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Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jul 16
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jul 8
[Alright, y'all, we have another interview on our hands and this time with the inimitable Taylor Grothe! Taylor is a nonbinary author of both YA and adult horror, so I thought it would be great to chat with them about their upcoming release Lethal Kiss, which you should DEFINITELY BE READING when it releases October 20! Grab a Snickers and strap in! \ \
- What was the biggest inspiration for writing Lethal Kiss, which features perhaps the hottest revenant to ever exist in the history of literature? I might be biased, though.\ \ \ Hahaha thank you so much! I am very partial to Marcella myself!\ \ The seed of Lethal Kiss came from my experience at university and in academia generally. I am who I am (i.e. a glutton for punishment and an overachiever) I decided to design my own major and focus on fairytales and folklore—and ended up focusing on the intersection between Nordic saga tradition and continental Arthurian romance. I went to Duke University, a school with a very fine Medieval Renaissance department, and spent a lot of time in the Rare Book Room researching old texts and holding medieval manuscripts in my hands.\ \ And yet, even though I really loved the work I was doing, I often felt roundly dismissed by the white cis male academic establishment. There was a sense that what I was doing was “girly” or unserious in scope. I had a particularly bad experience with a professor who ended up as the MedRen department dean. So you could say that this book comes from both a place of passion in medieval studies as well as absolute spite. I wanted to critique academic culture through a queer, hyper-femme lens.\ \
- Cassie from Hollow was working through her autism diagnosis and how to be a person with it. Lacie seems to have a far better management system as an assistant professor. I know you've mentioned your own ASD before. When it comes to writing your characters, how do you determine how much of yourself you want to share in them?\ \ \ It’s so important to me to have my characters be neurodivergent in general and autistic in particular. I don’t know, really, if I could write my characters as neurotypical. But, to your question: characters often come to me fully realized, so it’s not really a conscious choice. Their ASD is absolutely nonnegotiable in edits—all my editors are on notice from the outset! And while I like to think my characters all have parts of me in them, they really are just themselves. We’re all in a Venn diagram with ASD at the center.\ \
- Did you model Marcella on any specific inspiration? I saw her as a perfect mashup of several of my favorite "mentor" characters, so I’m curious!\ \ \ Let me be so real with you: I was like, what is the hottest I can make a character and get away with it, without making her feel like a pastiche? Lethal Kiss is satirical and campy, but I wanted Marcella to feel like she was the strongest, most aggressive, zero bullshit character I could—at least on the surface. I was really keeping my eye on Jennifer’s Body though; I love Megan Fox’s unhinged portrayal of Jennifer.\ \
- So your official debut was Hollow, a YA horror novel featuring autistic rep as well as LGBTQIA+ rep! Which did you actually write first, Lethal Kiss or Hollow? If Hollow came first, did you know you wanted to break into the adult genre with horror as well?\ \ \ I wrote Hollow first! But it had long been my goal to have a career both in YA and adult books, and the markets are very different, especially in horror.\ \
- If you could distill Lethal Kiss down to one song, what would it be?\ \ \ An impossible question! I would say I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God by Halsey.\ \
- Monstrous Beautiful Things is coming up next for you from Peachtree Teen and I know The Mage and the Liar Knight is coming out next summer. Are there any other novels in the works that you'd like to mention?\ \ \ There are but I can only hint at one: my next Nightfire book! Think a grief horror in a haunted house plus mushrooms. It’s also a horror romance, but more literary.\ \ LITERARY HAUNTED HOUSE HORROR PLUS MUSHROOMS???? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP. Anyway, I sincerely hope you'll pick up all of Taylor book's because they are all amazing. I devoured Hollow in one sitting! Plus the rep in their books is incredible, and ahem that scene in Lethal Kiss...so good! I'm reading their next book Monstrous Beautiful Things on my Kindle now and y'all aren't ready! \ \ Till next time!\ \ Ryn](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/Sc34bUKn4LKMoitPvEQ2/)
3 books
3
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jul 1
Interview with Rachel Harrison!
1 book
1
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jun 30
[Hello, everyone! Happy New Release Tuesday, here are some releases we're excited for!\ \
- Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorne (THIS IS PERFECT FOR MURDERBOT FANS)\ \
- Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay (a master)\ \ \ Hope you're all doing well! \ \ Till next time!\ \ -Ryn](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/lSUDs2K7WaZcE7uVm2GE/)
1
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jun 23
[Hello, everyone! Happy New Release Tuesday! Sorry for the late post, but here are some new releases we're excited for!\ \
- The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus\ \
- Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh\ \ \ I haven't been reading as much (hello, slump!) but I did find a copy of Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle so I'm reading that and it feels like the slump buster I've been looking for! \ \ Till next time!\ \ -Ryn](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/VzrS8CXYAdVwDClsqy7A/)
3 books
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jun 16
[If you like horror, romance, and sapphics, then boy do I have the book for you. LETHAL KISS by Taylor Grothe (out October 20, 2026) is a horrormance with sapphic characters. It's also a monster romance, which was my first! I'm not generally a romance kinda person, but when you mix it with some horror and mystery, apparently it's right up my alley! Let's get into it.\ \ WHAT WORKED (for me!):\ \
- Characters\
\
- Marcella is DIVINE omg, step on me please\ \
- Lacie is adorable but also relatable\
- Setting\
\
- Dark academia? Hell yeah\
- Pacing\
\
- It didn't feel like it moved too fast or too slow!\
- Spice\
\
- Okay so generally smut in published books gives me the ick for some reason but this was soooooo good.\ \ WHAT DIDN'T WORK (for me!):\ \
- Honestly? The only thing that didn't really work for me was the way Marcella called Lacie "little lamb" all the time. That was it. (I'm not a big fan of cutesy nicknames like that, babe works just as well lol)\ \ \ Thank to Tor Nightfire for the e-ARC which I devoured in April on a business trip. This was just what I needed at that time and I loved every minute of it. I highly recommend for your spooky season line up and please consider ordering it from us! \ \ Till next time!](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/0qnbsvUXHF1BUqIE4x5i/)
REVIEW: Lethal Kiss by Taylor Grothe
1 book
1
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jun 9
[Hello, all! Happy New Release Tuesday! There are a few great releases today, so let's jump in!\ \
- Headlights by CJ Leede (Ryn's top read of the year so far!)\ \
- It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo (******)\ \
- Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer\ \
- The Other by Annie Neugebauer\ \
- The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher\ \ \ If you're in the Chicago area, Cynthia Pelayo will be in conversation tonight with Christina Henry about their two Peter Pan-inspired books at Bucket 'o' Blood at 6:30pm!\ \ Recent reads include:\ \
- It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo\ \
- Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle\ \
- He Will Have the World by David-Jack Fletcher\ \
- Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm\ \
- American Rapture by CJ Leede\ \
- Phoning Faust by Sophia Mutiara Nova\ \ \ I would recommend them all! My favorite recent read is a tie between It Came From Neverland and Our Cut of Salt, but I think they were all solid reads! Have you read any of the books mentioned above? If you want to pick them up, please use our Bookshop.org link!\ \ Till next time!\ \ -Ryn](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/ztjVvp48fCyFtFiswqYt/)
10 books
1
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jun 2
[Happy New Release Tuesday!\ \ Here are some new releases we are excited for today!\ \
- Phoning Faust by Sophia Mutiara Nova (***)\ \
- Hunger & Thirst by Claire Fuller\ \
- Marion by Leah Rowan\ \
- Muñeca by Cynthia Gómez\ \
- Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim\ \ \ Phoning Faust was HEARTBREAKING and I recommend it! Not to mention Sophia is a super sweet person. All the others are TBR for me, but I'm excited for them nonetheless!\ \ Have you read any of them? Please consider buying from our Bookshop.org shop!\ \ Till next time!\ \ -Ryn](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/emYhauiQaR46lfexEnO5/)
5 books
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Jun 1
[Everyone has a first Tingle. This was mine! I tried Bury Our Gays and wasn't in the right mindspace so I dnf'd it, and had initially dnf'd this too! But I came back and I'm glad I did! So let's talk about it.\ \ SUMMARY:\ \ Four years ago, an unthinkable disaster occurred. In what was later known as the Low-Probability Event, eight million people were killed in a single day, each of them dying in improbable, bizarre ways: strangled by balloon ropes, torn apart by exploding manhole covers, attacked by a chimpanzee wielding a typewriter. A day of freak accidents that proved anything is possible, no matter the odds. Luck is real now, and it's not always good.\ \ Vera, a former statistics and probability professor, lost everything that day, and she still struggles to make sense of the unbelievable catastrophe. To her, the LPE proved that the God of Order is dead and nothing matters anymore.\ \ When Special Agent Layne shows up on Vera’s doorstep, she learns he's investigating a suspiciously—and statistically impossibly—lucky casino. He needs her help to prove the casino’s success is connected to the deaths of millions, and it's Vera's last chance to make sense of a world that doesn’t.\ \ Because what's happening in Vegas isn't staying there, and she's the only thing that stands between the world and another deadly improbability.\ \ WHAT WORKED (for me!):\ \
- Characterization: I loved Vera's character. I also love her arc very much. I felt it was appropriate and well-structured!\ \
- Pace: This is a borderline thing for me on this one because I do feel like the pace lagged a bit in the middle, but overall the pacing was good!\ \
- Absurdity: LOVED IT. I need a movie version of this movie like stat.\ \ \ WHAT DIDN'T (for me!):\ \
- All the stats talk. I understand why, but dang. My focus drifted during those sections. I'm not a mathematician! \ \
- The length. I think it could have been a bit shorter to help with the pacing issues I mentioned above.\ \ \ BUY, BORROW, OR PASS?\ \ I think this is one you can BUY. It's short at like 267 pages, the cover is gorgeous, and it's just enough of a whirlwind of a book to keep you entertained. \ \ I'm eager to read his other two horror novels now, so I'm gonna be getting those as soon as I can. If you've read this one, what were your thoughts? If you haven't and you're looking for absurd horror (definitely different from humorous horror), then I recommend it! \ \ Till next time!\ \ -Ryn](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/dCjmBVDMUBph2vCM86hM/)
REVIEW: Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle
2 books
2
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • May 26
[Hello, everyone!\ \ Happy New Release Tuesday! Here are some new releases we are excited about this week!\ \
- Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir\ \
- Bone of My Bone by Johanna van Veen\ \
- Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer\ \
- The Rainshadow Orphans by Naomi Ishiguro\ \ \ Ryn has read Bone of My Bone and recommends it if you like historical horror that feels very Canterbury Tales-esque! \ \ Happy Tuesday, till next time!](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/a2Y8VWA1baFlXU0eq9TS/)
4 books
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • May 21
[While The Return is Rachel Harrison's debut, it was not the first book I read that she'd authored. That distinction belongs to So Thirsty. I have now read three of her books (including Play Nice) and am in the midst of reading her upcoming release Kiss Slay Replay so let's talk about what worked in her debut, what didn't, and her evolution as a writer.\ \ WHAT WORKED (for me anyway):\ \
- Tone\
\
- It was eerie, it was full of dread, and I ate it up. Think like the same sort of odd dread from Twin Peaks? Or the vibes of Haunting of Hill House (show, not book).\
- Setting\
\
- A rural bed and breakfast with creepy ass vibes? SIGN ME UP.\
- Horror elements\
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- Gross depictions of standard horror imagery, the came back wrong trope, and man I swear I could physically smell some of those scenes.\
- General plot\
\
- Came back wrong will always work for me as well as grief horror.\ \ WHAT DIDN'T (again, for me!):\ \
- Pacing\
\
- Most debuts struggle with pacing, so I can't really fault her here. It felt like it could have been tightened up in a few places, but wasn't a main detractor.\
- Characters\
\
- Her characters are GOD AWFUL people. Lord I would hate to be friends with ANY OF THEM. Communication is key to any friendship, folks, and this friendship had, like, none.\ \
- Elise as an FMC was extremely relatable though! I too worry about being the odd one out on a near-constant basis lol\ \ BUY, BORROW, OR PASS?\ \ BUY. I think this is worth having on your shelves if you're a horror fan like me. Not to mention Rachel Harrison's way of writing makes you blow straight through the pages. Her momentum is great! This was a strong debut, and if I'd read it first, I certainly would have added her to my list of authors to watch. As it is, So Thirsty solidified that spot almost instantaneously. Loved it!\ \ I think her evolution as a writer clearly shows; she found her niche with horror that has a humorous touch. Her debut doesn't have this, but you'll find her later novels do and it really works! \ \ Have you read anything by Rachel Harrison? What was your favorite, if you did? If you didn't, please consider clicking the book widgets and ordering from us!\ \ Till next time!](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/qgRHYtWBEsA4YgLfmrFW/)
REVIEW: The Return by Rachel Harrison
4 books
3
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • May 19
[Hello, everyone!\ \ Happy New Release Tuesday! Here are some releases we are excited for today!\ \
- The Dorians by Nick Cutter\ \
- Filth Eaters by Ito Romo\ \
- Startup Hell by Caitlin Rozakis\ \ \ Recent reads include: \ \
- Trad Wife by Sarah Langan\ \
- A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay (reread, still 10/10)\ \
- The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis\ \
- To Clutch a Razor by Veronica Roth\ \
- The Return by Rachel Harrison\ \ \ More to come on the recent reads!\ \ Till next time!](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/1bq2pt7maMigAeKQ0Vk7/)
7 books
2
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • May 12
[Hello, everyone!\ \ Happy New Release Tuesday! Here are some titles we're excited about that you should definitely check out:\ \
- Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey\ \
- Migrant Heart by Reyna Grande\ \
- Femme Feral by Sam Beckbessinger\ \
- Abyss by Nicholas Binge\ \
- We Dance Upon Demons by Vaishnavi Patel\ \
- Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda, translated by Sarah Booker\ \ \ Have you read any of these? If you haven't, consider ordering them from our Bookshop.org link! \ \ Till next time!\ \ -Ryn](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/eDEckfGrbYBTs3jgyrf9/)
6 books
1
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • May 11
So We Need to Talk About Veronica Roth...
10 books
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • May 7
1 book
2
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • May 7
1
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • May 5
[Hello, everyone! \ \ Here are some May 5th releases we are excited for!\ \
- Platform Decay (Murderbot #8) - Martha Wells (*)\ \
- The Girl With a Thousand Faces - Sunyi Dean\ \
- The Last Contract of Isako - Fonda Lee \ \
- One Leg on Earth - 'Pemi Aguda\ \ \ (\* means Ryn has read and recommends!)\ \ Other News:\ \
- We have our Penguin Random House account set up so soon we can start selling new books in our store! (At least from PRH and imprints)\ \
- Our website is back up and running, with listings to come online later this week!\ \
- Our Kickstarter is still going--we will be sharing posts on socials soon so please share away!\ \
- A merch reorder is going to happen in June with more stickers, both bookmark designs, and pride-themed stickers as well! Stay tuned.\ \ \ Thank you all for your support! Remember you can still order new books from us by using our Bookshop.org link! \ \ Till next time!](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/o5xESgDrLJoAQ6N5lxb2/)
4 books
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Apr 28
[Happy New Release Tuesday! Here are the new releases we're excited for today!\ \
- Molka by Monika Kim*\ \
- The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva**\ \
- Death Meets Cute by J. Penner**\ \
- A Murder Most Camp by Nicolas DiDimozio**\ \ \ (\* means Ryn has read an ARC and recommends, ** means this is a TBR book for Ryn!)\ \ What are you looking forward to picking up today? \ \ As a reminder, we have a Kickstarter! Please help us fund our brick-and-mortar location! \ \ Our website is also back up and running! I will be listing books for sale soon there, but you can also find us on Pangobooks! \ \ Thank you to everyone who entered our Golden Ticket giveaway, our winner has been announced and contacted! Stay tuned for more giveaways in the future! \ \ Till next time!](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/Wnenww6gw8UfSj42jRmq/)
4 books
1
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Apr 25
[It's Independent Bookstore Day and I know I'm late on getting this post out, but that's because I did a crawl to ten bookstores today with my friends! \ \ If you don't have a local store, please consider making us your home store on Bookshop.org and Libro.fm! \ \ Here are some books we recommend for today!\ \ Ryn:\ \
- Lethal Kiss by Taylor Grothe (Out October 20, 2026)\ \
- Seek the Traitor's Son by Veronica Roth (Out May 12, 2026)\ \
- Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (yes, we adore Star Wars in this house)\ \
- The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White\ \ \ Tori:\ \
- The Sluts by Dennis Cooper\ \
- Boy Parts by Eliza Clark\ \
- The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (this is Tori's favorite book of all time)](https://twostoriesbookshop.binderybooks.com/item/ypN5YJtIDHGVAhRcWsqw/)
7 books
2
Two Stories Bookshop\ \ Queer-Owned Shelves🌈\ \ • Apr 21
1