When I finished re-reading Dream Boy back in May, I did a quick search to see what Jim Grimsley was up to these days and stumbled across this upcoming release. I reached out to the publisher for a copy and crossed my fingers it wasn’t going to be as traumatic or emotionally draining as the others I’ve read.*
The Dove in the Belly is the story of Ronny and Ben. It takes place on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in the 1970s and that’s the main reason I wanted to read this, Grimsley went to UNC and having it set on the UNC campus intrigued me as I also went to UNC and remember some of the history around the early LGBT organizations and experiences on campus.
Continue reading “Book 959: The Dove in the Belly – Jim Grimsley”
What a wonderfully weird novel. When this landed in my inbox from the publisher I first thought WTF is that because the cover art screams pulp fiction and as much as I find those hilarious I’m not usually drawn to them. However, I’d decided I wanted to expand my LGBT novel repertoire, and knowing this featured lesbian/bisexual female protagonists I said sure why not.*
Bare with me for a moment as I go on a tangent. Recently, I’ve been obsessed with re-watching the Netflix adaptation of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper series and I couldn’t realize why other than it’s a fantastic series and adaptation, but then I read this book and it all clicked into place: queer joy.
Yessssssss . . . I’m so glad Calder got his book and that I was able to snag a review copy from NetGalley as soon as it was listed. I’ve been sitting on it FOR MONTHS—do you know how hard that is when it comes to an Annabeth Albert book!? I had to force myself to read soooooo many other books so I wouldn’t push my response out too soon!!!!
So I have talked about gut punches when reading books before, but Silvera took it to a different level with this one—and this was his freakin’ debut novel!