A very interesting exploration of a pivotal piece of queer history. I absolutely loved reading on as Abby learned more and more about the "taboo" literature that made so many queer women feel seen. This book so wonderfully illustrated the importance of representation in media. It shows us how far we've come, and inspires us to continue striving toward a future where everybody can see themselves positively and accurately represented in the books they read.

One Sentence Synopsis: First heartbreaks, resilience, and change told from two young women, generations apart.

Why You Should Be Reading: Talley’s “Pulp” is a fun, yet serious take on being a queer youth during varying and unforgiving times. Through two perspectives you gain an understanding of how things have changed for us (the LGBTQ+ community) for the better, and how things still remain the same, no matter how much time has passed. At the heart of this story is also a tale of love, danger, and desire.

You want Janet Jones and Abby Zimet to end up happy and to get past the woes in their lives because they love women in a world/time/place where that is still frowned upon in various levels. But you understand that the two young women connected through words and time might fail, experience loss, and come to seperate conclusions about what love is and what it’s worth.

Genres: Young Adult, Historical Fiction, LGBT

Other Books by Robin Talley: A Tyranny of Petticoats, As I Descended, Our Own Private Universe

Learn more about the author HERE.

Buy Pulp HERE.

Add Pulp to your Goodreads HERE.

This was just ok? I loved the premise of this story, what it promised to be. I still think it was very creative, the story picks up right away. But the wiring was just mediocre, and this really brought it down for me. It was hard to get into. This was a story that was so exciting concept, but fell flat in execution. However, if you're not as picky, and story trumps writing for you, you may still enjoy this.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't Bad. But it was nothing special either.

really enjoyed this book and read it actually in a few hours even though it is pretty lengthy.

The first thing I enjoyed about this book is the discussion of the past & present. I enjoyed how this book looks at being gay in the 1950s and comparing it to now. I don’t feel that there are enough historical fiction books about the LGBT+ community. So having a book that is both contemporary and historical fiction about young lesbian women is really cool. I also enjoyed that the book discusses lesbian pulp fiction novels. These novels were both good and bad in the fact that they were books featuring women who loved other women, but to be published the books required the women to either die (usually by suicide) or “realize” they were actually straight. These pulp fiction novels are not ones that I usually see discussed or are really well known to many people. So being able to learn more about them through this book and to be able to help others learn more about them is phenomenal.

Something else I enjoyed about the book is the relationships we get to see the characters have, especially Janet. I really liked the friendships we see Janet make with the people she meets in her area who are gay and also in New York. I really like the relationship she has with Marie (without giving away too much the ending of this book for me in bittersweet regarding the rest of Janet’s life…the bitter part being specifically about her and Marie). I enjoyed Abby’s story too with the research she does and all the people she meets. I love seeing Abby’s complicated relationship with her family and her mentorship regarding her advisor. The relationships in this book are not only fantastic regarding the exclusivity of the past and present, but in the fact that they all seem to come together in the end.

If I had to say something I didn’t like in the book I guess it was that I felt there was a little too much filler at times and that certain parts took longer to get to than need be. I wished the book had been quicker to get to certain parts of the story and that SPOILER ALERT



the relationship between Marie and Janey had worked out & they ended up together. Those are honestly though my only real complaints.



Overall this was a pretty good book. I think it discusses topics not talked much about and has a really interesting way of combining the past and present. I enjoyed the characters, especially the relationships and friendships we get to see them make over the years. I only wished it had been a little shorter and that a certain relationship had worked out. While I know not everyone has access to the ARC if you have access to an eARC or physical ARC of this book then I would read it especially during PRIDE month. For everyone else make sure to pick this up at your local library or book store in November.

I wish I could have loved this book a bit more. While I felt that it hit a lot of issues on the head and it does a good job of opening the readers eyes, sadly the writing itself fell a little flat. I would have liked if the characters had been a bit more fleshed out. Overall though I did enjoy the plot just think the writer could have used a little more time to focus on fleshing things out.

It's probably more of a 3.75 star.

I’ve never read a book by this author before but from the first time I saw the blurb, I was so fascinated by this story. Even though it’s essentially YA, it didn’t feel like the romances that I usually read but I really wanted to know what it was all about. However, now I’m not sure how I feel about it. I didn’t want to put it down once I started because I was really engaged in the mystery, but it also didn’t captivate me as much as I wanted it to.

In the current timeline, our main protagonist Abby is a high school senior trying to work on her project on 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. She has a lot of things going on in her life – she is still unable to deal with her breakup with Linh while trying to remain friends with her, her parents don’t spend even a minute together at home anymore, her younger brother is acting out and getting into trouble and she hates the competitive nature of applying for colleges. All she wants to do is escape all these problems of hers and when she discovers one particular lesbian romance novel from 1956, she becomes obsessed with the characters and decides that she needs to uncover the true identity of the author. This obsession literally takes over her life and while I understood her struggle with being helpless about her home or love life, it did make her slightly petulant and very neglectful about her studies. I could feel for her desperation to keep things okay, but it also made me slightly unsympathetic towards her because of the way she went about it all.

The timeline in 1955 follows Janet, the author of Abby’s new favorite novel and this was a very compelling look into the times. The wonder when Janet first discovers a lesbian novel herself (or even sees the word lesbian for the first time) or when she realizes that there are other people like her out in the world is captured beautifully. She can be a bit impulsive and sometimes even naive, probably due to her sheltered upbringing, but once she gets to know more about herself or others like her, she decides on her path forward and never wavers from her convictions. She is quite brave in that she wants to live a life being true to herself despite the whole world telling her that it is wrong and I was amazed at her strength in such a young age. Her story is definitely what kept me going with this book.

The writing is good but not enough to keep me engaged throughout. I preferred the 50s timeline because Janet was a much more intriguing protagonist and the stakes felt quite high in her narrative. Even when Abby is trying to find the mystery behind “Marian Love”, I wanted her to solve it as much as she did, but the way her character is written made the journey less enjoyable for me. There is also not a lot that happens for more than half of the book, but the last 25-30% is very exciting when the two timelines converge and definitely what makes the book a memorable read.

The amount of research that the author must have done also shows in every page and this was one of the most informative fiction books I’ve read in recent times. We get some great insight into the queer culture of the 50s, about the Lavender scare when scores of LGBT+ people were discriminated against and fired from their jobs for being immoral and subversive, and about the small communities that they still managed to form to support each other despite the whole world being against them. The two timelines also give us a picture about how far we have come in the fight for equality and how much more we have to do. I especially liked that Abby and her friends have the acceptance from their families which Janet never had, but how this also makes them more politically aware and engage in activism themselves.

This book may not hit the mark all the way through but I still think it’s an important read and I would recommend it to everyone. It’s also really an ode to the power of words and stories, and how the courage of authors to tell them can have an impact on so many others.

Robin Talley always give me the female female romances that makes my heart skip a beat. This was such a good book and i have already reccommended it to my friends.

Janet Jones is an 18 year old girl who lives in Washington D.C. Her best friend, Marie evokes feelings that somehow she can’t find words for. Marie has already graduated from high school as she was ahead of Janet in school. She has gotten a job with the government as a typist. However she is still being scrutinized before she has one hundred percent approved for her job. This time period is the 1950’s when there was something wrong with you if you desired another female rather than a male. It was an era where one could lose there job if even suspected of being a lesbian. When Janet finds a book about two women loving each other' she tells Marie. Will Marie still be a best friend? The lesbian novel has Janet inspired to write a lesbian novel. Sixty plus years years later Abby has just been dumped by her girlfriend and is having a difficult time dealing with it. Abby is a high school senior and decides her project for high school will be writing about pulp lesbian novels after finding one in a bus station. Abby is trying to find out if love lasts or not. She discovers how in the 50’s the novels were rule bound in that the love could not continue—that they must straighten out or one of them dies tragically. Will Abby find the answers she is searching for?

The novel is much more than a book about lesbian love (no x-rated scenes) but about the history of what it was like to be a lesbian then and now. You learn about the fear of parents either throwing you of the house or sent somewhere to be cured. While progress has been made in the lesbian community, there is still much more that can be done. It is an excellent book to read as you get two stories in one book. I was completely fascinated how each woman dwelt with their life.

*Actual rating is a 3.5*

PULP tells the story of Janet and Abby -- two girls separated by more than 60 years who are linked through their love of lesbian pulp fiction and their shared desire to write. Janet, living in 1950s DC, is trying to discover her identity in the midst of the Lavender Scare, a time when people at government jobs thought to be subversive or gay were at risk for being fired if anyone discovered (or even so much as suspected) how they lived their lives. The contrast between this time period and Abby's life as an out lesbian in 2017 was stark. Abby discovers 1950s lesbian pulp fiction and decides to write a book defying the tropes these books relied on for her senior school project.

I really liked the premise of PULP and enjoyed learning about a side of life in the 1950s I was unfamiliar with. The pacing could be a bit slow at times, particularly around the halfway point, but I never found myself bored with the story. It does seem like this book is aimed at the younger half of YA readers. The way some issues were covered felt like they lacked depth and a few plot points were resolved too easily. Overall, <i>Pulp</i> was an interesting deep dive into a specific topic but would've benefitted from discussing its heavier topics with more nuance.

High school senior Abby researches lesbian pulp novels from the 1950s and '60s. Alternating chapters are from the point of view of Janet, a teenager living in the '50s. Both begin writing a novel of their own and exploring their own relationship to community and navigating family trouble. Sometimes compelling, sometimes slow, this is worth a read for the lesbian history included in the story.

3.5/5 Stars

I enjoyed the dual perspectives and how both character's stories worked off each other.

I think I preferred Janet's the most just because of the historical aspect of it and learning about history I never even knew about. How history impacts the present day is very interesting to see.

This was quite a long story and it often times felt very dragged out to be longer. There were a bunch of different stories going on, with the stories that Janet writes, the story that Abby is writing and it felt too much to take in.

Overall I think its a good book that I could recommend to someone who is interested in historical fiction featuring queer characters.

I’m giving Pulp a 2.5/5 stars. I really had high hopes for this book. I thought it was going to be so interesting to see how stuff from the past can greatly affect people in the present. And that was interesting to read. However, I was not a fan of reading from Abby’s point of view. As a character, I simply found her annoying and fairly cringey. However, I absolutely loved Janet’s point of view. If only the entire book had been told from her point of view. I liked the idea of all the different story lines, but they just got too confusing for me. I’m sure that there are plenty of people who would still adore this novel, it just wasn’t for me.

FTC DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Harlequin Teen through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own

3 stars

I really wanted to love this book, however, Abby was insufferable! I only forced myself to finish because this was a review copy. It took until almost the end of the book for Abby to wake up to the real world. My biggest problem with Abby was her delusion that love had to be this perfect fairytale and also that she could somehow stop the inevitable by stalling her life to try to keep time from moving forward. I found it a bit irritating that she ended up being fine at school and basically having no consequences for her actions. Her irresponsible behavior was basically rewarded in the end.

I did enjoy Janet and the lesbian pulp fiction world. I preferred the 1955 portion of the book monumentally more than the 2017 portion of the book. Janet seemed like a sweet and naive (at least about the world relating to homosexuality in the 1950s) young women.

Janet and Abby were basically the only 3-dimensional characters in the entire book, and while I understand that they were the two MC's everyone else kind of seemed like a background to the whole story and didn't really develop at all.

Overall the book was just meh, the subject matter was interesting but the execution just wasn't there.

Content warning: homophobia, racism, moments of intensity/discomfort (please read last paragraph of review for further information)

The draw of storytelling, the connection of a shared identity...

Janet and Abby have a lot in common, despite being separated by more than sixty years. Their worlds, for all the similarities between them, are also vastly differently. 1955 is, for members of the LGBT+ community, nothing like they are in Abby's 2017 and yet, maybe, not so different as you might think.

The dual perspectives, interspersed with selections from novels written by Janet, Abby, and lesbian pulp authors within Robin Talley's world, spell out a story that is as engaging as it is terrifying, as hard to put down as it is heartbreaking.

Janet and Abby were interesting characters. Their voices were strong separate from each other, in their own timelines, while still being complimentary of each other. The things that reached across the years, whether it was one of the books or authors or something that is a spoiler, were well crafted by Robin Talley. She kept up the interconnections in a way that would've been difficult in less skilled hands and I applauded her keeping the story together and weaving it so well.

**What I Liked**

I preferred Janet's perspective a bit more because Abby's perspective was a bit more familiar to me, modern as it was and much closer to my own experience. Janet's perspective offered, on the other hand, insight into a time that I haven't often read about. The 1950's were a terrifying time for people considered "other" by those in power (read: cis-gendered white men). This sense of unease and terror was palpable throughout the writing, even more Janet and her friend, Marie, became aware of it as it related to them personally.

Abby was a complex character that had a lot going on and while there were some things about her chapters that I wasn't a fan of, overall I thought her interesting. Walking through her handling not only of her senior project, but also of the pursuit of the identity of her favorite author and her daily life opened up a character map with many offshoots and paths to explore.

**What I Didn't Care For As Much**

While Abby's complexities did speak to the realities of not only being human, but especially a teenager in her situation (dealing with parents that are fighting; a little brother being affected by that; a potential uniting with her ex; among other things) it felt like at times that all of these threads got tangled and made it hard to follow which one the reader was meant to be concentrating on at any given time.

**Would I Recommend**

I would recommend this, especially if you're interested in the era of lesbian pulp fiction. As someone who didn't know much about the genre prior to reading this title, I think I found out a quite a bit, including threads to learn more (I didn't realize The Price of Salt, aka Salt was a lesbian pulp novel, for example). Robin Talley included information at the back relating to real titles and authors to explore and that inspired her before writing her own story, which I found incredibly useful.

I would remind readers that there are scenes, particularly those that take place in Janet's timeline, that have an overwhelming feeling of tension relating to homophobia, whether external or internalized. Whether on the page or inferred from the context of the events in the book, it could make some scenes difficult to read, so be aware of that when diving in. The book is well worth the read, but some fair warning may be needed.

Robin Talley again proves her gift with making historical narratives feel vitally real to readers. The story is split between the perspectives of Janet Jones, a teenager in 1955, struggling with being in love with her best friend despite the danger of those feelings, and Abby Zimmerman, a teenager in 2017, working on her senior project examining lesbian pulp novels of the time. Talley makes each character feel utterly real in their conflicts and illuminates a piece of history that is not well known, showing the terror and danger that queer people could potentially suffer in the 1950s, something that even young queer people today might not know about. The historical elements never feel forced, and the reader will walk away with plenty to think about. Highly, highly recommended for all collections.

This book beautifully interweaves the coming of age stories of two young lesbians at two vastly different points in recent history. Highly recommend.

A sweet romance told in alternating narratives, Abby is drawn to a pulp novel when researching for her senior project. Since the events of breaking up with her girlfriend. Abby is determined to find out about the author of 'Women of the Twilight Realm' to at least find some happiness. Before this book was written, however, the author lived a very different life under McCarthyism in America. While slow at times, the plot had trouble keeping me excited for both storylines since I found Janet's to be the most interesting (and rooting since the first line for her happy ending!).

Overall, a slow story that will draw more historical romance fans rather contemporary ones.

Abby has been floundering ever since her girlfriend Linh broke up with her at the beginning of the summer. Now it's a new school year, and between Linh, Abby's disintegrating home life, looming college application deadlines, and a school project that is most decidedly not completed, she's feeling pretty damned overwhelmed. Then she discovers a book called Women of the Twilight World, and on a whim decides to write a lesbian pulp fiction book for her senior project.

Meanwhile, in 1955, Janet Jones is coming to terms with her sexuality and her feelings for her best friend Marie, after reading a book called A Love So Strange. She desperately wants to write her own book, but the Lavender Scare is in full effect—and naive Janet has no idea the kinds of trouble she is about to stir up...
~
Wow this book.

I was a little nervous coming into it, particularly since I've read two other YA f/f books that were released this month and both were...disappointing to say the least. And this one had such mixed reviews.

Well.

This definitely did not disappoint. I don't normally enjoy dual storylines with one set in the present and one in the past, as I find it an incredibly annoying way of telling a story, but this pulled it off. The dual storyline sets a dramatic contrast between the 1950s and now and the rights and lives of LGBTQIA people.

One of my favorite quotes from the story that really sums up what it was like:

"It was weird to think that being gay used to mean being isolated, but it was exciting to think a book could be so important."

In Janet's timeline, there's nothing but fear and worry surrounding everything, and her sexuality drives her story. Everything is closeted, closed off, and secretive. For Janet, trying to find her people and discover the words for the feelings she had was next to impossible because she was so isolated and unable to find her own community—until she found a book that described everything she felt and gave names to her feelings and desires, opening up a world of possibilities she had never before imagined.

In Abby's timeline, there's also nothing but fear and worry, but her worries have nothing to do with her sexuality and everything to do with her family and her feelings for her ex-girlfriend. Everything is open and out and proud—Abby's friends are a gender, sexuality and ethnically diverse group and they all mix and flow so easily.

Granted, I found Janet's story to be much more interesting than Abby's, since Janet's world was just so different than my own and Abby's was...well, the present. Shiny and new and Gen Z and ready to take charge and change the world one protest at a time (this is not a critique, btw. Gen Z is going to change shit up and I'm excited). However, I did feel like Abby's timeline was trying to be too right and too in the moment, with her attending gajillions of rallies, protests and political campaigns. Sometimes it felt a bit too painfully politically correct and a bit too preachy, but I did love that she and her friends were so active and open in their demonstrations against injustice.

I also really loved the lesbian history that flows through this book. There is just so much history—and I realized just how much LGBTQIA history (particularly lesbian history) has been erased or, well, stuffed. into the closet.

I had no idea that lesbian pulp fiction was a thing—and it was a big thing in the 1950s. By "big," I mean, very popular among closeted circles of lesbians and straight men who fetishized lesbians (long sigh here), despite the fact that the stories all had to have tragic endings for their characters in order to get around all of the homophobic discrimination.

Okay, and the last thing I'm going to talk about that I loved was how fucking meta this book is. It's a book about two girls—in different points in history—trying to right the own injustices within their lives and find love while writing books about righting injustice and finding love. Their story arcs are drastically different but similar, and there's all of these fun (by fun I mean darkly, painfully real and funny) quotes about writing and how much of a struggle it is—and how a book is never truly finished by the writer, but at some point they have to pack up the words and send them to the editor to be edited. And the plot itself is a lesbian pulp fiction—it both follows and subverts many of the tropes popular in the 1950s, minus any scandalous sex scenes (this is a YA book, although I think it bridges the gap to more adulty reading), particularly the idea of the tragic ending/having to give something up (don't worry, this isn't a spoiler! You just have to read it to see!) Anyhow, it was really neat.

As to the things I wasn't particularly fond of, well, there are only two big things.

The first is that the book is very, very long. At over 400 pages, it takes its sweet time getting to where it wants to go. And it is very character driven verse plot driven. Despite this, I didn't really find my attention lagging, mostly because the subject matter was so fascinating, but I did speed read through a couple of Abby's chapters because they were so boring sometimes.

The second is the use of a particular N-word. Yes, it's the other Yes, it is used in a historically appropriate way for the time (1950s), but (and big but here), I personally don't feel that it's appropriate for a non-Black author to use this word. There are other ways to be historically appropriate without using it. [Additionally, a couple of reviewers have commented that they felt that they thought the author was writing outside her lane in addressing the lives of Black lesbians in the 1950s, however I didn't feel like she was actually writing outside her lane because she wasn't trying to tell their story—but was trying to be inclusive to show how Black and other LGBTQIA people of color tried to live their lives. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but I was glad to see the acknowledgement that although Janet and Marie had it rough, their lives were nothing in comparison to people forced to live under Jim Crow and homophobia.

Overall, this book is a really fascinating read, and a character-driven, historical/contemporary f/f novel that shows that sometimes you really do need to let something go in order to truly be free.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

I loved this book! The full review will be posted soon at kaitgoodwin.com/books! Thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity to connect books to their readers!

I liked the premise of this book - a girl discovers 1950s lesbian pulp novels and decides to make her own. I like how stories from past and present were intertwined and I didn’t expect for Abby to be reading Janet’s book all along. The twist at the end where Janet didn’t die after all was pleasing. I liked reading about Janet’s adventures in New York and wish they could have been drawn out more. 4/5 stars because it didn’t keep me hooked the whole time and it took me 6 days to read.

I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.