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Local Heavens

K.M. Fajardo

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A corporate hacker. An elusive billionaire. A society trying to survive the American Nightmare.

New York City, 2075. Filipino American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he’s struck by the city’s contradictions—shining corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class.

When Nick meets alluring, new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby’s frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren’t all they seem—and as a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker, Nick knows that no secret can stay buried forever. He’s the reason they don’t. And his latest assignment? Investigate Gatsby himself.

As Nick becomes entangled in the dark affairs of the elite—and the devastating fallout of their actions on the city’s most vulnerable—he must reckon with the limits of compassion and accountability across class and status. What takes precedence: Love or truth? Heart or soul?

A brilliant reimagining of Fitzgerald’s classic tale of glamour, desire, and desperation, Local Heavens examines the guardrails of morality . . . and the price of desire.

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Posts about this title from Boundless Press

Boundless Press\ \ Jananie\ \ • Jan 7

my last reading wrapup of 2025 📚 books i read in october, november, & december

watch for my reviews of the last 15 or so books i read toward the end of 2025!

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Boundless Press\ \ Jananie\ \ • Oct 21 2025

new releases & upcoming books that sound cool (& that you should add to your TBR) 📚

are your excited for any of these releases?!

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Boundless Press\ \ Jananie\ \ • Oct 9 2025

[what the heck are preorders and why is everyone yelling at you to preorder their book? \ \ well, let me tell you. (as an ex-publishing employee, book influencer of eight years, and current indie publisher under Bindery Books.)\ \ the publishing industry banks on a few arbitrary metrics to understand whether a book is going to be “successful” or not. one of these metrics is the unfortunate goodreads adds. the other is preorders. (i will not at this point get into how this is ultimately a popularity contest of how buzzy you can make your book sound because no one is actually preordering based on ACTUALLY READING your book, because it’s not OUT yet! i will get back to the importance of early reviews tho 😉)\ \ Thanks for reading this story ain't over! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.\ \ preorders are essentially what they sound like—you order a book ahead of its release because you are invested in reading it once it’s out. think of it like kickstarter, but for books! the more people who preorder the book, the more confidence there is that the book will sell. and there is nothing publishing loves more than a surefire bestseller. high preorders also signals to the sales reps and retailers that there is a lot of interest in said book and this encourages sales reps to sell more aggressively, and retailers to buy more stock (what we call sell-in), which in turn, can contribute to further sales because more stock = more eyes on the book when browsing in stores. (we’ve all been convinced by a full table of the buzzy new book at some point in our lives)\ \ preorders also help books hit bestseller lists because the lists will count the number of copies sold during the first week PLUS all preorders together to determine the official sales number for the first week. i.e. if you have high preorders, you can more easily hit a bestseller list on the first week.\ \ now why are preorders important? and especially for marginalized writers? well—if you’re an unknown debut author, and a BIPOC author to boot, you are probably working against all the biased forces of the industry and if you fail to scrounge up preorders you are even less likely to sell well. if you fail to sell well within the first six months of your book coming out, then stores are less likely to restock your books. and if your books fail to be restocked, then there’s no reason to print more copies, which will ultimately lead to your book simply going out of print and descending into the ether where most author careers go to die. (i am so sorry for triggering any authors reading this 😭)\ \ but there’s hope! early reviews by influencers and booksellers and industry professionals go a long way to convincing people to pick up a book based on the QUALITY of its CONTENT. but that only works if the people reading early actually POST their reviews and express their excitement.\ \ as a regular reader in the general public—especially one who wants to support marginalized authors—preordering books from authors you want to see more from is SO important to the longevity of their career and of the career of others LIKE them. if you don’t support BIPOC authors now, then when the next one wants to get published and can’t point to any previous successes before them, then they are going to run into a tougher time (it’s an unfortunate reality but it’s true).\ \ all this to say — i recently read LOCAL HEAVENS and LOVED it, so i need everyone to go preorder it now.\ \

- *\ \ why LOCAL HEAVENS is awesome, out Oct 14 \ \ Goodreads | Storygraph | Bookshop\ \ ok, beyond the fact that at first glance this book sounds awesome — cyberpunk Great Gatsby with a bi4bi love square?? like come on, that is my fodder 😍 — it also actually lives up to the concept and expertly weaves a compelling new story out of the source material.\ \ in LOCAL HEAVENS we follow the same loose storyline as THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald but with several key differences that make this such an interesting retelling—(1) the book is set in 2075 in a glittering and yet frightening cyberpunk future that seems to be a beautiful echo of Fitzgerald’s roaring twenties, (2) Nick is a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker investigating Gatsby, (3) and everyone is gay (or to be specific, bi), which is probably the best part lol. the one thing that was not changed was the writing style, which Fajardo keeps in an anachronistic tone to the cyberpunk future we’re experiencing, and i think that may have been my favourite aspect of the book. i loved that we got the contemplative tone of Nick’s narration contrasted against this glittering future that was not all that different from the past. the yearning between the characters was so heartbreaking and consuming that i found myself captivated by their lives—especially because i knew, in part, how things would end.\ \ Fajardo also expands on the original text’s themes of elitism, wealth, desire, and desperation, by expertly applying extensions of the horrible futures we’re already seeing come to pass in our current day. Overall, LOCAL HEAVENS finally delivered a Gatsby retelling that lived up to the original (and then some!) and i’m so excited to see what the author does next.\ \ Preorder LOCAL HEAVENS on Bookshop !\ \
- *\ \ aaaand if you’ve made it this far, then this is my attempt to get you to preorder the second book coming out from my imprint, Boundless Press — BURN THE SEA by Mona Tewari, which is the first in a fantasy duology following the life of one of India’s historical queens as she goes up against the colonizing snake monsters known as the Porcugi. It’s ultimately a story of incredible women who refuse to bow to their oppressors and I cannot wait for it to be out April 2026. ❤️\ \ Goodreads | Storygraph | Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble\ \ \ \ until next time,\ \ jananie ♡](https://boundless.binderybooks.com/item/GAA5HVLP3bI7qcKRvJlt/)

books i will be preordering like my life depends on it, pt 1: LOCAL HEAVENS by K. M. Fajardo

a new series where I review books ahead of their release (bc i read an early copy) and tell you why I'm preordering them

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Boundless Press\ \ Jananie\ \ • May 20 2025

new and upcoming books you NEED on your radar | 2025 MOST ANTICIPATED RELEASES

what books are you looking forward to this year??

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The Inky Phoenix\ \ Kathryn Budig\ \ • Jul 24

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[Poll:\ \ Do you enjoy genre bends? (Ex: Sci-Fi with retelling)\ \

"I wasn't sure I had one - a belief in any perfect, untouchable oasis. Then again, I had always moved through life a little too skeptically. I'd been raised to mind the gaps. The deceptively small ones. The one you think you can jump, even though you know those that try never make it."\ \ \ \ GENRE: Cyber-punk Sci-Fi Retelling (The Great Gatsby)\ \ RATING: 4.5/5\ \ FORMAT: eBook Arc\ \ Review:\ \ A Retelling of The Great Gatsby as a Cyerber punk story? I knew this one was going to be a good one and I'm glad I wasn't disappointed!\ \ I read The Great Gatsby in high school os its been many years now since I've read it and analysed it (meaning I didnt remember all the finer details but knew the overall story enough) and I think Local Heavens is a lovely retelling of it. My favourite parts are that there is an introduction of them vs us and instead of New Money vs Old Money (its still there and a bit more to the background), there's more of a focus on being othered, a POC and marginalised communities.\ \ The concept of corruption, people who are self serving and billionaires who think of themselves only is blended really well with the idea that "third world corporations" and people who want to destroy America are coming back to hurt them. We see this through Tom and how he sticks to so many of his learnings of being morally superior as an Old Money, non-modded American.\ \ And yet, everyone that stands and tolerates Tom's talk is no better. Nick, our narrator, is meant to be someone watching from the outside and someone who slowly fits in and uses his privileges to his advantage. In fact, it is said by Tom that he forgets Nick is "one of them" from third-world nations. I think Nick is our ideal character that essentially becomes a wallflower. He absorbs what happens and tries to minimise the damage by not really being proactive or doing much about it.\ \ I genuinely enjoyed the character development in Nick and how we got to see him change and embrace that he is different. He can't really blend in and do good that way. The ending of the story isn't meant to solve all of the issues that arises throughout but to show a realistic understanding of how using your privileges the wrong way can still be harmful. Nick had one foot in both worlds and you truly see how he changes as a character in the book with everything that happens.\ \ There are so many other themes done beautifully in the story, like chasing your legacy, building a relationship and finding who you are amongst it all, understanding your privileges and doing better and I think K.M. Fajardo did a beautiful job connecting them all while standing true to The Great Gatsby as a retelling.\ \ I think the only thing that would have made the book better for me is if we got a deeper dive into the Sci-Fi element of the book as I really wanted to know more about the mods and the way it all worked (being a diver...etc.). I appreciated that the author wrote about her struggles of getting a balance between her own author voice vs the original works voice in the book. I do think we can see this struggle a little bit throughout the story but K.M. Fajardo's voice is unique, lyrically beautiful and mysterious in just the right moments throughout Local Heavens and it was lovely to be able to read that.\ \ Thank you to the author, publisher and netgalley for the Arc copy in the exchange for my honest opinion.](https://cozysabie.binderybooks.com/item/g6wE1AjIibkyIYWaZXfY/)

Cyber-punk Sci-fi & The Great Gatsby Retelling: Local Heavens

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I’ve already had my first read of February (Kindred by Octavia Butler) and it does in fact blow all of these out of the water #booktok #readingwrapup #fantasybooks #romancebooks

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