I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it will come out in June. I love learning about my sapphic ancestors. Queer people and queer love are nothing new.

Great read!!! The storyline is interesting to read. The story about queer couple during the old days. There so much parts in the story about the towns, the people tho there some parts i feel a bit draggy. It was quite a slow read for me since the storyline was flat. I love the art style. Very pretty!! The way the story was told in 12 boxes per pages. It was refreshing reading it that way!!

I know it’s nonfiction so it kind of gets a pass, but just a warning that this book is slow!

I requested it on NetGalley for historical lesbians depicted by Tillie Walden (whose work I have previously enjoyed) and it was educational and charming, and the sepia art was great, and the little asides and quips about the wider time period at the chapter breaks were impeccable!

Queer people have always been here!

This was nice but not at all what I expected. This is a historical graphic novel biography of two women who were the bestest of gal pals and definitely not lesbian lovers, they just happened to never get married and lived together. It was gorgeous and definitely had me bawling at the end.

But it is also very episodic, it doesn’t try to stuff the lives of these two real people into a consistent narrative structure, cause that’s not how human lives usually work. So the story is instead told in one- to two-page long vignettes from Charity and Sylvia’s lives, following them from when they first met all the way to their deaths. I was initially a bot taken aback, because it wasn’t what I was expecting, but as I kept reading I enjoyed it more and more. It is very slow-paced and uneventful at times, but results in a gorgeous, heart warming whole by the end.

I really liked the art style, it was very pretty and I feel like it really managed to capture the time period quite well. But it was a bit difficult at first because the beginning had a number of young blonde women who all looked very similar, so I kept getting them confused - the characters get more distinctive as the story goes on and this isn’t a problem for long though.

Tropes and such:
- lesbians in 19th century New England
- biography in vignettes
- slow-paced graphic novel
- a heart-warming ending (did make me cry tho)
- loads of religion but barely any homophobia

This was a really wonderful telling of the true story of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake. I think it is so important that we keep the memory of these people alive, to show that we have always been here and we always will be and Tillie Walden has done this beautifully. It took me a little bit of time to get used to the way this is presented in a series of vignettes, of small moments that happened throughout these womens' lives as at first I wasn't sure who anyone was but once I was used to it I did like it, and it was reflective of how Tilly pieced together their story from the letters, poems and journal entries that were left behind (I also loved that photographs of the source materials were shown at the end!). The art style is beautiful and my only criticism really is that while I found the layout to be interesting (a 3×4 grid) it did make some scenes a little bit difficult to make out what was happening as the text tended to take up most of the box and it wasn't easy to tell who was speaking. Overall though this was a really great read, especially for pride month.