Romance readers often treat genres like a set of tidy little boxes. Contemporary romance sits in one place. Fantasy in another. Science fiction in another. Mystery somewhere else. If you walk into most bookstores, those sections all have their own shelves and places in the store.

Sapphic romance does not follow those rules.

One of the strangest things I hear from readers is this sentence. “I want sapphic romance but I cannot find any good ones.” I hear this from people who read ten or twenty romances a month. At first, I thought the problem involved visibility. Publishing. Marketing. Recommendation algorithms.

Then I started looking at reading habits.

A lot of readers search for sapphic books only within the contemporary romance category. That search misses a huge portion of what sapphic writers are doing. Many of the most interesting, delicious, beautiful sapphic love stories live inside fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, mystery, and other genres.

So I want to spend some time wandering through those shelves with you.

Not as a definitive guide. More like a curious reader poking around and asking questions.

Contemporary sapphic romance

This is the shelf most people check first. Contemporary romance focuses on modern life. Workplaces. cities. small towns. messy families. dating apps. community spaces. awkward first dates. soft domestic moments.

Many contemporary sapphic romances center on identity. Coming out. Chosen family. Learning how to communicate needs. Learning how to exist in a world that does not always recognize queer relationships.

The setting remains familiar. The emotional stakes stay grounded in everyday life. That familiarity makes the love story feel immediate.

You watch two women/femmes try to build something steady while dealing with family expectations, career pressure, and their own emotional baggage. Sometimes the most satisfying stories come from watching people figure out how to care for each other better.

I love contemporary romance for this reason. You get to watch people grow. But honestly, it’s my least favorite subgenre of romance. I couldn’t tell you why, but I end of gravitating to fantasy and science fiction more and more these days.

Fantasy sapphic romance

Fantasy takes the rules of this world and throws them out the window.

Instead of navigating modern society, characters deal with magic systems, political alliances, ancient curses, rival kingdoms, and magical creatures who probably have opinions about the situation.

The love story takes place in a world that operates differently from ours.

Fantasy creates room for authors to reshape gender roles, social norms, and power structures. Some worlds hold no rigid expectations about gender or sexuality. We diverge from heteronormative and ciscentric ideologies. Others still contain those systems but allow characters to challenge them directly.

You might see princesses falling for rival generals. Court mages quietly falling in love while the kingdom teeters on the edge of collapse. Two warriors on opposite sides of a war slowly realizing they care about each other.

The stakes feel large. The feelings still remain deeply human.

Science fiction sapphic romance

Science fiction pushes things even further.

Instead of medieval kingdoms, you get starships, distant planets, artificial intelligence, time travel, or societies built around entirely different ideas of family and partnership.

Science fiction often asks strange questions about identity.

What does gender look like in a society that evolved differently from ours?
How do relationships function in a space colony where survival depends on cooperation?
What happens when technology changes the body itself?

A sapphic love story in that context forces readers to rethink what love even looks like.

Sometimes two characters fall in love while exploring alien worlds. Sometimes they meet across timelines. Sometimes they exist in a future where the rules of society look nothing like the ones we inherited.

And I find that deeply fascinating.

Historical sapphic romance

Historical romance does something equally important. It looks backward.

For a long time, people acted like queer women barely existed in earlier centuries. That claim collapses the moment you start reading historical fiction written by people who actually researched queer history.

Queer women existed in every time period. They wrote letters. They formed partnerships. They built quiet communities. They hid. They resisted. They survived.

Historical sapphic romance brings those lives into the foreground.

You often see secret relationships. Hidden meeting places. Social rules that force characters to move carefully. Sometimes the tension of those restrictions makes the romance even more intense.

Two people trying to love each other inside a world designed to prevent exactly that.

There is something powerful about reclaiming those stories.

Then there is the Bridgerton effect: historical romances that rewrite history to be more accepting. Romances that focus on classism or struggles of living off the land in a wild frontier, rather than on love being forbidden.

Mystery and thriller sapphic romance

Then you have romance that develops while people solve crimes or try to stay alive.

Mystery and thriller plots create immediate pressure. Two characters investigate a case together. They share danger. They rely on each other under stressful conditions.

Trust develops quickly in situations like that.

Detectives who start as reluctant partners. Journalists uncovering corruption together. Investigators who slowly realize their professional partnership has turned into something much more personal.

The emotional tension grows right alongside the plot.

And honestly, forced proximity during a murder investigation remains one of my favorite romance setups. In my opinion, there aren’t enough of these. I want psychological thrillers with sapphic subplots and women who fall in love with the serial killer they are hunting.

Why this matters

When readers only search for sapphic romance in one genre, they miss most of the field.

Sapphic writers tell love stories in every genre imaginable. Some focus on soft domestic intimacy. Others build entire worlds around queer relationships. Others explore history or future societies.

Genre shapes how these love stories unfold.

Fantasy allows writers to imagine entirely new social systems. Science fiction questions the very structure of identity. Historical fiction recovers erased lives. Mystery places love inside moments of danger and urgency.

All of those approaches expand how we think about queer relationships.

And frankly, they make reading more fun.

Your turn

I want to hear from you.

Which genre holds your favorite sapphic romances?
Which genres do you want to explore more this year?
What books would you recommend to other readers who want to branch out?

I am also asking this question for a practical reason.

This year I want to read widely across genres, especially speculative fiction. If you know a sapphic fantasy or science fiction book that rearranged your brain chemistry in the best possible way, please tell me about it.

Your recommendation might end up in the next review, the reading challenge, or even a future Sapphic Sunday book club discussion.

Next post will include some book recommendations from each of these sub-genres that I have read and loved, and some that are on my TBR.

I want to share an update and bring you into the process a bit.

The book box is still happening. Frankie and I chose to move in a new direction and keep it separate from The Tenth Muse. The focus is still, obviously, sapphic. The covers WILL BE NSFW. The vision feels clearer and more aligned with what we want to build.

We are deep in planning mode right now. Brand direction. Artist outreach. Book curation. Community pieces. All of it. The goal is to build something that feels intentional and worth your time and money.

I also want your input. What do you want more of at this tier?

Talks on deconstruction
Sex Ed stuff
Short form videos
Thoughts on current book space discussions
Exclusive essays or reading guides
Live chats
Discord discussions
Sneak peeks of upcoming boxes

I have a lot I could offer. I want to focus on what feels valuable to you. Tell me what you would be excited to see and what would make this space worth staying in.

Long time no talk, but I have been busy building a sapphic empire. I will talk about that this week. I have been mulling over the anti-intellectualism conversation moving through social media and had thoughts, but I recently picked up ten client,s and the last two weeks have been busy. Here I am on sapphic Sunday with two quick things before I get into it. Book club is tonight at 7 pm on Discord. Even if you did not read the book, come hang out and get to know people. I am also working on a schedule so I show up here more consistently.

There has been a lot of noise about a rise in anti-intellectualism in online book spaces. That claim needs care. People often use it in ways that slide into ableism by equating intelligence with academic language, formal education, or a narrow reading culture. Many readers engage deeply through romance, lit fic, non-fiction, fan spaces, and community-driven recommendations. Those are valid forms of connection and learning. Dismissing them limits who gets seen as thoughtful or informed.

At the same time, fear of knowledge creates real harm. When people are taught to distrust history, journalism, and critical thinking, power concentrates. Disinformation spreads. Simplistic narratives replace complex truth. Attacks on libraries, educators, and marginalized voices follow. Access to knowledge is tied to the health of any democracy. We are currently seeing its fall in real time with the defunding of libraries, the banning of books, etc.

Algorithms also shape what we see. Platforms reward straight, cis, white, western beauty standards and quick, polished content. The tropification of books as reviews, belittling deeply romantic and beautiful stories to one-liners like “Where is my wife?” Creators who fit those expectations get more visibility. The shorter, flashier, and more outlandish a video is, the more it gets engagement. The books pushed in those spaces often feel safe, familiar, and forgettable. Visibility gets mistaken for quality. That narrows the range of tastes and limits exposure to voices that challenge readers.

The response is not gatekeeping. The response is expansion. Follow disabled creators. Follow queer and trans reviewers. Follow Black, Indigenous, and global readers who bring history and lived experience into their analysis. Seek people who name power, context, and impact. That builds perspective and keeps the book space alive and relevant.

I recently read an ALC of Was That Racist? By Evelyn Carter. This is also where that book fits. The book works as an entry point for readers who want to understand racism as a system, not only as overt harm. It explains how Whiteness functions as a standard and why many White readers have not been socialized to recognize bias in the same ways people of color often must. The tone is gentle and inviting, keeping readers engaged rather than defensive.

Readers already immersed in anti-racism work will recognize much of the material. The strength lies in delivery and in the personal stories. The examples show how bias shows up in everyday moments and how unlearning requires attention and accountability. The author names her own bias, reinforcing the idea that everyone carries learned patterns.

This is not a theoretical text. It is a practical tool for conversation, reflection, and early learning.

The broader goal is not to win debates online. The goal is to widen what people read, who they listen to, and how they think about knowledge. Curiosity and critical thought protect communities. The book space has a role in that work. Showing up, reading widely, and amplifying voices outside the algorithm’s comfort zone matters.

Comfort over truth

White supremacy culture prioritizes comfort, especially white comfort. This shows up when tone becomes more important than content. It shows up when anger, grief, or directness from Black and Brown women is labeled as unsafe, aggressive, or inappropriate.

Comfort over truth sounds like:
Can you say that more nicely.
I agree, but the way you said it was harsh.
I am open to feedback, but not like this.

This shifts focus away from harm and toward managing white emotional experience.

Reflective journaling:
How were you taught to relate to anger or strong emotion, especially from women of color.
What messages did you receive about politeness, niceness, and being likable.
How has that shaped whose emotions you take seriously.

Intent over impact

White supremacy culture teaches individualism and defensiveness. Many white women are taught to focus on intent. If harm was not intended, then harm feels up for debate. This moves the conversation away from the person harmed and toward protecting white identity.

Intent over impact sounds like:
That was not my intention.
I did not mean it that way.
You misunderstood me.

Intent does not erase impact. Accountability asks for attention to what happened, not just what was meant.

Reflective journaling:
What happens in your body when your impact is named.
What stories do you tell yourself to feel less responsible.
What would it feel like to stay with impact without explaining.

Tone policing and emotional control

White supremacy culture values emotional restraint and control. Black and Brown women are often punished socially for expressing anger, urgency, or pain. White women are often rewarded for calmness and softness. This creates a dynamic where white women feel entitled to set the emotional rules.

Tone policing sounds like:
I would listen if you were calmer.
I agree with you, but you are being too intense.
Let’s keep this productive.

This treats emotional expression as the problem instead of the harm being named.

Reflective journaling:
Who taught you what emotions are acceptable.
Whose emotions feel threatening to you and why.
How do you benefit from being seen as calm or reasonable.

Moving Toward Accountability and Relational Repair

Shifting these patterns requires more than intellectual agreement. It requires nervous system work, relational skills, and a willingness to tolerate discomfort without centering yourself. Accountability asks white women to build capacity for staying present when feedback feels activating.

This means learning to notice defensive impulses without acting on them. It means resisting the urge to correct tone, explain intent, or manage your image. It means staying focused on the harm named, even when your body wants to escape, justify, or shut down.

Practically, this can look like.
Listening without interrupting or correcting.
Naming impact before intent.
Saying, “I hear you. I caused harm,” without adding explanations.
Asking what repair would look like.
Sitting with discomfort without making it someone else’s problem.

This is not about perfection. It is about practice. Each moment of staying with impact builds capacity for real relationship. Each time you choose accountability over comfort, you weaken the systems that depend on white emotional centrality.

This work is not abstract. It shows up in friendships, workplaces, therapy spaces, activism, and family systems. It shapes who feels safe to speak and who feels pressured to stay silent. Choosing truth over comfort is a daily practice. It is relational. It is embodied. It is ongoing.

White Women. Pause Before You Speak.

When conversations about safety, harm, or oppression come up, many white women/femmes feel an immediate pull to respond. The response often feels caring, protective, or helpful. Underneath that urge, white supremacy culture often shapes what feels normal, responsible, or polite and we don't even realize it.

Tema Okun’s work on white supremacy culture names patterns that are baked into institutions and relationships. These patterns are not about individual morality. They are about systems that train white people, especially white women, to center comfort, control, and emotional safety in ways that silence or override Black and Brown women.

Decolonized therapy and healing justice frameworks add an important layer. These are frameworks I use in my own therapeutic practice. They remind us that harm is not only interpersonal. Harm lives in systems, bodies, and histories. Healing is not only about insight. Healing is about changing how power moves in relationships, whose nervous systems are protected, and whose pain is taken seriously.

Pausing is not passive. A pause is an active disruption of systems that reward speed, reassurance, and control.

Why the pause matters.

White supremacy culture often teaches urgency. Urgency pushes fast responses, quick fixes, and immediate reassurance. In conversations about harm or safety, urgency often serves white comfort more than Black and Brown safety.

Urgency sounds like:
I need to respond right now.
I should fix this.
I need to explain myself before I am misunderstood.

Healing justice asks whose nervous system is being prioritized. Decolonized practice centers the people most impacted by harm. A pause creates space to ask who benefits from speed. In many cases, speed protects white emotional comfort and social standing, not the person naming harm.

Reflective journaling:
What emotions come up when someone names harm connected to race or safety?
What do you feel pressure to protect in those moments. Your image. Your relationships. Your sense of being good?
Where did you learn that being quick and calm equals being safe?

Stay tuned because I have a LOT more on this to come.

Also check out the source material https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info

The thinking brain, centered in the prefrontal cortex, is the part that helps you reason, plan, make decisions, and regulate impulses. Under normal conditions, it balances the reactions of the survival brain and feeling brain. It can calm the body by recognizing when a threat is over, applying logic, and choosing healthy responses.

During trauma or a trauma trigger, the thinking brain goes offline. The survival brain and feeling brain send overwhelming signals that the body is in danger, which shuts down access to higher reasoning. Blood flow and energy are redirected to survival functions instead of logical thought. This is why in the middle of a trigger, it can feel impossible to “think your way out” or use reminders that you are safe.

For the thinking brain to re-engage, the body first needs to receive signals of safety. This often starts from the bottom up, through calming the nervous system and reducing activation in the survival brain. Grounding exercises, slow breathing, movement, or sensory input like touch or sound can help. These cues tell the survival brain the danger has passed, which in turn quiets the feeling brain. Once the alarm settles, the thinking brain can come back online and assess the situation more clearly.

When the thinking brain is active again, it can work with the feeling brain to regulate emotion and put experiences into context. For example, it can recognize that a loud noise today is different from the traumatic event of the past, which helps the hippocampus store the memory accurately. It can also help create new patterns by practicing responses that reinforce safety instead of fear.

This process of re-engaging the thinking brain is central to trauma recovery. The goal is not to silence the survival and feeling brains—they are essential for protection and connection—but to bring the three systems back into balance. Over time, repeated practice helps the thinking brain stay more accessible, even during stress.

I'm still using this space as a place for understanding more about how trauma impacts us. The triune brain model basically breaks that brain into three major brain structures which are thought to be in control of three major aspects of human thought and behavior. The survival brain, the feeling brain and the thinking brain, which I gave a brief overview in the last post.

I'm going to start with a more in-depth look at how trauma impacts the triune brain, starting with the survival brain.

The survival brain sits at the base of the brain and includes the brainstem and hypothalamus. Its primary job is to keep the body alive. It regulates automatic functions like breathing, heartbeat, and digestion, and it controls reflexive responses to danger. Because survival is its focus, this part of the brain reacts much faster than conscious thought.

The brainstem is responsible for keeping us safe. The health and functioning of this brain region largely determines our ability to detect and respond to threats. At the most basic level, the brainstem helps us identify familiar and unfamiliar things. Familiar things are usually seen as safe and preferable, while unfamiliar things are treated with suspicion until we have assessed them and the context in which they appear.

When you face a threat, the survival brain takes charge before you even realize what is happening. It sends signals through the nervous system that release stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These chemicals speed up the heart, sharpen the senses, and prepare the muscles to fight, flee, or freeze (and like four more f responses - flop, fawn, friend, faint/feint). This process is automatic and does not involve choice - I'll go more in depth on these, later, as well.

Trauma changes how the survival brain works. In situations of extreme stress or danger, the survival brain activates repeatedly and strongly. Over time, this can rewire it to stay on high alert, even when no threat is present. This is why trauma survivors often experience hypervigilance, startle easily, or feel unsafe in ordinary settings. At this point, if you've been awake and paying attention for years, we have a sort of collective trauma of witnessing Black and Brown folks get gunned down in the streets, a genocide live on tiktok, war crimes committed in front of our very eyes, gaslighting by the current administration and all of the past administrations (to a degree) and so much more, on top of the personal traumas we have all experienced. The survival brain learns to treat neutral cues—like a tone of voice, a smell, or a crowded space—as if they signal real danger. Which is why opening social media, seeing a post by someone you thought was an ally, watching the news, the phone ringing, going to the grocery store, they can all be triggering. We are all living in a state of hypervigilence, and if you aren't, you have been asleep.

Another impact of trauma on the survival brain is difficulty switching off once the alarm has sounded. In non-traumatic stress, the body returns to balance after the threat passes. But with trauma, the survival brain struggles to reset. Stress hormones remain elevated, keeping the body tense and on guard. This prolonged activation can lead to problems like sleep disruption, physical health issues, and exhaustion.

When the survival brain dominates, it overrides the thinking brain. Logical reasoning, planning, and perspective-taking shut down because the body prioritizes survival. This is why during a trauma trigger, a person may not be able to calm themselves with rational thoughts or reminders of safety. Instead, their body reacts as though the original danger is happening again.

Ok I know I have inundated you with a lot, but I wanted to start with this foundation, stay tuned because tomorrow I'll post about the feeling brain.

A good book to read right now is My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem. In this house we do not support Bessel van der kolk as he profits off the work of women of color and does harm in multiple ways to his own community.

As always, the discord is a place to process and talk about what you're experiencing, I love you, I'm holding space for you all. I'm here as a resource.

I'm starting with a brief breakdown of the three main parts of the brain often discussed in trauma work and how they function:

1. Survival Brain (Brainstem and Hypothalamus)

• Responsible for: Basic life functions like breathing, heart rate, and the fight-flight-freeze response.

• Impact of trauma: Becomes hyper-alert, quickly activating danger responses even when threats are not present. This can cause panic, dissociation, or physical shutdown.

• During a trigger: It takes control immediately, pushing the body into survival mode before other parts of the brain can assess the situation.

2. Feeling Brain (Limbic System, especially the Amygdala)

• Responsible for: Emotions, attachment, memory, and scanning for safety or danger.

• Impact of trauma: The amygdala becomes overactive, tagging safe experiences as threats, while the hippocampus (memory system) struggles to place events in context. This can lead to flashbacks and intense emotional reactions.

• During a trigger: It floods the body with fear, sadness, or anger, often overwhelming rational thought.

3. Thinking Brain (Prefrontal Cortex)

• Responsible for: Logic, problem-solving, planning, impulse control, and perspective-taking.

• Impact of trauma: Trauma reduces access to this part of the brain during stress. It becomes harder to regulate emotions, think clearly, or recognize that the danger has passed.

• During a trigger: It often goes offline, leaving survival and emotional responses in charge.

How they interact during a trauma trigger
When a trigger occurs, the survival brain reacts first, signaling danger. The feeling brain amplifies the alarm with strong emotions and distorted memories. The thinking brain, which could normally calm the body and assess reality, is shut down or slowed, so logic and self-soothing feel out of reach. This creates the cycle where the body feels unsafe even if no real danger exists.

If I don't lose power, I'll post something longer tomorrow. Please know that there is a channel on the discord for people to let me know that they would like to schedule something one on one. Also, it's ok to be not ok. And I'm here to support you during this time.

As a reminder, I'm a licensed clinical social worker and my area of focus is trauma work.

Hey all, in no particular order because ain't nobody got time for that, here are all the sapphic books I could find, both trad and indie, releasing in Febrauary. Since you are amazing and are here on the bindery, you get a peek at this calendar a full week before everyone else!

There are literally too many good options to choose from and I'm still wading through the new releases from January. I started Mine, Yours & Ours by Karmen Lee, and after that I'm going to read the book of Blood and Roses by Annie Summerlee!

Oh and I'm currently also listening to For Love and Blood and Fury by JJ Arias! I have downloaded a million books and I have all my devices and backup battery packs charged and if all else fails I can always read my physical books for this ice storm we are allegedly getting. I'm actually mostly terrified that we won't have power and I'll miss my submission date for The Tenth Muse, so I'm going to try and get it up early.