The Sapphic Romance Novels That Altered My Brain Chemistry
240 Characters? Hilarious.
This has been an exceptionally fun few days on sapphic romance Twitter. In fact, we might be the only group of people still having this level of fun on the whole damn site. It feels, often these days, like sapphic romance Twitter is the band playing on as the Titanic sinks.
And it brings me untold joy.
This week's fun was kicked off when Sagacious Sapphic posted their list of 10 sapphic romance novels they would give as an introduction to the genre. It was such an inspired idea. A beginning, a place to start, tends to be the hardest part of any journey. Overthinking that assignment was a joy. It was the most work I’ve ever put into a tweet. Hours. Hours of work. Too much. I went too hard. You can see my list below. Also, I’m not telling you to read them in order, but I’m not not telling you that.
This joy bomb was followed by people, and I cannot pin down the origin point on this one, tweeting about the five sapphic romance novels that altered their brain chemistry. This one REALLY sent me down a rabbit hole – which is honestly my favorite place to go. This rabbit hole went so deep we all find ourselves in it together, right now.
As I thought about what it meant for a book to alter my brain chemistry, it came down to the book changing the way I look at myself, the form, or the world. And, sometimes, if I get extremely lucky, I’ll get all three.
These are very lucky books.
Five Sapphic Romance Novels That Altered My Brain Chemistry
Must Love Silence by Lucy Bexley
There is a prevailing wisdom in romance that romantic comedies need to be light. Rompy. Effervescent. I bought into this idea for a long time, and then Must Love Silence stepped in and altered my brain chemistry. I now understand romantic comedies have to be two things: a romance and purposefully and intentionally crafted to be funny. That’s it. Those are the two criteria. And the only two. One of my favorite movies of all time is 50/50 - a hilarious and heartfelt comedy about having cancer. Must Love Silence is a funny, heartfelt joyride of a book about anxiety, loneliness, and addiction. It showed me how to use humor in what I think might be its highest form, both in stories and life. See, humor is often simply the way in, the door opening, letting light flood into the painful places, making the exploration bearable. That’s the paradox of it all, humor is light, but it needn’t be light and might be best when it isn’t. Bexley made me realize that humor can be as heavy as you want as long as it’s a Bexley kind of humor. Humor that is based in joy not judgment, love not isolation, and inclusion not stereotype. Humor that celebrates rather than stigmatizes. Humor that expands your empathy and makes you better. Humor that alters your brain chemistry.
A Whisper of Solace by Milena McKay
A romance novel is a thing. There is a tradition. It has a whole structure. There are norms and conventions and don’t even get me started on tropes. A romance novel is a very specific thing. And nothing about A Whisper of Solace fits neatly into romance novel genre buckets. Not one thing. And still, it is one of the most perfect romance novels I have ever read. I have said it before, and I’ll say again and again and again, Milena McKay can write her tits off. She’s brilliant, and anyone who says differently is simply wrong. One of her very specific strengths is her uniquely complete mastery of tension. She knows when to hold it, break it, and use it to move the story forward. She understands tension is the gas in the engine of a romance novel, and McKay writes so that there is enough gas in that engine to make it to the end driving a hundred miles an hour. This novel wholly broke and reformed in my mind what a romance novel was and could do. Neve’s trying to wrap her mind around the fear and courage, the assuredness and insecurity, the wonder and horror of love altered my brain chemistry wholly. Showed me the truth of what makes a romance novel a romance novel is that at the end, standing in the ashes, is loving winning the day.
Night Tide by Anna Burke
I did not understand how much we need writing about pain, all the kinds of pain, and how truly rare that was until I had my brain chemistry altered by Anna Burke’s Night Tide. In her brilliant and haunting book,The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry writes, “Physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned.” John Green said more succinctly, "Language is always inadequate in the face of pain." Pain is an objective experience people understand subjectively. Pain, like most everything that defies language, alienates. Its ineffability builds walls, isolating when connection is most needed. We are limited by our empathy. And our empathy is limited to our experience with pain and willingness to connect with others. Great fiction builds empathy. It helps us understand the richness and complexity of other people – and maybe, especially, their pain. Burke writes about pain, both emotional and physical, with exceptional specificity. The unfortunate specificity of someone who knows exactly what they are talking about. It makes ineffable pain solid, sending language up the wall like Ivy, creating cracks that allow us to see into the black box that is another’s pain. I am thankful for this book for that reason. It helped me understand. And in helping me understand, it leveled up my empathy. Burke was unafraid when writing this book. She looked at pain and disability and suffering and saw something worth mentioning, worth exploring, and something that did not preclude anyone from love. I've always loved the Mr. Rogers quote, "Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.” In making pain more understandable, Burke made pain more manageable, made it wholly mentionable. And that is beautiful. And brain chemistry altering.
Then & Now by Monica McCallan
Raymond Carver has this quote about writers that I love:
Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications. It’s akin to style, what I’m talking about, but it isn’t style alone. It is the writer’s particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and
no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There’s plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time.
I didn’t really understand it, though, not until I had my brain chemistry altered by reading Monica McCallan’s Then & Now. McCallan truly has a special way of looking at the world. She has this lens that could have only been created through some impossible-to-replicate alchemical magic combining queer joy, deep pathos, and almost ferally fearless vulnerability with incredible story sense and deep understanding of character. It has given her a unique and distinct point of view that is so much more than just the sum of the parts of her voice as a writer. It is her way of looking at the world - at relationships and philosophy and people and rescue animals and bars - that sets her work apart. Well, that and her wholehearted openness. I read a Toni Morrison interview in O Magazine for a class once. It was a gorgeous read. But two sentences, in particular, have always stuck with me, “It’s that being open—not scratching for it, not digging for it, not constructing something but being open to the situation and trusting that what you don’t know will be available to you. It is bigger than your overt consciousness or your intelligence or even your gifts; it is out there somewhere and you have to let it in.” McCallan writes through her magical lens with wholehearted openness, and we all benefit. I say it often, but we really are living in McCallan’s Imperial period. And what I have learned thus far is that when a writer as prodigiously talented as McCallan wholly understands her voice and works with wholehearted openness, well, at the very least, it’ll alter your brain chemistry.
In the Long Run by Haley Cass
It is not a secret that I am in an eternal and passionate love affair with Haley Cass’ In the Long Run. I love this book so much that I have a tattoo inspired by it on my forearm. It’s perfect to me. This book is excellent for so many reasons, many of which I have written about and a bunch of which I am sure I will write about soon, but it changed me, forever altered my brain chemistry and my relationship with myself, for just one. I am not an easy person. I am pathologically driven. I am lost in my head more than anyone I know. There is almost nothing I will not overthink to death – I always have a reason, ten reasons, and, wow, will I never stop telling you why. I’m also a person who has dedicated her life to play in all its forms. I am, above all, committed to the bit (see Turtle Day Vibes 2023 playlist). I never know where my keys are or what our plans were, but I can quote a poem for any occasion. I am just kind of complicated and very contradictory. Not easy. I think, maybe, everyone is, but for a long time, I thought that the fact that I was not always an easy person to be around meant I wasn’t a worthy person to be around. It was, I realized looking back, the central thesis to my existence. And then I read In the Long Run in a moment when the world had knocked the breath out of me, and I was still lying on my back struggling to breathe. This book, this wonderful, magical book, forced air into my lungs for the first time in a long time. There is such compassion in this novel. So much grace and hope and love. But what altered me is that In the Long Run is filled with characters who contain multitudes, as Whitman famously said. Every person in this novel is complicated. Not just multifaceted but tangled up and contradictory and wholly unequivocally lovable. This book is filled with people who are not always easy but are so fucking worthy of being around, easy or not. Cass writes characters who make wild choices, overthink things, and are filled with dissonance. Those same characters are brave and true and remarkably loving. Cass writes characters who feel like real people with real psychology. People who are just trying their best, and their best is more than enough—characters who, it turns out, are like me. I think, sometimes, you need someone to show you the way. Brooke and Taylor and Ben and the rest of the Faircombe crew in all their messy muchness absolutely showed me the way. And in doing so, completely altered by brain chemistry. And me.
I do understand four of the five writers here I have already written about extensively. The other I have written about some, and talk about a lot. I will, in all likelihood, never stop. In retrospect, now that I have explored the books that altered my brain chemistry, I write about these authors so often because their work changed me for the better as a person and writer and reader.
And those, well, those are my three favorite things I am.
More, they helped me understand why I love books so much. Why stories are what I hold most precious. There is a prayer I heard recently that I love. It’s perfect, and it doesn’t matter who or what you pray to when you pray it. It goes, “May we be justified in our hope and un-alone in our sorrow.” Through their stories, these authors walk with me, so I don’t feel so alone. With their words, they remind me I am justified in my hope. And they sit with me in my deepest sorrows, so I never have to carry that sorrow alone.
I guess that’s why I’ll always…
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