difficult to read about how the athletes featured have been treated and to think about how much worse things have gotten since the book was written (despite it just releasing this year). But the Brownes also create a sense of hope, and end the book with a list of actions that individuals can take in their daily lives to support gender diverse members of their community. This is an important and well-written book that I think is a must read for anyone who loves sports.
Title/Author: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
Series: The Vampire Chronicles, Book 2
Reviewer: Tali
Summary: Once an aristocrat in eighteenth-century France, now a rock star in the 1980s, the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt journeys through the centuries in search of others like him, seeking answers to the mystery of his eternal existence.
Genre: Gothic horror
Book Format: Physical book
Length: 493 pages
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Bi/pan main character, various MLM and gender non-conforming side characters
Content Warnings: Violence and disturbing content typical of the gothic horror genre
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written
Would I Recommend?: Yes
Personal Thoughts: Lestat has a reputation as one of the most memorable and iconic characters in all of vampire fiction, and after reading The Vampire Lestat, it’s easy to see why. He is charismatic, talented, daring, curious, and refined – as well as tempestuous, stubborn, reckless, defiant, and melodramatic. The Vampire Lestat is framed as Lestat’s dictation of his memoirs, and despite the lush, sensuous prose, the novel feels conversational, as if you are sitting down with a very interesting friend over a goblet of blood while he tells you his life story (and a few millennia of wildly inventive vampire history and lore to boot). All of this adds up to a book that is compelling and compulsively readable.
The Vampire Lestat follows Lestat’s early life as a mortal, his transformation into a vampire, and his search for the origins and meaning of vampirekind. Along the way, we see Lestat in a variety of romantic relationships, including his affair with his first love Nicolas, his infatuation with the ancient vampire queen Akasha, and many others in between. Most of these relationships would have to be described as “doomed” or “toxic” in one form or another, so those in search of happily-ever-after romance might wish to look elsewhere. But for fans of gothic horror and twisted relationship dynamics who are willing to spend some time in the darkness, this is a read with much to enjoy.
Though this book is a sequel to Interview with the Vampire, 90% or more of it can be read as a standalone, with only a short section at the end referencing events and characters from the first book. The Vampire Lestat is a great starting point for exploring Anne Rice’s work, an excellent horror novel for the “spooky season,” and a timely read as it’s about to be adapted to the screen in the third season of the excellent Interview with the Vampire TV show. This book has been foundational and massively influential for modern vampire fiction, and it's not to be missed by any vampire fans or horror aficionados.
Title/Author/Artist: The Summer Hikaru Died, Vol 1 by Mokumokuren
Reviewer: Ana
Summary: Six months ago, Yoshiki’s best friend Hikaru came back from a solo mountain hike…different. His voice and appearance are the same, and his memory is still intact. But Yoshiki knows it isn’t him. A supernatural entity came across a dying Hikaru on that mountain and made a home in his body. He wants to try living a normal life, and Yoshiki wants to pretend that all is well. But is this creature responsible for strange happenings in their rural village? And what does the growing chemistry between the two boys mean for their futures?
Series/Standalone: Series – it’s still ongoing, with the next English translation publishing next month!
Genre/Sub-Genre: Teen horror/slice-of-life manga
Book Format: eBook
Length: 180 pages
LGBTQ+ Orientation: Achillean
Content Warnings: Child death (past)
Well-Written/Editor Needed: Well-written and well-illustrated
Would I Recommend?: Yes!
Personal thoughts: Now is an excellent time to get into this series – an anime adaptation is currently airing on Netflix, with the season finale scheduled for later this month! It’s also just the perfect read for September, flawlessly combining late-summer vibes with a sense of dread that’ll get you excited for Spooky Season. In my opinion, this volume is more suspenseful than scary. The author-illustrator knows exactly how to make ordinary life appear uncanny.
I am such a massive fan of the “summer can also be creepy” niche of horror. From camp slashers like You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight, to atmospheric Southern Gothic ghost stories like The Reformatory, to “bored teens on vacation discover something they shouldn’t” tales like To Break a Covenant, the possibilities feel endless! One of my favorite aspects of The Summer Hikaru Died is how the season itself is almost a character. Cicadas constantly chirp in the background and the heat is drawn to be oppressive, combining to create senses of overwhelm and unease. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with such an evocative setting before.
The mangaka doesn’t classify this as a romance, but has stated publicly that it’s indeed a queer story. This is the “oh no, I have a crush on my childhood best friend” trope at its finest. We love a little yearning! Yoshiki cares so very deeply for Hikaru, causing the reader to ponder what they would do in his shoes: consider their loved one truly dead, or cling to an imperfect copy? The thought exercise is heartbreaking in the best way possible, almost a form of catharsis. I genuinely look forward to the exploration of Yoshiki’s grief in further volumes.
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