Amy has spent her entire life putting other's needs before her own, working as a baker and a bartender in mid-2010's Tulsa. That is until she's outed and fired from her job at a Christian bakery, and turns her one-off gig of subbing in for a bridesmaid into a full-time business, thanks to her love of all things weddings. Between her new business and meeting Charley, Amy has found what she really wants, and her chosen family is beyond thrilled that she is becoming her authentic self. But when her desire to people please kicks into overdrive and begins to strain her relationships to the breaking point, Amy must decide what it looks like to be true to herself.

What I loved about this book was learning about Amy and watching her grow and develop throughout the story. That said, the rest of the characters felt underdeveloped, especially Charley. Their romance was cute, however I just needed to learn more about Charley to really be invested. I also found the ending to be a little rushed, but I loved the epilogue and seeing where all of the characters were so many years later! I thought this was a super enjoyable read, and really appreciated the important discussions that happened in the story.

TW: Homophobia, outing, and mentions of conversion therapy.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC, which I received in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks NetGalley for letting me read this book before it comes out in May. I'll be honest, I had no idea what this book was really about when I agreed to read an E-ARC. I saw the cover, and thought it would be another cute LGBTQIA+ romance. Well it is that, but this book also sets the scene for what life is like for LGBTQIA+ individuals in a red state back in the 2010s. This story follows Amy a baker with aspirations of opening her own bakery, but for now she works in the best bakery in Tulsa which also happens to be owned by a very conservative religious family. This book shows Amy'a struggle to be herself as she tries to reconcile the fake straight persona she projects at work and her real true lesbian self that she gets to let out with her mom and at night working in a gay bar. I liked aspects of this story, but it felt like there was just a lot packed in. There is some romance, but the majority of this book is about self growth and acceptance. The end of this book just felt too rushed compared to how detailed other aspects of this book for about random people's weddings that Amy goes to as a paid bridesmaid. But that being said I still enjoyed this book, it just wasn't what I was expecting. If you are looking for a romance novel look elsewhere, if you want a fiction story about a LGBTQIA+ woman in Tulsa who gets fired for being gay and starts her own adventure helping people at weddings while also trying to find love and accept herself then give this book a shot.

Sadly, although I loved the premise of the book - I couldn’t connect with the characters that well. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc ebook in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

I wavered between three and four stars but in the end I'm not sure it was quite four-star material, but for the most part it was a worthwhile read. Amy is a great protagonist to follow through all her ups and downs. Like a few other recent books marketed as queer romance, I'm not sure the romance label is fitting. It's a part of it but a larger part is about Amy coming of age. Also, it's always great to read a queer-centric book that takes place outside the usual coastal metro city setting.

My main issue is that it didn't quite work to have the book take place in 2013 and be so focused on marriage equality. 2013 is too recent to feel historical or nostalgic but too long ago to feel current. Mostly, I was not much in the mood to have the entire marriage equality debate rehashed or have the concept be so glorified to the point where it's implied that homophobia and transphobia just went away once it was legalized. It felt like the whole narrative was built on it at a time when it would be really nice to move on.

The other thing is that is was too long. It took me a while to get through and I think I would have still been able to get the same out of it if it were 100 pages shorter.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Random House, Dial Press Trade Paperback and NetGalley for granting me permission to read and review this digital ARC of Queerly Beloved.

Honestly, I loved the cover so that alone drove me to want to read this book. Secondly, even as a cis-woman, I believe is supporting my amazing family, friends, strangers in the LGBTQIA family. Being an ally is so important to me and I love to read books to help me grown and learn how to better support those around me

This book is so cute -but its thoughtful just the same. The characters are relatable and the discussions around LGBTQIA were thought provoking. I think this is a great read to encourage discussion about LGBTQIA. Its well written and a great story

This is more about a woman acknowledging and becoming her true self than it is a rom-com. It's 2013, Amy finds herself being a full time bridesmaid (seriously) when she's fired from her job at a Christian bakery in Oklahoma because she's gay. She's just met Charlie. an engineer for an oil company, who is more confident in her identity. It's easy to point out the issues with this- that Charlie isn't really well fleshed out among others things- but read it generously and it's a fine one. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'd like to see more from Dumond.

First of all, this cover is so cute! Second of all, there were a lot of aspects of this story to enjoy. I loved the food descriptions of all of the bakery treats, the lovable side characters and the descriptions of the realities of growing up queer in the Midwest. The discussion throughout the book of Southern Baptist and Midwestern life was spot on, and I'm speaking as someone who was raised as a Southern Baptist in the Midwest! I seriously felt like I was highlighting entire pages at times while reading because the author was offering such good social commentary through the main character's perspective.

But, this book is marketed as a rom com, which it is not. I really think that tempers expectations in the wrong direction. This is more of a personal journey story, with a hint of romance here and there. I actually didn't much care for the romantic interest, Charley, and her lack of communication/care for Amy throughout the book. I thought it was cheesy that they ended up together after all she put Amy through. Their connection just didn't scream "love" to me.

The first 30% or so was also much more engaging than the first in my opinion. The story started to drag during the last two-thirds, and there was just so much going on with side characters that it got a little hard to remember the actual point of the story. Also, I'm sad that the "Queerly Beloved" part of this book didn't actually come out until the literal last pages in the epilogue - that was disappointing.

Overall, this was a good read, especially if you like LGBTQ+ stories and/or are from the Midwest and/or have deconstructed your faith.

Let me just say…Queerly Beloved by Susie Dumond is my new favorite comfort book. If you are looking for a book as diverse as the queer community, this one is for you!

Amy, a semicloseted queer baker and bartender in mid-2010s Oklahoma, has spent a lifetime putting other people’s needs before her own. Until, that is, she hits it off with Charley, a brilliant, attractive engineer who’s just moved to Tulsa. Suddenly, Amy’s found something—someone—she actually wants. Her tight-knit group of chosen family is thrilled she’s finally moving on from her ex. Mostly, though, they want Amy to find a way to show up for love—and life—as her authentic self.

But when a one-off gig subbing in for a bridesmaid turns into a full-time business—thanks to Amy’s baking talents, crafting skills, and years watching rom-coms and Say Yes to the Dress—her deep desire to please kicks into overdrive, at her own expense. It’s not until Amy’s precarious balancing act strains her relationships to the breaking point that she must decide what it looks like to be true to herself—and if she has the courage to try.

Susie take the time to develop her characters in a way that is slicing into each layer of a freshly baked cake. My heart swooned, it broke, and it cheered with each turn of events! Honestly, this is one that I will read over and over again!! Thanks to NetGalley for my ARC of this amazing story!!

~Thanks to Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Queerly Beloved in exchange for an honest review. ~

Being promised romance and finding out the book is actually Women’s Fiction will become my villain origin story.

I, unfortunately, ended up not finishing this book after 45% in because I went in expecting a romance story, where the majority of the book would be dedicated to the development of a relationship between our main characters’ Amy and Charley. Instead, this book is mostly focused on Amy trying to secure her life with a new job and find happiness, which happens to include dating the new hot girl in town.

I have no problem with that kind of a story, but it wasn’t what I wanted and wasn’t what I went in expecting, so of course, I was disappointed. I should have picked up on it when I noticed that we received so much information and background about Amy, but her love interest, Charley, gets quick summarizations, making it hard to connect with her. Because of this, I wasn’t invested in the relationship between the two. The writing around them as a couple just wasn’t convincing. At one point the author tells you there is sexual tension, but I couldn’t feel it in the writing, so I didn’t believe it. Very tell not show writing style throughout. Basically, this isn’t a romance book, it just has an (unconvincing) romance side-plot.

As I said, there’s SO much information about Amy and you have to sift through all of it to figure out what is actually important to the story. This made the pacing of the story really slow, even if it’s an easy read. Also was pretty disappointed that the two gay men in this are stereotypical gay best friend types with little depth, I’d expect more from a book with a lesbian romance in it.

A big plus I will give this is that the author actually acknowledged period sex! Not something I’ve ever come across in a traditional romance book, so props to normalizing menstruation.

All in all, a disappointment due to poor labeling and marketing, once again.

Queerly Beloved is a beautifully written story of love and friendship and identity. Amy is a part-time bartender and a people-pleasing baker who gets fired from from the bakery she works at after being outed, and after she’s fired, she becomes a bridesmaid-for-hire. She is so endearing, and my heart broke for her over her persistent struggle of finding her place as a queer woman in the wedding industry and her struggles with being open with that. I loved her honesty and journey, and her friends at the bar she works at her were amazing. Everyone needs a Joel and Damien in her life. I also loved her relationship with her mother and uncles—she has such a wonderful support system, and I just adored their help in Amy’s journey to find her voice. I didn’t love the love interest, Charley. While their dates and banter was endearing and sweet, I feel like it took them too long to communicate well and honestly with each other. But every other element of the book really worked. The writing is captivating and witty. The community built in these pages is beautiful and the characters were just fantastic.

Queerly Beloved was cute. Definitely more of a womens fiction/coming of age than a romance. I enjoyed it and loved all the Queer representation and loved that Charley was an engineer. The multitudes of speeches and grand gestures made it feel a little unrealistic. I feel like I don’t know anything about Charley other than she’s “one of the good ones” that works in the oil & gas industry as an engineer. A lot of the descriptions of the book feel like i’m just being told what to imagine instead of actually experiencing it. All of the baking/food descriptions did make me hungry.

Look at that cover, y’all. Doesn’t it just scream “I am a light buttercream confection?”

Well, just like The GUNCLE, this more than a little misleading.

So, Amy is a queer baker working in a Christian bakery. Her boss is deeply homophobic, so Amy remains well-secured in the closet. One day as she is closing up, Charley walks in looking for a cupcake. She finds Amy, and they hit it off immediately.

And then they don’t. After a perfect date, they don’t go out again for…a couple weeks. And then they have a pretty perfect second date…and they don’t go out again for weeks. And then they have a pretty perfect third date…and you see where this is going.

This was a relationship that had zero momentum. They seemed to start from scratch every couple of weeks. After the second date, I just didn’t care if they got together, and I didn’t believe it when they did. This was a couple with a casual connection at best, so their HEA rang seriously false for me.

Which brings me to the central problem with this book. It was joyless.

Now, that does not mean that it was a bad book. If you are looking for a light novel that ruminates on the consequences of deeply-ingrained queer-phobia in the deep south in the early 21st Century, this might be your book. If you want to read about toxic patriarchy in the wedding industry, well, ditto.

But if you are looking for the gorgeous confection advertised by that cover, well, this ain’t it. And if you want a love story that feels inevitable, if you want to fall in love with these characters as they fall in love with each other, well…this ain’t that, either.

Two stars because it’s well-written, and the author has a clear point of view. But this is not a Romantic Comedy. Buyer beware.

*I received a free ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

This was a great book, but what took it to the next level for me was the character growth. The characters' apologies were sincere, thorough, and in no way felt half-assed (by the character or by the author!) The discussions around queerness and being queer in an area that often means you can't be safe and are unseen were deep and made me as the reader think (I'm Canadian and didn't grow up in an environment like this, so it showed me a whole different perspective.) I've read a lot of books with queer characters in metropolitan areas, but this delivered a completely different perspective and the author really nailed it.

I also like that the author set the book in 2013 rather than present day, and her explanation why in the Book Club Guide section was super interesting. It added another layer to the story that I hadn't considered (again, as a non-American reader).

I definitely recommend this book, I think a lot of readers will find it highly enjoyable but also thought-provoking and intensely real.

While the description of Queerly Beloved sounds so promising, the concept was poorly executed. A lesbian baker-turned-bridesmaid falls in love with a cool, kitschy engineer. However, most of this book isn’t about the romance between Amy and Charlie, and the two women barely have any chemistry when they do interact. The plot mostly focused on Amy and who she is, her figuring out how to start up a new professional bridesmaid business. With about 150 pages of extraneous information that didn’t need to be there, this book is long and very slow, and hardly qualifies as a rom-com.

This book is marketed as a romance comedy, but it's really a coming of age. The main character, Amy, is a social chameleon and consummate people-pleaser - skills that have served her well as a gay woman who works at a Christian-owned business. When she is fired after being outed to her intolerant boss, she stumbles into work as a professional bridesmaid. She loves weddings and is good at her new job, but she feels uncomfortable participating in an institution that rejects homosexuality (the novel is set in 2013 Tulsa, pre-marriage-equality). Soon the contradictions between Amy's identity and her career threaten her friendships and force her to re-evaluate who she really wants to be.

So... where's the romance? There is, in fact, a romantic plotline, but it's underdeveloped, implausible, and feels like an afterthought. Maybe it was added to help define this story's genre: it's about a young woman, and it has a happy ending... it must be a romance!

But the worst thing about the romance part of this story is that it actually gets in the way. The love interest, Charley, is poorly characterized, and her scenes with Amy are draggy and awkward. The rest of the story is funny and readable, but whenever Charley shows up the pace slows and the dialogue becomes stilted. These scenes eat up space that could be spent deepening Amy's friendships and her relationships with family members, and they bloat the first third of the book unnecessarily.

But Charley's appearances are intermittent once her importance to Amy is established - fortunately for the reader, if not for the main character. There are enough wedding- and cupcake-related shenanigans to fulfill the usual rom-com requirements, some serious discussion of marriage equality, a plausible and satisfying character arc. Although I found the first half of Queerly Beloved difficult to read, I loved the second half.

This was such a fun, touching book that also dealt with important, real-life issues that I really fell in love with.

Amy is a baker, but the problem is she is a lesbian baking at a Christian bakery. By night she bartends at a fun, queer bar full of found family. When Amy is outed and fired she has to figure out something to do and somehow gets hired to be a bridesmaid in multiple weddings. This all happens as she starts to fall for the new girl in town.

I really loved Amy as a characters and found myself relating to her a lot. Not only do I think being a professional bridesmaid would be a very fun job (I love solving problems on the fly and I love weddings), I felt like we had very similar feelings on a lot of issues. I really liked the conversations that she had with her mom involving religion, though they might be slightly triggering for those who have had hard experiences with the church, especially regarding sexuality.

I loved the cast of characters in this book and really loved watching Amy find her way and herself throughout this book, with love thrown in there as well.

Thank you NetGallery and the publisher for this ARC!

3⭐️ book for me. I really loved the first few chapters and was looking forward to learning more about the side characters as the book went on. Sadly that didn’t really happen—besides Amy the characters don’t really have much dimension.

I did love Amy as our narrator, she was relatable and seemed like a real person we are all probably friends with. Some of the language in the book was kinda awkward at points—I know it was 2013 but some things didn’t make sense for the times.

I actually did enjoy the romance part of the book, but it wasn’t nearly enough!!! I thought this was gonna be a complete romance novel and felt more like fiction or even a coming of age.

All in all I liked it and will look out for the authors next work!

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram!

DNF’ed at 18%. Felt too stereotypical, between the gay besties, the hot intelligent new to town love interest, and the fast friends at the wedding. The dialogue seemed clunky and what I read was way too wordy with too little action.

I really enjoyed this book. I found it to be really unique within the genre of contemporary romance and that's not easy to do in such a crowded genre!

I found myself sometimes wanting to pick up the lead Amy by her shirt tails and tell her to believe in her self a bit more - but she found her way to where/how she needed to be and in the end it's good that she did it on her own. We follow Amy through some real highs and lows and it's not always easy to stick with an MC through that, but it was worth it!

There was a huge cast of supporting characters and although I liked most of them, it was a bit confusing at times due to their sheer number.

Dumond also does a really great job of situating the issues faced by the queer community and shows us that it's not a one size fits all which I think it soooo important.

Well done!