Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith is a low-key but enrapturing graphic novel about Nisha, Davene, Kim, and Cookie, a group of Black women with deep and caring friendships. Each story lovingly depicts their hair care rituals while also revealing the soulful mundanity of the processes they engage in to care for themselves and others. Wash Day Diaries is as much about the relationship between the beauty rituals of these women and … Continue reading Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith →
After three novels and a novella, you’d think I’d run out of new things to say about the Heroine Complex series, but the fourth book, Haunted Heroine, found new ways to surprise and delight me. This series involves a group of women, some with superpowers, who fight paranormal manifestations in San Francisco and who form a family. There’s Evie Tanaka, her sister Bea, Evie’s best friend Annie Chang AKA Aveda Jupiter, and trainer and bodyguard … Continue reading Haunted Heroine by Sarah Kuhn →
If you are pining for 1980s tribute fare like Stranger Things, and you love books that focus on friendships between women, and you can tolerate some gross content, then I highly recommend My Best Friend’s Exorcism. It is not a romance, but it does have a great, though platonic, love story between two teenage girls who battle occult forces in 1988. And yes, the paperback cover is a perfect facsimile of a beat-up VHS tape. … Continue reading My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix →
