Tag Archives: Coming Out Themes

Love Letters for Joy by Melissa See

Less than a year away from graduation, seventeen-year-old Joy is too busy overachieving to be worried about relationships. She’s determined to be Caldwell Prep’s first disabled valedictorian. And she only has one person to beat, her academic rival Nathaniel. But it’s senior year and everyone seems to be obsessed with pairing up. One of her best friends may be developing feelings for her and the other uses Caldwell’s anonymous love-letter writer to snag the girl of her dreams. Joy starts to wonder if she has missed out on a quintessential high school experience. She is asexual, but that’s no reason she can’t experience… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Acephobia including mentions of a teenager being disowned by queerphobic parents
  • Forced outing & coming out themes
  • Sexual assault (nonconsensual kiss)
  • Parental divorce discussed
  • Asthma attack
  • Mentions of fertility & premature labour

Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore

New York City, 1922. Nicolás Caraveo, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Minnesota, has no interest in the city’s glamor. Going to New York is all about establishing himself as a young professional, which could set up his future—and his life as a man—and benefit his family. Nick rents a small house in West Egg from his 18-year-old cousin, Daisy Fabrega, who lives in fashionable East Egg near her wealthy fiancé, Tom—and Nick is shocked to find that his cousin now goes by Daisy Fay, has erased all signs of her Latina heritage, and now passes seamlessly as white. Nick’s neighbour in West Egg is a mysterious young man… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & colourism
  • Period-typical transphobia & homophobia
  • Period-typical sexism
  • Coming out themes
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & gambling
  • Emesis
  • Gun violence
  • Boating accident
  • Mentions of soldier’s military experiences in WW2

Wren Martin Ruins It All by Amanda DeWitt

Now that Wren Martin is student council president (on a technicality, but hey, it counts) he’s going to fix Rapture High. His first order of business: abolish the school’s annual Valentine’s Day Dance, a drain on the school’s resources and general social nightmare—especially when you’re asexual. His greatest opponent: Leo Reyes, vice president and all-around annoyingly perfect student, who has a solution to Wren’s budget problem. A sponsorship from Buddy, the anonymous “not a dating” app sweeping the nation. Now instead of a dance-less senior year, Wren is in charge of the biggest dance Rapture High has ever seen. He’s even… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Acephobia/aphobia
  • Coming out
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Sibling with terminal cancer
  • Death of a parent from cancer recounted

The Will of the Many by James Islington

The Catenan Republic – the Hierarchy – may rule the world now, but they do not know everything. I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus – what they call Will – to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do. I tell them that I belong, and they… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Amputation (loss of limb)
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Genocide
  • Blackmail
  • Animal harm

For Never and Always by Helena Greer

Hannah Rosenstein should be after a lonely childhood of traipsing all over the world, she finally has a home as the co-owner of destination inn Carrigan’s All Year. But her thoughts keep coming back to Levi “Blue” her first love, worst heartbreak, and now, thanks to her great-aunt’s meddling will, absentee business partner.  When Levi left Carrigan’s, he had good intentions. As the queer son of the inn’s cook and groundskeeper, he never quite fit in their small town and desperately wanted to prove himself. Now that he’s a celebrity chef, he’s ready to come home and make amends. Only his return goes nothing like he his family’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia recounted
  • Coming out
  • Emotional child abuse mentioned (secondary character)
  • Anxiety & agoraphobia
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a great-aunt recounted

VenCo by Cherie Dimaline

Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy. Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Transmisia & deadnaming
  • Coming out scene
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Dementia
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Smoking
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder
  • Home invasion

The Gay Best Friend by Nicolas DiDomizio

He’s always been the token gay best friend. Now, stuck between a warring bride and groom hurtling toward their one perfect day, he’s finally ready to focus on something new: himself. Domenic Marino has become an expert at code-switching between the hypermasculine and ultrafeminine worlds of his two soon-to-be-wed best friends. But this summer—reeling from his own failed engagement and tasked with attending their bachelor and bachelorette parties—he’s anxious over having to play both sides. The pressure is on. The bride wants Dom to keep things… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Coming out & outing
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Gun violence

Pageboy by Elliot Page

Pageboy is a ground-breaking coming-of-age memoir from the Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page. A generation-defining actor and one of the most famous trans advocates of our time, Elliot will now be known as an uncommon literary talent, as he shares never-before-heard details and intimate interrogations on gender, love, mental health, relationships, and Hollywood.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic homomisia & slurs
  • Lesbomisia & slurs
  • Transmisia, deadnaming & misgendering
  • Coming out themes including outing
  • Sexual assault
  • Adult-minor relationship & grooming
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Eating disorder including food restriction
  • Body dysphoria discussed
  • Social anxiety & panic attacks
  • Self-harm
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Emesis
  • Top surgery
  • Stalking

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma of pap smears… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Dysphoria
  • Coming out themes
  • Misgendering
  • Emesis
  • Graphic blood depiction

Too Hot to Touch by Katy James

He’s spent a lifetime putting up walls to protect himself, but he never expected one woman to break them all down. Between working multiple jobs and tackling her dissertation, it’s hardly unexpected PhD student Murray Silva is a hot mess. What is unexpected? Tyler Valentine. When the hockey playboy and former—okay, current—crush shows up in her summer school class, he immediately becomes the kind of distraction she doesn’t need. Want, however? That’s a whole other story. Tyler Valentine understands… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia & internalised homomisia including parental estrangement
  • Forced outing recounted
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Sports injuries including dislocated shoulders and broken bones
  • Parent in remission for breast cancer

*Context : The protagonist was outed by his partner to their hockey team in the past, resulting in bullying and being traded to another team.