21 of Our Favorite New LGBTQ Books

In this adorable novel Morgan, an elite track athlete, is forced to transfer high schools late in her senior year after it turns out being queer is against her private Catholic school’s code of conduct. There, she meets Ruby, a girl with two diverse hobbies: playing around with her baby blue 1970 Ford Torino and competing in local beauty pageants, one activity that she pursues to please her mom. Once meeting, the two are drawn to each other and can’t deny their growing feelings. But while Morgan is ready to shout out off the rooftops about their relationship, Ruby is not. This novel will touch your heart as it explores a queer relationship and all its ups and downs when society sometimes can be simply unfair.

—Aurora Lydia Dominguez

Winter’s Orbit is a great sci-fi space opera full of palace intrigue with a tender slow-burn queer romance at its center. When an imperial prince’s sudden death threatens to weaken already fraying alliances with several planets, the prince’s cousin and his widower, a noble from one of the discontented vassal planets, are rushed into an arranged marriage to keep the peace and preserve the political status quo. The story is surprisingly romantic — a Millennial Star Wars meets Red, White & Royal Blue. It also (strangely) reminded me a bit of The Flatshare: two sweet, diffident people have trouble connecting despite compatibility because of their difficult pasts. Maxwell seamlessly blends science fiction and high stakes politics with some of the most popular romantic tropes: marriage of convenience, forced proximity, and the fake relationship which soon feels all too real. An excellent, page turning, and thoughtful read. 

—Carole V. Bell

This gorgeously written and harrowing novel is one of my favorite books of the year. It opens with 15-year-old Vern — a queer, albino Black girl — escaping into a forest from a dangerous Black pride cult and an abusive husband, the leader of the cult. Pregnant with twins, Vern gives birth and raises her sons in the forest alone until they’re 4. Away from the cult, Vern begins hallucinating, and slowly her body transforms into something else, something monstrous. This novel vividly portrays how Black bodies have been used for unethical experiments while also celebrating queer love and motherhood.

—Margaret Kingsbury

This super fun  and action-packed young adult sci-fi presents an intergalactic world where being queer is normalized. Tina is a cloned alien war hero disguised as a human and brought as an infant to her human mother. She’s waited all her life to become her destiny and remember who she truly is, but when the time comes, everything turns out differently than she thought. But the stakes are high, and she has a whole galaxy to save, with the help of some other Earth teens. I listened to the audiobook read by Hynden Walch and quite enjoyed it.

—Margaret Kingsbury

I’ve heard that you need to read or hear a new word 17 times before you learn it. I assume the same is true of hearing about new books — I saw this one recommended about that many times before I borrowed it from my library and read it all in one breathless sitting. (Okay, maybe two sittings. I am very tired.) Sort of an anti-heist book, we follow Nora into a bank with her new, secret girlfriend Iris, who isn’t yet out to her mom, and her ex-boyfriend Wes, who is her best friend but only very recently found out about her and Iris — by walking in on them kissing. Awkward, but not quite as much as the fact that the bank is robbed immediately after they walk in. What Nora hasn’t told Iris yet is that her mom, who is in prison, is a con artist who taught Nora everything she knows. The book takes us through Nora’s high-stakes and high-paced attempts to keep her loved ones safe during the robbery, while introducing us to the girls Nora played as roles in her mother’s cons over the years.

—Annika Barranti Klein

The first in what I’m hoping will be a pretty lengthy series of interconnected standalone romances, When Tara Met Farah is the New Adult romance of my heart. Tara is a food vlogger who has a complicated relationship with her math genius mother. When Farah (another math genius) moves into their home, she and Tara do not hit it off. But when they make an arrangement that will benefit both of them, and they slowly learn more about each other, those stupid feeling things start to happen. I have been having a lot of trouble finishing books over the past year, and this was one of the ones that sucked me in immediately and kept me reading until it was done. Opposites attract, meet disaster, incredible emotional growth, sexy pining, slowly falling, South Asian food, AND Bollywood style dancing? How can it not be incredible. Also, that cover, amirite?

—Jessica Pryde

Everyone loves a Victorian (Edwardian?) “below stairs” drama, right? Well. Actually. This isn’t that. Patience and Esther are introduced when Patience comes to work as a maid at the grand home where Esther is a housekeeper, yes. But this is a much quieter story than Downton Abbey would have you expect. The two women share a room, work together, and slowly bring down the walls each has erected in order to survive. Their friendship is so easy, it doesn’t even matter that we don’t see the particulars of their friendship evolving into a courtship. It’s just a darling story of two women who love each other figuring life out. 

—Jessica Pryde

A retired legendary highwayman, Kit is just fine running his coffeehouse until a young lord shows up with an offer to rob his greatest enemy. Percy, the young lord in question, needs a man who can rob his father to save a childhood friend, but is unacquainted with hiring thieves. Although Kit refuses to participate in the robbery, he is willing to teach the young lord how to pull it off. From lessons on how to throw a punch to when to stop a carriage on the road, Percy is shaping up to be a fine student (in between bouts of shameless flirting). But will they be able to pull it off together as new revelations threaten their tenuous relationship? If you are looking for brutal honesty about the cost of ducal estates on the working class this is the book for you. But seriously, you come for the highway robbery and stay for the comfort of found family.

—R. Nassor

I’m reading this one right now and I have to stop every couple of paragraphs to ask if I’m certain I am not the one who wrote this! It feels like it was poured directly out of my brain and onto my ereader. This cultural commentary is so quintessentially Gen Y, with all the love for (problematic) pop culture that made us who we are today and all of the incisive criticism we are so good at — it is the ultimate “your fave is problematic, but you can love it so long as you can articulate why it’s problematic” text, and it’s also witty and sharp and fangirly and absolutely marvelous. I’m obsessed. 

—Sarah Hannah Gomez 

This debut poetry collection had me all-in from page one with a poem about RuPaul’s Drag Race, and by the time I reached a poem about Killing Eve I was an eternal fan. It’s wonderfully queer, fresh, rebellious collection infused with pop culture, politics, and family history. Lau’s poetry is so smart and full of life, and I truly can’t wait to read her next collection.

—Susie Dumond

LGBTQ advice columnist John Paul Brammer is accustomed to mixing his personal life, sense of humor, and heartfelt thoughts into his writing. In this memoir, his ability to laugh at what once made him cry really shines. From growing up as a gay biracial kid in rural Oklahoma to career woes to learning to use his writing to help people, Hola Papi is an earnest and uplifting book about finding your place in the world.

—Susie Dumond 

As a teenager, Louise Lloyd made headlines for escaping her kidnapper — and freeing his other victims along the way. Now, in 1926, she works at a Maggie’s Café by day and at Harlem’s coolest speakeasy by night. When dead girls from the club start turning up, Louise can’t trust the police to find the murderer. Instead, she takes matters into her own hands. Louise Lloyd is the perfect combination of smart, fun, and irreverent, and the historical setting makes this a mystery you won’t soon forget.

—Susie Dumond 

Reese and Amy were once a power couple in the trans community, almost happy in every way. But one thing was missing: a baby. Their relationship unraveled when Amy detransitioned and returned to living as a man, Ames. But when Ames’s new girlfriend Katrina gets pregnant, he wonders if he can repair things with Reese and create a new, queer family formation. This is exactly the kind of queer lit I want to read more of: messy, honest, real, and not written for straight audience’s consumption.

—Susie Dumond