For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to stories about sisters. For much of my youth, this meant the Olsen twins and the television series Charmed had me in a chokehold. I think about the connection between close sisters a lot, how there’s a magic to it. My sister and I used to have the same dreams. We live many states apart, but sometimes we unknowingly cook the exact same thing for dinner.

My sister and I are close, but I’m also drawn to stories of sinister sisters, sisters at odds or in competition with each other. It’s all kinds of sister narratives I’m interested in — the loving, the tender, the dysfunction, the estranged — and I recently realized some of my favorite queer novels of the past couple years (All-Night Pharmacy, We Were the Universe, and Smothermoss) are all connected by the throughline of complicated sisters. So I thought I’d put together a little curated list for anyone else interested in reading queer novels that prominently feature sisters and stories of sisterhood. Anything I missed? Definitely shout it out, because I want to read it!

When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar

Hey! It’s right there in the title! When We Were Sisters spins the story of three orphaned Muslim American siblings — Kausar, Aisha, and Noreen — in the aftermath of their parents’ deaths. Youngest sisters and eldest sisters will feel well represented by this novel of family, grief, trauma, and survival. Sisterhood is complex and varied and its dynamics can shift, and this is a novel that understands all that very well.

All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky

I will jump at ANY excuse to write about this novel, which I adore. At its heart is a toxic dynamic between the protagonist and her older sister Debbie, a character who can never really be fully known. I’ve pitched this novel to many friends as one with mommy issues and sister issues. It’s a drug and booze-filled descent into grimy LA haunts, but it’s a fever dream you won’t want to wake up from. The complicated queer relationship the narrator ends up entangled in is a wild ride, but I’m especially endeared to the wild sister dynamics here.

We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons

I adored this novel, one of my favorites from 2024. It’s very much about sisters, but specifically sisterloss, the sudden absence of a sister. Narrator Kit grapples with the death of her sister Julie and how her life has seismically changed since leaving the small Texas town where she grew up and becoming a mother. It’s a hilarious and delightfully horny book, despite being about such heavy topics as addiction, grief, and death. Parsons balances it all impeccably. And the novel also portrays the almost magical, supernatural bond that can exist between sisters — which I’ve experienced with my own sister — unlike any other I’ve ever read.

Private Rites by Julia Armfield

Weaver of some of my favorite sentences of all time Julia Armfield is back, following up the melancholic and haunting Our Wives Under the Sea with Private Rites, which offers a speculative reimagining of King Lear and follows three sisters amid fractured family and climate horror. Like her first novel, it’s atmospheric and unsettling while remaining sharp in its exploration of interpersonal conflict.

Smothermoss by Alisa Alering

This was easily my favorite novel of 2024. Set in the 1980s, it’s about two sisters growing up poor in an Appalachian mountain town whose methods of survival diverge greatly. Their lives and home are quaked by a disturbing act of gendered violence: the murder of two young women hiking the Appalachian trail. It’s a modern day and wholly original fairy tale that’s immersive, strange, and striking. Just trust me on this one and dive right into its pages, because once you start you won’t want to stop.

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Set in 1994 Jamaica, Nicole Dennis-Benn’s debut novel is about sisters Thandi and Margot and their mother Delores. The novel tackles sex work, class stratification, tourism, and racism and colorism, Dennis-Benn’s dazzling prose bringing every page to life. Margot is also in a clandestine queer relationship with a woman, and the novel explores queerness in nuanced and complex ways that go way beyond mainstream narratives of coming out. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous novel with a pair of sisters who are hard to forget.

Stone Fruit by Lee Lai

Stone Fruit looks at chosen and given family with equal depth and care, centering gay aunties Ray and Bron who have wild playdates with Ray’s young niece Nessie. But the graphic novel also explores the relationships between Ray and Bron and their respective sisters, who they each have complicated dynamics and loads of baggage with. It’s very much a book about the ties between siblings and how to repair those ties when they fray.

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

I thought it would be fun to have some fantasy on the list, and Sarah Gailey’s Magic for Liars immediately came to mind. It features a magical school, minus the transphobic overlord. And it focuses on a pair of sisters — one who has the gift of magic and one who does not — who are estranged from one another but are thrust together to solve a murderous mystery at the magical academy where one of them works. It’s like a hardboiled mystery with touches of the supernatural, but what makes the novel truly compelling is the familial drama at its core.

A Reason To See You Again by Jami Attenberg

This novel is unique on this list in the sense that it isn’t either one of the sisters who is queer, but the Cohen sisters’ story is bolstered by queer side characters. Like many titles on this list, this is a matriarchal novel about multiple generations of women. Starting in the 1970s, it spans four decades and, amid its family drama, chronicles the creation of the mobile telephone. It’s about the ways we connect and don’t connect with one another, and it’s sharp, propulsive, and often humorous in its exploration of specific dynamics between female family members (mother/daughter, sister/sister, aunt/niece, etc).

Matrix by Lauren Groff

So, I’m being a little cheeky here as this is a novel about sisters in the ecclesiastical sense. Yes, I’m talking about nuns. If you somehow haven’t heard of this much accoladed book, it is THE lesbian nun novel. This original and intricately layered work of historical fiction is steeped in themes of sisterhood.

Helen House by Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Yes, I am putting my own novel, which is actually a novelette — shorter than a novella! — on this list, because I am shameless. I do very much consider my book to be a sister book, even though the sisters in it are absent. It’s about two women in a relationship who both have lost sisters in very different circumstances but whose individual griefs nonetheless become entangled. It’s a sister ghost story, another story of sisterloss. The intimacy of sisterhood haunts the characters in different ways, leading to some nightmarish situations and psychosexual thrills. If you check it out, I hope you like it!!!! It’s short enough to be read in one sitting — perhaps even in the bath!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!