#Queer YA

[therefugeofbooks]

Hell Followed With Us by Joseph Andrew White mini review

What I liked:

Complex relationships

Fast-paced

It's gory

What I didn’t like

Repetitive inner monologues

Weak side characters

Overall, it was one of the best ya books I read in a while. It’s violent and cruel, and it doesn’t shy away from difficult topics. Recommending for anyone looking for a horror book!

[reedreadsbooks]

Book Review: Dreadnought by April Daniels ✨🏙️⚡️

rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

(5/5)

After Dreadnought, the world’s greatest superhero, is killed in combat, closeted trans girl Danny Tozer inherits his powers and is transformed to have the body she’s always wanted to have. Now she has to deal with having superpowers and being an out trans woman, all the while hunting down the supervillain who murdered her predecessor.

This book was phenomenal, and I’m kind of at a loss for words to describe how much I liked it.

To start, I love the world of this book. This is such a classic superhero story. Daniels uses the conventions of the genre without making things feel like a parody and subverts tropes just enough to make the story distinct.

I also really love Dreadnought as a trans narrative. This book doesn’t shy away from transphobia. Between Danny’s parents, kids at her school, and other heroes she meets, we get a pretty broad and realistic representation of the types of abuse a young trans woman might face. There’s also so much trans joy in this book. It was really nice to see Danny come into herself, and it was cathartic to watch her realize that no one could take her transition away from her. This is the type of story that will give trans kids hope for the future.

I would recommend this book to literally everyone. In fact, I plan on recommending this book to literally everyone. But because that’s not helpful, I’ll be more specific and say I highly recommend this book to fans of Andrew Joseph White. Obviously, it’s very different from his work, genre-wise, but I think the themes are really similar. If you like Hell Followed with Us and The Spirit Bares It’s Teeth, I can definitely see you liking Dreadnought.

[aroaessidhe]

Demisexual YA Contemporary Books

Main characters

The Summer of Bitter and Sweet - demisexual girl, m/f

Two Can Play That Game - demisexual-coded girl, m/f

Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller - demisexual girl, m/f, novella

Technically You Started It - demisexual girl, m/f

Bad At Love - demisexual boy, m/f

Read With Pride - demisexual girl, f/f (younger-YA)

Side characters

The Summer Love Strategy - love interest is demi-aroace (f/f)

Radio Silence - major side character is demisexual (m/m, the MC has no romantic subplot)

Belly Up - love interest is a demisexual boy (also grey-ace best friend)

#aspec books / aspec database / tumblr masterpost

[grizzcore]

Just My butch husband and his familiar being nosy neighbors

We’re working on the final edits and some promo material for my partners debut novel, The Heretic Prince!

If you want to read queer fantasy written by a queer author, please check out @thehereticprinceseries , my beautiful butch has written a captivating high fantasy following the interwoven fates of three queer main characters, with an incredible journey of transmasculine chivalry, a pining sapphic romance, and a gay coming of age against a backdrop of magic, espionage, and a budding conspiracy to undermine the false-prophets of an oppressive theocracy

[b0rtney]

you want homosexuals in every conceivable scenario?

Boy oh boy do i have the substack for u: mine!

NO PLEASE LEMME TELL U THE STORIES BEFORE U LEAVE--

Current is Cinnamon Muffins. TLDR: Six queer boys in a homophobic tiny town in Iowa are trying to survive winter break dodging awful parents, social stigma, and mental health crises.

Next up is How to Get Away with Marriage. TLDR: Guy with awful, religious parents marries guy who is living paycheck to paycheck so they can both get all their younger sisters out of their shitty situations (but they fall in love ofc).

Longer desc of these plus the stories coming in the next months are below the cut! (Genres include fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, mystery/thriller, coming-of-age)

Cinnamon Muffins centers on Taylor Macready, a homeless senior in high school holed up in a sleeping bag under a bridge after his parents kicked him out. He's fully ready to just accept death when it starts snowing on him while he's stargazing, but social outcast Wes Post is taking his nightly walk in a new direction and stumbles (literally) on his longtime crush, Taylor. Dragging Taylor home, Wes's parents prove themselves the only reasonable parents in this book by setting Taylor up on their pullout couch and nursing him back to health. Then Wes, whose closest school relationships include the kids who bully him for his anxiety-related speech impediment, has to get in touch with Taylor's friends to let them know the situation. Meanwhile, the mean girls of Swisher High School are starting a campaign to get homosexuality banned at school. Administratively, it gets nowhere, but it inspires several small-minded shitwads to take matters into their own hands. While Taylor is used to getting into fights, Wes isn't, but he'll have to sink or swim, because the teachers are not paid enough to care what happens in the hallways during lunchtime.

How to Get Away with Marriage opens with Luke Providence, son of a devoutly Baptist family in Nebraska, proposing to Patrick Demden, son of a recently-deceased alcoholic mechanic. The wealthy Providence parents have a longstanding agreement that once their children get married, they will receive a trust of $100,000 to use on the down-payment of a house and to start a life with their spouse. Patrick's younger sister tutors Luke's younger sister, but Patrick's sister is 16. This age gap doesn't matter much to the Providence parents, but it matters a lot to Luke, so he strikes a deal with Patrick: tell the parents he'll marry the sister, legally marry the brother, everyone gets to move to Colorado and escape abusive religious parents and crushing poverty. He needn't have done something so elaborate, Patrick would have married him for any reason at all. But the secret doesn't stay secret forever, and the Providence parents eventually come knocking, trying to recollect their children and their money.

Future stories I'll keep shorter, but feel free to ask about them either in the replies or my askbox and I'll elaborate!

Assassin x Demon King will be getting books 2 and 3! ADK is about an assassin and the king he was supposed to kill, both of whom have quit their jobs and started trying to save as many people as the assassin killed before he dies of a slow-acting poison in twelve months. Books 2 and 3 will have things getting awfully tragic and somewhat more horny than before! (No smut will make it into the print versions of these, that will remain on my substack alone)

How to Find Your Friends After the End of the World is a fantasy inspired by the isekai anime genre. Five friends in their 20s are on earth as it is wracked by a violent battle between the Heroine of the Gods and her Nemesis, and then, suddenly, they aren't. Earth has been destroyed and they are now on a new planet, in new (non-human) bodies, strewn across continents! On their new wrists, they have tattoos with each others' names, plus one (or two) new ones: their soulmates. Court politics and wastelands of monsters await them as they try desperately to reach each other, and their soulmates try desperately to reach them.

HtFYF will also have a prequel, focusing on the events that led to earth's destruction, and the battle between the Heroine of the Gods, a young woman, and her Nemesis, who seems to know more about the gods than she says. Why do the gods keep choosing such young heroes? What has the Nemesis done to put the world in such peril? Will the Heroine get to graduate on time despite the sleep she's been missing!?

The following do not yet have titles, but are fully fleshed out works ready to be thrown onto Substack:

A trilogy of eleven teens assisting in the fight against an agency that traffics, tortures, and then sells children with preternatural powers and abilities, and an exploration of the trauma those kids emerge with.

A murder mystery where a woman's sister dies, the police rule it suicide, and the woman enlists the help of a rumored contract killer to help her solve the murder-- but why does this rumored murderer-for-hire seem to know so much about her sister's death? And who was truly responsible?

A campy novel about a woman who graduates college, goes back to her hometown, and finds her highschool crush is still there, still single, and has since come out as gay. Of course, the only solution is to co-adopt an at-risk child from a neighbor.

This post will remain pinned on my profile, but for the next few days I'm having a sale on my substack tiers-- 20% off! That makes the cost to you just $8 per month to get a chapter every other day. 15 chapters for $8; that's a steal!

[augustyearroundprod]

A little over a year ago, my friends and I got to start this incredible, amazing, fulfilling audiodrama journey called MOONBURN. It's a celebration of queerness and Chosen Family and growing up and the power of love, friendship and joy.

And now, I feel so endlessly lucky to be working with all of them again to CONTINUE this story, this world, this journey with SEASON TWO!

If you haven't already, check out SEASON ONE of MOONBURN wherever you get your podcasts-- catch up, reach out, and help us get ready for a brand new season of love and joy!

[layaart]

Here's the cover I designed/illustrated for Sweethearts, 3rd in the Babylove trilogy!

[the-dust-jacket]

Queer YA for spooky season!

Pictured: A Vile Season, Everything Glittered, Spells to Forget Us, Compound Fracture, A Darker Mischief, Beholder, Better Left Buried

[shazleen]

My favourite book covers that I've worked on :)

[whilereadingandwalking]

First, a quick spoiler: this book is groundbreaking because it was a YA novel featuring two queer girls who get a happy ending. I know, I'm sorry to spoil it, but it's vital. In our age of blossoming queer YA contemporary, it's important to see why Annie on My Mind was so important, and so controversial, given a past where the only gay books permitted were those with unhappy endings.

In this book by Nancy Garden, two girls from across New York City meet at the Met and begin to have feelings that they don't, at first, understand. And when they are caught, their academic careers, friendships, and family relationships are all put at stake. This novel is simple, and to those who grew up with all kinds of queer novels around, it might feel outdated. It reads as historical fiction, with the sheer shockwave the adults in the book feel at finding lesbianism in their elite school. But there's nothing wrong with that, and it's a great book about a time when queerness was ok if it was just experimenting, or secret, or hidden, and where two girls are determined not to let go of each other, no matter the cost. A really good, quick read about coming-of-age queer and finding acceptance within yourself.

Content warnings for outing, homophobia, lesbophobia, ableism.

[biandlesbianliterature]

For Nerdy Queer Teens Past and Present

Cass is a fat, nerdy queer teenager who is obsessed with a book series and roleplays as one of the characters in an online community. I was a fat nerdy queer teen who was obsessed with a book series and roleplayed in an online community! She’s a chronic overthinker, I’m a chronic overthinker. Needless to say, I cared a lot about Cass and felt protective of her while reading.

The chapters are interspersed with roleplay scenes, which might not work for everyone, but was very nostalgic for me, and they nicely complemented what was happening in Cass’s AFK world.

It was also nice to read about a main character who is so confident both in being fat and being a lesbian, especially as a teenager. There still aren’t many examples of that in media.

While there are a lot of elements to this story, including family as well as romance, it was the friendships that stood out to me, and how seriously they’re taken. They’re often messy and imperfect, but they’re also so important to Cass, and they can be unexpected and beautiful even when they’re messy.

I highly recommend this for nerdy queer teens and those who once were nerdy queer teens—though I’m sure lots of other readers would enjoy it, too.

Out of Character by Jenna Miller was reviewed at the Lesbrary

[vik-the-prik]

So I was looking through some reviews on the bastard son and the devil himself and came across this

And I must say…

So true bestie! The minute I laid my eyes on Gabriel Boutin any hope of being straight was gone. Poof, nada. While i may not have converted to the gay life style my bisexual levels are through the roof!

Anyway go watch the bastard son and the devil himself, Netflix did very little in the way of advertising it most places and it’s really worth a watch!!

[derpcakes]

Queer YA Spotlight: The No-Girlfriend Rule

Welcome to The Afictionado’s Queer Book Rec Bonanza! It’s Pride Month, and to celebrate, I’ll be breaking my usual blogging schedule to post one review a week for the entirety of June.

Last week’s entry was a historical fantasy. This time we return to the contemporary world, but don’t worry, magic isn‘t too far away…

Premise: Hollis has always been one of the guys, but the number of things she has in common with her childhood-best-friend-turned-boyfriend are dwindling. She wants to connect with him over his beloved tabletop RPG Secrets & Sorcery, but he and his friends have a strict “no girlfriend rule” for their games. After some disastrous, alienating attempts at finding another group to join, Hollis comes across Gloria’s all-girls, queer-friendly game, and figures she might as well roll the dice. What she doesn’t expect, when she sits down at Gloria’s table and sends her paladin on a quest, is that Hollis is setting out on a personal adventure of her own.

Keep reading...

[cultofsappho]

Convincing you to read queer romance books by their aesthetic (8/∞):

So This Is Ever After by F.T. Lukens

Arek hadn’t thought much about what would happen after he completed the prophecy that said he was destined to save the Kingdom of Ere from its evil ruler. So now that he’s finally managed to (somewhat clumsily) behead the evil king (turns out magical swords yanked from bogs don’t come pre-sharpened), he and his rag-tag group of quest companions are at a bit of a loss for what to do next.

As a temporary safeguard, Arek’s best friend and mage, Matt, convinces him to assume the throne until the true heir can be rescued from her tower. Except that she’s dead. Now Arek is stuck as king, a role that comes with a magical catch: choose a spouse by your eighteenth birthday, or wither away into nothing.

With his eighteenth birthday only three months away, and only Matt in on the secret, Arek embarks on a desperate bid to find a spouse to save his life—starting with his quest companions. But his attempts at wooing his friends go painfully and hilariously wrong…until he discovers that love might have been in front of him all along.

[intersexbookclub]

2023-12-22 Across the Green Grass Fields

For our December book, we read YA portal fantasy novella *Across the Green Grass Fields *by perisex author Seanan McGuire. Elizabeth nominated the book after seeing this review of the book by intersex author JS Fields, who was also a sensitivity reader for the book.

Overall impressions

Elizabeth was stoked for a book with quality intersex-at-puberty representation that was also refreshingly pleasant to read!

vic read the first half, and liked how the book asks you to think about how to parent intersex kids, as well questions about agency and children. Also the book is really sweet; it is warm and caring.

Bnuuy was upset that the book did not take an unambiguous anti-bullying stance, and failed to hold its protagonist Regan accountable for her role in ostracizing her friend Heather when Heather was insufficiently girly.

Vo felt it was very heavy hitting at the beginning, but the book only sort of returned to it. There’s all these scenes where Regan doesn't feel like one of the other girls, and then in the Hooflands she's able to become herself.

Michelle’s view as an author was that from a craft perspective, the ending felt rushed [SPOILERS] xe would have liked to see her meet her centaur family again, see the anti-monarchist revolution that Regan incited. [/SPOILERS]

Intersex analysis

A totally incommensurate amount of intersex representation is intersex-at-birth stories, even though tons of intersex variations become evident at puberty. While Regan’s AIS was known from birth, she doesn’t start to show physical differences until puberty, and her parents don’t tell her until then.

A big reason many of us liked this book was how it delivered on conveying the social & psychological aspects of being intersex at puberty. The author is perisex and perisex authors tend to over-focus on the anatomical aspects and fail at depicting the social/psychological parts. 

The horror that Regan experiences at realizing she is intersex and her terror of transgressing gender roles was something many of us could relate to. Many of us spoke up about our personal experiences going through atypical puberties and getting picked on for it. In the sharing of personal stories, many of us pointed out how our parents added to the shaming. Regan’s parents, while very imperfect, at least did not ruthlessly double down on gender presentation like so many of our parents did!

Many of us were excited to see intersex representation that is *literally anything other than ambiguous genitals*! This book was not fetishy in a way that is very rare to see from a perisex author, and felt like a good example of how a perisex author can do intersex representation well. 

This book does an excellent job prompting the reader to think about how to best parent an intersex child. The parents of the protagonist are depicted as kind of bumbling but good-intentioned and fail in some key ways that lead to Regan running away. It invites the reader to think about what they should do differently.

Parenting Intersex Kids

We spent a good hour talking about the decisions made by Regan’s parents and how they set her up for failure. Her parents made the decisions not to tell Regan she had AIS until she noticed she was different, which gave us the impression they saw the AIS as a negative they needed to shield her from.

Bnuuy pointed out the parents, before telling Regan she had AIS, should have first established that “hey you don’t have to experience things like everyone else”. Regan had anxiety about not starting puberty, and the parents focused instead on revealing she was intersex. vic pointed out they gave a different answer than what she had actually asked.

vic was concerned that the parents didn’t sit Regan down and explain that the world HATES intersex people and those who don’t conform and so you need to be careful about who you tell. Vo agreed that if you don’t set people up for the realities of the situation they will be facing, you’re setting them up to fail. 

Bnuuy pointed out how the parents called Regan a “perfect girl”, when what they needed to do was deconstruct that. Vo asked what they would do if down the line Regan stopped being a “perfect girl”. We discussed how the language of “perfect girl” conveys that we measure people by how good they are as a girl/woman, and that teaching your kid they need to be perfect to be loved is messed up. 

Michelle pointed out there was a nice moment of implied trans solidarity when Regan’s parents told her that “if you say you’re a girl then you’re a girl���. 

Elizabeth pointed out the parents didn’t encourage Regan to support non-conformity, to have her play in non-stereotypic ways. They also seemed way too happy to accept Regan saying she was okay with the situation rather than keeping Regan home from school the next day to process it.

Bnuuy pointed out they could have made Regan apologize to Heather, and was disappointed the mother did not make that happen. Even if Regan didn’t know she was intersex at the time, the parents did know, and should have been able to connect that letting bullying happen would eventually lead to Regan being bullied.

We did note that Regan’s parents protected Regan from surgery as an infant and were supportive of her bodily autonomy. This is important! But it was great to see parents held to a higher bar than whether or not you subject your child to unnecessary and irreversible cosmetic surgery as a child.

Book summary (mild spoilers)

The book has two distinct parts: it starts in our world, centring on protagonist Regan as she enters adolescence. She has embraced social conformity, even though it has led to shun her friend Heather after a mutual friend (Laurel) decides that Heather is gross for wanting to play with a snake. 

When Regan’s parents tell her she AIS at age 10, it triggers a series of events that involve Laurel shunning Regan for having AIS and Regan running away through a portal. 

Once through the portal, Regan arrives in the Hooflands, a world of centaurs. She is adopted by a family group of unicorn ranchers, who nurture her and give her actual agency. She is expected to be the harbinger of some sort of social upset, which she refuses to participate in. Instead, she grows up with her family for five years before she finally feels ready to play her role as a hero. 

What we liked about the book

The intersex representation (see above!), it was very normalizing without any awkward fourth-wall breaks to infodump on the reader

The story is sweet and warm, while also remembering that “kids are not little sugary robots that are happy all the time” (per vic)

In the Hooflands, Regan is given agency and grows as a person; the implicit message is that autonomy and agency are necessary for children to grow.

A few of us were just happy to have horses 🐴

Anti-monarchist plot yesssss

What we didn’t like

The ending. Regan never gets to say goodbye to her adopted family nor see the revolution she instigates. The book ends with her returning to our world, getting ready to enter her bioparents’ house, so we never see her reunite with her bioparents. 

This also means that the first part of the book (events that lead to her running away) and the second part of the book (the Hooflands) never really come together. We all agreed that the book didn’t do enough to resolve or return to the first part of the book, leaving the story feeling incomplete.

There were POV/narrator changes that multiple people found confusing; it was unclear when it was Regan’s thoughts vs an omniscient narrator.

Regan is a coward and a bully. She grows as a character but never really makes things right with her friend Heather. That Regan doesn’t reflect on how she was a bully nor properly redeemed was particularly upsetting to Bnuuy, who found it difficult to sympathize with Regan after she participated in the ostracism of Heather.

Mixed feelings

Some of us preferred the first part of the book, others preferred the Hooflands part.

A few people were surprised Regan was the main character, given how badly she’d behaved at the start, and assumed Heather would be the main character

Not everybody could empathize with Regan, that social ostracisation is something young girls understand they need to avoid at all costs. Some of us felt that although Regan’s behaviour was bad it was understandable. That children don’t have fully developed moral compasses and shouldn’t be judged by adult standards. Michelle recommended “Cat’s eye” by Margaret Atwood for capturing issues of girlhood in greater detail than this book did.

Other thoughts on the book

Most of us related to Heather, who did nothing wrong and was arbitrarily ostracized. Many of us shared stories of being bullied as children & adolescents and how for many of us it happened without any clear inciting event or reason.

A few of us saw Regan’s friendship with Chicory as sapphic or queerplatonic

Michelle pointed out there’s a possible reading of the book where the Hooflands weren’t real - that Regan had dissociated for years and only at the end of the book snapped out of. This is not what the book seemed to be going for, but it was an interesting thing to consider.

Overall assessment: the intersex representation was lauded by all of the intersex people in the call as an example of how a perisex author can do justice to intersex representation. However, the bullying subplot was a notable weakness, given its lack of resolution in the ending. Bullying is a serious issue that has lifelong effects, and intersex people are vulnerable to bullying, so we would have liked a clear moral message on this front.

[hasmoneanbulbasaur]

Today, I finished reading Night Shine by Tessa Gratton. It is hands down one of the best YA fantasies I've read in a long time. A sensual, lusciously-written world filled with demons and heart-eating sorceresses that's very queer. Imagine Earthsea, but written by Tanith Lee instead of Ursula K. Le Guin instead.

My review.