SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Book Review: The Second Mango by Shira Glassman: https://t.co/Tb5TXJWM8S
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) May 24, 2022
Short Review: 8.5 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): A tremendously fun Jewish Fantasy Romance Adventure featuring Demi and Lesbian Protagonists, as Shulamit, Queen of Perach, convinces her brave warrior bodyguard Rivka to help her search the kingdom for a woman to love only to find danger. Just delightful
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) May 24, 2022
2/3
The Second Mango is the first book in Shira Glassman's Jewish Fantasy Romance series of short novels/novellas (her "Mangoverse"), which feature LGBTQ characters at their heart. For this book, that's lesbian Queen Shulamit and her new friend and bodyguard, the demisexual Rivka (who pretends to be a man named Riv), as they go out and search for a new love for the Queen and find adventure at the same time. Jewish Fantasy Romance - especially adding in LGTBQ characters - is a way to really appeal to my interests, so I bought this when I first heard of it and it was on sale.
And boy was I glad I did, because The Second Mango is just so so so much fun. Both lead characters - insecure Queen Shulamit, still a young woman at heart who means well but is a bit naive about the world and also desperate to find another lesbian woman after her last love disappeared (in a world which where such love isn't common), and Rivka, a strong bodyguard woman who has trauma from what happened to the only man she ever loved, are really great and fun, and the story does a great job telling their pasts and allowing them to have adventure. The book doesn't really have that much conflict or really much of an antagonist, which I guess is the only strike against it, but it's just so so so charming that I really don't care.