These eight books will satisfy anyone’s thirst for queer love stories, whether they be romantic or of the self-love variety. This Pride Month and beyond, sink into a story featuring LGBTQ+ characters discovering (or, in several cases, rediscovering) love, relationships, and themselves.
From poetic novels about first love to powerful memoirs by celebrity activists (looking at you, Laverne Cox), there’s something in these books for everyone.
And if you’re looking for even more warm-weather reads, check out our spring books and beach reads for this year.
"Almost Life" by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (March 24)
In this decade-spanning love story, two women meet in 1978 Paris for a lot more than a whirlwind affair. Erica is studying abroad for a summer before starting university back home in England, but she is captivated by Laure, a student at the Sorbonne who drinks, smokes, and sleeps with married women. With its theme of young love and its tautly drawn characters, Hargrave’s novel has been compared to Sally Rooney’s fiction.
"Bad Queer" by Gayathiri Kamalakanthan (March 26)
This young adult novel by debut Tamil writer Kamalakanthan is about a non-binary teenager navigating their identity and the joy and pain of first love, and it’s written in “scintillating” verse, according to a starred review from Publishers Weekly. With illustrations that pull you further into protagonist Surya’s story, this lyrical book “with intense lines that often land with the force of a gut punch” captures a young person in the process of self-discovery.
"Fat Swim" by Emma Copley Eisenberg (April 28)
The theme of this collection of short stories is hunger — specifically how appetites can upend our lives and make them feel more fulfilled. Set in and around Philadelphia, the title story follows a young girl who is desperate to be included in a group of fat women at her local pool. Characters in other stories navigate desire and their relationship to their bodies as queer and fat people, including a trans narrator who takes a job screening hookups for his employer in one of the strongest stories in the collection, according to Publishers Weekly.
"Ordinary Love" by Marie Rutkoski (May 12)
Rutkowski is another author who has been compared to Sally Rooney, seemingly because her sex scenes are so compelling and well written. This queer romance follows Emily and Gen, high school sweethearts who have grown up to lead very different lives as adults. Emily lives in a New York City townhouse and is married to a wealthy and emotionally abusive husband, while Gen is a famous Olympic athlete with a publicly chronicled string of ex-girlfriends. When the two reunite in their 30s, they start to question their shared past and explore whether they have a future together.
Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang (May 13)
Huang, the author of Natural Beauty, which eviscerates the wellness industry, now turns her attention to female relationships and their all-consuming nature. Enka becomes obsessed with Mathilde at art school, but when Mathilde starts getting more recognition for her work, Enka uses her technological prowess to enter Mathilde’s mind and inhabit her inspirations and trauma. “Tackling class, technology, and the fetishization of the artist, Huang pokes and prods at the patriarchal structures that often render female friendship exhausting, if not untenable,” according to an interview in The Cut.
The Maidenheads by Benny B. Peterson (May 26)
Set largely in DC’s early-2000s music scene, this debut novel explores gender, sexuality, and romantic and platonic love, and follows protagonist Jamie, who is stuck between a break-up with her first-ever hetero partner and memories of her ex-girlfriend. After Jamie and her ex meet in high school, they start a band together called The Maidenheads that experiences some early success but then breaks up. A decade later, Jamie jumps at the chance to play with her ex in a new band. Will they or won’t they?
"They All Fall In Love At The End" by Haili Blassingame (June 2)
Cat, 24 and a student, is looking forward to expanding her horizons in a new open relationship with her college sweetheart, but she just so happens to fall for the two people who are supposed to be off-limits: her boyfriend’s best friend and his girlfriend. Blassingame, a producer at NPR, explores Black identity, nonmonogamy and the need to make art during a time of regressive politics in this debut novel.
"Transcendent" by Laverne Cox (June 9)
Cox, a four-time Emmy-nominated actress who is best known for her role in the Netflix show Orange Is the New Black, dives deep in this memoir, chronicling her abusive childhood, depression, and her gig at a drag restaurant in New York for 7 years before rising to prominence as a Hollywood star and LGBTQ+ and trans-rights activist. The first transgender person to win a Daytime Emmy as executive producer on Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, Cox gives behind-the-scenes looks at her star turn.