Eleven Must-Read Books for Pride
Go ahead, queer up your bookshelf. You know you want to.
Welcome to my substack / newsletter! 🫶🏻 This is where you can find updates on my life, my upcoming novels, and my special interests (which are wide and varied though mostly witchy, probably because I have a Gemini stellium and ADHD). Things like writing, publishing, herbalism, astrology, tarot, witchcraft, reading recommendations, cozy games, and more.
If you’re looking for more info on my books, you can find them all here on my website. I also created a bunch of free herb profiles as a part of my work as an herbalist. You can find those here!
Alright, let’s get to it. ✍🏻
Happy Pride! I absolutely love June because I go from my birthday on May 31st to Pride on June 1st to my wedding anniversary on June 5th, so it’s basically two full months of joy. To celebrate, I’ve put together a list of some of my favorite queer books by queer authors as well as some queer books that are coming out later this year (and early next year) that you should definitely preorder. Spoiler alert: there are actually more than eleven books mentioned in this post. 😅
Out Now!
Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar (Literary Fiction)
I read this one with my book club, and it was such a powerful and moving book. I laughed, I cried, I got deeply frustrated with the narrator as one does when reading. The author is a poet, and it shows with the lyrical prose. I don’t want to spoil anything, but love (specifically queer love) plays such an essential role in this story.
If you’re looking for literary fiction, Martyr! is a National Book Award finalist that tells the story of Cyrus, a queer Iranian man grappling with life and sobriety and depression. Haunted by the childhood loss of his mother on an airplane accidentally shot down by the American military and his father’s suicide when Cyrus went to college, he wants to find a way to make his death matter.
The Lovers (Romcom)
One of my favorite w/w romcoms, The Lovers is part coming out story, part reconnecting with the one that got away, and all disaster bisexuality set in the California desert. Plus, it has a tarot-reading psychic. I don’t read a lot of romance, but I do read everything Rebekah Faubion writes, and this one is a banger.
She also has another bisexual romcom coming out in August called The Sun and The Moon that is (somehow) even better than the first about the daughter of a psychic who doesn’t want to let her mother’s predictions determine her fate and the woman she finds herself falling for. Not only does Rebekah write romance, she also writes horror (her YA horror debut Lost Girls of Hollow Lake comes out in January), reads tarot, and is my go-to person to talk astrology.
The First Bright Thing (Historical Fantasy)
A time traveling circus book with multiple types of magic that’s very gay? Yes, absolutely. Count me in. (I love this book, y’all). It’s got a sapphic love story with bi rep, demi rep, and nonbinary rep. The writing is beautiful and evocative.
It’s a story of healing and becoming and truth, of finding our broken pieces and fitting them back together. A beautifully woven exploration of who we are, who we love, and who we choose to be in this world—the light or the darkness. It’s a must-read for Pride. J.R. also has a book called The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World that comes out in July that I cannot wait to read, and which I will forever be angry at TOR for not approving my Netgalley request for.
It Looks Like Us (YA Horror)
This novel is essentially a YA version of The Thing where a group of teens end up on a research trip funded by mega billionaire Anton Rusk and has some of the most amazing and grotesque body horror I’ve ever read. It has gay rep and ace rep, and it’s guaranteed to keep you up at night. I actually woke up screaming twice while reading this book.
Alison also had a gay pirate book that came out in January called The Devourer about revenge with a horrifying undersea monster and a lot of worms that you should check out, and her debut, To Break a Covenant, is gay and scary and has a haunted mine. Alison herself is a wonderful human and one of my favorite horror writers, so you should go buy all three of her books right now.
Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey (Horror)
Keeping with the theme of horror, Just Like Home is a book I haven’t stopped thinking about since I read it. Things just keep getting weirder and weirder as you read, and the way everything unfolds was a masterclass for me in writing horror.
Vera returns to her childhood home—a place she thought she left behind for good after her father was discovered to be a killer—because her mother is dying. But there are even more secrets buried in the house’s foundations. The main character is queer.
Kill Creatures by Rory Power (YA Horror)
Another one I haven’t read, Kill Creatures came out earlier this month and I cannot wait to read it (it was delayed in arriving at my indie, and didn’t come in until yesterday—so I need to go pick it up!). New York Times bestselling author Rory Power has written some of the most beautiful, terrifying, and weird YA horror I have ever read. While her first two horror novels were speculative (Wilder Girls and Burn Our Bodies Down), this one is a thriller with major Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes about a girl who killed her friends, but on the anniversary of their deaths, one of them reappears, very much alive.
Rory is a standout voice in the genre. Like, when I say I aspire to the level of prose Rory puts on paper, it’s not an exaggeration. And my god does this woman know how to write a twist. Also, her newsletter is hilarious. You can subscribe to her Substack here.
Books to Preorder!
The Leaving Room by Amber McBride (YA Novel in Verse)
I have yet to meet an Amber McBride book that I didn’t love, and this one is a top contender for my favorite (though We Are All So Good at Smiling is difficult to dethrone). I cried multiple times and yet somehow finished the book feeling comforted and loved.
The book is about a teenager named Gospel who is the Keeper of the Leaving Room, a liminal space where people go before they die, but one day the rules of the Leaving Room start to break and Gospel finds another keeper—Melody—and starts to fall in love. The Leaving Room doesn’t come out until October 14, but preordering a book is like buying a present for your future self, so go ahead and do it because Amber is amazing and deserves every success in the world. Also her debut (Me) Moth was a National Book Award finalist and the main character is queer.
The Faithful Dark by Cate Baumer (Fantasy)
Originally an indie fantasy, now you have to wait until February to get your hands on this one. The Faithful Dark is a fantasy Vatican serial killer novel that I’ve been obsessed with since I had the opportunity to read some of its earliest drafts. The world building is deliciously dark, and the book is dripping in heresy. It has ace representation, trans representation, and bisexual representation. It’s full of longing, religious angst (in the best way), and quite possibly the slowest burn romance I’ve ever read (also in the best way).
The Great Disillusionment of Nick and Jay by Ryan Douglass (YA Romance)
Okay, this one doesn’t come out until January, but that cover??? It’s a queer, YA Great Gatsby reimagining from New York Times bestselling author Ryan Douglass. I have not read this book, but I cannot wait to get my hands on it!
My Books!
Because some of you are new here, I did also want to mention that I am a queer author with queer books of my own that you can add to your Pride reading list.
The Other March Sisters (Historical Fiction)
My favorite two-star review of this book reads: “Kinda read like fan fiction and everyone was gay.” It takes place in the world of Little Women while Jo is away in New York, and instead focuses on stories for Meg, Beth, and Amy March (I wrote Meg). It has bisexual rep and gay rep and all that with Jo off page!
Witches of Honeysuckle House (Contemporary Fantasy)
A family of witches is haunted by a curse that takes someone they love every thirteen years (sort of a queer Practical Magic but if the house was alive). It comes out October 21, and you can request it on NetGalley now. There are three romances in the novel (though it is not a romance novel): m/f (both bisexual), f/f (pansexual and bisexual), f/f (lesbian).
Until next time…
If you made it all the way to the end of this post, hello! Thank you for reading. Here’s a link to all of the books mentioned in this post on Bookshop.org. Here’s a link to all of my books, and here’s a link to my Spotify playlists for all my books. If you want to hear from me more often, I'm always on Instagram and TikTok, frequently on Threads, slowly migrating to BlueSky, and I share all my plant and herb content on Pinterest.
Wishing you healing wherever you may need it.
xo
Liz
This list is EVERYTHING!