Book Recommendation

Exodus 20:3

by Freydís Moon

The Storygraph link for this book contains information such as page count across various editions, publication date, and community-created content warnings.

Exodus 20:3 is a standalone love story centered around Diego, a Mexican-American trans man, and the relationship he forges with a Brazilian angel named Ariel as they refurbish an abandoned church in New Mexico together. It's a beautiful blend of queerness and religious eroticism that comes in at around 100 pages on my Kindle edition, and has been recently updated with a new cover (see above) that is absolutely gorgeous. There is prayer, body worship, divinity kink where the divinity is no fantasy, hemipenes, and more eyes and teeth and wings than humans are used to experiencing in their love affairs. I absolutely loved it.

A note about body terminology for trans readers: Diego's genitalia (he has had top surgery but not bottom surgery) is referred to using feminine terms such as cunt and clit. Some trans readers might find this dysphoria-inducing or otherwise upsetting.

Diego is what many people would call troubled. He does camming out of desperation for money, has recently quit using opiates illegally, and is struggling to deal with his mother's disappointment once she found out about the latter through Diego crashing a car and getting sent to jail once the cops found said opiates inside the car. Basically, he's not having a fun time as the family disappointment, so he reluctantly agrees to his mother's plan for him to earn enough to pay her back for his bail money via refurbishing the church in New Mexico.

Ariel is the church's caretaker. Diego is attracted to him from the jump, but that attraction is tempered with the wariness of a prey animal who has been hunted down and abused one too many times. Diego isn't used to tenderness or genuine love from his sexual partners, and he isn't interested in getting mixed up with someone and used in ways that don't make him happy in the long term. I really loved how complicated Diego is—he's tough as nails because the world hasn't treated him gently, but also desperate for real affection because of how love-starved he's become over the years.

Ariel isn't smothering when offering that affection, nor parental in caring for his new laborer. Initially, he comes across as enigmatic and perfunctory, reclusive and emotionally distant. But as he insists on digging into Diego's past, so too does Diego start putting the pieces together and realizing that Ariel isn't quite the man he seems. During their first sexual encounter with each other, consent is kind of iffy, but it gets talked about later between the characters. The sex scenes are lavish and drawn out, abstracted by Freydís' beautiful prose into things elegantly rendered yet primal in their intensity.

The writing in this novelette is exquisite, by the way. Freydís has a command of language that I'm nakedly envious of, and there were multiple points where I stopped to re-read certain passages just to savor the taste of them, as well as the beautiful wordplay and turns of phrase. I keep a list on my phone of 1-2 sentence snippets I read in various places that are too good not to write down, and that list gained several entries from this book.

Finally, I really liked Exodus 20:3's frank discussions of trauma and oppressive systems. As a Mexican-American, Diego is no stranger to the violence constantly forced upon brown bodies by the United States government, and as a trans man he's equally familiar with transphobic violence from cis people. Although Freydís makes absolutely zero attempts to gloss over or divert attention from real-world issues inherent to their characters' identities, nothing ever felt hopeless. Diego is initially very cynical, but as his relationship with Ariel evolves so too does he undergo a change of heart toward the nature of faith. You can get a side of religious philosophy with your steamy monster fucking in this book, if you choose to accept it.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and cannot recommend it enough to anyone who's in the mood for queer Latino romance stories. I can say with confidence that nobody who chooses to pray at Freydís' altar will be left unsatisfied.

You can find this book on Amazon Kindle if you so desire.

Have you read Exodus 20:3? Do you want to? If you have any questions or thoughts about the book, feel free to leave a comment in the box down below!