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The Fall That Saved Us
Tamara Jerée
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Cassiel has given up the family tradition of demon hunting, leaving behind her sacred angelic duty and fated sword. What she can't leave behind are the scars. To cope, she spends her days immersed in work, pouring all her attention into New Haven Books, her small bookstore and anchor in the new world she's carved for herself.
But the past hasn't let go of Cassiel yet. When a succubus named Avitue arrives to claim her angel-touched soul, Cassiel's old hunter instincts flare, forcing her to choose between old knowledge and her truth. What should be a fatal seduction becomes a bargain neither woman expects. As they grow closer, Avitue is surprised to find her own pain reflected in Cassiel, a nephilim deemed fallen by her own family's standards.
By choosing trust, they reveal the lies that bind them. Falling for each other begins a path towards healing. But exorcising the effects of trauma is harder than naming it, and to explore the unfettered possibility Avitue represents, Cassiel must find a way to reclaim and redefine her angelic heritage.
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Posts about this title from Wanderland Reads
Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Mar 16
[Sapphic Speculative Fiction Expands the Imagination\ \ Many people approach queer romance through familiar frameworks. Modern settings. Recognizable social rules. Families that resemble the structures most of us grew up around. I wrote about this a week or two ago, about looking beyond contemporary romance for great sapphic stories.\ \ Those stories matter. They reflect lived experience and present-day struggles.\ \ Yet some of the most thought-provoking sapphic stories appear in places where the rules look completely different.\ \ Speculative fiction offers writers a simple but radical tool. The ability to ask what happens when the world operates under different assumptions?\ \ What happens when gender does not function the way our societies expect?\ \ What happens when colonial hierarchies collapse or never existed in the first place?\ \ What happens when family and community follow different structures?\ \ Sapphic speculative fiction thrives in these questions.\ \ What counts as speculative fiction?\ \ Speculative fiction serves as an umbrella term for stories that imagine worlds different from our own.\ \ Fantasy explores magic, mythology, and alternate societies.\ \ Science fiction looks at future technology, space exploration, and evolving social systems.\ \ Alternate history reimagines historical timelines.\ \ Dystopian and utopian fiction examine political systems taken to extreme outcomes.\ \ Magical realism blends ordinary life with elements that challenge reality.\ \ All of these genres share a common feature. They build worlds where the assumptions we treat as natural begin to shift.\ \ When those foundations move, storytelling changes.\ \ Reimagining gender systems\ \ Many speculative worlds question the rigid gender frameworks common in contemporary culture.\ \ Some settings include fluid understandings of gender. Others remove the strict gender hierarchy. Some societies organize identity through entirely different categories.\ \ When gender works differently, relationships evolve as well.\ \ Characters express attraction without the scripts that dominate many romance narratives. Partnerships develop around compatibility, trust, or shared goals rather than predetermined roles.\ \ For readers, this shift opens new ways of thinking about identity and connection.\ \ Challenging colonial power structures\ \ Speculative fiction often explores empire, conquest, and resistance.\ \ Many worlds center characters fighting against oppressive systems or rebuilding communities after political collapse. Some stories draw inspiration from Indigenous traditions or non-Western perspectives to imagine societies structured around different values.\ \ Within these settings, sapphic characters frequently appear as leaders, rebels, scholars, or explorers. Their relationships unfold inside larger struggles over power, survival, and cultural memory.\ \ Love does not exist in isolation. It grows alongside questions about justice, resistance, and the future of entire communities.\ \ Rethinking family and community\ \ Another striking feature of speculative fiction involves how stories approach family.\ \ The nuclear family model rarely stands as the only option. Characters often live within chosen families, cooperative communities, traveling crews, or political alliances.\ \ Romantic relationships exist inside these broader networks of care.\ \ Two people falling in love may also share responsibilities to their crew, their village, or their resistance movement. Partnership becomes part of a wider web of loyalty and support.\ \ For many readers, this structure feels both imaginative and deeply familiar.\ \ Common tropes in sapphic speculative fiction\ \ Speculative fiction combines romance with adventure and conflict. Certain narrative patterns recur.\ \ A princess guarded by a loyal warrior or knight who begins to question her duty.\ \ Rival soldiers from opposing factions are forced to work together.\ \ A scholar and a fighter navigating a dangerous quest.\ \ Political enemies are forming uneasy alliances during a rebellion.\ \ Explorers encounter unfamiliar worlds and build trust through survival.\ \ These tropes create tension, intimacy, and emotional growth while the larger story unfolds.\ \ Why these stories expand the imagination\ \ Speculative fiction does more than entertain. It shifts perspective.\ \ When readers step into worlds built on different assumptions, the systems shaping their own lives become visible. Gender roles, political hierarchies, and family structures reveal themselves as historical constructs rather than permanent truths.\ \ Sapphic speculative fiction takes this imaginative shift even further.\ \ Queer women appear not as side characters but as central figures in the story of the world itself. They lead revolutions. Build communities. Explore unknown territories. Fall in love while reshaping the societies around them.\ \ These stories ask readers to imagine something larger than representation.\ \ They ask us to imagine entirely different ways people live together.\ \ An invitation to explore\ \ If you have not spent time with sapphic speculative fiction, consider this an invitation.\ \ Explore fantasy worlds where magic reshapes power.\ \ Read science fiction that questions identity in future societies.\ \ Look for stories where love grows alongside resistance, exploration, and discovery.\ \ These books stretch the imagination in ways that linger long after the final page.\ \ I am especially interested in reading more sapphic speculative fiction this year.\ \ Which books expanded your worldview?\ \ Which stories stayed with you long after you finished them?\ \ Here is a list of books I've read and books on my TBR!\ \
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Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Nov 2 2025
[Romance novels have always been about hope. They promise emotional connection, communication, and repair. When you read inclusive love stories—especially sapphic ones—you’re not only witnessing romance, you’re watching healing in motion. These stories dismantle shame and rewrite what safety and intimacy can look like when everyone is allowed to belong.\ \ As a trauma therapist, I often use romance in bibliotherapy with clients who struggle with attachment wounds, shame, or fear of being seen. Inclusive romances provide more than escapism. They model what emotional safety looks like in relationships. They remind readers that love can be gentle, patient, and affirming.\ \ Love After Trauma: Stories That Make Space for Healing\ \ Healing isn’t linear, and neither are these stories. Sapphic romances that include therapy, self-reflection, and recovery arcs let readers see that healing and love can coexist.\ \ Books like Battle Scars by Meghan O’Brien or Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner show characters working through trauma without being defined by it. They fall in love while learning to regulate emotion, set boundaries, and communicate—skills that mirror therapeutic goals.\ \ When I recommend stories like these in session, it’s often to clients who believe they have to be “fully healed” before they can be loved. Reading characters who love and are loved through imperfection helps dismantle that belief.\ \ Bibliotherapy here isn’t about identifying with every plot point. It’s about seeing your nervous system reflected in another person’s healing arc. Clients often say, “If she can learn to trust again, maybe I can too.”\ \ Love looks different when it carries the weight of culture, race, or community expectation. Intersectional sapphic romances—like Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers or You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi—show the intersections of queerness, race, and belonging.\ \ These stories normalize complexity. They explore what it means to exist at multiple margins and still claim joy. For clients of color, especially queer women, reading these stories becomes an act of witnessing. They see themselves not as side characters but as the main story.\ \ In therapy, I might ask:\ \
- How does this character balance identity and love?\ \
- What cultural or familial expectations shape how she expresses desire?\ \
- Where does she give herself permission to want more?\ \ \ These reflections often open conversations about cultural trauma, code-switching, or the fear of losing belonging when stepping into authenticity.\ \ Pleasure and Power: Reclaiming your Body\ \ For trauma survivors, especially those who’ve experienced body-based harm, pleasure can feel inaccessible or unsafe. Reading stories where diverse bodies and sexualities are celebrated—like Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner or The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite—helps reconnect the idea of pleasure with safety and agency.\ \ When clients read scenes where consent is explicit and communication is mutual, they’re not just reading erotica. They’re watching a healthy model of attunement. The body learns through observation too.\ \ In bibliotherapy sessions, I ask clients to note:\ \
- How do these characters talk about consent?\ \
- What language makes desire feel safe?\ \
- How do power and vulnerability coexist in this story?\ \ \ The answers often become springboards for conversations about reclaiming autonomy and rebuilding trust in one’s body.\ \ Inclusive romance teaches something therapy alone can’t always provide: an emotional blueprint for connection. Readers internalize what safety feels like through story. They learn pacing, repair, and communication by seeing it modeled repeatedly and gently.\ \ When clients see love that looks like theirs—two women, a trans character, a fat protagonist, a disabled heroine—they see proof that their body and identity are worthy of tenderness. That experience, even in fiction, begins to rewire shame into self-compassion.\ \ In my work, I often frame reading as “emotional rehearsal.” When a client reads a story about vulnerability, their nervous system gets to practice what it might feel like to open up—without real-world risk. That safety-through-story is where processing begins.\ \ I don’t assign books like homework. I offer them as companions. We use them to reflect, name patterns, and imagine what healthy connection can look like. Sometimes a novel says what the client can’t yet articulate. That’s the quiet magic of bibliotherapy.\ \ Here is a non-comprehensive list of books I recommend\ \
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Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Aug 29 2025
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Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Apr 5 2025
Happy Sapphic Sunday fam, I heard someone say “sapphic books” and I was summoned. (Do I need my own version of a bat signal?)
Also just fyi sapphic is inclusive of trans women, genderqueer, genderfluid and nonbinary individuals.
So like yeah, do you need a recommendation bc I’ve got you!!!
#sapphicsunday #queerbookstagrammer #sapphicbookstagram #sapphicromance #bookrecommendations #bookrecs #bookishlove
35 books
Posts about this book from across Bindery
Queer as Books\ \ José\ \ • Apr 2
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\ \ Join for free or login](https://queerasbooks.binderybooks.com/item/QTcZ4nKAUBrY3bfu5MO1/)
Because sapphic stories deserve to be celebrated loudly and lovingly.
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Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Mar 16
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Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Nov 2 2025
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Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Oct 29 2025
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scents and memories go hand in hand, so let’s create some immersive & memorable reading experiences together!!
📚 books mentioned: - Fate’s Bane by C.L. Clark (Sacred Santal from Cyklar) - The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson (Only Human from NOYZ) - The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez (Vanilla Blackberry from PHLUR) - The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Blond Musk from Ellis Brooklyn) - The Fall That Saved Us by Tamara Jerée (Kama Noir from Embarouge / Bellavita)
👗💄: - eyeshadow is Sparklestiks and single shadows from Half Magic - sweater was from a vintage street fair in Italy so I can’t help ya there! - (also if you have a question about my makeup or something i’m wearing, most of it is curated in my shopmy!)
thank you to Tor Books and Tordotcom for the gifted books!
#booksandscents #fantasybooks #perfumereviews #fragrancerecs #romancebooks #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #diversebookstagram #nycbookstagram #bookstagram #TorPartner #torbooks #cyklar #noyz #phlur #ellisbrooklyn #bellavita @torbooks @tordotcompub @delreybooks @cyklarofficial @noyz_official @phlur @ellisbrooklyn @bellavita.official @halfmagicbeauty
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Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Aug 29 2025
\ \ Join for free or login](https://wanderlandreads.binderybooks.com/item/H1ukB9Z2KB9J35FnnA7R/)
Tackling Internalized Shame: How to Reclaim Your Body and Desire
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Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Aug 23 2025
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who’s your greek godly parent? DEMIGOD BOOK RECS (PART 2)!
who’s your greek godly parent?
DEMIGOD BOOK RECS (PART 2)!
📚 books mentioned: - The Fall That Saved Us by Tamara Jerée - The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova - The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid
👗💄: - rainbow eyeshadow using the Mírame palette from Aora México @aoramakeup - dress is from @anthropologie (Celandine), rented from @nuuly - (also if you have a question about my makeup or something i’m wearing, most of it is curated in my shopmy!)
#greekgodlyparent #demigod #percyjackson #bookrecs #fantasybooks #magicalrealismbooks #romancebooks #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #diversebookstagram #nycbookstagram #bookstagram @rainbowcratebookbox @atriabooks @harpervoyagerus @harpercollins
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Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Apr 5 2025
Happy Sapphic Sunday fam, I heard someone say “sapphic books” and I was summoned. (Do I need my own version of a bat signal?)
Also just fyi sapphic is inclusive of trans women, genderqueer, genderfluid and nonbinary individuals.
So like yeah, do you need a recommendation bc I’ve got you!!!
#sapphicsunday #queerbookstagrammer #sapphicbookstagram #sapphicromance #bookrecommendations #bookrecs #bookishlove
35 books
Queer as Books\ \ José\ \ • Nov 21 2024
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"The Falls That Saved Us" by Tamara Jerée: Video Review
1 book
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Oct 10 2024
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recommending books that charles rated 1 star
let's battle charles & celebrate queer lit together! (if you don't know who Charles is ... keep watching!)
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Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Aug 28 2024
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🍁🫣 🎃 two sets of fall book recs for two sets of fall book vibes!
my delightfully spooky bunnicula shirt was gifted from out of print!
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Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Aug 16 2024
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okay, i gave you the INTENSE horror reads. now it’s time for some chiller vibes! some cozy (or at least cozier) book recs!
📚 books mentioned: - The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth - She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa - The Fall That Saved Us Tamara Jerée
#fallbooks #magicbooks #cozybooks #cozyfantasy #cozybookrecs #nycinfluencers #bookstagram @titanbooks @atriabooks @water_sign_books
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Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Mar 31 2024
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which crisis are you dropping into this time? so many dangers … so many choices. (choose your book crisis part four!)
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