Book Review: Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

I'm pretty sure I heard about this book through bookstagram, and immediately put it on my mental TBR list. I will read any book about librarians, and this one sounded really cool. Synopsis:

“That girl’s got more wrong notions than a barn owl’s got mean looks.”

Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her—a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.

The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.

I didn't really read the synopsis, or if I had I'd forgotten the details, so I was surprised a few chapters in when Esther mentioned cars as a past thing. From the writing and worldbuilding, it felt like a historical fiction book set in the wild west in the 1800s. People ride on horseback and use horse-drawn wagons; gender roles and ways of talking sound like they were in the 1800s, and people are executed by hanging. The cars thing, and other references Esther internally makes to propaganda films, show that this is a dystopian book set in the future. It's clear the Librarians are the only women allowed to move around independently, distributing Approved Materials to entertain, educate and enlighten the populace (and secretly distribute forbidden materials and goods as part of the resistance against the fascist US). Not all of them are women, either; one Librarian is nonbinary, like Sarah Gailey themself. 

This book is rather suspenseful due to the outside danger as well as inner: Esther's self-doubt and internalized homophobia. Due to the highly conservative heteronormative culture, she thought there was something wrong with her and her best/girlfriend, and that they were outliers. When she meets the group of awesome queer Librarians, she feels at home despite the danger and decides to join them. While I would have liked to learn more about the library (both Approved and not) and its operations, there was still plenty that just sucked me in. There are exciting fights with gangs on horseback, spy stuff, a love interest for Esther, etc. I highly recommend this book if you like Westerns and antifascist queer themes. My only real complaint is that I wanted it to be like 3 times longer! I wanted to keep following Esther and the Librarians as she truly became one of them. I think this is a novella; Google will only give me word count guidelines so I'm going to assume you just define what a novella is with your heart.

Score: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: April 27
From: Book Outlet
Status: keep

Cover notes: Perfect Western font. I didn't realize initially that the black design on the left side of the cover is actually the Librarians and their horses and camps, sideways!

Trigger warnings for this book: murder, shooting deaths, corpses, execution by hanging, guns, homophobia, domestic violence mentions, domestic abuse mentions, physical abuse mentions, implied transphobia, internalized homophobia, fascism and censorship, sexism, misogyny, disassociation due to shock, government corruption and neglect, water shortage and thirst