5 Queer Books I've LOVED Lately

It's been a good summer for gay reading!

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Also! The owner of Pocket Books, an indie queer feminist bookstore in Lancaster, PA reached out with a discount code for us! 15% off all preorders with the code PREORDER at checkout, and they ship all over the country! There are a couple of books below you’re gonna want to preorder, I promise!

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I almost can’t believe how many brilliant books I’ve gotten my hands on this summer. I’m on one of those reading highs where every novel that comes my way is smart and captivating and able to wrap up both my brain and heart in its magic spell. I read in the evening and at night — and then spend my whole day thinking about how I’ve got a dazzling book waiting for me with open arms when the sun goes down. Here’s five books I’ve L O V E D lately. Got any recommendation for me? Leave ‘em in the comments!

Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous

by Mae Marvel

Katie let out a laugh that sounded fully and utterly like a woman’s laugh that Wil didn’t know yet. When she turned her head to Wil, there was hectic color on her cheeks. “I don’t want to, no. Then you’ll know much too much. Except there is the part of me that wants you to know everything no matter what happens. I’d say that I can’t decide what to do, but I would be lying.”

Katie Price is a super successful, major award-winning A-list actress. Her high school best friend, Wil Greene, is an insurance adjuster with a pre-law degree and a million subscribers on TikTok, where she kisses strangers — for exactly one minute — twice a week. They were wildly, wholly, world-shakingly in love with each other in high school, but they didn’t really know it. When Katie returns home to Wisconsin and meets up with Katie for the first time in 13 years, they start their conversation with each other exactly where they left off. Only now they have language for their feelings.

I don’t think my heart beat right or my breathing was normal the entire time I was reading this book. The dialogue was so fresh, the tension was so visceral, the longing was almost too real. Katie and Wil kept surprising themselves, and each other, and me, and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted two fictional people to kiss so much in my life. Plus! PLUS! Katie and Wil are both in love with their cats, who are everywhere in this book, and I loved them too. Just trust me and read this. It’s SO good.

Read If You Like: Hope and heartsickness, therapy, Billie Eilish, delayed gratification, designer sunglasses, Twizzlers, worn flannel, The Half of It, Lorelai Gilmore, those camo ‘Harris/Walz’ hats, cats on TikTok.

A Memory Called Empire

by Arkady Martine

“How wide is the Teixcalaanli concept of ‘you’?” Mahit asked her, rubbing her hand where she’d hit it. She’d probably bruised herself.

“Grammatically or existentially?” Three Seagrass asked. “Get dressed, Ambassador, we have so many meetings today.”

Intergalactic diplomacy meets murder mystery meet space opera meets low-key sapphic romance meets dissertation on Empire meets a philosophical confrontation with the concept of identity that would have had Plato hurling himself out of an airlock. Mahit Dzmare is an ambassador from tiny Lsel Station, a not-really-planet that has managed to keep itself from being absorbed by the Teixcalaanli Empire, despite the fact that basically everything else in space that’s reachable by jumpgate has been colonized by Teixcalaan.

But, like her predecessor — whose murder she ends up needing to solve as soon as she arrives in Teixcalaan — she’s kind of in love with the culture, especially the language and the storytelling. Mahit has some secret brain tech that she needs to keep hidden, and also an undeniable connection to Three Seagrass, her Teixcalaanli liaison. So many people with so many competing motivations, so many morally gray gays, so many words I could not pronounce!

Oh, and a Hugo Award for Best Novel too!

Read If You Like: Linguaphiles, drinking champagne from the bottle, Octavia Butler, ethicism, John Locke, the concept of metaphysical personhood, Robert Redford’s Three Days of the Condor (1975).

The Last Gifts of the Universe

by Riley August

A chilly draft bursts in, and Pumpkin and I are revivified. Even under his little fishbowl space helmet, his majestic orange fur lifts with impressive volume. Could have been a model, but here he is. Little explorer.

I thought I was getting a cute queer sci-fi adventure with an orange cat sidekick when I picked up this book. And well ha! Joke’s on me! What I got instead was a braided and melancholy rumination on grief and on purpose and on living. Kinda like thinking you’re going watch Captain Marvel and ending up with Battlestar Galactica.

Scout and their brother and their cat, Pumpkin, are, essentially, space archeologists, traveling the universe looking for answers about their own planet’s future from the debris of lost civilizations. These dead places didn’t phase out, over time. They blinked out, wholly, immediately, because they were all under attack from something. Scout’s determined to save their civilization because they couldn’t save their own mom’s life. And to do it, they’re up against some fuckin’ creepy dormant aliens and a capitalist nightmare organization that privatizes and patents every bit of information its own archeologists uncover way out there in the blue.

The Last Gifts of the Universe made me feel like I did the first time I played Horizon Zero Dawn: a pinprick of glorious hope in the face of overwhelming devastation. It’s a quick read at 200 pages, but this story is going to stick inside me for a long, long time. It’s kind of the exact book you want to read if you’re willing to look the end of the world right in the face with an adorable cat by your side. (The cat does not die!)

Read If You Like: Bon Iver, mechanical keyboards, Nimona, pizza Fridays, Flerkens, wrinkles in time, surprise storms, crying it out, poking at bruises, going for walks after midnight, Mary Oliver, growing herbs in your windowsill.

Not For the Faint of Heart

by Lex Croucher

“I’m not staring,” Mariel said. “I can hardly see you.”

“I can see you,” Clemence said. ‘I’ve got eyes like an owl. And legs like one too. Have you seen an owl’s legs? They go on for much longer than you’d expect.”

“No,” said Mariel, closing her eyes. “I haven’t seen an owl’s legs.”

Perfect. A perfect book. Everything you could possibly want from queer fantasy, queer romance, YA, and a story set in the Robin Hood universe. (But not a retelling!) Clem is a healer who has kind of always loved the story of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, has always felt drawn to the magical forest. She gets her chance to find out all about the gang when Robin Hood’s own granddaughter, Mariel, kidnaps her from her little village. That’s the first sign the Merry Men have lost their way. Mariel is a terrible kidnapper. Clem is a terrible kidnapee. And oh they cannot stop touching each other and sniping about it!

This is Lex Croucher at their absolute best. Everything wonderful about Infamous AND Gwen & Art Are Not in Love — and also, just, more. It's got all the classic Croucher Queer Found Family feelings. It's a swoony, pining romance with one prickly heroine and her counterpart who gives just as good as she gets, even though she's the sunshine half of the pairing. Deeply engaging voice, sparkling dialogue, so much hilarity. There's villains you're not expecting, heroes you wouldn't guess, and none of them are pure evil or squeaky clean.

I have loved so many of Croucher's characters over the years, but Clem is my hands-down favorite. She's so competent and confident and sweet, even though she's got major PTSD. She's so funny. So surprising.

If you’re into lovable gay idiots, you’re gonna devour this book.

Read If You Like: Robin Hood (Disney fox type), D&D, handing out full-size candy bars on Halloween, pocket knives, Kristin Cashore, Skyrim, school supplies, apple cider donuts, tomboys, Cedar Stack candles.

Interstellar MegaChef

by Lavanya Lakshminarayan

“I have no idea how it all works. Flavours, blends, feelings: fuck me, it’s rocket science,” she moaned, then kicked at the ground.

“You’re only here because you need someone to fill your flavour void,” I said.

“I need you,” Serenity Ko pouted.

“Great British Bake Off in space with queer women” is a brilliant way to sell this book. Who doesn’t want to read that? But Interstellar MegaChef is SO MUCH MORE. Saras Kaveri is a refugee from earth who has broken all kinds of intergalactic laws to land on Primus to try to win their most popular reality cooking competition. Serenity Ko is a ruthless and brilliant corporate dreammaker who accidentally bumps into Saras while getting rescued from a huge mess she made in a rural bar. They don’t have anything in common, but they also can’t stay away from each other. Through dual POVs, their stories weave together until they end up on the same team. Kind of.

Yes, this is a simmering, layered love story between two complex queer characters. And it’s great! And yes, there’s the reality cooking competition! But man, this book is: the colonization of food, cultural hegemony, the ethical conundrums of technology and artificial intelligence, xenophobia, representation vs. the peddling of pipe dreams, food as love, food as sustenance, food as art, food as relationships, food as memory, culture wars, the ethics of power, idealism as imperialism, and identity inside all that.

When I got to the last page, I blurted out, “My god, this is the ultimate anti-Gatsby” and I mean that as the highest possible compliment. It’s also just a gloriously imagined and plotted sci-fi novel.

Read If You Like:

Lofi Girl, BB-8, black holes of nuance, the blind taste test on Top Chef, Lady Eve’s Last Con, campfire stoves, Field Notes, Ratatouille, putting your whole mouth on a watermelon quarter, coy girls, secret smiles.