reviews, releases and recommendations of LGBT media
Ignoring the fact that this post is a little delayed and a couple of the books may have been published (we did at least pick them earlier than this!), but today we have for you, our most anticipated releases of the second half of this year.
Not that either of us really read any that we selected for the first half.
But anyway. Check out what we picked, and let us know what you’re looking forward to most!
A second part to the post I made at the beginning of the year, where I listed books with bi/pan main characters which were published between January and June (it’s here!). Now it’s time for the second half of the year.
Once again, I want to make some things clear:
1) I included only books that use the bi & pan labels or, in case of sff ones, that make it clear from context the characters are bi or pan. It’s not always clear-cut but I figured that if you’re looking for bi/pan rep, you’re looking for something concrete;
2) I did not include books which I wasn’t sure about, because I didn’t want to falsely advertise. If there’s anything I missed that you know for a fact features a bi or pan protag, please let me know!
The rainbow emoji indicates that the book is written by an LGBT author, and just for fun, I also marked YA books with a ✌️ emoji. Please let me know if I missed or mislabeled something!
A bit of a different post for you today in that it’s not really got a theme as such. Instead I went for books that I’d rec that have fewer than 400 ratings (criminally) on Goodreads (as voted for on twitter, actually).
There is a somewhat…eclectic mix here, for sure. But I hope it’s such that you will be able to find something you’re interested in, no matter what you’re looking for.
Oh, and I tried my best to include books that didn’t have so few ratings just because they had only recently been released.
So check it out!
You already know about all the LGBT YA books that came out in the first half of the year (and if you don’t, check out my post about them!), so now it’s time for the second half. By now all of you probably know that I usually read YA books, but hopefully some of our readers share my preference and will find something to read among those 90 or so titles.
I tried my best, but of course, I’m only human so if you know of any books I missed, please let me know!
Like always on this blog, the rainbow emoji indicates that the book is by an LGBT author.
From the author of the critically acclaimed Dominion of the Fallen trilogy comes a tale of dragons, and Fallen angels—and also kissing, sarcasm and stabbing.
Lunar New Year should be a time for familial reunions, ancestor worship, and consumption of an unhealthy amount of candied fruit.
But when dragon prince Thuan brings home his brooding and ruthless husband Asmodeus for the New Year, they find not interminable family gatherings, but a corpse outside their quarters. Asmodeus is thrilled by the murder investigation; Thuan, who gets dragged into the political plotting he’d sworn off when he left, is less enthusiastic.
It’ll take all of Asmodeus’s skill with knives, and all of Thuan’s diplomacy, to navigate this one—as well as the troubled waters of their own relationship….
A sparkling standalone book set in a world of dark intrigue.
Aliette de Bodard
Published: 7th July 2020
Goodreads
Rep: Vietnamese bi mc, gay side character
Something exciting for you today as we are part of the blog tour for Helen Corcoran’s Queen of Coin and Whispers which released last month. If you haven’t read it yet, and you’re looking for a sapphic royal fantasy with a slowburning romance and political machinations, this book is for you!
For this tour stop, I figured I would make a mix for the book, complete with reasons why I added each song. Or at least, I tried to give reasons. Sometimes it’s just about how the song feels…
Before we begin though, you can check out all of the other stops on the tour here and read my review of the book here.
‘She loved me as I loved her, fierce as a bloodied blade.’
When teenage queen Lia inherits her corrupt uncle’s bankrupt kingdom, she brings a new spymaster into the fold … Xania, who takes the job to avenge her murdered father.
Faced with dangerous plots and hidden enemies, can Lia and Xania learn to rely on each another, as they discover that all is not fair in love and treason?
In a world where the throne means both power and duty, they must decide what to sacrifice for their country – and for each other …
Helen Corcoran
Published: 1st June 2020
Goodreads
Rep: lesbian mcs
It’s a new month, which means a new book of the month! As ever, there were so many potential books to choose from, so, if you want to see what we sadly couldn’t choose, keep an eye out for our August releases post later in the month.
That said, here is what we did choose. And hopefully it’s introducing you to a whole new book!
Forgive me if I keep this brief, this post took longer than I expected, and I really need to sleep. But here it is! The final part of our “like this, try that” series, this one dedicated to solely straight media.
Apologies for the sort of… eclectic mix of media. When we thought about this, we realised we didn’t actually know a whole lot of straight media ourselves, so asked twitter (and pooled some ideas). So yeah.
Happy Pride and enjoy!
July sadly brings us fewer releases than before, thanks to COVID-19 pushing back a few. But there are still over 60 books coming out in the month! All of which are in this post.
As ever, you can find all our previous releases posts here and the rainbow emoji indicates an author who id’s as LGBT.
About, oh a month or two back, I asked a question on twitter. Namely, if you had to rec a single LGBT book (cruel I know), what would it be.
Well, these are the results — 50+ books recommended by 50+ folks!
Lesbians everywhere, hello, I have a gift for you! Well for other people, too, but lesbians specifically… I’m part of the blog tour for The Falling in Love Montage organised by Fantastic Flying Book Club! This means that not only do I have a review for y’all, but also a giveaway and a playlist!
Saoirse doesn’t believe in love at first sight or happy endings. If they were real, her mother would still be able to remember her name and not in a care home with early onset dementia. A condition that Saoirse may one day turn out to have inherited. So she’s not looking for a relationship. She doesn’t see the point in igniting any romantic sparks if she’s bound to burn out.
But after a chance encounter at an end-of-term house party, Saoirse is about to break her own rules. For a girl with one blue freckle, an irresistible sense of mischief, and a passion for rom-coms.
Unbothered by Saoirse’s no-relationships rulebook, Ruby proposes a loophole: They don’t need true love to have one summer of fun, complete with every cliché, rom-com montage-worthy date they can dream up—and a binding agreement to end their romance come fall. It would be the perfect plan, if they weren’t forgetting one thing about the Falling in Love Montage: when it’s over, the characters actually fall in love… for real.
Ciara Smyth
Published: 9th June 2020
Goodreads | Barnes and Noble | iBooks | Book Depository | Kobo | Indiebound
Rep: lesbian mc & li, lesbian side character
Find the full schedule for the blog tour here!
This month we decided to add a little series to the blog, one that centres on reccing a piece of media, given another, more popular piece of media. It’ll come in four parts: books, films and TV, and music, and then straight media specifically.
So today’s post is the first of those parts. We’ve picked 10 pretty popular books or series (which may themselves have some form of LGBT rep), and recced you three other books depending on what you might like about that series.
(As ever, 🌈 means the author identifies as LGBT.)
Our first rec list of the month has a theme! And that is, books which fit the labels assigned to the colours in Gilbert Baker’s pride flag (with the added black and brown stripes, obviously).
So we took each label as a prompt and tried our best to come up with a theme, and a book each to pick that theme.
And if you want to take this as a book tag and do your own post, please do because we would love to see what you’d rec!
(As ever, 🌈 means the author identifies as LGBT.)
It’s time for our book of the month feature again, and this month that book is a collection of mythological short stories! First though, a disclaimer. This is shelved on the big rainforest-named site we do not mentioned as bisexual and gay/lesbian, and that information comes direct from publishers’ metadata. So it’s probably correct.
Only there are no reviews of the book to confirm or deny this. So if we’re wrong here, please pretend you didn’t see.
But it sounds an amazing book nonetheless, and one we can’t wait to read come August!
As a special Pride Month celebration, me and Anna decided that this year we were going to pick each other’s TBRs. Now, both of us are notoriously bad at actually keeping to TBRs, so this could go absolutely terribly, who knows!
We each picked 5 fiction (or poetry) books and one nonfiction book that we thought the other might like (or hoped). So check back in July to see how we got on!
(Oh, and keep following, because we have some exciting things for you this month!)
