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Top /u/ fantasy list

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Like in Love with You by Emma R. Alban is a regency era romance between two rivals going after the same suitor. It has a strong opening, and for the first third of the book I was hooked. Two strong cunning women vying for a boring man's obstenively vying for a man's attention while eye fucking eachother the entire time. The added drama of their mothers having once been close friends now turned enemies heightens the narrative and the drama. Neither of the women really want the man obviously but they feel they must to please their families. It was interesting to read especially as this was my first regency era novel. Then they confess and have raunchy sex and maybe that's historically valid, maybe it's not, but it rather took me out of the experience. Especially it felt like the author gave up keeping the prose and characterizations in line with the era they were from. And while reading I kept wondering where it was all heading too, how two women without much agency would fair against such a patriarchal society and heteronormative expectations. All too easily it seems, no one is outwardly homophobic and both families after their dispute is resolved are persuaded to let them have their happy ever after. While I am no fan of Tragik endings, this felt like a fairly unrealistic fantasy of what was otherwise a grounded depiction of regency life. I appreciated that the suitor both women are competing for is given no good qualities, little dialogue and basically barely exists other than as a plot device. 6:10

Any recent sports romance? Olympics always gets me in the mood for one. The last I read was It's a Love/Skate Relationship by Carli J. Corson.

>>4526396
The author's first book in that series, Don't Want You Like A Best Friend, does a pretty good job imo of depicting the difficulty two women in that situation would go through. They go through a fair amount of suffering on the way, and at the end their happy ending feels like the stars aligned for them specifically, and not like they were simply allowed to get away with it. I'll definitely read this one, interested to see how they compare.

>>4523669
>>The Book of Blood and Roses by Annie Summerlee
Got through it, not the worst, light on prose, somewhat simple characters, but all in all enough not to be a waste of time.
Sex is indeed hot.

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So I read three things that were entitled Playing for Keeps because why not.

The first, Playing for Keeps by Alexandria Bellefleur is basically what if Taylor Swift and her football boyfriend had lesbian publicists? Also one has a praise kink and the other one is very into soft dom dynamics. There isn't much to say about this one beyond that the author clumsily exposition dumps the mcs traumatic past at you in the least clever way imaginable. The sex is mid. 5/10

The second, Playing for Keeps by Pixie Chica is a short story that exists only for size difference smut. 5/10

The third, and best, was Playing for Keeps by Jennifer Dugan. It is a referee x baseball player teenage romance set against the grief both of them are experiencing due to a family member dying from cancer. It is an interesting forray into toxic relationship dynamics and managed to make both the toxic girl and the non toxic girl sympathetic and interesting. I felt myself relating quite a bit to the characters experiences as I myself lost my dad at an early age. The prose keeps well with the drama, easily getting you into the headspace of both characters even as they experience very different things. The ending resolution is predictable but the way the story is written, it doesn't feel like an obvious plot beat but rather a inevitable tragedy when the tension finally snaps. I quite liked this one 8/10

Anyone else reading middle grade stuff?

>>4526343
Don't use a clanker image for these threads, asshole.

In Charm's Way - Lana Harper

Book 4 of the Witches of Thistle Grove series. Book #1 is f/f, and you don't need to read the others to know what's going on in this one.

Not quite as good as the first one imo, but the purityfags will like this one better. The protagonist, Delilah is a stroppy little shit who, in a desperate attempt to free herself from magical brain fog, does a blood magic ritual that attracts assorted monsters to her, as well as a soft-butch monster hunter. It's a fun contemporary romance with a dash of fantasy and a smattering of decent action scenes that don't overstay their welcome. If you like (or at least don't mind) the American Halloween aesthetic, I'd say it's pretty good, and worth a read.

Waiting for a romance set in the Olympic village with the LC totally-not-based on Alysa Liu

>>4526788
If OP fixes the thumb, it looks fine. Do not discriminate the clankers, please.

Is there something that's literally like those shitty dystopian YA novel with a protagonist and rival love interests but lesbian

Books with well written sex scenes (don't care if it's just a porn book or not, as long as it has good writing)? I find sex scenes boring if the aren't particularly well written.
Goblin fires is my favorite for this. Icehole was pretty decent too.

>>4530427
I'm not 100% sure if any of these are exactly what you're after (I didn't read a lot of dystopia when it was big), but maybe something here will fit the bill:

Hearts Still Beating, Archer Brooke
The Last Bookstore on Earth, Lily Braun-Arnold
Charon Docks At Daylight, Z. R. Reed

And these are fantasy dystopias:

In The Vanisher's Palace, Aliette De Boudard
Ruinsong, Julia Ember
Crier's War, Nina Varela
The Never-Tilting World (contains het)

I found Ruinsong to be pretty skippable, but the others were at least a good time. Hopefully something here will suit you.

>>4526396
It was probably a mistake to just not end it with them having sex. Of course a regency-era lesbian romance wouldn't have a happy ending. Best-case scenario, the women involved, should they insist on staying together, would have to concoct some sort of lie for the sake of plausible deniability.

Sometimes ending right at the point of the release of maximum dramatic tension is the best idea. Not every story needs to reach its epilogue. Glengarry Glen Ross is a good example of this.

>>4531384
>muh realism
Fuck off. Stories that end right when it actually gets good fucking SUCK

whats the name of that butterfly hong kong gang book someone linked last thread

>>4531384
Could have gone with a Ladies of Llangollen ending, I guess.

>>4532020
Was it When They Burned the Butterfly, by Wen-yi Lee?

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Finnish anons, has anyone checked out Kultainen peura? Looks like some kind of historical kinda-fantasy yuri? Reading books in Finnish is a lot of time and effort for me, which is why I'm asking to know in advance if it's worth getting into.

>>4526343
Link to the previous thread?

>>4530474
>Goblin fires
That cover is really doing that book no favours

Any good rich girl/poor girl romance recommendations?

>>4533890

Nobody in Particular, Sophie Gonzales (YA, contains an unwanted het kiss)
Far From Home, Lorelie Brown (MC has het history)
Lover Birds, Leon Egan (YA)
Tryst Six Venom, Penelope Douglas (purityfags be warned, there's no het for the main couple but it's very obvious that the author's main shtick is m/f romance)
Love at First Set, Jennifer Dugan (starts with love interest breaking off a het engagement)
Not My Problem, Ciara Smyth (YA)
Malice, Heather Walter (YA)
The No Kiss Contract, Nan Campbell

>>4532430
Haven't read it, but Otava generally doesn't publish slop, so I'd expect more artsy prose attempts and less romantasy.

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>story is promising
>main character's name is something stupid like dice
Why do they always do this?

>>4532430
I have not personally read it, but it seems like it has gotten some glowing reviews. Don't know if the Karelian dialect is going to cause some difficulties for you if you are not a native speaker though.

>>4535109
Find and replace or get used to it

>>4535092
>>4535110
Thanks! I'll try to read it. My Finnish level is "I passed the intermediate exam for foreigners" so I'll definitely struggle with dialects, so far I've only read the two earliest Simukka's novels which I assume are on the much easier end of the language difficulty spectrum.

Are there any big impending releases soon, like Gideon and Priory?

>>4538109
Baru 4th final book soon this year.

>>4538140
>Baru 4
>Existing
good try

>>4538140
[citation needed]

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Started this, seems pretty good so far, autistic lesbians.

Also read When the Museum Is Closed by Emi Yagi recently. It was okay, a bit weird for my taste. There was so much weird shit going on for such a short book and the yuri was only like 10% of it. It's about a woman who falls in love with a sentient venus statue. Also she has to permanently wear a raincoat that no one else can see and she can never take off for some reason. IDK it was weird but at least it's short so it might be worth checking out if you like weird stuff.

I find amusing how all of those books are written by men using female pen names or ghostwritten by males and the "author" in the cover is just a face and nothing more.

>>4538444
About half way through this now and really enjoying it so far. Girl with Seasonal Affective Disorder crashing out at uni and meets a girl who loves Autumn and wants to get SAD girl to love autumn as well. So they just go around doing a bunch of cozy autumn stuff together. It's cute and cozy and wholesome and it has lots of platonic snuggling. Good shit.

For a genre written for, by and about lesbians they sure seem to talk about white men a lot. Book I'm reading now has mentioned 'white men' like 5 times in the last few pages.

>>4538479
Same thing as how all BL and yaoi is with by women.

>>4539136
Probably written by one of "those" that the jannies don't let us speak ill about here.

>>4538444
I finished this. Was okay. Kind of fell apart towards the end. The cozy date stuff was really nice, but the mental health stuff was just badly written imo. One of the POV characters is meant to be autistic but you wouldn't know it unless she told you. She doesn't act autistic at all. I know people will say it's a spectrum and some people don't 'act autistic' but she's a POV character. We get a window into her mind and we get to see what she is thinking. At no point in this book did she think like an autistic person. Again makes me feel like being an 'autistic' woman is just autism on easy mode.

Tryst Six Venom is so good, oh my god.

>The flower that bloomed nowhere

Anybody kept up with this? Is it still good?
I stopped reading just after the first loop since that's where I caught up and then kind of lost interest with having to wait for new chapters.

Also, any other good webnovel recs (aside from katalepsis and that author's other stuff)?

Any good isekai/portal fantasy wit yuri?

Tryst Six Venom is horrible. Dropped it after 2 chapters.

>>4543139
So you didn't experience it at all and now you're saying it's bad. Especially considering that chapter 1 is about Clay being stuck in her own performative version of hell, being insufferable because she's naive and anxious deep down, and you can tell she's borderline crashing out unless you're blind. Okay.

>>4543311
Yeah, the writing sucks. Not going to force my way through the rest when I'm not enjoying it. Plenty of other books to read.

>>4543345
The writing isn't stellar but it's not terrible either, so I think you're missing out lol. But to each their own. I think Clay and Liv have insanely hot relationship dynamics, one of the best enemies to lovers in lesbian romance.

If anyone wants to read an age-gap story, try Beneath the Falling Leaves by Emma Collins. Not only is it an age-gap story, but the main character falls for her girlfriend’s mom at the time.

>>4543402
I prefer age gap a la itou hachi

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>Daughter of the Cursed Kingdom
This book is easy to read and sometimes fun, which makes it better than most. I prefer the first book that is more limited to school life and has the better pov character. The sequel focuses on events too big for it to handle well while romance is put on the back burner with an unsatisfying resolution. The side characters are more likable and communication has improved but the key points are still skipped over.

Why do characters in books so rarely just talk it out?

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I only read yuri books with cartoon covers. If it has a 3D woman on the front I'm not interested.

>>4543402
Yeah, tried it, but it was just so fucking generic and bland and soulless. I hate when books make me go "Is that all there is to lesbian fiction? Is this the best we can get?". It's such a depressing feeling.

>>4544536
I don't only read yuri books with those kinda covers, but I do end up liking them the most.

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>>4533890
200 hours by Natasha West. I really liked this one.

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Anyone read this? It's kind of interesting but the author mentions the race of every single character, even side characters who have like 1 line, and the only races are white and black. It's super weird. Just don't mention their race at all...

national socialist yuri

>>4544939
>national socialist yuri
With a Jew girl and also having good ending for both.

>>4544941
Israelis are basically national socialist already.

>>4544938
The cover tells me everything I need to know. It screams tarot and fortune telling and whatnot. And only "those" types obsess over that stuff.

>>4544938
I'm assuming that it's set in a fictional world, and the author doesn't know how describe races besides white or black without referring to real world locations (Asian, Hispanic, Indian, etc.) and doesn't want to call them "brown".

Havent read in a long time.
I think the last book I read (and paid for) was Little Dip in the Garoul series.
What's something actually good, has some action or drama, and not first person.

>>4545758
That makes sense. I feel like at that point just don't mention race. It takes place in a single city in a fictional world so...

>open /lit/ book
>first chapter
>"he,him"
>close book
I'll stick to LN

>>4547134
Most stories that aren't set in an all girls school have some form of male characters. Real life also works the same way.

Has there been a better book since TLT or should I reread until Alecto?

Are there western yuri that aren't wish fulfillment "everyone's gay/accepts gays" worlds and not preachy "LGBT"/political screeds?

>>4548845
There has to be more interesting drama than "b-but what will society say!?"

>>4544938
I finished reading this. The concept was kind of interesting but the writing was pretty bad, the characters were bland, and it was very light on the yuri.

Are there any works that feature Christian sistership that turns homo?

>>4548845
I prefer scifi and scifi worlds tend to be okay with teh gay, which is fine with me

>>4538140
>>4538142
>>4538148
still nothing? I guess Tyrant is good ending point.

>>4551042
by the end of tyrant nothing is resolved and it only set up the (supposedly) final book

>>4551043
Yeah but she gets a lesbian harem so, when you really think about it, that's the best ending.

>>4551047
>lesbian harem
iscend is endgame

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These Shattered Spires by Cassidy Ellis Salter

Follows four familiars (essentially slaves to their arcanist masters) in a very locked-tomb-esque world as they try to survive an event known as the Slaughter. There's a lot of focus on magic, necromancy, pain, and toxic relationships, like the most toxic relationships I've ever read. Christ almost every single character in this book hates each other.

From the start you can see where it draws inspiration from. The first MC Taro is very Gideon-esque. Her love interest Nixie is Harrow-esque. It's nowhere close to being direct copies but you can see where the inspiration come from. The magic system is also quite gory and focuses a lot on blood/bone/dead stuff etc very similar to TLT's necromancy. The setting and plot, however, are very different from TLT.

I love Taro. She's funny and I wish the whole book was from her POV. My biggest issue with the book is that with 4 POVs there's not enough focus on the two lesbians. The other POVs are Elliot, a BL magnet whose defining trait is how hot he is, and Alis, a heavy-handed walking gender dysphoria. The other POVs aren't bad, but just not as interesting as Taro. I'm also very much not into BL or gender dysphoria, if you like those you'll enjoy it more than I did.

The plot dragged in the middle. It starts out excellently in the first few chapters, but ultimately becomes too messy with 4 different POVs. It does end on a strong note, even if it's a clear setup to the second book and not really an ending by itself.

Overall, I found the book alright but too diluted. Probably will not be reading the second book.

No het at all involving the MCs. Taro is 100% lesbian, Nixie (her love interest) appears to be bi but is only ever in a relationship with Taro. The BL guy is obviously BL and gender dysphoria FtM is not involved in any romance.

Does anyone have the new Hiyodori novel? I don't want to use amazon and can't find it anywhere else.

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>Nightwood is a 1936 novel by American author Djuna Barnes that was first published in the United Kingdom by publishing house Faber and Faber.[1] It is one of the early prominent novels to portray explicit homosexuality between women, and as such can be considered lesbian literature.
Is this worth reading?

>>4553133
dunno, read and tell

Any books with an possessive toxic ex?

>>4556190
real life

>>4556513
Lucky!

People have recommended Gideon the Ninth to me in the past, but I can't stand the other letters of the alphabet. Is there a lot of that in the book series?

>>4556674
I don't remember any. Why don't you give it a try? The first is the best so if you don't like it you should stop.

>>4556674
Extremely overrated, doesn't even have romance; don't read it. Not worth it.

>>4556885
What do you think is worth reading?

>>4556885
Why do I consistently see people saying this? Am I crazy? Is there not explicitly romance between Gideon and Harrow in the first book?

>>4556190

Origins of Eternity by Nicole Pyland has a obsessive vampire ex.

Can I get 3 book recommendations?
Any genre or style, as long as you rated it high.

>>4556887
they're shown to be very close but there's no explicit romance, no sex/kissing or even any allusions to it

>>4558267
I could've sworn they kiss.

>>4558295
gideon and harrow do not kiss in any of the 3 books

in fact, the only girl-on-girl kiss I remember is Harrow and Ianthe for a weird ritual

>>4558307
I was thinking of the scene where Gideon kisses Harrow on the forehead. I don't know, call me crazy, but that scene has pretty unambiguous romantic undertones from the few excerpts I just reread and my admittedly faulty memory. But I guess she just kissed her face and not her lips directly and I suppose that's just not gay at all

I hate when the girl on the cover doesn't match how either the MC or LI are described in the book. Like how does that even happen

Reading the second Kyoshi book and why is it so intense! Got me feeling legit anxious

>>4558316
>unambiguous romantic undertones
>unambiguous undertones
Anon, undertones are ambiguous by definition

>>4559540
Not undertones as in subtext as in "they looked at each other so its yuri" undertones as in maintext as in "two lesbians were being extremely physically intimate with each other". I mean, what, are you seriously coming away from these books thinking Harrow should get with Alecto? Ianthe? Come on now. And this goes beyond the whole "if one of them was a man you wouldn't doubt it" etc etc. It's a book about lesbians written by a lesbian with an extremely basic enemies to lovers arc. It's not that deep.

TOWEM update
>Tonight I've started rewriting the very last leg of Act 2, tightening and improving the story's flow. This is part of an overall goal to bring my final word count down. Act 2 was, by far, the roughest when I finished the last draft and it's close to finished.
>I will probably do another pass on Act 3, but it will involve much less development than my Act 2 rewrite. Also: I sent Act 1 to some beta readers, so things are definitely moving!
>Act 1 is with two beta readers, Act 2 is close to ready, and Act 3 needs some polish.

>I may reach out for additional beta readers since my regular writer's group is a little over-tapped at the moment.

I've no doubt that we'll get the sequel eventually. I just hope the author stays in good health.

>>4560054
10 years ago author mentioned it was "almost done" in a facebook post

it's dead sis

Have there ever been good lesbian characters written by male authors

>>4560749
I actually prefer yuri written by men. They usually have actual plot and no GBTQ preachy bullshit.

>>4560749
>ignoring Baru Cormorant by our Lord and Savior Seth Dickinson

>>4560892
I'm ignoring it because it's fantasy. I physically can't care about the genre

>>4560846
Oh my god, an actual cuck.

>>4560846
Retard alert

>>4560846
Based and true.

>>4561288
>>4562169
The duality of m*n

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This Must Be the Place by Kelly Quindlen

>Inheriting a gay bar from your secretive great-uncle? Awkward. Trying to save it while catching feelings for the wrong girl? Complicated. From the author of She Drives Me Crazy comes an exuberant YA novel about queer joy, found family, and standing your ground.

Since I really liked She Drives Me Crazy, I was hoping this would be just as good, and in a lot of ways it is, it's just in ways that don't matter as much to me as having a well developed romantic story.

For the first half of the book, I was really enjoying it. The characters were well written, everyone acted their age (no wise beyond their years teenagers), even the stereotypical ones weren't bad, but at that point you start asking yourself "Where's the romance?".

There's no development on that front thus far, and when the LI "comes out" to the MC she's not surprised, and I'm not sure why because nothing in the LI's behavior suggested she was gay.

Past this point, as you're reading about her Uncle and this magical bar, wondering how they're gonna get together, they just... kinda do. We get a bit of holding hands and making out for a few chapters, then some melodrama that really felt below the standards of the rest of the book, they get back together aaand scene.

It's not something I'll read again to be honest, and I'm not sure I would recommend it. While the MC learning about her uncle and finding a place she felt like she belonged was engaging, it just isn't enough for me.

>>4562363
Are there religious undertones in this one? The author is a religious gay woman and I usually find myself relating to how she incorporates it into her books.

>>4562434
A big part of the book is how uncomfortable she feels everywhere other than the bar she inherited, cause it's a small town, everyone including her grandparents is religious and a bigot, blah blah you've heard it before.
Anyways, I don't recall religion being talked about or discussed in depth, or to a particularly noteworthy degree at all.

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Smash or Pass by Birdie Schae

Saw a lot of positivity about this online, and the rating is fairly high so I figured it was my duty to let you all know it's shit, as any small amount of time you waste on it will not have been worth it.

Just, nothing interesting about this. You've read all the dialogue elsewhere, the cliches, none of the characters talk like real beings who have ever existed or will exist...

It was a book designed for the algorithm to make it pop up on your booktok or whatever.

Lovely cover though! Just wish it was attached to a different book.

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I adore Haley Cass, but her new book is only available on Amazon & now that they've ceased to support my 15 year old Kindle I can't read it even if I pay for it >_>

>>4563024
Let me guess
>celeb
>fake dating
>second chance
Hard pass.

>>4562759
I read that book too recently. I am not sure what I should have expected. The pronouns are okay then keeps bringing up the autism and being neutrotypical. I kept thinking about how I would rewrite this book because the premise is cute

>>4552471
I bought it on Amazon. I liked it better than the last one which felt like a long short story, but some might feel the romance was slow in this one

I hate books that introduce the characters meeting as teenagers / young adults, then skip 30 years ahead.
I understand it's for late bloomers who haven't gotten over their first love or whatever but I still hate it.

>>4563024
myanonamouse is your friend

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