If you haven’t stepped into a bookstore in the past couple of years, you’re not alone. You are, however, missing out on a period of time where the shelves are overflowing with new, diverse, excellent queer books releasing week after week, for readers of all ages and identities.
Find here the top ten queer books we think you should bring to the beach this summer – some that’ll have you saying “I wish I’d had this book when I was in high school,” and some that no high schooler should ever be caught reading.
All of the titles mentioned here landed on shelves in the first half of 2021 and are available now.
via Shutterstock[/caption]
If you haven’t stepped into a bookstore in the past couple of years, you’re not alone. You are, however, missing out on a period of time where the shelves are overflowing with new, diverse, excellent queer books releasing week after week, for readers of all ages and identities.
Find here the top ten queer books we think you should bring to the beach this summer – some that’ll have you saying “I wish I’d had this book when I was in high school,” and some that no high schooler should ever be caught reading.
All of the titles mentioned here landed on shelves in the first half of 2021 and are available now.
[/tps_header]
RISE TO THE SUN by Leah Johnson | YA
Last year, Leah Johnson’s debut You Should See Me in a Crown, a Midwest prom-com with a queer, Black girl in the lead, was the first-ever YA pick for Reese’s Book Club. Her follow-up is an emotional, romantic YA that follows two teen girls at a life-changing music festival. Olivia and Toni are a complicated and hectic lead couple, and Leah Johnson’s writing is full of show-stopping moments that’ll make you want to dance and cry at Lalapalooza.
Available on Amazon.
INDIVISIBLE by Daniel Aleman | YA
After Mateo Garcia’s parents are arrested by ICE officers and face deportation, his life as a queer high school student with great friends, his plans to pursue acting, and the family business running the local bodega get turned upside down. Aleman pens a poignant, compulsively-readable, heartbreaking debut novel; he’s a writer who is clearly just getting started. The fast pace makes for a moving, all-too-real look into the injustice faced by immigrant families, but the writing will leave you filled with Mateo’s resilient spirit.
Available on Amazon.
JAY’S GAY AGENDA by Jason June | YA
Jay Collier’s family unexpectedly moves to Seattle, where he starts his senior year at a high school with a robust LGBTQ community. If you’ve ever wished other YA books took it to the next level when it comes to what queer teens experience within their communities, this hilarious, sex-positive, coming-of-age YA will take you there…and then, probably, make you feel like you did high school wrong. (Sorry!)
Available on Amazon.
YES, DADDY by Jonathan Parks-Ramage | Adult
A 25-year-old aspiring playwright in New York seduces his middle-aged gay hero, who quickly manipulates our protagonist down a dark, messy road disguised as a glorious Hamptons vacation. Have you ever thrown a book across the room because it burned your hands? The gay Get Out has arrived. And yes, the title is said in the dialogue.
Available on Amazon.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
HOLA PAPI by John Paul Brammer | Memoir
A memoir-in-essays from the popular advice columnist, Hola Papi is more than an extension of what we already know and love of Brammer’s writing – it’s an honest, hilarious, and heartfelt memoir full of hard-won insights about growing up biracial in America’s heartland, and finding (and keeping) your place in the world as a queer person.
Available on Amazon.
DETRANSITION, BABY by Torrey Peters | Adult
A sharp, unreal, and gloriously messy debut novel about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose worlds collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to face their desires and fears around gender, motherhood, and sex. Don’t pick this up unless you’re prepared to question everything about what a book should even be allowed to do. Torrey Peters’ writing is addictive and chaotic, with a gut-punch line on just about every page.
Available on Amazon.
HONEY GIRL by Morgan Rogers | New Adult/Romance
For anyone who has graduated college and entered that period of life that feels like a constant “now what?” Honey Girl follows 28-year-old Grace Porter, fresh off a demanding PhD program, learning to trust her instincts as the shiny life she’s built for herself starts to dim, and she realizes no one is going to make the hard decisions for her when it comes to “the rest of it.” Oh, and there’s also an adorable queer romance.
Available on Amazon.
THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF AIDAN S. (AS TOLD TO HIS BROTHER) by David Levithan | Middle Grade
From a founding father of queer YA (Boy Meets Boy, Two Boys Kissing) comes…a queer middle-grade novel. After Aidan disappears for six days, his brother Lucas wants to believe his impossible story about where he went, but everyone around them claims that Aidan must be lying. What unfolds is a literary middle-grade journey about truth, perspective, and fantasy. The magic of this book is in the level of experiences one reader might have compared to another. Young readers will enjoy it, and probably understand it even more, while older readers will question everything – as Aidan and Lucas learn, that’s the issue with growing up.
Available on Amazon.
LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLUB by Malinda Lo | YA
A young, queer, Chinese woman comes of age in San Francisco during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Lily Hu is a rule-follower, but learns to take big risks as she falls in love with her classmate, Kathleen, and they start visiting a lesbian bar together – the Telegraph Club. Malinda Lo perfectly balances the heavy history with the bittersweet coming-of-age through the eyes of a protagonist learning to live on her own terms.
Available on Amazon.
ONE LAST STOP by Casey McQuiston | Romance/New Adult
From the author of Red, White and Royal Blue, the queer, enemies-to-graphic-royal-blowjobs blockbuster of 2019, comes an early twenties, NYC, coming-of-age, wild-and-fluorescent rom-com that will have you booking a flight to New York just to ride the Q train to Coney Island. Sadly, you won’t have as much fun on the train as August and Jane do during one particular scene. But you will feel the romance, nostalgia, and picture-perfect detail that Casey McQuiston packs into every page.
Available on Amazon.
This article includes links that may result in a small affiliate share for purchased products, which helps support independent LGBTQ+ media.
Sundance614
I’d also add pretty much anything by Josh Lanyon to this list—great murder mysteries with a M/M romance component. I’ve spent many a long car trip listening to Josh Lanyon novels!
blackholerosebud
Damon Ferrell Marbut put out a book about a guy who moved to New Orleans pre-Katrina and his struggles with fitting there and drinking too much and being unsuccessful with the dating scene around the gay bars. It was heartbreaking at times but overall it was beautiful. Highly recommend also.
linedrive
Josh Lanyon’s Adrien English series is fantastic. That’s as good a place as any to start but pretty much anything by Lanyon is a treat.
Sundance614
I totally agree—I loved the Adrien English series! Although, I’m on the third book of the “Art of Murder” series now, and I may like it just as well. If you check out Josh Lanyon’s blog there is a lot of extra content there, like unpublished scenes that take place between the books, where the characters are now, etc. There are also a few key scenes from the books that are rewritten from Jake’s POV instead of Adrien’s which are really interesting.
Kangol2
Given how many YA novels (and a Middle Grade) one were on this list at first I wondered if it was geared to adult Queerty readers or their children. I’m glad to see some novels written for adults on here, and there are bunch more, including many of the recent Lambda Literary Award winners and nominees, worth checking out.
Thad
But I’m technically a senior citizen, yet I’m often in the YA section at the library. So much of today’s best writing can be found there. I just finished Nicola Yoon’s “Instructions For Dancing,” which had some queer content but was mostly a wonderful contemporary rom-com.
I assure you, the librarian won’t give you disapproving looks and may even suggest other titles you’d like.
eeebee333
I thought the list was a little YA heavy too. But, I must tell you… When I was a teenager in the 1970s, there was no place in literature where a gay or questioning kid could see himself. It does my heart good to see that kids have so many options nowadays. I’m 64 and I find reading gay YA novels to be an incredibly enjoyable escape.
RomanHans
Yeah, not gonna click thru ten pages.
Heywood Jablowme
You’d really have trouble getting through an entire book.
ManCanBemuse
The post-campaign chaos and its possible resolution were foreseen in a shocking book that also understood that these times of angst are fueled by a mostly unconscious but instinctual knowledge that humanity is at the end of its evolution as it has known it. “The Ecstasy of Carbon,” by Charles T. Laffoday, describes the world after Empire and much of Western Civilization collapse in a cacophony of Identity Politics, polarization and fractious subdivisions. It is a story informed by an Anthropological Futurism that is described from the point of view of the survivors that delves into a rarely imagined possible outcome of our current political climate of tribalism and divisiveness. It is a book that builds upon its precursor from 2010 entitled “Fixed Stars Rise,” one of the first books to predict the collapse of Empire and the rise of Gay Elitism with its awareness of the unique evolutionary characteristics and trajectory of the gay male form as that most ideally suited to hybridize with increasingly complex AI who have no need or desire to perpetuate what will soon be the superfluous act of biological procreation with its inherent costs and conflicts, especially with what is feared to be a loss of rationality and personal freedom in a hyper-feminist world. Everything is again open for discussion in this existential moment where the most fit of the fittest must be chosen for hybridization… It probes the riddle of why male homosexuality has continued to arise in the random distribution of human evolution. Concomitantly, it ponders what the role of women and femininity would be in this future society of gay man/machine hybrids who will have no use for procreation. It discusses the evolution of concepts and ideas, especially in accordance with technological developments. It is here where is discussed the society and the ethics of the new race, The Mance, the merging of man with experience, and the gradual and then meteoric ascension of Porno for this new race and this new world, whereby only with the hindsight afforded by these technological innovations can it be perceived to encompass the gist of the deepest ontological meaning in existence, embodying the most vital workings of the energies of chemical reactions in their purest and most unifying forms, revered among the scholarly disciplines. It explores what is unique in the physical and cultural evolutionary history of Western Europeans, particularly Northern Europeans, which affords many of them a capacity—sometimes even a predilection—to feel ashamed and guilty and angry at the historical success of their heritage. It is the proclivity for The Bleeding Heart, which dissipates in the populations of Eastern Europe and Southern Europe and is rarely, if ever, found in the rest of the world’s populations. Finally, it discusses the resolution of one of the most profound physical and conceptual dichotomies inherited from the human evolutionary path: the conflict between individualism, which is associated with the European trajectory, and that of collectivism, which is associated with the East Asian trajectory.
PerhapsYesNoMaybe
Look like great interesting books. The creepy books out there are all the gay male hookup books written by women. So creepy. It’d be like a gay author writing hetero hookup books.
Cam
So, what’s been happening for decades you mean with LGBTQ authors writing books and scripts about straight people?
james7
BATH HAUS, by RJ VERNON. Mystery of strange encounter in a bath house in Washington DC. Young man goes, is cheating on his lover who is out of town and gets caught up in mystery with dangerous stranger at the baths; and then a series of lies to his partner only gets him deeper and deeper involved with the stranger from the baths.
Sundance614
Thanks! I just added it to my Kindle books to read list 🙂
james7
PS: BATH HAUS had positive review in yesterday’s book section of New York Times.