The Transfeminine Review

Welcome back to our fourth and penultimate shortlist for this year’s TFR Reader’s Choice Awards! We’ve already gone over poetry, nonfiction, and author of the year, and now we’ve finally arrived at the debut award! To clarify: this is an award for either the first book published by an author, or the first book traditionally published by an author. In particular, the relevant case here this year is The Sisters of Dorley by Alyson Greaves, which was self-published in 2022 but traditionally rereleased this year. It’s not an industry convention that I love, but the publishing industry standard for a “debut” novel still follows more along the lines of “debutante to high society” than “holy shit you wrote a book and people are paying for it???” so for all my quibbles, we’ll be respecting it nonetheless.

Voting won’t close until 11:59pm EST on December 27th, so you’ve still got plenty of time to add your voice to the conversation.

Books will be ordered alphabetically by author’s last name in order to reduce bias to the greatest extent possible. I will be including only information found in publicly available marketing and publishing materials. Remember that every book on this list was nominated by the readers, and you can still vote for any book! If you want to see one of these books win the award, or think that a novel not listed here deserves recognition, then make sure to vote in the link at the bottom of the article.

Without further ado, here are the six books you voted for the shortlist for the Best Transfeminine Debut of 2024!

1. The Shortlist
   1. A Quiet Universe – Kay F. Atkinson
   2. Magica Riot – Kara Buchanan
   3. Sundered Moon – Fae’Rynn
   4. Welcome to Dorley Hall – Alyson Greaves
   5. Love/Aggression – June Martin
   6. The Potent Solution – Ashley Nova

---

The Shortlist

---

CERHA is a fabricant, and her job is simple: keep Annalise Fletcher safe, a role she performs dutifully and without fail, as she was designed to. Neither she nor her charge expected that this routine assignment could lead to love, but when feelings begin to bloom, neither see fit to stand in their way, and the two find themselves leading a shared life where both must walk a tightrope, precariously balancing between duty, and what domestic bliss is woven into the spaces remaining. For a time, they are as close to happy as they can manage.

Then Annalise vanishes away to the embattled starship ‘Upon Silver Tides’, leaving a cryptic warning in her wake, and CERHA finds herself frantically in pursuit, on an illegal mission to save her objective-turned-lover and bring her home alive. She isn’t sure what she’ll find. But what awaits is a web ensnaring both wayward lovers, far more tangled than either could possibly know, and lurking upon this forsaken vessel is a descent into insanity that will force CERHA to confront the bleak truth at the heart of her function.

---

The last night of Claire Ryland’s old life in the closet was pretty normal, aside from the alley fight with interdimensional monsters. Fortunately, the drummer of her favorite local band transformed into a magical girl and saved her.

Then Claire became a magical girl as well. Things got a little complicated after that.

Now Claire is juggling two new living as a girl and as a member of Portland’s super-secret supernatural defense squad, the hard-rocking magical girls known as ..Magica Riot!

The story of a young transgender woman who’s discovering herself at the same time she’s learning how to be a magical girl, Magica Riot is an action-filled musical adventure inspired by classic magical girl anime, tokusatsu shows, and the vibe of the American Pacific Northwest. Featuring a cast of LGBTQ+ magical girls, mysterious monsters, and villains that are more than they appear to be, Magica Riot shows that finding your true self is the first step toward saving the world.

---

The galaxy is a dark and deadly place, run by vicious corporate empires.

Only Central, a nation that rose three hundred years ago after violent insurrection, remains as a beacon of hope and equity to all who reside in their borders.

Dia, a young mech pilot from Central, has infiltrated the upper echelons of the Fomorian Armory, an empire that prides themselves on their exceptional pilots and otherworldly weapons. It’s a dangerous game she must play—bringing down an empire—especially after becoming an unlikely ally with the imperial princess, a woman hellbent on gaining her own freedom.

Fates will intertwine in this fast-paced mecha romance!

---

What if the only way to fix toxic masculinity were to erase it entirely?

Mark Vogel is like the older brother Stefan never had, but one day he disappears without a trace. A year later, after encountering a woman who looks near-identical to Mark, Stefan becomes obsessed. He finds that dozens of young men have disappeared over the years, many of them students at the Royal College of Saint Almsworth, and most of them troubled or unruly. Why are students going missing? Who are these women who bear striking resemblances to them? And what is their connection to the selective student accommodation on the edge of campus, Dorley Hall?

Stefan starts studying at Saint Almsworth for one reason and one reason only: to find out exactly what happened to the women who live at Dorley Hall, and to get it to happen to him, too.

An electrifying début by Alyson Greaves, Welcome to Dorley Hall is an intense exploration of gender and society that will appeal to readers of Torrey Peters, Imogen Binnie and Gretchen Felker-Martin.

---

Best friends Lily and Zoe fight, separate, reunite, and repeat, each time deepening the belief that the other is the source of their problems. Once Lily, a struggling tattoo apprentice, is exiled from their shared house, she bounces from an artist’s fixer-upper, to a cult leader with a harem of subs, to a house shared with the goddess of transfemininity. Meanwhile, rising movie star Zoe becomes more cutthroat by the day in her relentless quest for fame. If Lily can’t give up her desire for control, if Zoe can’t lay aside her cruelty and ego, they’ll never escape their intolerable places in the world. Traversing art, domination, sex, and shape-shifting houses, Love/Aggression is a novel about the indignity of depending on other people, and the terrible cost of trying not to.

---

An alchemical gaslamp fantasy full of wisdom, wit, more than a dash of magic, and a joyous F/F romance.

Charlotte Price is a mess; perpetually tardy, chronically unfocused, and indecisive to a fault.

She’d hoped that apprenticing for London’s only master alchemist and private detective would help solve her problems, but her first investigation will test her limits in ways she never imagined. On the trail of a dangerous magical drug, Charlotte’s mentor vanishes without a trace, Lost, overwhelmed, and inexperienced, she must use everything she’s learned, and improvise the things she hasn’t, as she takes on magically empowered assassins, gate-crashes a society ball, and uncovers a conspiracy that goes right to the heart of government.

Yet Charlotte’s biggest challenge is her own errant attention span, which threatens to stop the investigation in its tracks. To find her mentor and prevent disaster, she must overcome her fear of failure, trust her instincts, and learn that she has everything she needs to thrive.

---

And that’s all she wrote! If there’s a book you wanted to see on here, or if you loved one of these fantastic debut novels too, then make sure to vote! Voting will be open until December 27th at 11:59pm EST, so make sure to get your vote in before then if want to have your say about these awards! Link below:

If you want to look back at the other shortlists, we’ve already covered poetry, nonfiction, and author of the year.

Our last shortlist of the day – the big one, the one I know you’ve been waiting for – is the shortlist for Best Transfeminine Fiction. That’ll be coming in the next few hours.