Here we finally are after a few weeks of deciding how to write this review. For a debut novel by Paylor, i couldn’t ask for a more beautiful mesmerizing story but unfortunately the book just fell short. Don’t get me wrong this novel is definitely still at the top of my 2023 reads with a massive 4 stars.

The world building, beautiful. The characters, surprisingly well written developments. Love story, meh. Multi-POV in a chapter, no thanks. Folklore, unfortunately lacking.

Here we go. Lets start off with the fact that even if this book is fiction Paylor does a wonderful job on the history of Canada and World War II. Not only did he capture a sense of how people used to live but also how Queers /non-binary’s were portrayed by hiding who they are. Kit was named a “she” throwout the novel until around the ending when the author changed her pronounced to “they”, at first i thought nothing to it (only a error) but i came to realize it was intentional. Maybe I wish that Paylor took the opportunity to teach us on why this is important rather then skimming over it, or maybe thats how its supposed to be (do not question and just accept it).

The love triangle annoyed the heck out of me and found it almost unreasonable by the end of the book. I must give credit to the author for how the story ended, beautiful.

Multi-POV in a chapter while not knowing who is talking, nope not for me (i give it a 0 out of 10) let’s move on.

Here is why the book did not achieve 5 stars, the folklore. Unfortunately it just landed short for me like something was missing even if it’s a work of fiction and not fantasy, I was left with so many questions. I feel like the possibilities we’re endless to incorporate the magic especially we’re the cabin came to pass, like excuse me i have so many questions!

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my free copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

I loved this book from the start. Beautifully written story of love, loss and the things we don't say. My favorite book of the last year. Easy read, I enjoyed the characters. I felt like I was right there with them. I enjoyed reading a Canadian author.

I am always so excited to read a book set in my home country. And a romantic historical fiction, with fantasy/mythical elements and queer rep? Sign me up!

The story follows Rebekah, newly arrived to town, and her friendship with the McNair family, most notably siblings Landon, Kit and Jep. Quick side note - Jep has my whole heart. Told in the alternating POVs of Rebekah and Kit, we watch the characters come of age, go to war, make friends, fight for what they believe in, become parents, and so much more.

The Cure for Drowning is gorgeously written. Flowing, descriptive language that makes the settings come alive. I could visualize the McNair farm, the surrounding country side, because the scenes were so richly detailed. I had a harder time picturing some of the war scenes, especially those from Kit’s POV. It took me a while to get all the names of Kit’s squad straight in my head.

The start of the story is genius. High stakes right from the beginning, and I think it showcased the true love and devotion of a family, and siblings in particular. That all comes full circle at the end, with a satisfying conclusion to a fair bit of sibling rivalry.

I was a little disappointed with the magic/changeling aspect of the book. I love fantasy elements, but I don’t think it was used well here. I want to say it was under-utilized (go big or go home) because it didn’t add much to the story. My other thought is that Kit’s queer identity kind of gets explained away as a byproduct of the accident.

Overall I really enjoyed this debut book by Loghan Paylor, and will look forward to reading the author’s future works. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for providing the ARC of this book. This review is my honest and voluntary opinion..

The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor is a beautifully written coming-of-age romance and historical fiction novel set in Canada centering non-binary and trans characters spanning the years 1939 to ‘53. Most of the story takes place in the fictional town of Harrichford, a small farming community in Southern Ontario. When Kit McNair was ten, on a walk with her brothers, Landon and Jep, she fell through the ice and drowned. Her Irish Canadian mother is able to save her using Celtic magic but she is never the same. She is reckless, prefers boy’s clothes to dresses, and chafes at farm life. When the family of Dr Kromer, a German doctor, move to town from Montreal, both Kit and Landon fall in love with his daughter, Rebekah. She likes both but it is Kit who wins her heart while her parents encourage a match between her and Landon.

However, as the war approaches and anti-German sentiment grows, the family returns to Montreal and, after a fight with Landon, Kit leaves home. When war starts, Landon joins the navy, Rebekah becomes a signal clerk in Halifax, and Kit joins the Air Force under the name, Christopher. During leave in Halifax, Landon encounters Rebekah and the ensuing night together results in a pregnancy and her forced exit from her job.

After the war, Rebekah, unable to return to her home in Montreal moves in with the McNairs and eventually Kit and Landon also return at least for a while. But again events intervene and again the family is split up. Despite it all, though, the story ends on a satisfactory and happy note.

When I first saw The Cure for Drowning on Netgalley, I’m not sure what attracted me to the story. Although I don’t mind historical fiction, romance is my least favourite genre. Perhaps, in the end, it was the Canadian setting and author. Whatever the reason, I am so glad I did because I can honestly say I loved this book.

There's a lot going on in the story and it could have become overwhelming but it never does.it’s told from varying viewpoints, mainly Rebekah and Kit, and I found both of them very likable. There’s a touch of magical realism in the tale and a story about selkies runs throughout, told by different characters, each changing the story just a little to express their own feelings. The section that takes place during the war was fascinating , especially one section that combined the strafing of Kit’s plane with the pain of childbirth that had my eyes glued to the page and my heart racing.

Paylor has published short stories before but this is their debut novel and what an impressive debut it is. I can’t wait to see what they do in the future. But now I will end this review by repeating I loved this book, even the romance.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

The Cure for Drowning was the final book I read in 2023 and am I ever glad I ended the year with this beautiful novel!

A historical fiction set in WWII era Canada with a touch of magical realism, this LGBT love story is about finding yourself, love, and family in turbulent times and how to survive and ultimately thrive. The story follows Rebekah Kromer, a French-Canadian-German whose family must face the rising anti-German sentiment that preluded the start of WWII and Kit McNair, whose Irish immigrant family holds the magic that saves them after a drowning at age ten, living on a struggling farm in rural southern Ontario.

The novel switches between Kit and Rebekah's POVs as they slowly fall in love and deal with the fallout of WWII, of Kit's older brother's affections for Rebekah, and of Kit's finding themselves over the course of the war.

The prose is gorgeous, I sped through the novel in two sittings. Having grown up in the forests of rural Ontario, I could easily imagine the landscapes and felt like they were lovingly described.

I loved the touch of magical realism as a way for the McNair’s to come to terms (or at least just not be bothered) with Kit’s gender instead of the typical monstrous portrayals that seem to pervade literature/films/real life to demonize trans and non-binary people.

Congrats to Loghan Paylor on this incredible debut! I hope many people read this and feel loved and seen.

Thank you so much to Penguin Random House Canada for the eARC of this beautiful novel in exchange for an honest review

I want to first off thank Penguin Random House Canada for sending this ARC my way. I next have to thank the author for writing a book that got me thinking about Canada during WWII. So many books are in Europe. It was so nice to read from a new perspective. I had no idea about enemy aliens and the stigma around being Canadian but not.

Now to the story. I loved the multiple perspectives allowing the overall story to be so well fleshed out. There's one scene that is so gorgeously written between such an extreme dichotomy of war and new life. Overall, I enjoyed the book and it got me to read further as the authors note suggests. I love when I can enjoy a story and also learn.

Heartbreaking and brilliant.

A deeply moving sapphic/queer love story set against the backdrop of WW2, told from the point-of-view of two Canadians struggling to find a place in the world and finding solace in each other.
The prose in this book was vivid and engrossing and the subject matter was often frustrating and sad. This author has a talent for writing deeply descriptive passage, action and emotion without superfluous language or details.

The magical elements were sprinkled throughout and sometimes I wondered if they were truth, legend or it was an after affect of Kit’s almost drowning as a child. You will have to decide this for yourself, and I haven’t come to any conclusions of my own either. Perhaps Kit is a changeling descended from Selkies and there are fairies in the water, perhaps her oxygen deprived brain and imaginative mother merely convinced themselves of it. Regardless I found it fascinating.

One small note about the ending that I struggled with: it seemed very idealized, with Kit and Rebekah living an almost a heteronormative life, raising Rebekah’s daughter. I want to believe that the glossing over of society’s inevitable push back on this was intentional. After reading some of the marketing and author’s notes, I believe it was. But I was left wondering why Kit never really expressed their feelings on this when in their pov. I finally resigned myself to believing that Kit would present themselves to the world how they wished, abandoning anyone who may have known them differently, in order to find any form of happiness at this time in history. So in that, this likely was the only way Kit and Rebekah could have happiness. But it was left very much open to reader interpretation. So I really had to embrace the ambiguity

Don’t go into this thinking it’s a romance though, it’s not, it’s a story of struggle, survival and finally, hope.

Thank you to NetGalley for the copy and congratulations to Loghan Paylor for a brilliant debut novel.

This is Loghan Paylor’s debut novel and I think that they did an exceptional job of capturing the audience. Seeing as Paylor lives in Canada, it was only an expected (by me, at least) that the story takes place in the country, and for the most part, it did. I was overjoyed to read about Toronto and Montreal and its people during the war, but sceptical and slightly disappointed that Paylor chose to invent the town of Harrichford as well as other locations, though this is of course my personal opinion. In fact, they acknowledged that this book is a work of fiction with “shifted” timelines and blurred history in order to not “risk overwhelming the narrative with detail.”

The story follows Rebekah and her friendship with Landon, Kit (born Kathleen) and Jep. It is a love story (see: love triangle) that grows and matures over 20 years, prior to, during and post-WWII. It dives into family dynamics. gender identity, homophobia and transphobia, discrimination, motherhood and more. There is also the concept of magic and Celtic folklore sprinkled throughout.

I did find it a bit long, and at times confusing, especially as I did not truly understand the necessity of the magic / folklore in the story. I just think that it was an unnecessary addition, sadly. Also, I don’t care much for action-filled books, and it got too concentrated on the war towards the middle. Finally, I just wish that I got to know the characters better—it felt like their personalities were not deep enough.

Overall, I enjoyed this historical fiction, queer romance book as it was based in Canada, with characters who are not portrayed enough in literature. I do think that I would read Loghan Paylor’s future work.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Canada for a copy of an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars. This is a beautiful novel of WWII and a family’s experiences navigating farm life, love, and the war. In this world, fae are real and a trans non-binary character is more or less accepted as presented (and they/them pronouns are used). Very Canadian and very real-feeling despite the magical elements. (One gripe - Halifax doesn’t have a “bay”, it has a “basin” and looking out from Devil’s Battery at the harbour you would not be looking over the bay/basin. Just sayin.)

I received a free ARC from NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving an honest review

I really enjoyed reading a book where being trans is celebrated while being treated as normal. It brings hope to see this warm and loving story brought to life in a Canadian setting. Loved it! Great treatment of history and wonderful characters and plot.

4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Cure for drowning was a sweet queer romance about growing up and learning how to live as your true self. I really liked both of our main characters, Kit and Rebecka and was rooting for them. A lovely story full of twists and turns with a very satisfying ending.

I rarely pick up historical fiction, especially WW2 settings, so this was for me very refreshing. As a French Canadian myself, I really enjoyed the canadian historical setting and the touch of magic and folklore added.

Overall a very nice debut and I’m looking forward to more from this author!

(Thanks NetGalley and Random House Canada for providing this EArc)

Book review of The Cure For Drowning, by Loghan Paylor.

The novel follows a trajectory and intersection of Kit, her brother Langdon and Rebecca, the doctor’s daughter, from the late 1930s until after the Second World War. Kathleen was drowned when she was 10 years old, only to be revived by her mother, rehabilitated, but was never the same. Kit was anything but girlie and acted and dressed as a tomboy and later a man. The war kept people apart causing untold misfortune for many. Kit was wildly adventurous and at one with the land surrounding the farm.
I loved the story and the characters. The first third of the book is very idilic and nostalgically reminiscent of Anne of Green Gables or Dickinson, a love triangle, separate trajectories during the war, and then a thrilling conclusion.
Toronto, Halifax and other familiar locations were an exciting backdrop that weave throughout the book.
I could not put this book down once I started! A modern classic!
5 out of 5 stars!

What a beautiful, heart wrenching, and unique tale of love & heartbreak and all of the things in between. Loghan's debut novel is an incredible story and I look forward to seeing what else they have in store for their readers in the future.

I really enjoyed this story. Following the lives of Kit and Rebekah made this story what it was. It was beautifully written. I think everyone should read it.

Deftly weaving together Celtic mythology and historical fiction, war stories and queer awakenings, Loghan Paylor’s debut novel was beautifully immersive from start to finish.

Beginning in the late 1930s, with dual narratives from Kit McNair, a nonbinary teenager believed to be a changeling in their rural Canadian farming community, and Rebekah Kromer, an aristocratic German-French daughter of a doctor who moves to their small village, the first part of the book focuses on forbidden love and family expectations and the tensions of an escalating war climate.

After devastating events have impacted the McNair and Kromer families and the world at large, we follow Kit and Rebekah through their military service and beyond, through years of yearning and grief and the inevitable ways lives can change.

This book tore at my heartstrings, made me warm and joyful, and I lived each breathless moment along with the characters. While it is at its heart about complicated love and identity, there were so many layered themes and hidden meanings, and I truly think anyone could get sucked into the deep waters of the story. An absolute triumph of a first novel, and I can’t wait to see what Paylor writes next.

4.5 stars

Thank you to Random House Canada and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

<b>Emergence and Coming Out</b>
<i>Review of the upcoming Penguin Random House Canada paperback/audiobook/eBook (January 30, 2024) via the NetGalley Kindle ARC (downloaded December 11, 2023).</i>

I found <i>The Cure for Drowning</i> to be completely engrossing as a coming-of-age story, an endurance during war story, and as a survivors coming home story. It is told in the alternating voices of Katheen (Kit) McNair and Rebekah Kromer. In the years prior to World War 2, Kit is growing up in a farming community near Orangeville, Ontario with her older brother Landon and younger brother Jep. Coming from Montreal, Rebekah moves onto a neighbouring property when her father is hired as the local doctor. In her childhood, Kit survived a drowning incident after which her personality changed, turning her into somewhat of a tomboy (there is a small magic-realism element to her ‘resurrection’). A love triangle develops with Kit and Landon both falling in love with Rebekah. The looming World War and various incidents cause everything to break apart with Rebekah forced to move back to Montreal, for Kit to run away to a vagabond life and for Landon to go to war.

In further dramatic turns, Rebekah and Kit also join the Allied Armed Forces. Rebekah becomes a signals clerk and Kit becomes Christopher (through a rather neat trick which avoids an entry medical physical), a navigator in a bomber crew flying perilous missions over Germany. Landon is meanwhile a sailor in the North Atlantic. A passionate encounter occurs when Landon again meets Rebekah, which brings about her expulsion from military service. Those who survive will meet again after the war back in Orangeville where events take various shocking turns, but where love triumphs in the end in a very satisfying and poetic conclusion. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and look forward its official release and to further books from its author.

This is the first novel by author Loghan Paylor, who has previously published short fiction in magazines and online. They grew up in Ontario and later lived in Montreal, Quebec and currently live in Abbotsford, British Columbia.

My thanks to publisher Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this preview ARC, in exchange for which I provide this honest review.

(I read an ARC provided by the publisher on NetGalley.)

The promotional material for this book compares it to the work of both Alice Munro and Ann-Marie MacDonald: the former, I assume, because of the small-town Ontario mid-20th-century setting, and the latter for the thoroughgoing queerness of a story set in the past. However, the book lacks Munro's uncanny precision of both prose and character psychology as well as MacDonald's inspired, passionate evocation of both intellectual and emotional experience.

The promotional material also states that this is a "great Canadian novel." I think that's an insult to the work of actually great Canadian novelists like Dionne Brand, Thomas King, Margaret Laurence, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Marie-Claire Blais, Jane Rule, Margaret Atwood, even Robertson Davies and Mordechai Richler.

Then again, the email I got from the publisher nudging me to post my review misspelled their own author's name, so I guess standards are pretty low in general.

I am trying very hard not to write that kind of review where the reader performs how OUTRAGED they are by a BAD BOOK THAT IS BAD. That only serves the reviewer's ego and doesn't do anything constructive (or, frankly, very interesting).

But the fact is that this book is not very good. Its flaws are fundamental, from narrative point of view to sentence-level dullness, from voices that sound nothing like human beings to a screenplay-like flatness of scene and event, unleavened by interiority, reflection, or, really, much sense of consequences/effect.

Put broadly, this is a love story about Kit and Rebekah, who meet in 1939 when they're in their late teens. After drowning at ten years old and being resurrected by weird blood sacrifice, Kit is the middle child of a poor farming family while Rebekah is the pampered only daughter of a German émigré doctor and his French-Canadian socialite wife. Kit's older brother, Landon, overtly courts Rebekah while Kit does so covertly. Neither family evinces discomfort or awkwardness about such different class experiences mixing and socializing; indeed, there isn't much sense of these people existing in a larger world/society until it's plot-necessary. That's when sudden anti-German sentiment drives Rebekah's family back to Montreal, Kit runs away, and the war comes. During the war, Kit joins the RAF and Rebekah does intelligence work until she gets pregnant by Landon, who then disappears for five years. She eventually takes refuge with her daughter at the farm with Kit's parents. Then Kit comes home, too, then Landon, there is a feint at conflict, only everything ends up working out.

This book feels like a summary or LLM-generated model of queer Canadian literary fiction. It has Celtic folklore, queer identities, the historical past, &c., &c. But it doesn't have much at all in the way of substance. Those elements construct a simulacrum that seems like a novel, but the effect is shallow. All surface, no heart or juice. There are so many shortcomings, flaws, and problems here.

These issues might be broken down into those concerning characterization, narrative voice, and prose style; the role played by magic and fantasy; and, finally, gender identity and performance.

In his 2022 essay, "<a href="https://simonmcneil.com/2022/01/15/notes-on-squeecore/">Notes on Squeecore</a>," novelist and critic Simon McNeil describes this quality: there is so "little in the way of internality beyond a gesture ... then it’s reasonable to describe [it] as being composed mostly of surfaces across which action plays. Like a movie, or a TV show." Somehow despite the fact that the book is told in two first-person voices, this lack of interiority and preference for the visibly external predominate. Scenes tend to end with dramatic gestures, quips, or cliffhanger remarks, rather than follow through with depicting the fallout and consequence of such things. Instead, these are summarized later. For example, Kit has a tearjerker scene with a gay man in the RAF who wants to leave; the scene ends with Kit telling him "I have a plan", only to pick up a couple hours later, when Kit explains to the reader what the plan was. It would have been a lot more interesting to see the two of them work out the plan, debate whether it was a good idea, anything, but that's not how this book works. It's more interested in scene breaks than characters having room to breathe.

The characters simply aren't there. We don't come to know them as specific individuals; instead, they are placeholders for what the reader already assumes she knows about "pretty, well-off girl chafing under society's expectations" and "masc enby". The older brother, Landon, is a placeholder for all the bad things about male privilege (just as the sudden appearance of a squadron of Americans makes possible homophobia, previously never an issue). The mothers, too, perform various functions as the plot requires, occasionally supportive, then inexplicably full of rejection when it's time for angst. (And what happens with Rebekah's father? She never seems to miss him, or try to contact him, again.)

There's just no coherence to any element here. There are set-pieces — Kit riding their horse to beat the train, a mean anti-German mob setting upon Rebekah's family, a fight between Kit and Landon, an RAF prank involving a pig — which are interspersed with expository summaries of what the characters have been up to, but there isn't reflection, or change, or anything.

These are rudimentary sketches of people, told in highly digestible, very clear terms. There isn't any room left for nuance, or shadow, or complication. Perhaps ironically, one of the best examples I have for how thuddingly overt the characterization and style are is, textually, about nuance: <blockquote>"I don't expect you to understand what it was like. To you- Germans, Czechs--we are all one people, but the Führer... before he brought destruction to Britain, he destroyed us first."
I nodded. Everything I knew had been filtered through newspaper columns, radio broadcasts, speeches from politicians. It had seemed like such a cut-and-dried conflict. Germany was out to conquer the world and the Allies had to stop it, but of course the truth was more complicated.</blockquote>What is that truth? How is it complicated? Kit never says. It seems to be enough to gesture at the general fact that Things Are Complicated. (Even if that includes defeating <b>Hitler</b>. [There are Unfortunate Implications to this, combined with the emphasis on anti-German bigotry, especially when we consider what was being unleashed on Japanese-Canadians at home and European Jews and Roma at the same time.]) What is the temporal difference that the change in tenses is supposed to indicate? When was it that knowledge "had been filtered" versus the now of "the truth was more complicated": how and when did things change?

I don't think the book is interested in examining that level of psychology. Much as we don't know who Kit and Rebekah, let alone Landon, are before the war, we don't get to see how the war changes them. We are told it does, but the change isn't depicted.

What's more, the two-voice narration is a good idea that doesn't, in the end, accomplish anything, because Rebekah's voice is indistinguishable from Kit's. All the strengths of first-person narration, how it can bring a reader into close intimacy, or hold her at an intriguing remove, how it can communicate emotional states and changing thought patterns, all these are ignored.

The prose is exactly the same, whoever is speaking, composed most often of sentence after sentence structured like this: "Subject verbed an object comma another subject participling adverbily." The rhythm is thuddingly repetitive: <blockquote>The sun had tinted everything gold, the water flowing fast and clear a handspan from my feet. The shale was warm under my palms, the willows throwing blue-green shadows over the water. Rebekah waded back towards me, her skirt bunched in her hands. Her hair fell down her back, tangled from her explorations along the river. She came up the flat stone steps and sat next to me, leaving a trail of damp footprints. She leaned back on her hands, tilting her face up to the sky. I closed my eyes, the sun turning my eyelids a deep red.</blockquote> Once I noticed this sentence construction, I couldn't ignore it; it reaches an absurd apotheosis in a death scene, where we're told, "My father gave a great shudder and a spasm ran through him, tightening all his muscles in sequence." Here, the participial phrase helpfully defines what a spasm is, as if it's a rare term.

In the wartime section, the two narrators actually even use exactly the same words in explaining particular jargon(/demonstrating the author's research): "The ground crew, or erks, as we called them, jogged out to the aircraft" and "there were other 'huff-duff' stations, as we called them, up and down the eastern coast."

I don't know what to say about how magic and fantasy operate in this novel. It's very muddled. As a child, Kit is saved by her mother's sacrifice of a lamb to...some power, possibly the same fae who live in the woods and whisper a lot. Are they the same as the blue-green spirits who live under water? I don't know. And are those the same as the selkies in the family's personal history? Again, I don't know. Magic and the blood sacrifice does something to Kit's gender at age 10, but they're still read as female by Rebekah eight years later. During the war, when Rebekah is giving birth, Kit is parachuting out of a downed bomber, and their consciousness intermingle. I'm not sure why. Like so many thing in this novel, this extraordinary experience is never remarked upon afterward. Later, back in Ontario, Rebekah realizes that her daughter hears the same voices in the woods as Kit does. Nothing seems to come of this, either.

So are magic and fantasy simply decoration to this story? Are they backdoors to explaining plot questions like "how does Kit pass as a man?" Are they there to switch the novel into fairy-tale mode, where things don't have to make sense, they just have to end happily? Maybe. I don't know and I'm not sure the book does, either.

Finally, there is the question of Kit's gender identity; our contemporary term nonbinary is probably the most accurate for who they are. Before and during the war, Rebekah refers to Kit with she/her pronouns, but when the two meet again, somehow (magically?) Rebekah knows to not only fend off gendered terms like "brother/sister" from Kit, but also to use they/them pronouns. Kit themself only mentions passing once, and this is after the war, when they remark on how easily they pass in civilian clothes. Rebekah asks just once, only for Kit to cut her off, about how Kit passed in the military.

I don't think that readers are due prurient details about a character's body. I don't think that queer stories, especially those set in the past, need to be all about fear and hiding. But I do think that, in a book about two pansexual AFAB people, one of whom passes in masculine contexts like the RAF and forestry, we need more about how they feel about gender and social expectations and danger. There are some strong details concerning Landon's unthinking deployment of male privilege and some annoyingly clunky passages about Rebekah's awareness that she performs femininity as a role, so I don't think I'm asking too much about the lack of detail and reflection around Kit's gender presentation. Both the funeral scene for Kit's father and the closing scene depict Kit, Rebekah, and Rebekah's daughter as a seemingly heteronormative family unit; they are living in society as one. What's that feel like? Ignoring such questions does a disservice, both to the reader and to the complicated realities of the past for queer Canadians, like playwright <a href="https://www.canadiantheatre.com/dict.pl?term=John%20Herbert">John Herbert</a>, arrested for indecency in Toronto just after the war, precisely when Kit is there, for, in part, wearing women's clothing.

I'm pretty sure this book will be popular with many readers. You can sell it according to elements like "queer love story HEA" and "enby protagonist" and "Celtic lore". That assembles a nice surface, which readers can fill in with preexisting assumptions.

I'm just not one of those readers, I guess. Not only did this book not work for me, I don't think it works, period.

Described as a boundary-pushing love story and a Canadian historical novel that boldly centers queer and non-binary characters, this book certainly piqued my interest!

Spanning 1931-1953, this is the story of Kathleen/Kit and Landon McNair who are siblings both in love with Rebekah. The story takes us through each of their courtships with Rebekah, their individual stories during their time away during the war and then their eventual return to the McNair farm. Beautiful, heart breaking, completely engaging. The characters were so well written and their stories so interesting I had a hard time putting this down. Very happy that the story ended as it did.

Really loved the book and highly recommend. 4.5*

When is history not history, when is gender not gender, when is sexuality not sexuality? This Canadian novel explores the small differences that occur when your gaze is shifted from the expected to the unexpected. From Canadian farm life to world-changing events, the same themes emerge to complicate lives.

This luminous book weaves this strands together in a way that feels effortless but hasn't been; rather, this is a fine piece of writing of which Canada can be proud.

If you want to explore boundaries or you want to challenge the seen vs the unseen, then this is also the book for you. Highly enjoyable.

This book was beautifully written. The characters were well developed. The writing was so descriptive and lent itself to vivid imagery in the imagination. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.