reviews, releases and recommendations of LGBT media
We wavered between a few releases for June’s book of the month and eventually settled on this one on account of the number of adds it has on Goodreads. Because we’re fair and scientific like that (in theory). This month’s selection is for all the historical fiction lovers out there, so feast your eyes on it!
Everyone else? Well, best start reading historical fiction, since you won’t want to miss out on this one!
Please don’t be fooled into thinking I’m biased in my opinion about Jonny’s book, I’m really not. They really just are that talented and created that lovely & soft novel. The music mix accompanying this review is titled “inside your arms i feel so much warmer” (Where We’re Going / Gregory Dillon), and that is exactly the vibe of this book.
And hey, we actually interviewed Jonny some time ago, check it out!
Also don’t forget to follow Jonny Garza Villa on twitter!
A poignant, funny, openhearted novel about coming out, first love, and being your one and only best and true self.
Julián Luna has a plan for his life: Graduate. Get into UCLA. And have the chance to move away from Corpus Christi, Texas, and the suffocating expectations of others that have forced Jules into an inauthentic life.
Then in one reckless moment, with one impulsive tweet, his plans for a low-key nine months are thrown—literally—out the closet. The downside: the whole world knows, and Jules has to prepare for rejection. The upside: Jules now has the opportunity to be his real self.
Then Mat, a cute, empathetic Twitter crush from Los Angeles, slides into Jules’s DMs. Jules can tell him anything. Mat makes the world seem conquerable. But when Jules’s fears about coming out come true, the person he needs most is fifteen hundred miles away. Jules has to face them alone.
Jules accidentally propelled himself into the life he’s always dreamed of. And now that he’s in control of it, what he does next is up to him.
Jonny Garza Villa
Rep: Mexican American gay mc, Vietnamese American gay li, gay, lesbian, bi & pan side characters
TWs: past & present parental abuse, physical abuse (chapter 14 & 28), homophobia, outing, mc gets kicked out
Release: 8th June 2021
To say we have mixed feelings about this book is probably a very fair statement. So, we discussed and we figured the best thing to do in reviewing this book would be like so: split the review into factors that we liked, and factors that we didn’t get along with. The caveat of course being that these are our personal opinions, so please don’t let us put you off this book unnecessarily!
There’s one thing Jay Collier knows for sure—he’s a statistical anomaly as the only out gay kid in his small rural Washington town. While all this friends can’t stop talking about their heterosexual hookups and relationships, Jay can only dream of his own firsts, compiling a romance to-do list of all the things he hopes to one day experience—his Gay Agenda.
Then, against all odds, Jay’s family moves to Seattle and he starts his senior year at a new high school with a thriving LGBTQIA+ community. For the first time ever, Jay feels like he’s found where he truly belongs, where he can flirt with Very Sexy Boys and search for love. But as Jay begins crossing items off his list, he’ll soon be torn between his heart and his hormones, his old friends and his new ones…because after all, life and love don’t always go according to plan.
From debut novelist Jason June comes a moving and hilarious sex-positive story about the complexities of first loves, first hookups, and first heartbreaks—and how to stay true to yourself while embracing what you never saw coming.
Jason June
Rep: gay mc, Chinese-American gay li, gay genderqueer side character, gay side character
CWs: vomiting
Release: 1st June 2021
Kicking off the Pride releases’ season the right way, with our reviews of an absolute gem, a sapphic time-travel rom-com of your dreams. One Last Stop hits all the spots for a perfect book.
And as an extra treat, apart from the mix you can listen to while reading the book, we want to offer you one more thing: Charlotte actually set up a bot that will start tweeting in mid June, to avoid spoilers.
Cynical twenty-three-year old August doesn’t believe in much. She doesn’t believe in psychics, or easily forged friendships, or finding the kind of love they make movies about. And she certainly doesn’t believe her ragtag band of new roommates, her night shifts at a 24-hour pancake diner, or her daily subway commute full of electrical outages are going to change that.
But then, there’s Jane. Beautiful, impossible Jane.
All hard edges with a soft smile and swoopy hair and saving August’s day when she needed it most. The person August looks forward to seeing on the train every day. The one who makes her forget about the cities she lived in that never seemed to fit, and her fear of what happens when she finally graduates, and even her cold-case obsessed mother who won’t quite let her go. And when August realizes her subway crush is impossible in more ways than one—namely, displaced in time from the 1970s—she thinks maybe it’s time to start believing.
Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.
Casey McQuiston
Rep: bi mc with anxiety, Chinese American lesbian li, gay side character, Black sapphic side character, Black gay side character, Puerto Rican American trans side character, Black pan side character
CWs: past homophobic violence, off page death
Release: 1st June 2021
We needed abut half a second to decide we want to request an early copy of this book, once they became available. We’ve read everything else that Natasha Pulley has written, so we thought we know what to expect. And yet, The Kingdoms just stunned us. It’s a masterpiece.
There’s a mix at the end of this post, and I highly recommend you listen to it while reading the book. It somehow makes it more painful. And after, make sure to follow Natasha on twitter.
(Also for those of you who are already fans of Pulley’s work, can I point you in the direction of a bot I made that tweets quotes from her books every two hours?)
For fans of The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and David Mitchell, a genre bending, time twisting alternative history that asks whether it’s worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you’ve ever loved.
Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English-instead of French-the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he’s determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire’s Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself.
From bestselling author Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms is an epic, wildly original novel that bends genre as easily as it twists time.
Natasha Pulley
Rep: gay mc with epilepsy, gay li
CWs: implied conversion therapy & rape, violence, gore
Release: 25th May 2021
My small offering to you in these horrible times is a list of ten LGBT movies made outside of the US (or even UK, for that matter). It’s good to remember that the world doesn’t start and end with North America, and LGBT people actually live everywhere around the globe. You might also be interested in one of my previous posts, about movies with two QPOC leads.
And a quick reminder that on this blog we do not recommend movies with trans characters played by cis actors, ever.
Well, actually… the term ownvoices here is used very liberally. By that I mean you will find below books with gay main characters written by gay authors but sometimes it will be for example books with gay characters written by bi authors.
Generally, though, novels with mlm characters by mlm authors. Achillean books by achillean authors, if you will. So while the label might not always 100% match between the author and the character, those are still books written by people who understand the experience.
This is also why I opted out of using the rainbow emoji – everyone would get one anyways.
If you follow either of us on twitter (and were following us back in December), you probably already know how much we love The Sky Blues. Personally I would have probably chosen it as my most anticipated April release, of it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve read it last year… (But I did sneak it onto our list of fav reads of 2020!) It’s a one that will make you laugh and cry, and feel absolutely loved.
But let’s not get into details now, when you can just read our reviews below. And listen to the mix we made for the book!
Also follow Robbie Couch on twitter! He has more exciting things for us in the store!
Sky’s small town turns absolutely claustrophobic when his secret promposal plans get leaked to the entire school in this witty, heartfelt, and ultimately hopeful debut novel for fans of What if it’s Us? and I Wish You All the Best.
Sky Baker may be openly gay, but in his small, insular town, making sure he was invisible has always been easier than being himself. Determined not to let anything ruin his senior year, Sky decides to make a splash at his high school’s annual beach bum party by asking his crush, Ali, to prom—and he has thirty days to do it.
What better way to start living loud and proud than by pulling off the gayest promposal Rock Ledge, Michigan, has ever seen?
Then, Sky’s plans are leaked by an anonymous hacker in a deeply homophobic e-blast that quickly goes viral. He’s fully prepared to drop out and skip town altogether—until his classmates give him a reason to fight back by turning his thirty-day promposal countdown into a school-wide hunt to expose the e-blast perpetrator.
But what happens at the end of the thirty days? Will Sky get to keep his hard-won visibility? Or will his small-town blues stop him from being his true self?
Robbie Couch
Rep: gay mc, mlm li, trans & gay characters
TWs: homophobia, racism, f-slur, past car accident, past death of a parent, vomiting
Release: 6th April 2021
Let’s be honest, we all know that there is no trope better than found family. And actually, as long as we’re being honest with each other, found family as a concept is inherently gay. There’s just something about choosing your own family, that rings true to all LGBT people.
So yeah, here I am with ten LGBT stories featuring the found family trope. Only the best for you guys!
And hey, a lot of those titles are available on Scribd, so if you want to check out that service but don’t have an account yet, use my invite code to get 2 months for free! (This also gives me one free month.)
This post being a day late (work has made a mess of my timing skills), I figured I would go with something easier. That is, part three of my list of books with less than 400 ratings on Goodreads.
Okay, it’s a mouthful. We’re working on it.
In the meantime, you can find the first post here and the second one here.
Sounds weird to use terms associated more with literature, but really, when I say “new adult characters” what I mean is characters in their early or mid 20s. Young people trying to figure adult life out.
I ended up with 11 titles, and because I cheated and am claiming the last one only half fits the theme & that’s why it can stay. I was also tempted to put And Then We Danced and God’s Own Country on here, but eventually figured you all must know about them already.
As requested by Lena on Twitter, here are ten books with “characters in college/university or that general age range”. A few are straight up taking place at uni, a few are just with protags roughly that age.
I really wanted to include two more books, but I just featured them on my last rec list (Warm Hug LGBT Books), so I figured y’all need some more variety. Please know, though, Abroad by Liz Jacobs & Weak Heart by Ban Gilmartin also fit this theme perfectly.
So, you’ve opened up Scribd. The choices are overwhelming. You’ve read everything Anna suggested on their previous post. But where do you go from here?
Not to worry because today it’s my turn to provide you with 50* books that you can read on Scribd! I’ve done the digging so you don’t have to! So whether you’re looking for YA or adult, classics or poetry, sapphic, achillean or trans/nonbinary rep, hopefully there’s something here for you.
A little disclaimer first though: I myself haven’t read all of these books (some of what I initially included has been taken off since, thanks for that Scribd!), but they are all, if not read, then ones I want to read sometime soon.
*You may not actually have access to all 50 of these books, since Scribd can vary in availability depending on country.
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.
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!
