Lynette Reini-Grandell’s Wild Things: A Trans-Glam-Punk-Rock Love Story is not simply a memoir about loving a transgender partner, nor is it only a chronicle of artistic rebellion in the underground music scenes of Minneapolis and New York. It is, at its core, a love story about endurance, confusion, courage, and the slow, often painful work of learning how to stay together when the world offers no maps, no language, and very little mercy. The book captures what it means for a cisgender woman and her trans spouse to grow side by side over decades, inventing their own rules as they navigate transition, community, hostility, and the relentless pull of creative ambition.
The author’s note sets the tone with striking honesty. Lynette writes about the person she married, the person she remains deeply in love with, now legally named Venus de Mars, using she and her pronouns. What follows is an acknowledgment that this truth did not arrive neatly or quickly. It took decades, shaped by a time when there were no visible role models, no accessible terminology, and no cultural framework for understanding what it meant to be transgender. They made it up as they went along, not out of rebellion, but out of necessity. This absence of guidance becomes one of the book’s quiet antagonists, a reminder that love alone does not eliminate fear, misunderstanding, or grief.
