Category Archives: Queer Lit

Vantage Point by Sara Sligar

The old-money Wieland family has it all—wealth, status, power. They’re also famously cursed. Clara and her brother Teddy grew up on a small island in Maine in the shadow of their parents’ tragic deaths, haunted by rumors and paparazzi. Fourteen years later they’ve mostly put their turbulent past to rest. Teddy has married Clara’s best friend, Jess, and the three of them have moved back home to take over the sprawling, remote family mansion known as Vantage Point. Then Teddy decides to run for the Senate—an unnerving prospect made much worse when… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Domestic abuse
  • Sexual assault
  • Eating disorder (protagonist)

Good Girl by Aria Aber

In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist. Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Domestic abuse
  • Drug use

Motheater by Linda H. Codega

After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Benethea “Bennie” Mattox sacrifices her job, her relationship, and her reputation to uncover what’s killing miners on Kire Mountain. When she finds a half-drowned white woman in a dirty mine slough, Bennie takes her in because it’s right—but also because she hopes this odd, magnetic stranger can lead her to the proof she needs. Instead, she brings more questions. The woman called Motheater can’t remember her true name, or how she ended up inside the mountain. She knows only that she’s a witch of Appalachia, bound to tor and holler, possum and snake, with power in… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Murder
  • Imprisonment
  • Animal death

There’s Always Next Year by Leah Johnson and George M. Johnson

Andy was supposed to shed her too-serious student journalist persona and reinvent herself on New Year’s Eve. Instead, she puked on her crush, dropped her phone in a fish tank, and managed to get her car stolen. Now, she only has the first day of the year to stop the gentrification that’s threatening her family’s business right her wrongs from the night before, and figure out why she feels so drawn to the electric new-girl-next-door. . How can Andy find her voice when everything’s being turned upside down? Dominique is an influencer on the verge of securing a major brand deal that will ensure his future and family legacy. But… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & classism
  • Gentrification

Ellie Engle Saves Herself by Leah Johnson

Ellie Engle doesn’t stand out. Not at home, where she’s alone with her pet fish since her dad moved away and her mom has to work around the clock. Not at the bakery, where she helps out old Mr. Walker on the weekends. And definitely not at school, where her best friend, Abby—the coolest, boldest, most talented girl in the world—drags Ellie along on her never-ending quest to “make her mark.” To someone else, a life in the shadows might seem boring, or lonely. But not to Ellie. As long as she has Abby by her side and a comic book in her hand, she’s quite content. Too bad life… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Anxiety (protagonist)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a grandparent recounted
  • Earthquake
  • Animal death
  • Bullying

Love at First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi

Rosemary is a successful horror author with a secret: she can see ghosts. So when the set of her hit novel’s film adaptation turns out to be a haunted countryside manor, she’s unfazed. What she’s less prepared for is the maddeningly handsome, completely miscast actor playing her leading man. Ellis is a Hollywood heartthrob tired of his action-hero persona. Instead, he dreams of being a serious actor, and having free time to spend gardening with his dog. Landing the lead in a historical horror movie is his chance to start fresh… until he discovers the author tried to have him… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Internalised homophobia & biphobia
  • Anxiety
  • Alcohol consumption & mentions of smoking
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother from cancer recounted
  • Death of a pet dog recounted (off-page)
  • Blackmail

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson

In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity’s ancestral habitat. She’s spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Body horror

High Times in the Low Parliament by Kelly Robson

Lana Baker is Aldgate’s finest scribe, with a sharp pen and an even sharper wit. Gregarious, charming, and ever so eager to please, she agrees to deliver a message for another lovely scribe in exchange for kisses and ends up getting sent to Low Parliament by a temperamental fairy as a result. As Lana transcribes the endless circular arguments of Parliament, the debates grow tenser and more desperate. Due to long-standing tradition, a hung vote will cause Parliament to flood and a return to endless war. Lana must rely on an unlikely pair of comrades—Bugbite, the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Drug use & abuse (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Gun & knife violence

Dead Happy by Josh Silver

Friends. Welcome to Elmhallow. Seb, along with a select group of participants, finds himself washed up on an isolated island called Elmhallow, under the guardianship of a mysterious couple. As the experiment steps up another level, Seb is forced to team up with Eleanor once more. But where is Finn? And what does HappyHead have in store for them next?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Eugenics
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Drug use recounted
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Murder & torture
  • Physical assault
  • Animal death & cruelty

HappyHead by Josh Silver

We are in an epidemic. An epidemic of unhappiness. Friends, here is the good news: HappyHead has the answer. When Seb is offered a place on a radical retreat designed to solve the national crisis of teenage unhappiness, he is determined to change how people see him and make his parents proud. But as he finds himself drawn to the enigmatic Finn, Seb starts to question the true nature of the challenges they must undergo. The deeper into the programme the boys get, the more disturbing the assessments become, until it’s clear there may be no escape…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & outing mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use mentioned
  • Overdose mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Animal death