reviews, releases and recommendations of LGBT media
One month down, only eleven more to go… This year won’t be so bad, will it?
As always with us, I (Anna) watched more stuff than Charlotte, but Charlotte read way more books than I did. At this point, I don’t suppose anyone is ever surprised to see that. But hey, at least I read more than in December, this is clearly progress! And hopefully y’all have read more than me!
We’re barely a month into this new year but it sure feels like a decade already, doesn’t it… To make everything better, though, I’m here with a list of over 110 LGBT books coming out in February! Whatever happens next, at least y’all have a lot of stuff to read.
As always, a rainbow emoji is next to LGBT authors. And if you know I made any mistakes here, feel free to let me know.
And if you need some more books, you can find all our previous releases posts here.
You might remember that just in time for Christmas, Nuno released a cover of I’ll Be Home for Christmas (which I very happily included in my holiday mix), and hopefully it brought you as much holiday cheer as me.
So hey, read on to find out more about the singer behind that little gem, how much he appreciates his home country and who was his Portuguese icon.
And of course, you can listen to Nuno’s music here, and follow him on twitter.
Tides change, but some feelings can’t be washed away.
Lillian Lee doesn’t believe in love at first sight. Hate is a different story—and one she is intimately familiar with. Luckily, she hasn’t seen her arch-nemesis, Ivy Holden, since graduating from veterinary school five years ago. Since then, while her life isn’t going exactly according to plan, she’s happy. She has great friends, a job she loves, and the best pets in the world. Most importantly, her life is stable.
Seal Cove, Maine, is the last place Ivy Holden anticipated ending up. But when an unexpected medical condition forces her to relocate to be closer to family, she can’t turn down the opportunity. Her new job at Seal Cove Veterinary Clinic has everything she needs: flexibility, proximity to her family’s summer home, and the chance to do the work she loves. Unfortunately, it also has Lillian Lee.
Thrown back into each other’s orbits, Lillian and Ivy must find a way to work together, despite the treacherous emotions threatening to drown them both.
Anna Burke
Published: 26th January 2021
Goodreads
Rep: bi mc, bi mc with MS, lesbian & bi side characters
CWs: internalised ableism
A mere week after I started working on this post, it is finally ready to go. If you were wondering exactly what sapphic books are upcoming in 2021, then look no further! There are over 250 for you right here, and just in time for f/f February, should you decide to take part in that.
Undoubtedly I have missed off books (I’m already predicting that I’ll find another as soon as I hit post on this), so I will be going through the post fairly regularly and adding more that I find, don’t worry!
In desperation, two days ago, I asked for a rec list theme. The response I got was the theme of pirates, or the sea in general. Now, I’ve not read that many pirate books (not that I would feel able to rec, at least), so I went with the latter.
So, if you’ve been listening to sea shanties non-stop for however long, in this list you’ll be able to find yourself a book that they’re the perfect soundtrack to.
I didn’t want to just use an umbrella term, which is why this post isn’t titled “2021 Trans Books”, although it might have worked too. But let’s go with “non-cis” as something broader, since there will be books on this list with agender characters, genderqueer, genderfluid, sci-fi novels with approach to gender like we don’t have here & now.
Like in my post of last year, I decided to only include books featuring main characters falling into any of those non-cis categories. I allowed myself also love interests or parents, or really major side characters. But on the whole, the idea was to have an actual rep, not a trans character mentioned in passing on page 275.
I’m sure I have missed some books and will update the post a few times throughout the year. Please leave a comment, if you know of any books I didn’t put in yet! And as always, books by LGBT authors have a rainbow emoji next to the title.
We asked what rec lists you guys would like to see & got this gorgeous request that maybe, possibly we have almost fought over. Just maybe.
So anyway, the request was: “wholesome books full of queer characters if possible, essentially just books that feel like a big queer warm hug because I cannot handle reading anything else”. You would fight to recommend people books like that, too, wouldn’t you? Enjoy then!
We had an absolute blast chatting with Jonny Garza Villa, and you will surely find them delightful, too! Their debut YA novel, Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun, comes out on 8th June, just in time for Pride! What a gay icon, am I right…
So read on to find out what inspired the novel, and generally become a fan of Jonny already. And don’t forget the pre-order the book! You should also follow them on twitter.
At this point it’s a tradition: I’ve already made a compilation posts about 2019 LGBT YA books & about 2020 LGBT YA books (first half of the year and second).
So it’s absolutely no surprise to anyone that I’m here with a list of LGBT YA books of 2021, right? Well, the first half of the year anyway. Over 175 of them! Have I missed any?
The books are (more or less) in a chronological order of publication, and I tried to be as specific with the rep as it was possible, given I have only read a few of them so far myself. Which of course means, please correct me if I’m wrong. As always, books by LGBT authors also have a rainbow emoji next to the title. Enjoy and preorder!
The last post about music from 2020! And I didn’t even include any Christmas music on the post itself (it’s there on the mix, don’t worry!), but if you’re feeling nostalgic, check out the Make the Yuletide Gay mix.
Music truly was one of the only things that made that hellish year bearable, so let’s go! Enjoy!
And if you need more, check out all my previous monthly posts right here!
Today’s post is our, slightly delayed, book of the month announcement! This time, we’ve chosen Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow, a children’s-slash-middle-grade book about a kid who just wants to make his dad happy, so he sets off to Pride in order to do that. If you want a book that will make you feel happy and full of love, this is the book for you.
You can also check out my (Charlotte’s) review of it here!
It’s a busy start to 2021 for this blog, what with our favourite books and tv/film/other media of 2020 posts, but now we come to the exciting stuff. Our 12 most anticipated releases of January to June 2021. There are, obviously, a vast number of books we couldn’t include here, so this is not the be all and end all of everything we’re excited about.
This year we are also going to do our best to actually read every book that we select in these two posts (instead of deciding to try it in September, leaving Anna with a near impossible task).
Also an important note from Anna: there are books I was able to choose as my most anticipated because I haven’t read them yet, because unlike Charlotte I’m a little baby forever stuck in a reading slump and I don’t read ARCs we’re granted on time.
Since we added a section about movies, shows and other media to our monthly wrap-ups, we of course also had to let you guys know which of the titles we loved most.
And if you paid attention to said wrap-ups, you probably noticed that Charlotte doesn’t watch as much stuff as I do (Charlotte is definitely the Reader part of this blogging duo). That’s the reason why my section is longer than Charlotte’s. And why The Half of It, And Then We Danced, and Schitt’s Creek are not among my choices – I loved them too, a lot, but it was either let Charlotte pick them or agree to this post being just five titles for each of us.
Anyway, below are 25 great stories we have watched (or listened to) in 2020. Enjoy!
Buckle in, guys, this is gonna be a monster of a post! To give you some context for just how giant our list of favourite reads of this year is: we only listed three books each from 2018 & five books each from 2019.
But this time? We had to divide our list into 3 categories: backlist books, books released in 2020 & books to be released in 2021. We also cheated for the last two categories and added a group of books that both of us loved, so we didn’t have to fight over them. Also all the groups are 5 books long, apart from the group of 2021 ARCs which is uhh… 16 books long.
So yes, in total here are 41 books we read this year and loved the most! Enjoy!
