2025 in Queer Books (so far)

a comprehensive list of book recs

Jul 13, 2025

June has come and gone, but I am still gay. As such, I believe it is my duty to share every single queer book I’ve read this year so far.

I was recently asked to put together a list of book recommendations for Open Book Club NYC, and I thought about my theme for a long time. I read all sorts of things and I think they could be grouped together in many ways: books about the collision of past and present, books for sad hotties, books that cool girls who worked at American Apparel in 2012 should read, etc.

I landed on queer books because I remembered it’s not a pigeonhole, it’s a soapbox. If I’m not using the little corner of the internet I’ve created to recommend queer books at every turn, what am I doing?

So, let’s break down my queer reads:
In the first 6 months of the year, I read 46 books.
21 of those were queer stories (19 written by out queer writers).
This number consisted of 18 fiction reads and 3 miscellaneous reads (poetry, short story collections etc.).

I’m going to go through all of them here highlighting my favourites, so buckle up!

18 Fiction Reads

Comedic Timing by

Upasna Barath

A modern romcom that follows a bisexual girl in her early twenties as she moves from Chicago to New York. She’s trying to make her life shiny again, healing from a messy relationship and figuring out who she wants to be in a new city.
Bonus recommendation: I wrote a short story for 831 Stories inspired by this book, and you can read it here.

Le Straight park by Gabriel Cholette
This is a work of autofiction inspired by a movement of reclamation that happened during the early pandemic lockdown: A skate park in Montreal was taken over by queer and trans people one night a week. It became a place to converge and celebrate community. Gabriel Cholette uses this as a diving board into his past and his experiences with the act of reclamation.

We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin
This book follows a young woman who has decided she wants to take her own life as she is taking stock of her existence up until that point. A large portion of the book is rendered through suicide notes, which makes for a tough read.
In the end, this story of sisterhood, belonging and growing up turns heartwarming and important.

Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Real Life is the story of Wallace, a queer black academic on a predominantly white Midwestern campus. We watch him navigate the various spaces in his life as an outsider and experience others othering him at every turn.

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
This book is inspired by a real story, and follows a young girl in Oakland who accidentally falls into sex work. She then gets roped into a larger scheme happening with the police department, which exposes deep-rooted corruption and imbalanced power structures.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
The Bee Sting is the story of an Irish family, two parents and two children, and the book splinters into four sections that dig really deeply into each of their lives. There’s teenage angst, a hunger for belonging, despair, regret, disappointment, so many things that make up these very real-feeling people.
I can’t go into the queerness of this book without spoilers, but it took me by surprise and was so incredibly done.

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
This novel is about three people with different relationships to their gender as their lives intersect in a complex dynamic of parenthood and partnership. An unexpected pregnancy and a desire to queer the family nucleus makes these flawed characters address questions of sex, gender, desire and identity.

On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer
This is a queer classic from the 1980s and follows Noenka, a young woman searching for more, as she leaves her hometown just days after announcing she was divorcing her husband.

Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter
Nova Scotia House is about love, queer community, finding the people who make you feel like yourself. It showcases a heart that has been shattered by the AIDS crisis, and what it can look like to pick up the pieces. It’s hazy and visceral, soft and hard.
This novel walks the reader through survivor’s guilt and grief in a way that feels so real. This isn’t reaching for the heartstrings, it tugs them effortlessly.

Like a Bird by Fariha Roisin
This novel is the story of Taylia, a girl who grew up on the Upper West Side, as she is navigating life post-college. She is grieving her sister, and when something traumatic happens to her, she is disowned by her parents and kicked out of her home. On her own, she has to face the skeletons she shoved all the way to the back of her closet.

All This Could Be Different by

Sarah Thankam Mathews

Early 20s, post-college, figuring out life with a 9 to 5, that is how we find our narrator. She is a queer woman of colour living in Milwaukee getting tangled in friendships and relationships. It’s finding out what the Big Bad World really means: bills, responsibilities, struggle, pressure, and being able to make decisions for yourself (negative).

Woodworking by Emily St. James
This is the story of a teacher in South Dakota as she’s coming to terms with her transness. She turns to the only out trans person she knows: a 16 year old student at her school. The book follows their unlikely bond and the tangled web of people around them.

Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt
Open, Heaven is the story of an out gay sixteen year old boy living in a small village in the north of England. It follows one summer in his life as he develops feelings for a straight boy his age. At first glance, that narrative feels overplayed, but it feels fresh, new and done really well here.

A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle
One night and two choices splinter a life. On one side, we follow the choice to repress and push down queer desire. On the other side, we follow the choice to live authentically.
Both lives follow their course over thirty years, starting in 1970s Australia. They explore family (chosen and not), identity, community, parenthood, art, love, and the changing landscape of their country.

The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela
A gay Latinx professor returns to his suburban hometown to visit his aging parents, and that visit coincides with his high school’s twenty year reunion. Past and present collide as he navigates what it means to go back home when you intentionally left it behind.

Open Throat by Henry Hoke
A slim book that centres a gay mountain lion living in the hills of Los Angeles. It’s one of the most unique books I’ve read in the last few years. This novel is an examination of humanity from the perspective of an outsider. The narration is detached from personhood, but is injected with the right elements to be a punch to the gut.

After the Blue Hour by John Rechy
It’s the (fictional?) story of John Rechy, a twenty-something writer, as he gets invited to a private island by an admirer. He stays there with the man’s girlfriend and teenage son, and joins a very strange familial dynamic. This is part erotic thriller, part autofiction, part hazy sizzling summer novel.

Memorial by Bryan Washington
A gay couple, Benson and Mike, are on the brink. They’ve been together for years, but their relationship is in limbo, it’s not quite right and it’s not quite wrong. When Mike goes to visit his dying father in Japan, he leaves Benson with his mother in their shared Houston home.

3 Misc. Reads

Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
Smith’s poetry discusses being HIV+, having a black body, being queer. This collection specifically digs into violence, and drags the reader through so much hate, pain, prejudice, and more.
Don’t Call Us Dead is contemporary, yet has beautiful lyricism that reminds me of classic poetry. It manages to balance both in a really great way.

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
This is a collection comprised of three short stories and one novella. Some speculative, some horror, all perfectly kooky. These pieces talk about gender and sexuality in a bold and intricate way—latex masks, crossdressing lumberjacks, and a gender apocalypse.

Personal Attention Roleplay by Felix H. Chau Bradley
This is a collection of short stories that could only have been written by someone of queer experience. It is so queer. Not just in subject matter, but in tone, themes, form, approach. Each story navigates queerness, living under capitalism, obsession, race, and does it from a very unique POV.