Support for the LGBT community doesn’t end with Pride Month. There are many ways the LGBTQ+ community can be helped throughout the year. Despite that, now that June as come to an end people and brands around the world have been slowly taking down the rainbow pride flags and starting to forget about those of us in the community. There is still a long way to go and we have to work together to fight oppression, and that can’t be completed in a single month. That’s why today I’m recommending several books with LGBTQ+ representation to celebrate us. Let’s remember, we deserve happiness all year long.
The Jasmine Throne
Author: Tasha Suri
My Rating: 5 stars
Genre: LGBTQ Fantasy
Representation: Sapphic BIPOC female MC, sapphic (lesbian coded) chronically ill female MC, BIPOC supporting cast, queer side characters mentioned in a historical context.
Goodreads Summary: Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.
Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.
But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.
Trigger Warnings: Abandonment, addiction, blood, past mentions of child abuse, chronic illness, colonisation, confinement, death, drug use (poison), emotional abuse, fire, injury/injury detail, lesbophobia/lesbomisia (general queerphobia/queermisia), medical content (depictions of withdrawal), misogyny, murder, physical abuse, sexism, violence, war.
The Romantic Agenda
Author: Claire Kann
My Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Representation: Black asexual cis female MC with anxiety, Black asexual cis male side character, white cishet female side character, white cishet male side character, BIPOC female side characters.
Goodreads Summary: Thirty, flirty, and asexual Joy is secretly in love with her best friend Malcolm, but she’s never been brave enough to say so. When he unexpectedly announces that he’s met the love of his life—and no, it’s not Joy—she’s heartbroken. Malcolm invites her on a weekend getaway, and Joy decides it’s her last chance to show him exactly what he’s overlooking. But maybe Joy is the one missing something…or someone…and his name is Fox.
Fox sees a kindred spirit in Joy—and decides to help her. He proposes they pretend to fall for each other on the weekend trip to make Malcolm jealous. But spending time with Fox shows Joy what it’s like to not be the third wheel, and there’s no mistaking the way he makes her feel. Could Fox be the romantic partner she’s always deserved?
Trigger Warnings: Major: Mental illness (anxiety), panic attacks, cursing, acephobia, alcohol consumption. Moderate: discussions of sexual content/behavior, racism. Minor: car accident.
Cemetery Boys
Author: Aiden Thomas
My Rating: 5 stars
Genre: LGBTQ Fantasy
Representation: Yadriel (mc) is cuban-mexican-american, gay, and trans. julian (li) is colombian-american, gay, and has adhd. maritza (sc) is Puerto rican-mexican-american. rocky (sc) is gay. flaca (sc) is transgender. all latinx cast.
Goodreads Summary: Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.
When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.
However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie up some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.
Trigger Warnings: transphobia, deadnaming, misgendering, gender dysphoria, death of a loved one, grief/loss, blood, murder, discussions of violence, mention of deportation, mention of xenophobia, mention of gun violence, mention of disownment, homelessness, mention of child abandonment, mention of police discrimination, mentions of smoking and alcohol consumption, violence, knife violence, dead bodies, injuries, hospital, sexism, non-binary erasure.
A Dark and Starless Forest
Author: Sarah Hollowell
My Rating: 5 stars
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Representation: Fat queer MC, fat deaf queer asexual Mexican SC, fat non-binary pansexual Mexican SC, trans SC, Black SC, Black SC with ADHD, fat asexual SC.
Goodreads Summary: Derry and her eight siblings live in an isolated house by the lake, separated from the rest of the world by an eerie and menacing forest. Frank, the man who raised them after their families abandoned them, says it’s for their own good. After all, the world isn’t safe for people with magic. And Derry feels safe—most of the time.
Until the night her eldest sister disappears. Jane and Derry swore to each other that they’d never go into the forest, not after their last trip ended in blood, but Derry is sure she saw Jane walk into the trees. When another sibling goes missing and Frank’s true colors start to show, feeling safe is no longer an option. Derry will risk anything to protect the family she has left. Even if that means returning to the forest that has started calling to Derry in her missing siblings’ voices.
As Derry spends more time amidst the trees, her magic grows more powerful . . . and so does the darkness inside her, the viciousness she wants to pretend doesn’t exist. But saving her siblings from the forest and from Frank might mean embracing the darkness. And that just might be the most dangerous thing of all.
Trigger Warnings: Anxiety, depression, violence, death, emotional, physical abuse, gaslighting, trauma, grief, being drugged.
The Mirror Season
Author: Anna-Marie McLemore
My Rating: 5 stars
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Representation: Pansexual Mexican-American female MC with PTSD, white male love interest with PTSD, Latine lesbian female side character, sapphic female side character, Mexican-American side characters.
Goodreads Summary: When two teens discover that they were both sexually assaulted at the same party, they develop a cautious friendship through her family’s possibly magical pastelería, his secret forest of otherworldly trees, and the swallows returning to their hometown, in Anna-Marie McLemore’s The Mirror Season…
Graciela Cristales’s whole world changes after she and a boy she barely knows are assaulted at the same party. She loses her gift for making enchanted pan dulce. Neighborhood trees vanish overnight, while mirrored glass appears, bringing reckless magic with it. And Ciela is haunted by what happened to her, and what happened to the boy whose name she never learned.
But when the boy, Lock, shows up at Ciela’s school, he has no memory of that night, and no clue that a single piece of mirrored glass is taking his life apart. Ciela decides to help him, which means hiding the truth about that night. Because Ciela knows who assaulted her, and him. And she knows that her survival, and his, depend on no one finding out what really happened.
Trigger Warnings: Body shaming, bullying, drugging of side character w/o consent, grief, homophobia, lesbophobia, mental illness (PTSD), racism, rape, sexual assault, sexual content, sexual violence.
Malice
Author: Heather Walter
My Rating: 5 stars
Genre: LGBTQ Fantasy
Representation: Sapphic MC and Sapphic love interest.
Goodreads Summary: Once upon a time, there was a wicked fairy who, in an act of vengeance, cursed a line of princesses to die. A curse that could only be broken by true love’s kiss.
You’ve heard this before, haven’t you? The handsome prince. The happily-ever-after.
Utter nonsense.
Let me tell you, no one in Briar actually cares about what happens to its princesses. Not the way they care about their jewels and elaborate parties and charm-granting elixirs. I thought I didn’t care, either.
Until I met her.
Princess Aurora. The last heir to Briar’s throne. Kind. Gracious. The future queen her realm needs. One who isn’t bothered that I am Alyce, the Dark Grace, abhorred and feared for the mysterious dark magic that runs in my veins. Humiliated and shamed by the same nobles who pay me to bottle hexes and then brand me a monster. Aurora says I should be proud of my gifts. That she . . . cares for me. Even though it was a power like mine that was responsible for her curse.
But with less than a year until that curse will kill her, any future I might see with Aurora is swiftly disintegrating—and she can’t stand to kiss yet another insipid prince. I want to help her. If my power began her curse, perhaps it’s what can lift it. Perhaps, together, we could forge a new world.
Nonsense again.
Because we all know how this story ends, don’t we? Aurora is the beautiful princess. And I—
I am the villain.
Trigger Warnings: Blood, bullying, death, gaslighting/manipulation, lesbophobia/general queerphobia for royals, misogyny, murder, violence, child abuse, drug use/abuse by side character, grief, slavery/extortion of Graces, torture, sexual content, xenophobia towards Vila and Fae.
Wrath Goddess Sing
Author: Maya Deane
My Rating: 4 stars
Genre: LGBTQ Fantasy
Representation: White sapphic Greek trans woman, white cishet Greek male side character, Egyptian cishet female side character, various trans women side characters (kallai), Amazonian achillean trans male side character, bisexual Greek cis male side character, various Greek side character, various Hittite side characters.
Goodreads Summary: Achilles has fled her home and her vicious Myrmidon clan to live as a woman with the kallai, the transgender priestesses of Great Mother Aphrodite. When Odysseus comes to recruit the “prince” Achilles for a war against the Hittites, she prepares to die rather than fight as a man. However, her divine mother, Athena, intervenes, transforming her body into the woman’s body she always longed for, and promises her everything: glory, power, fame, victory in war, and, most importantly, a child born of her own body. Reunited with her beloved cousin, Patroklos, and his brilliant wife, the sorceress Meryapi, Achilles sets out to war with a vengeance.
But the gods–a dysfunctional family of abusive immortals that have glutted on human sacrifices for centuries–have woven ancient schemes more blood-soaked and nightmarish than Achilles can imagine. At the center of it all is the cruel, immortal Helen, who sees Achilles as a worthy enemy after millennia of ennui and emptiness. In love with her newfound nemesis, Helen sets out to destroy everything and everyone Achilles cherishes, seeking a battle to the death.
Trigger Warnings: War, violence, pregnancy, sexual content, slavery, transphobia/transmisia, dysphoria, birthing scenes, death, child death, injury/injury detail, blood, gore. Moderate: body horror, alcohol consumption, deadnaming, misgendering, abandonment, animal death, past mentions of bullying, grief, medical content, misogyny, sexism, murder, outing, torture.
Late to The Party
Author: Kelly Quindlen
My Rating: 4 stars (Read Jocelyn’s 5 star review)
Genre: LGBTQ Contemporary
Representation: Lesbian mc, bisexual panamanian major character, two gay black major characters, bisexual side characters
Goodreads Summary: Seventeen is nothing like Codi Teller imagined.
She’s never crashed a party, never stayed out too late. She’s never even been kissed. And it’s not just because she’s gay. It’s because she and her two best friends, Maritza and JaKory, spend more time in her basement watching Netflix than engaging with the outside world.
So when Maritza and JaKory suggest crashing a party, Codi is highly skeptical. Those parties aren’t for kids like them. They’re for cool kids. Straight kids.
But then Codi stumbles upon one of those cool kids, Ricky, kissing another boy in the dark, and an unexpected friendship is formed. In return for never talking about that kiss, Ricky takes Codi under his wing and draws her into a wild summer filled with late nights, new experiences, and one really cute girl named Lydia.
The only problem? Codi never tells Maritza or JaKory about any of it.
Trigger Warnings: Drug and alcohol use
Beyond the Black Door
Author: A.M. Strickland
My Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Representation: Kamai (mc) is demi-biromantic & ace; Vehyn (li) is ace; Kalin (sc) is trans & ace; Zereni (sc) is gay & poc; Hallan & Razim (scs) are poc; queer & poc scs.
Goodreads Summary: Kamai was warned never to open the black door, but she didn’t listen …
Everyone has a soul. Some are beautiful gardens, others are frightening dungeons. Soulwalkers―like Kamai and her mother―can journey into other people’s souls while they sleep.
But no matter where Kamai visits, she sees the black door. It follows her into every soul, and her mother has told her to never, ever open it.
When Kamai touches the door, it is warm and beating, like it has a pulse. When she puts her ear to it, she hears her own name whispered from the other side. And when tragedy strikes, Kamai does the unthinkable: she opens the door.
Trigger Warnings: ableist language, internalised amisia (theme), transmisia, queermisia, misgendering, misogyny, sex worker shaming, sex work & underaged sex work discussed, sexual harassment, emotional abuse, cheating, anxiety attack, nightmares, attempted suicide, alcohol consumption, nonconsensual drugging, pregnancy due to stealthing (partner’s nonconsensual manipulation of birth control), blood depiction, grief depiction, death of a mother (on-page), death of a stepfather, murder & attempted murder, knife violence &stabbing, strangulation, kidnapping, fire, and imprisonment mentioned.
The Henna Wars
Author: Adiba Jaigirdar
My Rating: 5 stars
Genre: LGBTQ Contemporary Romance
Representation: Bengali Muslim lesbian MC, Brazilian-Irish (Afro-Latinx) bisexual LI, side Bengali characters, side Korean character.
Goodreads Summary: When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants—as long as she isn’t herself. Because Muslim girls aren’t lesbians. Nishat doesn’t want to hide who she is, but she also doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life.
Flávia is beautiful and charismatic and Nishat falls for her instantly. But when a school competition invites students to create their own businesses, both Flávia and Nishat choose to do henna, even though Flávia is appropriating Nishat’s culture. Amidst sabotage and school stress, their lives get more tangled—but Nishat can’t quite get rid of her crush on Flávia, and realizes there might be more to her than she realized.
Trigger Warnings: Racism, homophobia, bullying, a character being outed
Perfect on Paper
Author: Sophie Gonzales
My Rating: 5 stars
Genre: Young Adult Romance
Representation: Bi girl mc, trans sc, Vietnamese-American lesbian sc, bi sc, gay sc, pan nonbinary sc
Goodreads Summary: Darcy Phillips:
• Can give you the solution to any of your relationship woes―for a fee.
• Uses her power for good. Most of the time.
• Really cannot stand Alexander Brougham.
• Has maybe not the best judgement when it comes to her best friend, Brooke…who is in love with someone else.
• Does not appreciate being blackmailed.
However, when Brougham catches her in the act of collecting letters from locker 89―out of which she’s been running her questionably legal, anonymous relationship advice service―that’s exactly what happens. In exchange for keeping her secret, Darcy begrudgingly agrees to become his personal dating coach―at a generous hourly rate, at least. The goal? To help him win his ex-girlfriend back.
Darcy has a good reason to keep her identity secret. If word gets out that she’s behind the locker, some things she’s not proud of will come to light, and there’s a good chance Brooke will never speak to her again.
Trigger Warnings: Biphobia, internalised biphobia, toxic parents, drugs, alcohol, vomiting
In The Ravenous Dark
Author: A.M. Strickland
My Rating: 5 stars
Genre: LGBTQ Fantasy
Representation: Pan main character, lesbian love interest, nonbinary ace character, polyamorous characters.
Goodreads Summary: In Thanopolis, those gifted with magic are assigned undead spirits to guard them—and control them. Ever since Rovan’s father died trying to keep her from this fate, she’s hidden her magic. But when she accidentally reveals her powers, she’s bound to a spirit and thrust into a world of palace intrigue and deception.
Desperate to escape, Rovan finds herself falling for two people she can’t fully trust: Lydea, a beguiling, rebellious princess; and Ivrilos, the handsome spirit with the ability to control Rovan, body and soul.
Together, they uncover a secret that will destroy Thanopolis. To save them all, Rovan will have to start a rebellion in both the mortal world and the underworld, and find a way to trust the princess and spirit battling for her heart—if she doesn’t betray them first
Trigger Warnings: death, loss of a loved one (on-page and off), violence, blood, gore, body horror, fratricide, mention of death by suicide, substance and alcohol addiction, enforced gender roles, forced marriage, and pregnancy (including rape, but the latter is off-page, in the past, and not involving main characters), and threats of rape and abuse.
Elatsoe
Author: Darcie Little Badger
My Rating: 5 stars
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Representation: Lipan-Apache asexual cis female MC, various Lipan and Apache side characters.
Goodreads Summary: Imagine an America very similar to our own. It’s got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream.
There are some differences. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day.
Elatsoe lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect facade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family.
Trigger Warnings: Death, murder, grief, car accident, blood, racism, violence, death of parent, injury/injury detail, gore, xenophobia, colonisation, body horror. Moderate: mentions of genocide, torture, gaslighting, medical content, medical trauma, terminal illness, cancer, alcoholism, alcohol consumption, drunk driving mentioned, stalking, racial slurs, animal death.
