This is a novella that focuses a lot more on character than on world-building, which was left kind of vague. I liked Esther's journey to finding inner strength, learning to question what she's been told/indoctrinated to believe, and discovering that she's not alone in the world or 'bad' for wanting something else other than what's been expected of her.

I do think the romance should have been left out of this one-- especially with Beatriz's death right at the beginning, it felt way too fast.

I'm definitely interested enough to read any future works set in this world that Sarah Gailey writes!

"[...] there was a wound in her voice deeper than a bullet could travel. "Just because he needed killing doesn't mean I can sleep easy."

The great thing about Sarah Gailey is that every time I read one of their books, I know there will be amazing representation of queer and non-white characters. That doesn't stop with Upright Women Wanted. Basically, this is about anti-fascist, rebellious, queer women and non-binary people fighting back against an unjust society. Basically, it's everything I want in a novel. I only wish it was a little more fleshed out in certain spaces, especially regarding Esther's grief and romance. But ultimately, a great read from an amazing author.

This actually leans on a 3.5, but I rounded up to a 4.

Full disclosure, scifi/fantasy novellas are not my go to because often (at least in my opinion) world building is done through info dumps or just completely glossed over. With that out of the way, on to my review.

On the surface Upright Women Wanted ticked a lot of my boxes. Librarians - check; badass women - check; and horses - check. Growing up I used to watch westerns with my Dad, all the time. But as I got older I started to shy away from them because I prefer magic to guns. However, as stated above this story had a lot of my interests so I jumped in.

I really enjoyed the supporting characters in this story, in particular Amity. She was such a great character and I would love to read more about her in the future. The main character Esther was kind of annoying, but I think that was a side effect of her naivete and being dumped into a new world outside of the one she grew up in. Cye was probably the only character I disliked, I felt like they were one-dimensional and they often felt cliche. I really wanted to like them and the growing relationship between them and Esther, but their tsundere personality was too much.

I did enjoy the story and I'm really intrigued by the dystopian setting and I would love to see more about it...but from Amity's perspective. Have I mentioned how much I liked her? Yes? Okay.

3.5 stars- This is a high concept SF that mostly delivers on its premise and is, even more importantly, fun. Picture it: ye dystopia future in The West. We've got a plucky band of Librarians who are ostensibly a part of the State's institutional arm meant to reinforce a regressive social order, but we quickly learn (along with our point of view character) that this band is more than it seems. I loved the thematic content of this, and much prefer this version of those themes over its predecessor, The Handmaid's Tale. However, I think the brevity of the book kept it from being fully fleshed out so it wasn't 100% successful for me. That said, more than anything, this is a fun version of SF Western and I really enjoyed the romance that budded over the course of the story. Would read more in this world for sure

A too short story set in a dystopian world in the Wild West with gun toting lesbian librarians, bad men and escaping wants insurectionists. More please!

I have loved all of Sarah Gailey's books up to this point, and this wonderful novella did not disappoint. It tells the story of the Librarians; a travelling band of women who are tasked with delivering 'approved material' to the masses.

The Positives - Gailey has a great tone to their writing and it is demonstrated here in spades. I love the way they incorporate gender and sexual diversity into the plot seamlessly, highlighting the issues integral to the plot. As always, the characters here are fantastically drawn and nuanced, with believable motivations and authentic behaviours.

The Negatives - The plot is a little bit generic, which is a shame, because the world is really interesting. It would be great to see a full length novel in this setting.

Overall, I flew through this and really enjoyed the experience - can't wait to see what Gailey comes up with next.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Upright Women Wanted is a thoughtful, provocative work. Sometimes poignant, often wryly, grimly funny, and always incisive, cutting at the heart of the way we see ourselves, the way society shapes us, and the capacity of people to re-imagine themselves. It really is all those things. And they help make it a great book. What also makes it a great book, is it being a dystopian western, where gender-queer spies and six-shooter-toting revolutionaries trickle around the edges of a nation at war. It’s a story which isn’t afraid to grab your attention by kicking arse, and uses the moments when you’re looking to draw breath as an opportunity to ask the bigger questions.

What I’m saying is, this one was a lot of fun to read.

In a sense, the world is a familiar one. You can see the badlands, the cracked gravel trails that a horse-drawn covered wagon crunches down. The sweeping vista of the big sky. We know the big hats, the sheriff’s stars. The lonely, intimate majesty of a campfire shared with travelling companions new and old, airing old wounds and showing older scars. And at the same time, there’s something else. There are sweat-shop factories turning out microcircuitry for drones. There’s diesel fuel going to military convoys rumbling toward a seemingly endless war. There’s fatigue, and a sort of quietly poisonous patriotism. There’s hyper-masculinity, a sense of old horrors brought back out into the night, of women (and every other oppressed group) being dragged back into their ancient chains, in a society which is unable and unwilling to understand the convulsions that wrack it within and without.

It’s a world where you can feel the dust in the back of your throat, and see the hugely waving national flags under the scorching sun. Where you can taste fear, and trace the oily scent of power back to men with money, and men with guns.

Esther is our window into this world. A stowaway. A young woman who wants to get as far away from her town as she can. A young woman who is no longer sure who she is, or what she wants to be. A young woman living in the heart of a trauma, used to the ways of a world which demands much from her, a world which is willing to make sure she conforms to it. But Esther is more than the will of a totalitarian state acting on her. She is her self. And even as the story opens, we can see that Esther has grit, has will, has the fire and energy to become something else. To live a story that isn’t the one expected.

I have a lot of time for Esther, who doesn’t know much about the world at large, but knows how to cook. Who isn’t sure whether stories she’s heard are true or not, but is willing to learn. Who doesn’t know much about travelling backroads, or sedition, or revolution, but knows a good person, and tries hard to be one. Esther is a heroine whose discomfort, whose discoveries, we feel alongside her. We can see her struggle, see her rise up in the face of adversity, and cheer her on.

In this she’s aided by a delightful cast of cheerful reprobates. They’re by turns hopeful, furious, conflicted, loving – and all the other complexities of the human experience. Gailey can write characters. They come to life before our eyes, with their own quiet stories, with their own hurts, their own needs, their own fierce passions and quiet tragedies. These are people; as they flow into Esther’s life, as they build something for her, with her, and as the wagon keeps rumbling down the trail, we see them as living, breathing souls, who just happen to be in a book. The prose that gets us there is concise yet rich, with a certain poetry living in the quiet spaces between the words.

Which isn’t to say it isn’t also a bloody good story.

I’m always saying this, but, no spoilers here. The broad strokes are there: fleeing into the night. Sudden betrayal. Gunfights. Romance that carries a white hot heat, and also the gentle affection and compassion that makes the heat bearable. More gunfights. Self realisation. Revelation. Hard riding in a good cause. People being rather sarcastic, and very funny. A fight for truth, for justice, for something better. It’ll grab hold of you and not let go until it’s done, this story. It’s bloody wonderful. If you want to try something new, something a bit special, this is the story for you.

I bailed on this at 25% because the characters just didn't feel true to me. This felt like...i dunno, Deadwood fanfiction with the names all find-and-replaced. I'm rating it 3 stars because I did enjoy the concept and the setting, and the whole idea has a lot of promise. It should have been right up my alley; I just couldn't keep on with the exectution.

Upright Women Wanted continues Gailey’s tradition of writing excellent Western novellas threaded with incisive prose and extraordinary heart. With Esther and the Librarians, Gailey weaves a tale of identity, survival, and the importance of writing and telling stories about lives and loves of queer people in a time, not unlike our own, when so many people live in hiding, afraid of living their truths. While I do wish Gailey had expanded further on some world-building aspects throughout, I would gladly welcome any return to this world that they want to entertain and excitedly await whatever they write next.

I was so excited to read this when I first read the description - but alas! After the first couple of pages pulled me in, the rest of it kind of just dragged me along. I found the imagery to be a little too heavy-handed, and wanted a little bit more world building, explaining what the Librarian's do if they're not rogue, and how the rest of society functions on a daily basis. There was a lot left unsaid in this short book, some things which were easily recognizable because of their absence, and others which I still can't make out the shape of. I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't again.

I was interested in Upright Women Wanted because queer librarians but I wasn’t sure what to expect because this is my first book by Gailey. What I got was excellence!

Ester is running away from the town where she’s grown up and where her father is one of the leaders after the death of her friend and lover, Beatriz, at the hands/order of her father. She stows away in the supply wagon the Librarians, a group of women whose job is to distribute Approved Materials across the states. But there’s more to the Librarians than Ester realizes and what follows is an adventure and the realization that Ester isn’t wrong for her attraction, nor is she alone in her experiences.

The moment I knew this book was going to be perfection was meeting Cye. They use they pronouns but when they introduce themself to Ester they tell her “I’m <i>they</I> on the road and <I>she</I> in town.” Ester doesn’t understand, and Cye explains their reasoning, but I understood instantly. It’s not that they’re ever “she” but for safety and to fit into role as Librarian they sometimes have to misgender themself - and that kind of relatability had me screaming to all my friends that Cye exists and I love them and they’re mine to protect! Not that they need protection because they have a revolver and know how to use it!

You know when you read a queer book and you can just <I>tell</I> it’s by a queer author? This book feels like that. Ester does have some internalized stuff to work through because of compulsory heterosexuality and the society she’s known, but what is shown is less her struggling with her identity and more her seeing others like her living their best life and being Happy. This just felt so warm to read, even with the violence and stress of going against the accepted system.

I utterly enjoyed this story and really hope there’s going to be more to Ester and Cye’s story, because this is just the beginning of their adventures. I had so much fun reading this, could barely put it down, and felt so warm and welcome, at least among the Librarians. This is absolutely a hard recommend for anyone on the lookout for sapphic novella with Wild West feels and Librarians plus a romantic thread between a cis girl and a nonbinary person.

This novella gave a taste of a different world that blended past and future, though I wish it had been more than a taste. The premise was intriguing and I was invested in the story and felt the tension and mistrust between the characters. I only wish that it had felt like a fully-developed story, rather than the prologue to something much longer.

I think I would have been way happier if this had been a full fledged book. It was a very interesting premise and I could have spent days in this world but as it was it felt like it was lacking life and felt a little flat. The characters were all very interesting and seemed like fun time.

A really exceptional book from an exceptional author. If you're here for 'queer librarian spies fighting fascists' then you will not be disappointed. Esther is a queer woman looking to escape her fate by joining the librarians, traveling women who ostensibly deliver 'approved media' to smaller communities in a post civil decline west. Her journey as she learns who the librarians really are and learns who she is (and allowed to be) herself, feels so earnest and earned. I sometimes have a problem with novellas where the plot feels too unfinished or leaves me hanging--not here. The pace never drags, and somehow Gailey managed to pack a whole novel's worth of reversals and revelations into one novella.

This was such a good read! I work for a library and the passion for freedom (whether literary or otherwise) in this book came through beautifully. And it’s GAY. That made it even better! Honestly the description of “queer librarians in a space-western” was all I needed to request this book and it came through on all fronts. I totally recommend this book if you like westerns, librarians, and freedom.

I've said it a few times, but I'll say it again: this book was so good I posted about it on my FB, a thing I never actually bother to do.

If you want a searingly well written, queer, anti-fascist Western book about librarians, set in the not-so-distant dystopian US, I suggest you read this when it comes out. And if you DON'T want that, read it anyway.

If nothing else, the phrase "she had seen a man decide that she deserved to die, and she had killed him for it" sums up the feeling this book gives me. The world of Upright Women Wanted is brutal, especially for those who don't fit within a cisgender, white, heterosexual ideal of how a woman (or anyone who isn't a cis man, honestly) should be. Sometimes something needs to be done about that kind of cruelty.

Queer librarians bringing knowledge and resistance wherever they go. I am absolutely here for it. Fans of Gailey’s other novellas will be pleased with this new world and set of characters. This is a story as much about self acceptance and community building as it is about resisting an oppressive regime.

I loved everything about it. I may not be the target audience for Lesbian Librarians of the Post-Apocalyptic Purple Sage, but I felt right at home on the range with them. The only crime here is that it's not a full novel. Ironically, except for all the run-ins with desperados and the bad things that happen when you're in town, riding from place to place with a covered wagon full of books and a few of your best gal pals is a pretty utopian life in the middle of a pretty dystopian reality. Any varmint that doesn't like this book is lower than a sidewinder's belly.

I think it was a few months ago that I first saw the cover for this book, which while it looked interesting with an equally intriguing title - it was the blurb talking about “queer librarian spies on horseback in future American Southwest” that sealed the deal that I had to read this one. I never expected to get the ARC but I did request on a whim, so imagine my surprise when I got approved for it. And I just had the urge to read it immediately and it was so much fun.

It’s kinda difficult to describe much about the book without giving a lot away because it’s less than 200 pages. It has a very Wild West feel to it, with lots of traveling on horseback in the deserts of Arizona but I actually haven’t read any westerns, so I mostly got the vibe based on whatever movies I’ve watched. The world building is also kept very vague and we mostly get to know nothing about why this America seems to be divided, just that there seems to be a lot of dissemination of propaganda and conservatism on one side. Nevertheless, the plot is extremely fast paced and it was an adventure ride that didn’t let up for even a moment. It was hella fun with a lot of banter and cheeky dialogue, a couple of great action sequences and lots of female bonding.

The characters are definitely the X factor in this book. Esther is a little naive, who wants to become a librarian because she thinks she doesn’t deserve a good life as she is queer and just wants to do some good things in life before gets her bad ending. But she is extremely resourceful and observant and brave, and it was nice to see her discover through the course of the story that there are others like her and she is allowed to find happiness and purpose. Bet and Leda are a badass power couple and though we get few interactions with them, they were awesome. Cle is a great companion and right from the beginning, watching their developing dynamic with Esther was delightful and I thought the author captured the attraction between them very well. Amity was a total mystery for the most part but she also gave Esther some much needed advice, so I really couldn’t fault her slightly devious machinations.

To conclude, all I want to say is I had fun reading this book. If you like reading adventurous westerns and some lovely queer representation, then this charming little novella is perfect for you. It’ll delight you and make you think and also fill you with hope, just like it’s very hopeful ending (or beginning), full of promise of more adventures to come.

After her best friend and lover hangs for the crime of Possession of Unapproved Materials, Esther stows away on the Library Wagon passing through town. But when she wakes up to the barrel of the Head Librarian's revolver, she realizes her escape from danger has only led to violence and intrigue (and possibly, a romance). Gailey's return to uncharted American territory is less joyful than River of Teeth, but delivers an action-packed story of identity and resistance.

***Review based on an ARC provided by the publisher.