A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle was a very intriguing read. The book weaves an emotional tale that does justice to the youth and queerness of the characters. It was a very intricate tale where parts of the story left me feeling raw with emotion. I love how it portrayed each limb’s perspective. It was a great read!

I would like to thank NetGalley, the author and the publisher for providing me with access to a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This novel is a beautifully crafted, deeply moving meditation on the roads we take—and those we don’t. Set in 1970s Australia, it masterfully unfolds two parallel lives, showing how a single moment of choice can shape an entire future. One path leads to rejection and finding family in a radical queer commune; the other to academic ambition and repression. Yet, despite their differences, both lives echo each other in profound, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful ways.

The alternating timelines are woven together with remarkable skill, building tension and emotional weight as the two versions of the protagonist navigate love, loss, activism, and the devastating impact of the AIDS crisis. The way these lives intertwine across decades is nothing short of brilliant, offering a powerful reflection on destiny, resilience, and the enduring power of queer community.

With lush prose, deeply realized characters, and a structure that keeps the reader enthralled, this is an unforgettable novel—one that lingers long after the final page. Fans of literary fiction and queer historical narratives will find themselves utterly captivated.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. I have so many thoughts and emotions after finishing this book that it is almost hard to put into words. Queer literature is so important. This story is so beautiful yet so heartbreaking. A queer coming of age story set during the AIDS crisis in Australia. I can’t recommend this enough.

A deeply moving story that follows two queer individuals on a journey of self-discovery. The prose is undeniably beautiful, though at times it leans toward being overly elaborate. Additionally, the frequent shifts between the two protagonists, while enriching their perspectives, occasionally felt chaotic and difficult to follow.

two girls face a choice in newcastle in 1972, and the rest of the work follows their paths as they grow and evolve following the fallout of each decision. the writing was so evocative in a way that pulled emotions straight from my chest without being overwrought — like i could feel myself spilled out on the page. as a lesbian in particular, i really connected with this — i could see pieces of myself in both limb one and limb two, and i ached with each of them through all of their struggles.

i devoured the entire thing in only a few hours, and i’m still feeling raw. this book absolutely shattered me, and i cannot recommend it enough. my god. what a work of art!

thank you to netgalley & penguin group dutton for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Great read. Character development was excellent and real. An eye opening view of people struggling to accept and love their true selves.

what a treasure and a gift of a novel. dylin hardcastle is an incredibly talented writer. i loved how the story itself tied to the front cover's photo. two people finding and holding each other in all the mess and muck and beauty of life. there were some lines/passages that were a bit heavy handed, which is totally fine, but were especially jarring in contrast to hardcastle's otherwise fluid, buttery prose. overall, a stunner. thank you to the publisher for gifting me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Usually, I am reading gay romance books and so when I saw this book about lesbians, I knew that I needed to expand my potential reading material and get this book immediately. I was not disappointed. This book gave me everything I was looking for and even things I didn’t know I needed. I felt so much through this journey and it’s definitely a book that will stick with me for a long time.

A Language of Limbs is a poignant and thought-provoking exploration of identity, connection, and the body’s role in self-expression. The novel delves into the lives of its characters with a focus on the complexities of their physicality and how it shapes their emotional landscapes. Hardcastle’s prose is sharp, introspective, and deeply human, offering a window into the intricacies of non-verbal communication and the hidden languages we carry within ourselves.

The book stands out for its rich character development. Hardcastle has a keen eye for detail, drawing readers into an intimate understanding of each character’s struggles and triumphs. The novel’s slow, deliberate pacing allows these emotional currents to unfold organically, making for a quietly powerful reading experiences . It’s a compelling choice for those who enjoy literary fiction about the human experience.

An often heartbreaking story but with a heartwarming dose of found family, finding yourself, and the power of queer joy. This book follows two women from a short lived connection early in their lives through the largely separate and completely different paths they take forwards. Really goes to show how much of what happens to us in life is determined by our decisions, but at the same time shows how many aspects of life and the world are out of our control and how loving fiercely, choosing who we spend our time with, and being true to ourselves is really all we can control.

The Language of Limbs has an intriguing premise and an original approach to exploring the complexities of human connection, but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. The concept is strong, and the author does a great job creating an atmosphere that feels both emotional and immersive. The central idea of using physical gestures and body language as a form of communication is unique and adds an interesting layer to the narrative.

However, the pacing felt slow at times, and some of the characters didn’t feel fully developed. While the themes of communication and connection are powerful, the execution occasionally left me wanting more depth and clarity. The emotional impact I was hoping for wasn’t as strong as I anticipated.

Overall, it’s a solid read with some thought-provoking moments, but it fell short of its potential. It’s definitely worth checking out if you enjoy exploring unconventional narratives, but it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

A Language of Limbs truly blew me away. Being only my second read of 2025 this one is going to be hard to beat. The prose in this novel was exquisite and made me want to voraciously eat up every word. The portrayal in this novel of sexuality, queerness, grief, love and everything in between was so distinctly relatable and raw and heavily resonated with me in many aspects. Limb 1 and Limb 2 take us through the lows and highs of living and in some ways their lives are echoes of each other and what could have been. I loved when some of the language in the alternate chapters mimicked each other and we could see how maybe they will eventually find their way to one another. Queer joy and love is so glorious when it is able to be realized and expressed wholeheartedly and it was phenomenal to see so much diverse representation in this book while till portraying the darkness that the LGBTQIA+ community has gone through and continues to go through to this day. There is so much joy to be had in being who you truly are.

Below are some of my favorite quotes from this wonderful novel:

"Only in my dreams, where she will lurk in the river veins of my limbs, stirring from time to time like silt stirred up from the bed of my sleeping body, clouding the water. And I will wake every time in the cold sweat of this very heartbreak, as if no time has passed at all. Because the river of mountain memory is achingly fresh."

"There is no light in there, no air, no room to fuck, no place to sleep. It is safe, for a time, perhaps. But a body in there will erode. Until its flesh is all gone and it becomes a secret of bones. To come out is to escape the secret, to stretch your limbs and bathe your skin in light. Sometimes. Because to come out can also be a sharper death, a quicker death. Total obliteration."

"Grief is wanting flesh, yearning for a voice. Grief is fear of forgetting...a face...the contour of a hip...your brilliant red hair...Grief is wondering what could have been made and what could have become. Grief is what if. Grief is endless cycles of why, and I wish I didn't. Grief is the guilt of the living, of my living. Grief is the sobbing into my birthday cake, because I'm older than you, now. Grief is the building of a world without you in it."

"At some point, between a kick and a breath, the thought of staying has become more terrifying than the thought of leaving."

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC. This book resonated with me on every level as a queer person. I loved the writing style and the way the story unfolded through the perspectives of two different narrators.

There were so many moments when I was completely captivated by the prose. Dylin has a gift for words that creates vivid imagery on the page. The characters' emotions are expressed so powerfully that it truly tugs at your heartstrings. Reading it felt like an exhilarating emotional rollercoaster, picking up speed with each page.

Exploring one's queer identity is a challenging journey, and I can’t even begin to imagine how much more difficult it was during a pandemic.

I loved this book.

Started reading this book at the end of 2024 and finished it 6 days into 2025 and I can honestly say this is and will be the BEST book I read all year. It is a tragically beautiful, poetic exploration of how two people can exist in the same place at the same time and live two completely different lives. With different love, joy, heartbreak and grief. And yet they are one and the same, in the near misses of their worlds colliding and in the parallels of their experiences and their interpretation of the world around them. And to see how it all comes together in the end and how through each other we can find happiness after loss is the icing on top of this already perfect cake. And instant reread with a permanent place on my shelf (both digital and physical)

I’m glad to see I’m not alone in assuming the two characters were the same person in two alternative realities. There were definitely moments where this didn’t make sense so partly my fault for assuming, but to be fair the two voices sound identical.

I genuinely liked it better before I realized it wasn’t an alternative reality vs just two people. An alternate timeline is so much more interesting and the repeating motifs work a lot better in that framing. I thought it was going to be like In Universes by Emet North which was one of my favourite books of 2024.

All that aside, there were some things that worked for me better than others. I loved the exploration of found family, the descriptions of sydney and wales, and the devastation of the AIDS crisis. I also enjoyed the recurring theme of porous boundaries between ourselves/others/the world, which was also a theme I loved in In Universes.

The exploration of creating art collaboratively with a lover was also done well and reminded me of Housemates by Emma Copley-Eisenberg, although I didn’t enjoy the poetry included on the page here.

Some of the lines were truly beautiful and moving and poetic, but others felt a bit cheesy tumblr motivational image to me, and the (brief) reference to the pandemic felt cringey.

This isn’t a bad book by any means, and there were parts I enjoyed, but I think it maybe tried to tackle too much for its length which meant certain threads were underdeveloped.

The back and forth format was a bit confusing at the beginning of the book. But as the gritty and heart wrenching stories playout, the reader is fully engaged with the lives of the main characters. I enjoyed this book and the insight into the history and culture of LGBTQ people in the 1970's- 1980's Australia. Their fight for acceptance and rights, and the heartbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980's.

I'm heartbroken to say this didn't work for me. I hit a couple of paragraphs that read so melodramatic after an already melodramatic scene that I had to pause and think about whether I wanted to continue with the book. The answer is no, it's a DNF at 25%.

I was already struggling with this book after the first few chapters and it took me like 20% to realize that we're following two different perspectives. I thought "limb one" and "limb two" were just different timelines from one perspective because they sound exactly the same, there's no difference in voice or inner thoughts at all.

Overall, I agree with reviewers who mention this is overwritten. It is. Though I won't deny there are beautiful lines here and there, it feels pretentious. I also found it too melodramatic, like I already said, and I felt like it was trying to force emotion out of me. I was also painfully aware that I was reading a book, you know? I was aware that things happened just because the author wrote them that way. I don't even know if that will make sense to anyone else, but I just wasn't engrossed by this story.

At times, I found it challenging to discern whose point of view I was reading (Limb One or Limb Two), often relying on context or the mention of a character specific to their lives to clarify. Initially, the novel didn’t fully capture my interest, but about halfway through, the narrative truly began to shine. At this point, the story delved deeply into the main character’s life, and their actions vividly reflected their personality. I grew increasingly invested in the supporting characters and felt genuinely moved when they faced hardships, which speaks to the emotional depth of the writing.

Whoa. What can I say about this book? It felt like a true window into queer experiences. It felt like joy and pain, finding out and embracing exactly who you are and also finding out who you are and completely denying it. It felt like love and loss. It felt like fear and safety. It was a lot. It was written super beautifully. There was poetry in parts which I feel unequipped to describe or critique because I can’t quite wrap my mind around poetry. This is the book I’ve highlighted most in recent memory. It followed two perspectives of queer women deciding how to move through a world not built for them. They choose almost completely opposite strategies despite the fact that their stories nearly intersect any number of times. The chapters alternate between their two vastly differently and hauntingly similar experiences throughout the book. There are times where the author throws the similarities in seemingly opposite experiences in the reader’s face by literally including the same phrases and sometimes completely paragraphs in subsequent chapters. It was so good. The cover is lovely, the title is beautiful and the story is lovely, beautiful and haunting. If you want to immerse yourself in a beautifully told pair of queer narratives then you should certainly pick this up. Here are the endless quotes I highlighted:

“And I liked how it felt, being turned inside out, learning that the self becomes whole in the moment it is opened.”

“As if she is breaking apart in the same moment that she is becoming whole, both coming undone and being built through the violence of metamorphosis—the process of taking shape.”

“Thomas speaks the way feathers fall. In that roundabout way where the words drift and ebb and are slow to land.”

“I feel as if my lungs are on fire, like I might, in a moment, smell the reed of my muscle burning.”

“And so, I am left, feverishly remembering, until her face is a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory, like ink in water, dispersing, and I’m not sure if we ever locked eyes at all.”

“And I feel the throb of this moment. Because, against the impossibility of it all, joy persists.”

“It’s raining outside, now, small footprints of sky on the windowpane.”

“Swallow and feed the memory pushed back under. Sunk down. As her face resettles on the ocean floor of my body, I feel the strangle of disgust loosen. Breath out. A twisted sigh. Heart slowing. Relief.”

“Language falls short. Because she falls. Slowly, she falls, falling through air spiraling down through all the years lived, back to the very beginning, into the darkness from which she was birthed and into which she ends, her skull cracked open on concrete.”

“Adrenaline fades into blood and the container of my grief disintegrates.”

“Her death is like a bird slamming into a window. The sudden shock that the sky has limits. That my motherhood was a trick of light.”

“Her death is like a birth slamming into a window. The sudden shock that the sky has limits. That our liberation was a trick of light.”

“I don’t imagine how this will affect me, how it will crush me, to see her coffin overwhelmed by bodies that got to grow fully.”

“You didn’t look particularly striking, and yet, I was entirely struck, the way lightning turns sand to glass.”

“Because you came over me like a wave. And I dove through the belly of the ocean, where I have been, ever since. With you, I could exist underwater. And in the beginning, I panicked. Because everything we’ve ever been told, tells us we cannot breathe underwater. I wanted to stay, but I thought, I need air, I need air. This isn’t how we are supposed to live, they say. But by both luck and necessity, my body changed. My lungs became gills. I had learnt to exist otherwise, and to live entirely in it.”

“Now I will keep you alive by love, loving you ceaselessly. In every movement of every murmuration.”

“Let the water carry what you can’t.”

“I learn how loneliness is felt most acutely in the presence of another person when the intimacy is gone.”

“I’m no longer resenting my flesh for what it couldn’t become.”

“Her breath was the anchor that settled me.”

Thank you, NetGalley and Publisher, for this ARC!

3.75 This novel was devastatingly beautiful. As someone who hasn't read many stories that take place in Australia and not one that takes place around the AIDS crisis, I didn't know what to expect. The book was beautifully written and tugged at my heartstrings throughout. However, this is not with critique. This novel had two perspectives and timelines, and as someone who didn't know this before starting, the fact that the two perspectives are so similar and difficult to tell apart. I only noticed this when I began observing significant inconsistencies in the plot due to merging both timelines. I discovered this after the 20% mark, if not further into the novel. While Hardcastle writes incredibly poetically, and his novel feels immersive, the book could be improved if the two timelines were more distinct. Overall, though, I highly recommend this book and the cover is absolutely stunning.