Imaginative stories that will expand your horizons and take you places where only imagination rules. Strong female leads and spiritual exploration pepper these wonderful tales. A must read!!! ( )

Very well written collection of short stories that focus on different female characters. This wasn’t really my specific cup of tea, but I can appreciate a well written short story no matter the topic. ( )

A beautiful and diverse collection of short stories, focused on females, relationships, personal expectations, and the tangles of emotions.

While the stories focused on the a different group of women than I would normally associate myself with (being white and heterosexual as opposed to black and lesbian) there was truth and insight I was grateful for in each one.

"What the Heart Wants" and "Feeling Blue" were my favorites. ( )

The stories in this volume are gorgeous, the language lyrical. I agree with the reviewer Kesterbird that some of the relationships in Two Moons are deeply messed up in a real-world sense, but the gorgeous weirdness of the surreal aspects of the short stories kept me reading nevertheless. My favourite of the stories may be Feeling Blue, about the mural that talks to Clare to remind her to take care of herself. I just read Shadowshaper recently, so murals coming alive is a theme I am enjoying very much in fiction right now. :) ( )

I want to love these. I want to love them because having queer women of color showing up as main characters in speculative fiction is important, and the voice is promising, but... the actual relationships are so blindly toxic, without the author seeming to have noticed that toxicity. The most fantastic (as in literal fantasy) parts of these stories are where they shine brightest; it's the reality that's really messed up. Like, ok, tearing out your heart post breakup to have a conversation with it and it singing you songs and bringing you flowers? that's fine and surprisingly cute. But flipping out on a loved one who doesn't immediately accede to your precise and previously unexpressed desires for the progression of the relationship but instead wants to think about it? That shit is terrifying. The only part of the friendship with the bleeding-on-the-counter-and-walking-around-making-breakfast-heart that is creepy is that said heart is such a bad, enabling friend as to tell this person that they did nothing wrong and that it was all the other person's fault.
That's just one story, but it's not the only example I could've picked. There's the moon marrying a human: not creepy. But the moon picking an infant, watching her grow up, grooming her from early adolescence, and then swooping down to fetch her? Nah.

-received as part of librarything's ARC program- ( )