As ever, this is an incredibly difficult post to write. There were so many good books we both read in the year, that picking only 10 each was a challenge. In the end, I (Charlotte), at least, had to go by the criteria: a) did it stick with me?, and b) how well was it crafted. Tricky criteria still, but it helped.

Once again, we have divided our list into 3 categories: backlist books, books released in 2022 & books to be released in 2023 that we read ARCs of (and, in one case, a 2024 book). Each of these categories, would you believe it, actually has 5 books. For once, we’ve managed to stick to our original plans! (Though there are so many books we still missed out, some of which we featured in our little advent calendar thread we did through December.)

But anyway. Here’s our list of our favourite 25 books of the year! If you want to have a look at the last few years of lists (and how our tastes have or haven’t changed), you can find them here: from 2018, from 2019, from 2020, and from 2021.

It’s 1st January, which means, firstly, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Secondly, here’s our best of summary of 2021, in typical expanding fashion (alright, so maybe a few books shorter than last year). If you want to have a look at the last few years of lists, you can find them here: from 2018, from 2019, and from 2020.

Once again, we have divided our list into 3 categories: backlist books, books released in 2021 & books to be released in 2022 (that we read ARCs of). Books of 2021 has a further category of ones we both loved (upped to six this year simply because we couldn’t keep it to five). However, on the whole we’ve tried to do that (except where Anna only read a handful of backlist books, so filled up their 10 with 7 releases from this year).

Before we start, though, I (Charlotte) would just like to note I found it incredibly hard to pick only 5 backlist books because there were so many I loved. So while this is technically our “best of” post, there’s still a lot that only just didn’t make it.

But anyway. Here’s our list of our favourite 36 books of the year!

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!

Last year we only allowed ourselves to choose 3 best books each. That was torture and so this year we expanded that number to 5. We were also very careful to choose only books that were published in 2019 and read by us in 2019 (barring one 2020 release from me, Charlotte, because I never listen to what Anna says and also I need everyone to mark it to read ASAP).

I wonder if any of our choices are predictable to you, guys…

In any case, here are ten best LGBT books we have read this year! (And our dear wish that we could have pick more books.)

As 20gayteen comes to a close, me and Anna wanted to take a moment to reflect on the best books we read this year. Of course, you know that, given the chance, each of us alone would be able to go on for days about our best reads, so, after some deliberation, we decided to only post three books each (yeah, I know. Only. Three).

Not unexpectedly, we then each took ages in picking those three (there have just been so many amazing books this year!). But, in the end, we have this. Three books each, representing (some of) our favourites from 2018. Enjoy!