Genre:
Gothic
Themes:
Angsty
Coming of Age
Coming Out
Dark Fantasy
Dark Romance
Erotic
Family Relationships
Femme / Femme
First Love
Fish Out of Water
Love At First Sight
Magic
Paranormal Encounters
Self-Discovery
Supernatural Elements
Heat Level:
Hot & Steamy (full, graphic description of sexual acts occurs and may include crude language)
Archetypes:
Dancer
Escort / Courtesan / Sex worker
Geographic Location:
United States: South
Setting:
Brothel / Sex Club
Forest
Small Town / Rural
Wilderness / Outback
Sexual / Gender Identity:
Bi or Pansexual
Lesbian
Femme
Trigger/Content Warning:
attempted sexual assault (not completed or graphic)
Ink Vine
By Elizabeth Broadbent
Mama told her to stay out of the swamp, but Mama also told her not to kiss girls . . .
Bisexual stripper Emmy has lived her whole life in a small Southern town with a few rules: Listen to your mama; don’t kiss girls; and stay the hell out of the swamp. Sick of all three, she sneaks under the dark tree-canopy behind her family trailer, where she meets Zara—mysterious, elusive, tattooed Zara, the first girl she dares to kiss.
But the small-town South hates a woman who dares to dance instead of plucking chickens for minimum wage, and as Emmy’s life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara’s offering something beautiful. But while Emmy’s slowly strangling, its price may be more than she’s willing to pay.
Shifting between the green-bright cypress cathedral and the dreamland of a dance club, Broadbent’s unforgettably-voiced debut confronts the brutal realities of poverty in the South, with a sapphic tale both sultry and sinister, gritty and gothic.