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The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling

Margaret lives with a rare autoimmune condition that has destroyed her life, leaving her isolated. It has no cure, but she’s making do as best she can—until she’s offered a fully paid-for spot in an experimental medical trial at Graceview Memorial. The conditions are simple, if grueling: she will live at the hospital as a full-time patient, subjecting herself to the near-total destruction of her immune system and its subsequent regeneration. The trial will essentially kill most of, but not all of her. But as the treatment progresses and her body begins to fail, she stumbles upon something sinister living and spreading within the hospital. Unsure of what's real and what is just medication-induced delusion, Margaret struggles to find a way out as her body and mind succumb further to the darkness lurking throughout Graceview's halls. PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Press YEAR: 2025 LENGTH: 320 pages AGE: Adult GENRE: Horror RECOMMENDED: Highly Queer Rep Summary: No canon queer rep. *I...
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The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke (Scapegracers, #1)

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

The Scapegracers is slick like new magic, fitting like a second skin. Gay witches, rural small-town queerness, the anxiety of new friendships, and the terror of being hunted.

The prose hums and clicks, conveying a train of thought without getting sidetracked. It's full of fricatives and phrases begging to be spoken into the air, hurled at the sky. The blend of literal descriptions and visceral metaphors conveys a sense of physicality, of being in a body while magic is in the air and winding through Sideways' skin. It has the teenage friend-group version of "feeling lonely in the middle of a crowd"; capturing a feeling of awkwardness and surprise at being wanted, being invited, being anywhere and having it finally feel right; dreading the possibility that it's all a trick, that anxiety that everyone is just pretending to like her and that they might inexplicably stop. 

There's a traumatic event early on (which I won't spoil) and the aftermath affects how they navigate the world throughout the rest of the book. It made that event feel grounded and immediate. It would have been easy to have it kick off the main plot and disappear, but instead it shows up in little ways through to the end of the story, continuing to have emotional impact. 

This is one of those where I'm having trouble talking about it without spoilers, but it's full of tiny moments and turns of phrase that just felt right to me. I could always follow the plot but never could predict where it would go next. I loved reading this and I'll definitely read the sequel. 

CW for assault.



A line drawing of a fawn below a snake and a crescent moon.
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