Rating: 👍🏻

Every time I read a book with queer characters, I have Laszlo Cravensworth (What We Do in the Shadows tv series) in my ear saying, “Trust me: Gay is in, gay is hot. I want some gay. Gay it’s gonna be.”

Because: yes. I agree.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey is basically a future Western dystopia with gay resistance librarians.

The tl;dr: Esther’s best friend and secret lover, Beatriz, was just hanged for having resistance propaganda. To escape a marriage she does not want to Beatriz’s widower, she runs off, fearing her own gayness, and stows away with librarians who travel the country to share books. Turns out the librarians are gay and they’re part of the resistance themselves. There’s also a small bit of romance.

The world-building itself was a little on-the-nose for me as someone who pays attention to the direction of politics (and is absolutely terrified of a world where LGBTQIA+ people continue to lose rights instead of gain them), but I did think it was an interesting take on the Western genre; it was refreshing to see it be set in the future, as opposed to the past.

Having recently read a feminist Western (by a different author) that I did not like at all, I was relieved to see that Upright Women Wanted avoided the same traps. We got to see Esther get stronger, better, and smarter—and she unlearns her internalized homophobia.

All that said, I felt like Esther fell for Cye, one of the librarians, almost immediately, even though she was still supposedly grieving Beatriz. And I had some questions about the ending, which felt somehow both abrupt and too clean. I also wanted more Amity (a side character who is not what she seems at first). I would read a whole book about Amity.