Recent Book I’ve Read (JUL 2025):

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink

The Last Bookstore On Earth by Lily Braun-Arnold

Both of these stories have queer protagonists. In Alice Isn’t Dead, we have a separated lesbian couple, but mostly the story is told through the lens of Keisha, a woman with anxiety whose wife disappears. In The Last Bookstore, we find ourselves in a post-apocalyptic world, where a young queer teen takes refuge in the last bastion of her former life: her job at the bookstore. These two stories are told differently in tone and texture, but I feel they share a common thread of survival. Therefore, I will discuss each book in a single review instead of two.

The Last Bookstore on Earth

I love reading LGBTQ teen and YA fiction, especially when it features a supernatural or post-apocalyptic setting. The Last Bookstore ticks this box, showcasing a, for lack of a better word, queer young woman named Liz.  I say that because she puts no label upon herself, but her love interest in the book is a young woman named Maeve. 

She doesn’t live in her childhood home, rather Liz lives in the bookstore she worked in before everything went to shit. We begin the story by seeing that she lives alone, trading books for food and supplies while writing down the stories of others.  She feels safe in her little corner of normalcy. When she meets people, she greets them with a customer service smile, asks what they are looking for, helps them, and then checks them out. All this was done with the same attitude she had when all her family lived and the world was still normal.  But that’s far from the current reality.

There were storms, acid rain, and disasters that killed so many people. The world has become less populated. People are trying to find each other and eke out a living off the land as best as they can. Liz also runs a postal service of sorts. She will post letters from people to their loved ones on her bulletin board if they ever come by the bookstore. She is lonely, but surviving. At least we think she is. Liz had a best friend or love interest, whose relationship with her was never quite clear, who decided one day that she needed to venture out past the bookstore, so she left Liz alone.

Liz clings to this bookstore, as if doing so will help bear this loss. Later, we find out she hasn’t left the store in over a year. She holds it tightly; it’s the centre of her world, like the past she can’t let go of. Enter Maeve, a young woman who broke into the store and tried to take refuge and raid it for supplies. Liz, of course, staunchly defends the store, even though she’s no match for the street-wise Maeve. The two form an uneasy alliance and begin cohabiting.

Amidst this backdrop, there are rumors of people living in the woods, despite many empty houses abandoned or filled with the dead. These woods people are hardened, creating a society with its own rules and punishments.

Of course, there are things that happen in this novel that have me grinding my teeth. Why was Liz stubbornly clinging to the bookstore, even when it became damaged? Later, her backstory is revealed to us through flashbacks and conversations with Maeve.

Eventually, there is a showdown, accompanied by character growth, as Liz and Maeve learn how to move forward.  It’s a character-driven story rather than a plot-driven one. We often understand little about why disasters occur and continue to happen, but ultimately, the story is told from a 17-year-old’s perspective, so it’s unlikely she knew either. The story focuses on the very real way in which we deal with trauma, our coping mechanisms, and how we learn to grieve and move forward in life.

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars. [See our Review Guide]

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink

If you’ve never heard the podcast “Welcome to Night Vale”, you are missing out. I’ve loved it for many years.  This is the premise.

Welcome to “Welcome to Night Vale”, a twice-monthly fiction podcast from the town of Night Vale, where every conspiracy theory is true.

https://www.welcometonightvale.com/listen

It’s a podcast like a radio show with commercials, news breaks, and stories, all centred around the town where everything and anything is possible—Bigfoot, pixies, black holes, aliens, vampires, all regular occurrences in Night Vale. Alice Isn’t Dead has a bit of the same whimsy, where the impossible appears possible and disturbing, particularly among those on the fringes of society—the ones who find themselves with impossible stories to tell and no one listening but each other.

We begin with Keisha, a woman who has lost her wife. Her grief is made worse as there is no body of Alice found, just a missing woman, gone for so long that the world presumes her dead.  Keisha is an introvert. A homebody who prefers a quiet life. Not that she and Alice didn’t have friends, but Alice was her connection to others. With Alice gone, Keisha tried to move forward but found herself stuck, unable to move on when the rest of the world already had. Her friends stop checking in. Keisha also battles anxiety, a severe anxiety which makes life hard on her, hard to breathe or swim through.

One day, Keisha sees Alice behind a news reporter across the country. Alice looks directly at the camera, as if staring at Keisha. From that moment on, all Keisha can do is dig deep to try to find where or why her wife was somewhere without any contact. Keisha gets a job as a truck driver and begins to look for Alice in every place she goes.

As she begins her life on the road, Keisha witnesses a horrific murder, with something that resembles a human, but not quite human either. The only thing is nobody seems to be concerned about the dead or missing people who disappear from rest stops, motels, shelters, and people in communes. People whose lives are defined by the lonely highways and stretches of road traveled by people the world seems to have forgotten about.

Does Alice have anything to do with this? How far down the rabbit hole with Keisha go to find answers? How will she handle it once she knows? This is the story that keeps you coming back to find answers. Who is good? What will the world look away from to keep their little corner safe and familiar? These are themes explored in the novel.

I enjoyed the absolute hell out of it. In fact, I’m going to see what else the author has written. I would encourage you to read it if you’re in the mood for something different, something that has heart, whimsy, and a mix of light and darkness.

I actually chose to listen to the audiobook version, which I would also recommend. The narration is spot on, and the characters are all distinct from one another. A rich tapestry woven together, I think it’s worth checking out. If you decide to, please let me know what you think of either novel.

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars. [See our Review Guide]