Be Gay, Do Crime: Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos - Edited by Molly Llewellyn & Kristel Buckley

EDITORS: Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley

GENRE: Anthology

PUBLICATION DATE: June 3, 2025

RATING: No rating.

In a Nutshell: A anthology of “gay crime” stories. The queer content was decent but the crime content left me somewhat dissatisfied. Also, the R-rated content and language in many stories wasn’t to my reading taste. So this collection wasn’t my cup of tea, though I did find a few gems herein.

The moment I saw that amazing punny title, I knew that I would have to get my hands on this collection. Seeing gay + crime within the same title stoked all embers of my curiosity. The fact that the book was included in the GR Reading challenge for Pride reads was the icing on the cake. However, the expectations created by the title were met only to some extent.

This anthology has sixteen stories, each of which feature an LGBTQIA+ character and a crime. Sounds like a fun combo, right? But it doesn’t exactly work that way.

Thanks to the contributing authors coming from varied backgrounds, we get a nice diverse experience with stories being set in different locations from multiple countries. However, in terms of characters, the queer diversity is missing. A majority of the stories had only lesbians in the lead, with one story featuring an (implied) trans character. I’d have expected more colours of the rainbow to be represented adequately.

The crime content was also much tamer than what I had thought. A word like “crime” conjures up expectations of murders and heists and kidnappings. But most of the crimes in this collection barely touch the murkier end of the criminal spectrum, as they contain relatively petty transgressions such as prank calls, fraudulent participation in contests, and tales of vengeance. If you are looking for darker and bloodier offences, you might be disappointed.

This doesn’t mean that the stories aim at a younger audience such as YAs. On the contrary, more than half of the stories have explicit sexual content or vulgar language, both of which aren’t to my reading taste. In a book about crimes, I didn’t expect to see so many open-door steamy scenes, most of which were totally unrelated to any crime and hence superfluous for the plot.

The writing style also was a mixed experience for me. Some stories were genuinely funny in an ironic sort of manner. Many had quirky characters and quirkier plots. But quite a few stories contained flashbacks, which broke the main narrative flow. Some had too many characters, while some others had too many subplots. Reading these stories felt like an endless trudge towards nowhere and the percentage indicators on my Kindle just wasn’t moving upwards quickly enough, despite this being a relatively short book at just 260-odd pages. After a point, I was so frustrated that I even contemplated DNFing the book. But I don’t DNF easily, and my persistence was rewarded in the second half, which had some really creative tales.

The characters save my experience to some extent. It is rare for contemporary books to depict a member of the LGBTQIA+ community as flawed; the idealised portrayal of homosexual relationships in Queer fiction is not just repetitive but also misleading. So such storytelling feels novel and refreshing. Most stories don’t have likeable leads, which is quite obvious from the title. But their flaws and their vulnerabilities enhance the impact.

As always, I rated the stories individually. To my regret, a major chunk of the book didn’t work well for me. Of the sixteen stories, only five stories reached/crossed the 4-star mark. The remaining eleven stories went all the way from 1 star to 3.5 stars, creating a shaky reading experience. These are my top favourites with 4+ stars each.

🏳️‍🌈 The Meaning of Life - Myriam Lacroix: No way would I have been able to predict the direction of this story. Weird yet wonderful. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🏳️‍🌈 Redistribution - Temim Fruchter: Witty concept. I would have rated it higher if it had continued for at least a scene more. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🏳️‍🌈 Peep Show - Alissa Nutting: Didn't expect the title would be literal. Might have rated this higher had the steamy content been more to my comfort level. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🏳️‍🌈 Bad Dog - Anna Dorn: Can dogs be bad or are they simply dogs belonging to bad owners? This hilarious story explores this question and much more. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🏳️‍🌈 Grand Beaver Cabin - Emily Austin: This is the kind of story I picked up this book for. It was perfect in terms of plot, characters, and theme. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

All in all, I had hoped for a memorable experience given that amazing title, but I guess it wasn’t to be. I am not sure if my incorrect expectation (of wanting more crime) led to this disappointing result, or if the writing itself, with its back-and-forth scenes and suggestive content, created a greater reader-book mismatch.

That said, many of the stories weren’t bad; they just weren’t to my taste. So perhaps you might still like the book if you go in with the right expectations: petty crime, mostly lesbian leads, unstructured story flow, R-rated scenes/language.

Leaving this without a rating as a major chunk of the low-rated stories fared worse because of my discomfort with such content.

My thanks to Dzanc Books for providing the DRC of “Be Gay, Do Crime” via Edelweiss+. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t work out better.