I'm befuddled by this book. After reading it, reading other reviews and interviews with the author, and sleeping on it, I still don't know what to think. I guess that's a success in its own way. Dykette is definitely written for queer readers, but whereas some books like that are love letters to queer community, this one is more of a hate letter. But queers have the right to be as messy and obnoxious as straight literary writers, I guess?

This was such a complicated read for me! Dykette has a lot of things that I love and yet it still manages to fall flat. The characters were messy and complicated and it had all the potential to be fun, but their edges blurred together too much and I found myself getting confused about who was who. Clearly there's a parallel being drawn between certain characters and it's intentional, but it wasn't done with enough care for it to really show what the author was aiming for. Halfway through the book I still had to remind myself who Jesse and Jules were and what they each meant to Sasha, and that really left me wanting for characters that felt a little less nebulous and a little more solid. Parts of that worked really well--the hazy lines between being friends and being lovers really felt true to life in this! Overall though, I had a hard time connecting to any characters, and therefore had a difficult time keeping my attention on this book.

The writing is sharp and clever, and that was what kept me going through this book. Jenny Fran Davis does have a gift for creating tension, especially in the pivotal scenes at the climax of this book. My attention was absolutely held then, and though that whole performance scene was a difficult read, I couldn't look away. The last third of this book is far and away the strongest part, and that's what redeemed the slog of the early sections for me.

It's hard to say who to recommend this to. Do you love messy lesbian drama, meandering character studies, and some kinky nonsense between semi-friends? Maybe this one's for you!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy for review!

I had virtually no idea what was actually going on for most of this book but I still enjoyed it. I really liked the narrative voice. This book felt like something I would've been asked to read in my queer studies class, in the way that it was equally confusing and enjoyable.

This one is written for a very specific audience that does not happen to be me. I enjoy an unlikeable character, but I found so little to latch onto here. I am DNFing but I think mostly because I was simply not the target audience.

This wasn’t for me. I didn’t love the characters and I thought some of the things that happened were kinda weird. Someone may love this and I was really excited for it but I just wasn’t able to connect.

Fun, sharp voice for a modern book on queerness and relationships.

That being said, I typically love books based on vibes, but this was a bit loose in plot and heavy handed on the style. It almost ended up feeling like a caricature of queerness — which I can appreciate, but it kind of fell apart for me by the end and made me wonder what it was all for. I would have liked a deeper connection to the characters even amidst the absurdity and chaos!

Overall a unique style and wild read for fans of Melissa Broder.

This one was…a journey. Still not entirely sure what to make of it, as it was a million things at once. Boiled down, I think it was a good examination of performative actions and how that influences/ impacts people’s perception of themselves and of others.

We read this novel through Sasha’s eyes, and quickly understand the dynamics of her own relationship and her understanding of the relationships gif the other couples staying at the upstate home where the story is set. Sasha’s enemy is Darcy, an influencer who Sasha feels is laying everything on a little too thick. But what Sasha dislikes in Darcy is what made them similar to me. And after awhile, that was a bit tiring. Ultimately, I wished there was more character development for Sasha but I was happy to read a queer novel that was unapologetically queer. Happy Pride Month!!

Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt for the ARC!

An incredibly funny and poignant queer novel. It had me laughing out loud from the first page and really solidified how much I truly love to see queerness in books.

i don’t even know where to begin with this one. this was quite the trip of a novel and almost everything was so entirely unexpected. i’ve never read anything like it and i’m definitely going to be thinking about this book for a long time.

This is a DNF for me.

It’s got that Melissa Broder absurdity that I love but absolutely no drive behind the plot. I have never once said this in my life but this book is too heavy on vibes.

This feels like reading the dream journal of someone with adhd who took a really great edible. Which is certainly a vibe just not *my* vibe. It kinda felt like I dropped acid and went to see an uncanny version of the Barbie movie. Which, again, IS a selling point. I’m so conflicted on this DNF because I desperately want to be cool enough to get it.

You know how it feels to walk into a place and instantly know you’re not cool enough to be there? That’s how I felt reading it and I’m a Leo, I can’t handle feeling like a loser. So, alas, it’s just not for me.

This just wasn't the book for me.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review!!

Enjoyable, great pacing, exciting settings kept me hooked. Fun novel that will be the perfect to lose yourself in. Thank you Net Galley for ARC in exchange for my honest opinion

I really wish I didn't understand so many of the references in this, lmao. An interesting modern look at dykes, butch-femme dynamics, and the feelings of jealousy and desire that can comingle in these spaces. I did consider DNF'ing because of the characters and wouldn't have minded tighter pacing.

Starting off pride month with a review of this queer drama filled with pop culture references. It’s messy, it’s absurd. This book was something. I appreciate the raw queerness of it — definitely would confuse and possibly bewilder someone who was not a part or adjacent to the queer community (sufficient research might need to supplement the read, but don’t let that discourage you!). 3 lesbian couples travel upstate for an end-of-the-year getaway, and each character feels quite distinctive. Jules and Miranda, the elder gay butch/femme power couple, whose home is the scene for our action and who presides over the chaos running free in the home. Sasha, our protagonist, and her partner Jesse. Lastly, Darcy and Lou — our non-monogamous nonbinary and insta femme couple— youngest and certainly most free (using that term loosely).

The character study for the first 2/3 of the novel is interesting. These characters are plagued by dissatisfaction, insecurity, desire, and jealousy. Their complex relationships, Sasha’s one-sided jealousy, anger, and fear of Darcy, our new hot femme on the scene, made for compelling exposition but lacked payoff for me. The last third of the novel lost me, and we fizzled out regarding character development and plot. This last section is ignited by a pornographic torture scene, so not for the faint of heart, and honestly began my disengagement with the book. The book seemed to struggle in its attachment to the author’s essay, High Femme Camp Antics. It took some moments right from that work, as well as sometimes stifling itself with gender theory and the musings of someone doing graduate work in gender studies.

As a lesbian who doesn’t know many other lesbians, I loved reading a book about so many lesbians and queer people that was so grounded in the work. An interesting book. Definitely check it out.

A 2.5 rounded up.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC.

I'm probably one of the readers who went into this book knowing what would await me. I've been around this kind of white femme my whole adult life. Some of them are wonderful. Others are like Sasha, the main character of Dykette.

Sasha is, if you've read the author's prior work, pretty obviously a self-insert. Same dog, same opinions, same behavior by her own admission. There are other characters who are also avatars. Sasha's primary rival, Darcy, is unmistakably a spin on a certain Brooklyn it-girl. Jules is nakedly Rachel Maddow.

But male authors do autofiction all the time and no one says a word. This is not my problem with the book, though it sometimes read like the internal argument one has with their imaginary enemy. It often read like practice for a conversation the author would like to have in person, or a rebuttal forgotten in the heat of the moment.

Despite this, I am fond of Davis' writing style. The book was an easy, beachy kind of read even though it's set between Christmas and New Year's Day. I found some scenes genuinely impactful, the one at the upstate thrift store for instance.

So let's get into why it's a 2.5 for me.

The book is beautifully written, but has very little to say. It builds itself up as some modern take on white butch/femme dynamics. It cannot accomplish this because the butches in the book, two of them trans, are marginalized by the text itself.

And look, I'm hard to shock with queer books, but implying your trans partner looks like a sex offender not once but TWICE in a book? That is actually a major, and pretty transphobic departure from butch/femme literature thus far.

I don't care if Sasha is a bad person, although of course she is a bad person. That's not enough to ruin a book for me. But if this is what a loving homage to butches, particularly transmasculine ones, looks like in 2023, then I am sorry for the mascs because this ain't it.

Of course the racial dynamics were shitty, but I didn't come to this book expecting a nuanced conversation about American racial dynamics.

The lone femme of color gets lost in the sauce of the book. Her threads are never finished. Why is she being flamed online? We never learn. What's wrong with her body, something we get hints about? We never learn.

She gets absorbed as a mommy figure for Sasha and her far cooler rival. Which would be fine if she had any independence or agency at all that wasn't literally a sexual performance for the white characters in the book.

Even that I could have let go, having read JFD's other work and other works of the same ilk, were it not for the book's insistence on how groundbreaking and profound the narrator's internal life was. She truly writes, as does Davis, as if this work is the second coming of A Restricted Country or Stone Butch Blues. It's not.

Even the lane that is Dykette's birthright, that of Maggie Nelson and Michelle Tea-esque queer or queered femme writing, isn't improved by this addition to the genre.

It is an upper middle class lesbian sex romp that masks its own uncertainty about identity in grand proclamations and casual transphobia, while making the case for being terrible as an inherent part of some "modern" rich white cis femme identity.

Thank you to Macmillan and NetGalley for the eARC of <i>Dykette</i>. All opinions are my own.

I really don't know how to explain <i>Dykette</i>. To say it will only land with a queer audience sounds rude and gatekeeping-ish, but I think it's just a matter of fact that most of the drama in this book, which is queer to the point of performative satire, can only be truly and deeply understood by a queer audience.

Sasha and Jesse are two young dykes—and although Jesse is consistently referred to as Sasha's boyfriend, his gender identity is never fully explained. They find themselves invited to the country home of two semi-famous lesbians, one from the news media (not-so-subtly Rachel Maddow-esque) and one a psychologist famous for her podcast, Jules and Miranda. Add to this Jesse's friend Lou and their partner Darcy, a social media star, and let the queer drama begin.

Sasha seems like a jealous hanger-onner for most of this book—excited by yet contemptuous of others' fame and her proximity to it, jealous when people besides her get attention, and insecure about her bonafides as a queer person (hence her naming herself a "dykette," for she is not yet a full-fledged dyke). Her only true companion seems to be her dog, a constant presence,

Truly, pretty much every character in this book is rather unlikable. I'm not sure what Davis is trying to say about queerness: that at its core, it's all about insecurity? That it's only valid when it exists as a performance for other people to consume? Or that all queer people are dysfunctional because of misogyny and homophobia (societal and internalized). At any rate, there wasn't much I found funny about this book, although it's lauded for its comedic social commentary. I have to assume this book was written with a great, heaping dash of irony on Davis's part, and if you can read it as just that—a text which skewers the hyper-sexual, social media servitude, attention-getting antic stereotypes of gay culture—then sit back and enjoy the show.

This novel was a fun and gruesome exploration of a niche of queer culture and I loved it. It was refreshing to read a book that felt like it was made for queer readers. It is obvious that the author was not burdened with the need to be universally appealing or accessible to a straight audience and I wish that were the case more often. The exploration of both gender and generational divides felt both warm and nuanced. And while there were a lot of facets of this book that were intentionally uncomfortable the light prose made me revel in the ill-ease. The performance art was genuinely shocking, Miranda’s mysterious canceling was a hanging knife, and the Darcy/Sasha dynamic was horrifying (the grandfather comment in particular). However, all of the shock and discomfort felt gratifying and exuberant. Did I like these characters and applaud their choices? Absolutely not. But I did feel seen. To be fair I did performatively cry in a Prius while wearing a stupid outfit, in front of my ex just a few weeks ago so I might be biased.

Thank you net galley!

This is where I say, “It isn’t the book, it’s me”. It’s not necessarily Dykette or author Jenny Fran Davis’ fault in any way that I find myself rating this book so poorly. As a matter of fact, It’s likely Jenny Fran Davis’ talent as a storyteller that kept me hanging on just enough to even finish this book, because I almost DNFd it more than once.

Before anyone tries to burn me in effigy, please let me explain.

When I requested to read this book I was very excited to read it, because of the blurb. That’s part of the problem: I feel for the blurb. The blurb isn’t a lie, but it certainly plays down certain aspects of the novel and exaggerates others. I knew we were getting into a book about queer couples and that the book took place at the upstate New York house of two lesbians. I didn’t know this book was going to be deeply steeped in dyke and butch discourse and terminology, none of which I understood. Yes, I realize that’s a “me” problem. The blurb also makes this book sound much more seductive and salacious than it actually felt to me, and it greatly exaggerates Sasha’s role toward the end of the book. I really feel robbed of what I thought I was getting.

I realize a lot of this book “not being for me” is due to my passing privilege. I am a proudly open and out polyamorous bisexual, but I’m cisgendered in the day to day and very femme when I go out at night. While I’ve known dykes, butch lesbians, other femmes, and am related to other members of the queer community, I don’t know lesbian or dyke culture well enough to say that I could pick up on half of the terms, references, or importance of the currents of discourse the characters in the story were having. There was no room for me to feel anything but confused or exasperated for the vast majority of the book: Whether it was about how these people treat one another or it was about pop culture references I was probably too busy raising my kids at the time they happened to understand.

I did enjoy Davis’ writing style. She does have a keen eye for satire and barbed wit. While I may not have enjoyed some of the more visceral and colorful descriptions Davis used in this book there’s no denying they are employed to great effect.

I feel a bit embarrassed for being a member of the queer community and yet not knowing a thing about a corner of it. My ex-spouse is transgender and pansexual, so I’ve educated myself pretty damn solidly on those topics so I can support her in her new life. My older kid is gender fluid and bisexual and is still trying to decide which pronoun fits best or if they all fit just fine. My younger son is asexual, and if he’s happy then that’s all I want. Yet I picked up a queer lit book and found myself completely perplexed.

I don’t regret reading the book at all. I just wish I could say I knew what was going on in it. But that’s on me and my own ignorance–not the book.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. Owing to personal policy regarding book reviews three stars or lower, this review will not appear on any bookseller or social media website.

File Under: Just Not For Me/Lesbian Romance/LGBTQ Fiction/LGBTQ Romance/Literary Fiction/OwnVoices/Women’s Fiction

Thank you to NetGalley and Jenny Fran Davis for giving me a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
*Cue Stefan from Weekend Update voice: “This book has everything: sluts, bimbos, butches, white queers, and an adorable pug named after Fashion Icon Extraordinaire Vivienne Westwood.”*
i love how deeply ingrained this book is in 21st century niche topics and queer culture, making it nearly impossible to understand from outside the realm of queer zilennials. this book is the most dramatic thing i’ve ever read, and i don’t think i’ll ever read anything like it ever again. it’s so unique and authentic, yet i don’t know if anyone actually behaves like this in real life, so i’m not sure how it’s authentic but i feel in my heart that it is. i would recommend to all my queers out there who feel like their lives are a mess as an offering of “it could be worse, this could be you”

Dykette by Jenny Fran Davis was a miss for me personally - I'm sure many readers will enjoy and connect with this one but I found it to be honestly confusing and hard to follow. Perhaps that is the point?

Thank you to Netgalley and Henry Holt & Company for the ARC. Dykette is out now!