Saturn Returning by Kim Narby

Narrated by Tessa Stavers

Sapphic Romance. Stands Alone.

Saturn Returning by Kim Narby is the first book published by Sapph-Lit. Full disclosure: the owner of Sapph-Lit lives with one of my sister’s kids. She offered me an ARC quite a while ago, but I never got around to reading it, so I purchased the audiobook when it released.

As Pride Month rolled around, it felt like the perfect time to finally pick it up. While I’m not the target audience for this story at all, I always try to approach books with an open mind and judge them based on what they set out to do rather than whether they were specifically written for me.

Jordan and Trace meet in college and become fast friends. When Silvia transfers to the school, the three quickly form a tight bond. Eventually, Trace and Silvia become a couple. After graduation, they move to Seattle and get engaged while Jordan settles in New York City. But when long-buried feelings and unspoken desires come to the surface, everything between them becomes complicated.

And messy. Very messy.

If you dislike love triangles or emotionally complicated relationship dynamics, this probably won’t be the book for you. But if you’re looking for a character-driven story filled with longing, tension, mistakes, and complicated feelings, Saturn Returning delivers exactly that.

Because I don’t read a lot of LGBTQ+ romance, it took me a little while to keep the three main characters straight in my head, particularly in audiobook format. The print edition includes character icons that identify whose perspective you’re reading, and I think that visual cue would have helped me. The audiobook required a bit more concentration to follow as the story moved between multiple timelines and points of view.

The novel shifts between past and present, follows three protagonists, and is written with a literary style that demands a little more attention than my usual rom-com listen. Because of that, I suspect I would have connected with it even more in print than in audio. That said, Tessa Stavers did an excellent job with the narration.

What stood out most to me was how authentic the story felt. These women aren’t always easy to like, but they feel like real people making messy choices and dealing with complicated emotions. I found myself invested in their lives and genuinely curious about where everything was headed. Even when I was frustrated with the characters, I never wanted to stop listening.

“She was thinking about how confusing it could be to not know what you wanted from another person, to not understand what role they should take in your life, how it could shift and morph over time, but maybe something about the first time you saw them would always stick.”

Saturn Returning is angsty, contemplative, emotionally messy, and deeply human. It won’t be for every reader, but for those who enjoy complicated relationships, queer fiction, and character-driven stories that aren’t afraid to get messy, there’s a lot here to appreciate.

Due to my personal relationship with the publisher, and the fact that I would not have picked this up on my own, I don’t feel like I can give this a fair star rating, so I will be holding off on giving stars here.