Verdict: A witty, genuinely hot butch/femme hookup-turned-relationship with one of the more likeable butch narrators in the genre, held back by a love interest who never gets to exist outside Jaq’s head.
Best for: Readers who want a funny, self-deprecating butch who is soft in bed and stubborn everywhere else, explicit heat with a confident femme in charge, and a crowded queer community around the couple, and who can forgive a romance that sometimes plays second fiddle to the subplots.
Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — explicit and recurring; romance.io has no steam band, so this is derived from trade and reader reports)
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.4/5 — a 3.66 Goodreads average across 203 ratings, with a recurring complaint that Hannah is written from too far away)
Tropes: Butch/femme, one-night stand to relationship, commitment-phobic heroine, opposites attract, meet at a wedding, divorce baggage, femme-led intimacy, queer found community, single first-person POV, happy-for-now.
The Butch and the Beautiful by Kris Ripper is the second book in the five-book Queers of La Vista series, first published by Riptide Publishing in August 2016 and reissued on Kindle in 2018, a contemporary lesbian romance set in a small, tightly knotted queer community in the fictional California town of La Vista — and the collision at its centre is Jaq Cummings, a butch high-school teacher who wants commitment but bolts whenever it gets close, and Hannah, a newly divorced femme who knows exactly what she wants and says so.
It holds a 3.66 average across 203 Goodreads ratings, drew reviews from Publishers Weekly, All About Romance, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Joyfully Jay and the Lesbrary, and landed with grades that range from warm praise to a flat C. Almost half the Goodreads ratings sit at four stars and a third at three. What separates the two groups is how much they needed Hannah to be a full person. Both sides of that split are worth understanding before you start.
What Is The Butch and the Beautiful About?
The Butch and the Beautiful is a sapphic contemporary romance and, just as much, a community novel. La Vista is the kind of queer scene where everyone has dated everyone within a few miles, where the wedding party includes half the exes in the room, and where a teacher who sponsors the high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance ends up carrying her students’ crises as well as her own. The book opens at exactly that kind of wedding — Jaq standing as best man for one of the brides, Hannah as maid of honour for the other, both of them there as exes.
Jaq narrates the whole book in first person. She is thirty-four, loves her job, goes to Sunday mass with her widowed father, and has a long record of leaving before anything can leave her. Hannah is a lawyer in the middle of an ugly divorce, moving across the state and not pretending to be anything but interested. The single POV gives Jaq a rich, funny, fully realised interior. It also means Hannah is read almost entirely from outside — through Jaq’s anxieties and her friends’ gossip — and that choice decides how most readers feel about the book.
What Makes This Butch/Femme Romance Work
- Jaq’s voice: The most consistently praised thing in the reviews by a distance. Readers call her witty, self-deprecating and honest, and Smart Bitches’ reviewer singled out her line calling herself a gentlewoman as a highlight.
- A butch who isn’t the default top: Several readers point out, approvingly, that Jaq is butch and proud of it but submissive in bed, with Hannah the one giving directions. All About Romance praised the book for avoiding butch stereotypes.
- The heat: Publishers Weekly credits the couple with “amazing chemistry,” and reader after reader names the sex scenes as a highlight — confident, inventive and unashamed.
- Jaq and her dad: A living, healthy, loving father who takes his lesbian daughter to mass every Sunday. Readers keep noting how rare that is in queer fiction, and Smart Bitches calls it one of the loveliest threads in the book.
- The GSA kids: Jaq’s work with her queer students gives the book its emotional weight, and All About Romance calls that subplot compassionate.
Book Synopsis
Jaq Cummings has a plan for her love life, and it is a sensible one. She wants a steady partner, someone who fits around lesson plans, early nights and Sunday mass with her father, and who does not need rescuing. She has done the rescuing thing. It never ends well, and her friends have noticed that she tends to leave before it ends at all.
Then her ex gets married, and across the reception is the maid of honour: Hannah, curvy, confident and fresh from a divorce that everyone in La Vista seems to have an opinion about. The consensus among Jaq’s friends is that Hannah is trouble. Jaq takes her home anyway, on the understanding that it is one night and nothing more.
It is not one night. It is two, then coffee, then a standing arrangement that keeps getting harder to call casual. Hannah is funny, direct and entirely at ease with what she wants from Jaq, in bed and out of it. She is also still untangling a marriage, selling a house and relocating to a town where her ex’s circle overlaps with Jaq’s. Meanwhile one of Jaq’s students is in real trouble, and every instinct Jaq has about protecting people is pulling at her. The question is whether a woman who has spent years choosing safety can take the risk of choosing someone who scares her.
My Review
Jaq is the reason to read this book, and I want to say that plainly because much of what follows is qualified. She is one of the most fully drawn butch narrators in the reviews I have assessed this month: dry, funny at her own expense, anxious under the swagger, and devoted to the people around her. Ripper gives her a job she is good at, a father she adores and friends who call her on her nonsense, and readers praise that texture most.
The second strength is the heat, and specifically who drives it. Hannah leads, Jaq follows, and the book treats that as sexy rather than as a problem to be explained. Readers describe the scenes as inventive and plentiful, one estimates they take up a third of the book, and several single out, with real pleasure, a butch lead who isn’t automatically in charge.
Where it struggles is Hannah, and this is not a minority complaint — it is the most repeated criticism across Goodreads and the trade reviews alike. Because we only ever see her through Jaq, readers say they learn more about Jaq’s friends and students than about the woman she’s falling for. Worse, almost every character keeps calling Hannah “crazy” while, as Smart Bitches and several Goodreads reviewers note, she never actually does anything to earn the label. Around that sit the structural complaints: the Lesbrary’s reviewer found too many side characters with too much backstory, a sluggish middle comes up more than once, and a murder subplot carried over from book one goes nowhere here.
One expectation to reset: the cover copy promises a conflict about Jaq defaulting to caregiver instead of partner, and Smart Bitches’ C-grade review argues that conflict barely materialises. What you actually get is a book about a commitment-phobe learning to stay, framed by her students and her town. If you came for a tight two-hander romance, calibrate; if you came for a funny, sexy, crowded slice of queer community life, you are in the right place.
My honest note: A great butch narrator and real heat, attached to a love interest the book keeps talking about instead of showing. If you need to know both women equally well, this will frustrate you. If you want to spend a weekend inside Jaq’s head, it is a good place to be.
| Element | In The Butch and the Beautiful |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Jaq Cummings & Hannah — butch high-school teacher and newly divorced femme lawyer, hookup to relationship |
| Core tropes | Butch/femme, one-night stand to more, commitment phobia, opposites attract, meet at a wedding, queer community |
| Setting | La Vista, California — a fictional town with a small, interconnected queer scene and a high-school GSA |
| Heat level | 4/5 — explicit, frequent, femme-led |
| Series | Queers of La Vista book 2 of 5 — standalone couple, happy-for-now ending, no cliffhanger |
| Content notes | Explicit sex including anal play, divorce and past infidelity, implied abuse of a student, a queer teen facing housing insecurity, childhood death of a parent from cancer, transphobia and misgendering by a side character, homophobic slurs, ableist language used about Hannah, an unsolved murder from book one |
How Spicy Is The Butch and the Beautiful?
A 4/5, with a caveat about where that number comes from. romance.io lists the book but has too few ratings to assign a steam band, so the figure is derived from the trade reviews and the reader record. Publishers Weekly calls it sweet and spicy, Smart Bitches describes explicit scenes, and Goodreads readers are unusually direct: the book opens hot, the couple sleep together repeatedly, and one reviewer calls it the best sapphic smut she has read. All About Romance’s “warm” sensuality rating is the one outlier.
The element worth knowing in advance is anal play, which comes up in several reviews and which one reader says recurred more than she wanted; others mention dirty talk and a light BDSM flavour to the dynamic. No reviewer I found flags anything beyond that. For contemporary romance in the same heat band, Stud Like Her and D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding sit at the same level.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want a funny, soft-centred butch narrator, you like a confident femme who takes the lead in bed, you enjoy romance embedded in a busy queer community with teens, friends and family on the page, and explicit heat is a feature rather than a problem.
You may want to skip it if: you need both heroines developed equally, it grates when characters label a woman “crazy” without evidence, you want the romance to stay centre stage rather than share it with subplots, or you need a firm happily-ever-after rather than a hopeful beginning.
In short: a sharp, sexy butch voice and a warm community, wrapped around a romance that only one of its heroines gets to narrate.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
There is no current buzz behind this book, and nothing in 2026 driving new readers to it. What it had was a proper 2016 release through Riptide, collecting Publishers Weekly, All About Romance (a B), Joyfully Jay (three stars), the Lesbrary and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (a C) — more trade attention than most sapphic romances of its year. Since then it has moved slowly: 203 Goodreads ratings and 67 StoryGraph reviews averaging 3.5. On Goodreads, 59% of ratings are four or five stars and 32% are three. The Kindle edition was reissued in September 2018, and I found no audiobook in any format.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Jaq, first and most consistently — “witty” and “self-deprecating” recur, and even negative reviews tend to concede she is well written. Then the heat, with repeated praise for Hannah’s confidence and for a butch lead who is allowed to be submissive. The father-daughter relationship gets named again and again as rare and moving. The GSA students and a homeless teen called Merin pull readers in so strongly that several say they’d have happily read a book about Jaq’s teaching instead.
What readers argue about and complain about: Hannah, above everything. Reviewers across the rating range say she is flat, underdeveloped or barely in the book, and put it down to the single first-person POV; Joyfully Jay’s reviewer says the relationship suffers for it. Second, and closely tied: the “crazy” label. Everyone warns Jaq off Hannah as a hot mess, but readers — Smart Bitches among them — can’t find the behaviour that justifies it, and some read it as ableist and as making Jaq’s circle look judgemental. Third: clutter. The Lesbrary’s reviewer found too many characters and too much telling, and others note a draggy middle, an unnecessary black moment and a series murder plot that adds nothing here. Beyond that, the most critical reviews name transphobic and biphobic remarks from characters that the book doesn’t clearly challenge. The genuine split is over whether all that community material enriches the romance or crowds it out.
The standalone question worth asking first: The Butch and the Beautiful stands alone. The book’s own description says it can be read without book one, and readers who started here confirm they never felt lost. Jaq and Hannah end together with no cliffhanger, though two separate Goodreads reviewers describe it as happy-for-now rather than a full HEA. Book one, Gays of Our Lives, is a male/male romance rated 3.75. Later volumes rate higher still: One Life to Lose (book 4) sits at 3.95 and As La Vista Turns (book 5) at 3.92. If what you liked was the town rather than the couple, the series is where it gets better.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Butch and the Beautiful a butch/femme romance?
Yes. Jaq is an out, proud butch and Hannah is a curvy, glamorous femme, and the title makes the pairing explicit. Readers note that Hannah, not Jaq, leads in bed.
How spicy is The Butch and the Beautiful?
A 4/5 by our estimate. romance.io has no steam band for it, but Publishers Weekly calls it sweet and spicy and Goodreads readers describe frequent explicit scenes, including anal play.
Does The Butch and the Beautiful have a happy ending?
Yes, a happy-for-now one. Jaq and Hannah end together and there is no cliffhanger, but two separate reviewers describe the ending as happy-for-now rather than a fully sealed HEA.
Do I need to read Gays of Our Lives first?
No. The book is written to stand alone and readers who started with it say they never felt lost. Book one is a male/male romance whose leads only cameo here; an unsolved murder thread carries over but is not central.
Is there an audiobook?
Not that I could find. Libro.fm does not stock one, and Amazon lists only Kindle and paperback editions.
If You Loved The Butch and the Beautiful, Read These Next
For another butch/femme romance told entirely from a tender-hearted butch’s point of view, Get It Right by Skye Kilaen pairs a shy butch with a proud, curvy femme and a similarly lived-in community. If Jaq’s humour won you over, D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding delivers stud/femme chemistry at the same heat with far more rom-com energy. And if you wanted more room for the romance itself, Wrong Number, Right Woman gives a soft butch lead a full-length slow burn.
For more in this register, browse our butch/femme lesbian romance guide or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
The Butch and the Beautiful is a book whose narrator outshines its romance. Jaq is a funny, vulnerable, deeply decent butch, the heat is confident and femme-led, and her father, friends and students make La Vista feel real. It is also lopsided, with Hannah seen almost entirely through other people’s opinions, crowded with subplots that compete for the page, and resolved on a hopeful rather than a definitive note. Whether that trade works depends on how much you need both halves of a couple — but if a great butch voice and explicit heat are what you are after, it is worth the weekend. Check The Butch and the Beautiful on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, The Butch and the Beautiful ranks as a funny, explicit, community-heavy butch/femme contemporary — carried by Jaq’s voice and the heat, held back by a thinly drawn Hannah, and best approached for its narrator and its town rather than as a balanced two-hander romance.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ 3.66 average across 203 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ Positive Publishers Weekly review, B from All About Romance
- ✓ 3.5 across 67 StoryGraph reviews
- ✓ C from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5
- ✓ Publishers Weekly praises the chemistry
- ✓ Hookup-to-relationship arc resolves by talking
- ✓ Femme-led dynamic readers enjoy
- ✓ Hannah barely on the page, readers say
Characters ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ Jaq is the most praised element
- ✓ Father-daughter bond called rare and lovely
- ✓ GSA students steal scenes
- ✓ Hannah flat through a single POV
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ Witty, self-deprecating first-person voice
- ✓ Called well written even in mixed reviews
- ✓ Community texture feels lived-in
- ✓ Too many characters, too much telling
Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Student crisis gives it real weight
- ✓ Childhood grief shapes Jaq’s fear
- ✓ Faith and family handled warmly
- ✓ Romance itself rarely affecting
Heat Level ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ Explicit, frequent scenes per readers
- ✓ Publishers Weekly calls it sweet and spicy
- ✓ Butch lead submissive, femme in charge
- ✓ No romance.io band to confirm it
Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ Together at the end, no cliffhanger
- ✓ Standalone couple in a five-book series
- ✓ Jaq’s arc toward risk completes
- ✓ Happy-for-now, not a sealed HEA
Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ Jaq’s voice rewards a second visit
- ✓ Later series books rate higher
- ✓ Heat readers return for
- ✓ No audiobook for a second pass
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