It’s that time of year again! Behold, my beloved list of the best queer books of 2024. There are so many damn good queer books being published these days. We are so lucky! I thought I’d share a little bit on my rationale for choosing the five books per category (six for lit fic, since it’s the most competitive). This year especially I’ve striven to put the spotlight on books that haven’t gotten a lot of mainstream attention. For example, I didn’t include The Pairing by Casey McQuiston or All Fours by Miranda July (which I personally loved!) because the latter was nominated for a National Book Award and McQuiston is such a high profile queer romance author that their first book has been made into a movie, with an apparent sequel on the way. Got it? Let’s get into the books!

Comics/Graphic Novels and Memoirs

Firebugs by Nino Bulling

This slice-of-life graphic novel of queer millennial ennui — the English-language debut of German cartoonist Nino Bulling — is a knock-out. It follows 30-year-old queer Berliner, Ingken, trying to figure out where they land in their own transness and navigating a long-term relationship with Lily, also trans. The expressive art that captures equally well huge queer dance parties and Lily and Ingken’s up close faces while having relationship disagreements is done in bold black and white with pops of red. The result is a depiction of queer contemporary Europe that is as life-like as it is affecting.

Portrait of a Body by Julie Delporte

Julie Delporte’s graphic memoir details how her later-in-life coming out as a lesbian and coming into her authentic self allowed her to address and heal from sexual trauma and abuse. In Stef Rubino’s review for Autostraddle, they call Portrait of a Body a “memoir of arrival, of the power we gain by growing into ourselves.” Told in short sections of cursive handwritten text accompanied by watercolor-esque pastel drawings, the story jumps around in time, and the art and words almost never directly speak to each other. The effect, as Rubino writes, is a moving “contrast [that] brings a level of emotional tranquility that helps illuminate the urgency of her story and Delporte’s belief in the possibility of healing from the trauma inflicted on us by others and ourselves.”

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 2 by Emil Ferris

The much-anticipated sequel to My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 1, Emil Ferris’s visually and narratively stunning work continues the story of Karen Reyes, baby dyke in 1960s Chicago trying to solve the murder of Anya, her upstairs neighbor and Holocaust survivor. With intricate art done solely in ballpoint pen, Ferris dismantles the false division between high and low art, as she — through Karen whose journal comprises the vehicle for the story — renders with equal dedication the fine art on the walls of the galleries Karen visits and the B-movie horror magazine covers she adores. Queerness as monstrosity and the reclaiming of that are central conceits, but Ferris’s interrogation of grief, memory, sibling relationships, and sex work are just as nuanced and compelling.

Something, Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt

This visceral and heartbreaking graphic memoir does so much more than nearly all the other work in its medium and does it so differently, it almost doesn’t feel like a comic. But, of course, it is. Something, Not Nothing is a collection of comics Sarah Leavitt made in the two years following the death of her partner of 22 years, Donimo. The formal experimentation and abstract watercolour art pair perfectly with Leavitt’s brutally honest words, simultaneously life-affirming and full of love, while expressing the despair and illogic characteristic of intense grief.

Homebody by Theo Parish

Theo Parish’s warm, uplifting debut YA graphic memoir traces their gender journey. It’s at once an accessible introduction to trans and non-binary identities in general and a moving story of one person’s specific self-exploration and discovery. Parish uses both conventional comics structure and journal entry-style drawings in a playful art style that conveys the book’s gentle and hopeful tone beautifully. Homebody particularly excels in its use of an extended metaphor of the body as a house.

Fantasy

The Weavers of Alamaxa by Hadeer Elsbai

The second book in the Alamaxa duology, The Weavers of Alamaxa continues to build on what made the first installment so successful: a complex friendship between two feminist women. In the final book, Nehal and Giorgina grow not only their magical weaving abilities, but their relationship with each other and their lovers. It’s a joy to watch the two dynamic characters evolve, together and apart. Politically, The Weavers of Alamaxa also shines, in its smart interrogation of collective and personal freedom, democracy, and how all kinds of oppression — and liberation — are linked.

Yoke of Stars by R.B. Lemberg

The transformative powers of story are key to R.B. Lemberg’s latest novella in their wonderfully unqiue Birdverse series. They write: “Each of us is a story translated to a language vastly different from its first.” Built around a dialogue, the book focuses on two characters — an apprentice assassin and a clever linguist — sharing their life stories with one another. It’s a gorgeous mediation on cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication, told in Lemberg’s signature lyrical prose.

The Lotus Empire by Tasha Suri

Concluding Tasha Suri’s Burning Kingdoms trilogy, The Lotus Empire is full of heart-pounding action as well as hard-won character growth for its three women protagonists, Priya, Malini, and Bhumika. The plotting is as tight as ever and the world-building continues to soar, as Suri integrates intricate South Asian-inspired cultures and histories into the narrative. To top it all off: there’s the gut-wrenching sapphic longing. If you’ve been waiting for this series to end before starting book one, the time is now!

A Pirate’s Life for Tea by Rebecca Thorne

Technically a sequel but very readable on its own, Rebecca Thorne’s second book in the Tomes and Tea series manages to be both cozy and adventurous. A Pirate’s Life for Tea — punny titular humor indicative of the book’s overall tone — is (lesbian) fantasy romance at its finest. When the first book’s adorable couple, Reyna and Kianthe, are out hunting dragon eggs, as one does, they find themselves in the middle of a sapphic pirate love story that they are sure will have a happy ending as long as they do some meddlesome matchmaking. The ensuing story is a delight start to finish.

The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

The fifth installment in Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills Cycle fantasy series (may it never end), this book takes a delicious turn for the gothic. Vo seamlessly weaves into a base of historical fantasy elements of horror and mystery to create an incredibly unique genre-mashup. The central (nonbinary) character, Cleric Chih, is the kind of appealing protagonist you’d follow anywhere, even if that place is a creepy crumbling estate with shades of Bluebeard written all over it. Run, don’t walk, to this series, which can be read in any order!

Historical fiction

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron

This page-turning historical adventure traces the rise to power of a mixed race queer woman pirate captain who sailed the Caribbean seas in the mid 1600s — or so the legends say. Told in three action-packed parts, Briony Cameron’s novel is full of compelling prose and characters, including the love interest Teresa, a fascinating character of similar strength, complexity, and intelligence to Jacquotte. The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye refuses to sanitize the brutal, violent details of 17th century piracy. The result is an epic tale that forgoes hero worship for a nuanced portrait of a complicated woman surviving in her time and place.

Rough Trade by Katrina Carrasco

Katrina Carrasco’s follow up to 2018’s truly excellent The Best Bad Things can be read as a standalone, but anyone introduced to the enigmatic and charismatic gender fluid bi protagonist Alma Rosales is going to want to read both (you can thank me later). Carrasco takes us back to Washington Territory, 1888, a setting she has recreated so vividly you can smell the gunpowder, the horse shit, and the sweat at the queer night club. Alma’s mystery to solve this time around is the death of two men linked to their opium smuggling operation. Also: their ex-girlfriend and ex-Pinkerton agent is in town! Carrasco’s prose is bold, her characters are rich, and her plotting is intricate. What more could you want?

City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter

As Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya writes in her review for Autostraddle, “story is everything” in City of Laughter. Moving fluidly between timelines and the lives of four generations of Jewish women, the novel’s understanding of history is that it is nothing but story. The contemporary epicenter of the narrative is Shiva, a beautifully realized character desperately grasping for her family’s history, filling in gaps with her queer imagination. KKU concludes: Temim Fruchter’s debut is “an intellectual but still deeply emotional narrative, one that pauses to contemplate but never feels lost in its musings and meanderings.”

Some Strange Music Draws Me In by Griffin Hansbury

An encounter between two trans people in a small Massachusetts town in 1984 is the catalyst for this remarkable story that moves back and forth in time, as the protagonist Max reflects on his past from adulthood in 2019. Characters and their interpersonal dynamics are rendered with care and insight, as are the book’s explorations of queerness. Max asks, “How can you comprehend that which has hardly been imagined? How could I imagine the shape of my own love?” Some Strange Music Draws Me In is a contemplative and deeply moving novel about gender and class.

The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor

Historical novels set during WW2 are, in general, extremely overdone. But Loghan Paylor’s elegantly imagined love story that centres queer and non-binary characters in Southern Ontario during the war proves it’s possible to do something unique. Firmly rooted in the context of the protagonist Kit’s Irish immigrant farming family and as well the love interest Rebekah’s German background, the story beautifully integrates Celtic lore into its war-time realism. Paylor infuses Kit’s trans identity with magic, making a moving tribute to past queer and trans lives.

Horror

Feast While You Can by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta

This wildly unpredictable novel has some elements of horror folk legends, with its historically rich yet vague small town European setting. But its characters — butch-femme couple Angelina and Jagvi — feel distinctly like authentic modern queers. Clements and Datta expertly balance the two women’s compelling romance with a uniquely terrifying monster that reeks of ancient evil as it emerges from the town’s neighboring caves. For more on Feast While You Can and the authors’ experience writing it, read their Autostraddle article, Writing a Lesbian Novel Should Have Been Easier. It Wasn’t.

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Gretchen Felker-Martin’s follow-up to her acclaimed post-apocalyptic debut, Manhunt, is just as dark and terrifying, with a completely different setting: a 1990s queer conversion camp in the Utah desert. This splatterpunk-lite novel features five queer youth who undergo horrors real and supernatural, thoroughly imagined and realized. The characterization of the group when they are both teens and later as adults is impeccable. Felker-Martin’s prose is visceral and graphic; she does not hold back in any way, but there is also not a complete absence of hope.

Grey Dog by Elliott Gish

With equal parts feminist rage, excruciating sapphic longing, and creepy nature, this novel set in a small farming town on Canada’s East Coast in 1901 is an extremely satisfying slow burn horror. It escalates so smoothly and subtly you don’t realize you’re in too deep to climb out until it’s too late. Elliot Gish expertly tells the story through the protagonist Ada’s diaries, immersing readers heavily in her perspective to eventual horrifying and grisly effect. As Ada’s world deteriorates and the line between reality, delusion, and traumatic memory begins to crumble, it’s hard not to feel like you’re living it too. This is Anne of Green Gables, but make it gay, dark, and gruesome.

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

“Maybe my mother is God, and that’s why nothing I do pleases her”: thus begins Rivers Solomon’s brutal, brilliant, unsettling masterpiece, a haunted house story that upends the horror sub-genre entirely. The story focuses on a wealthy Black family whose children, Ezri and their two sisters, grew up in a McMansion in a white suburb of Dallas. Strange and increasingly terrible inexplicable things happened there, leading up to Ezri’s return as an adult. Childhood sexual trauma, racism, and segregation are the real terrors here though, and Solomon skewers them expertly as they explore the complexities of memory, parenting, and sibling relationships.

Withered by A.G.A Wilmot

From the literally and figuratively explosive prologue to the very end, A.G.A. Wilmot’s debut novel is an engrossing, slow-burn read that delivers on both paranormal and psychological horror. Playing with haunted house story conventions and making them their own, Wilmot compassionately investigates themes of grief, mental illness, and disordered eating. The late teens nonbinary protagonist Ellis is vividly brought to life; the house itself, too, feels as alive and authentic as Ellis. Wilmot writes: “Over years, as a mattress takes on weight from dead skin and oils, so does a house grow dense with memories of all who’ve dwelled within … their fingerprints along surfaces and banisters are musical notes, scattered and unstaffed.”

Literary/Contemporary Fiction

Love the World or Get Killed Trying by Alvina Chamberland

This debut work of autofiction is a “poetic cry of trans loneliness,” as Drew Burnett Gregory puts it in her review on Autostraddle. Equally emotionally resonant, intellectually thrilling, and darkly humorous, Love the World or Get Killed Trying follows a nearly-30-year-old trans woman as she travels through Europe, “visibly trans and femme,” which Drew emphasizes is key to her experiences. Chamberland writes: “I don’t think I’ll ever become a person who believes my words mean anything to anyone other than myself … My greatest solace is that this assessment seems to be incorrect.” Indeed.

Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg

As Drew raves in her glowing review on Autostraddle, Housemates is “funny and sexy and smart and well-written. But the truest compliment I can give is that it challenged me and changed me. It’s a book I know I’ll cherish for many years to come.” Similar to Drew’s reading experience, the novel itself is “a love story about meeting someone who changes the way you see the world.” Following two housemates-turned-best-friends on a road trip, Emma Copley Eisenberg’s celebratory yet critical novel examines art, chosen family, friendship, and the beauty and mess of the contemporary US. It’s a tour de force crafted with love, care, and intimate insider knowledge on young queer life in America today.

The Default World by Naomi Kanakia

With biting social commentary as well as occasional generosity, Naomi Kanakia puts left-wing San Francisco tech bro culture under a microscope in her story about a young trans woman Jhanvi who gets swept up in it despite her best efforts. Jhanvi’s slow progression from cynicism and intention to take advantage of these rich white boy idiots to eventual fascination and tenuous acceptance among them is expertly mapped out. The Default Worldis thought-provoking, darkly funny, and relentlessly unflinching in its determination to leave no one — including its underdog heroine — unexamined.

How It Works Out by Myriam Lacroix

Myriam Lacroix’s debut asks the question: what if you could rework and relive your queer relationship in the most outlandish alternate realities, with the hope that, in one world, everything would work out? In Aamina Inayat Khan’s review on Autostraddle, they discuss how the book cleverly blurs the lines between fiction and reality, as well as those between genre and form. They also write: “The prose is brilliant. It’s sophisticated and smart, and at the same time, it melts on the tongue like candy and is quick to digest.”

A Small Apocalypse by Laura Chow Reeve

Laura Chow Reeve’s debut short story collection boldly takes on the contradictions of queer life in Florida. Deftly examining themes of memory, transformation, messy friendship, found family, otherness, hybridity, and the concept of home, A Small Apocalypse does not have a misstep in any of its 14 stories. Whether it’s a gothic tale reimagining Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca — but even queerer — or a young woman learning to pickle memories, this book is consistently fresh, weird, and haunting.

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly

Originally published in Aotearoa / New Zealand in 2021 and released this year in North America, Greta & Valdin is a sparkling, delightful debut about two queer neurodivergent siblings and their eccentric Māori-Russian-Catalonian family. Rebecca K. Reilly makes writing a debut novel that is extremely funny, smart, thought-provoking, and touching look effortless. The book’s insights into family, parenting, queerness, and cultural identity are as numerous as they are perceptive. Greta & Valdin is like Schitt’s Creek, but Indigenous, global, and even more gay and weird.

Memoir/Biography

Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere

You can’t get much higher praise than the discerning Stef Rubino writing that your “memoir is more than a beautifully and thoughtfully written debut. It’s a gift to everyone, to all of us, in between.” Eschewing the conventional understanding of identity as a fixed, stable point at which everyone arrives, Zoë Bossiere traces many selves: a boy kid, a gender fluid adult. Bossiere’s writing about place is equally nuanced and compassionate. Stef commends the “profound sense of place and empathy for the people of this place that Bossiere exhibits in their writing.” Go get this gift of a book for yourself!

Pretty by KB Brookins

Challenging what belongs in a memoir, despite being clearly labelled one in the subtitle, Pretty is a deeply moving book that includes poetry and manifesto-type essays to talk about KB Brookins’s life so far. Discussions of toxic masculinity and gender norms within the Black Christian community are particularly astute and fresh. Brookins is devoted to writing intertextually, situating themselves and their work in relation to icons as diverse as Dionne Brand, Gwendolyn Brooks, NeNe Leakes, and Erykah Badu. It’s a consistently powerful memoir, full of poignant sentences like “I deserve a world where I don’t have to be resilient.”

Survival Is a Promise by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s new biography of Audre Lorde is cause for celebration, particularly, as Lauren Herold writes, “Gumbs shows us how Audre Lorde’s life was and still is in process, ever-evolving as the lives of those she influenced continue to evolve.” Her approach to Lorde and the genre itself are distinctly queer, not following a linear life trajectory but instead structuring the text in 58 — the number of years Lorde lived — poetic chapters focused on a key moment in Lorde’s life. The result is sheer brilliance. Read more about the author’s approach to biography in this interview on Autostraddle.

Mama by Nikkya Hargrove

Nikkya Hargrove’s hard-won story of becoming a mom is remarkable in and of itself, but to have it told in such raw and powerful prose is a gift. Hargrove had recently graduated college when her mother, who had given birth to Hargrove’s half brother months earlier after having been in and out of prison for most of Hargrove’s life, passed away. With fierce determination and compassion, Hargrove investigates the carceral system, substance abuse, intergenerational trauma, queer Black motherhood, poverty, and systemic injustice as she charts her journey through obtaining custody of and then raising her brother Jonathan. Hargrove’s relationship with the woman who becomes her wife, Dinushka, is the book’s beautiful queer and inspirational core.

How To Live Free In A Dangerous World by Shayla Lawson

Subtitled “A Decolonial Memoir,” Shayla Lawson’s travelogue defies genre conventions while still brimming with fascinating details about the far-flung places Lawson has lived and visited, from Zimbabwe to Portugal, Tokyo to Mexico City. In their exquisite prose, Lawson charts a very personal, inward journey alongside external journeys around the globe, as well as sharp reflections on race, gender, and disability. The book is as joyful to read as it is inspirational and thought-provoking, particularly on themes of liberation, love, grief, and (missed) connections.

Mystery/Thriller

Nothing But The Truth by Robyn Gigl

Number four in Robyn Gigl’s Erin McCabe mystery series, Nothing But The Truth is another thrilling installment that tackles systemic racism and how that, alongside organized homophobia, transphobia, and sexism, are embedded in policing. Gigl’s plotting here is extra tight, with a well-earned yet unexpected conclusion. Trans attorney Erin McCabe continues to delight, and the big developments in her personal life — she and her partner Mark are having a baby! — are a joy to watch. It’s especially lovely to see more page time devoted to Erin’s law partner, Duane Swish, in this book.

I Want You More by Swan Huntley

I Want You More is an unhinged, engrossing read about being trapped in a house with a person so domineering and charismatic, you not only fall in love with them, but start becoming them. Such is the situation ghostwriter Zara finds herself in when Jane, a celebrity food personality, invites her to live with her for a summer so they can get to know each other. It’s a perfectly paced thriller, slowly but surely reeling the reader in just as Zara is consumed bit by bit. Read Riese’s interview with Swan Huntley about the book!

The Rivals by Jane Pek

Second in a literary mystery series, the first of which was the acclaimed The Verifiers, The Rivals is an engaging continuation of the beloved protagonist Claudia’s journey, career-wise, romantic, and with her ongoing family drama. Still working for the dating detective agency Veracity, Claudia’s unpredictable puzzle to solve this time is an AI conspiracy backed by evil corporate interests. Pek has such a flair for cheekily evoking the tone of classic spy stories, but she also makes the spy here, Claudia, an authentic and vulnerable young queer Chinese American woman who couldn’t be less like James Bond (and a lot more interesting). Let’s hope we get even more Claudia Lin soon!

Rough Pages by Lev A.C. Rosen

If you’re familiar with my work at Autostraddle, you know I rarely feature books by/about cis gay men, so you might guess the inclusion of Rough Pages by Lev A.C. Rosen — the third book in his historical mystery series set in 1950s San Francisco — on this list is a glowing endorsement in and of itself. This novel succeeds on many levels: as a twisty puzzling mystery evoking classic film noir vibes, as a richly imagined depiction of the queer past and queer community, and as a moving evocation of its central theme: the utter importance of queer people seeing themselves reflected in books.

Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash

In Maggie Thrash’s engaging adult debut, she takes readers through the protagonist Lacey’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, but the 1990s and its “Satanic Panic” is the time period that anchors the plot as it upends Lacey’s world at 13. Thrash’s characterization is on point; as Sa’iyda Shabazz writes in her review for Autostraddle: “[c]reating characters like Lacey is what Thrash does best. She takes a character who seems unremarkable and throws them into the deep end.” Rainbow Black is a riveting blend of thriller, murder mystery, and psychological drama that always comes back to the decidedly remarkable Lacey.

Nonfiction

Dinner on Monster Island by Tania De Rozario

Tania De Rozario’s excellent debut is an essential investigation into growing up as a queer person in Singapore, as well as a master class in how to write essays that blend personal narrative and film/TV analysis. Drawing parallels between horror media like The Shining and The Walking Dead and her life, De Rozario succeeds in creating both intellectually engaging critique and emotionally moving first-person storytelling. Essays that describe her complex relationship with her mother and her indictment of the intense homophobia she experienced from her and Singaporean society are special standouts.

Vantage Points by Chase Joynt

Vantage Points could just as easily be sitting in the memoir section of this list, and that’s the point. Taking the concept of memoir, along with its typical practices like digging in the family archive after his father’s death, as a starting point only, Chase Joynt has created a truly unique text of “media as trans memoir.” He presents his personal narratives only within the context of other sources, media, and stories, such as the writing of well-known Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan with whom Joynt discovers he has a previously unknown connection. The result is a book that brazenly flouts conventions of both genre and form. It’s a bold experiment that is as visual as it is textual, as intellectually challenging as it is artistically triumphant.

The Call Is Coming From Inside the House by Allyson McOuat

In my review for Autostraddle, I raved about how The Call Is Coming From Inside the House “is a dream for any reader looking for queer feminist essays that will intellectually thrill you, scare you, and make you laugh.” Effortlessly moving from personal narrative to (pop) culture criticism throughout each essay, Allyson McOuat touches on themes of motherhood, pregnancy, queer / bisexual identity, anxiety, true crime, and horror movies and fiction to truly revelatory effect. McOuat’s feminist insights are reminiscent of Melissa Febos and her horror film analysis is on par with Carmen Maria Machado. What more could you want?

American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era by Nico Lang

It’s clear from the main title of this book, which insists that being trans is only one — albeit crucial — aspect in the book’s subjects’ lives, that it is going to thwart readers’ expectations. As journalist Nico Lang explains, they deliberately wanted the title to be “lighter and funnier and just more nimble than folks would expect … [something] that wasn’t a trans pun and doesn’t even necessarily explicitly name being trans.” The tone set by the title is absolutely delivered: Lang’s portrait of the eight trans and non-binary teens featured in the book are by turns silly, sweet, serious, funny, and sad. The book is not only a crucial intervention into rampant institutional transphobia targeting American youth, it’s a riveting, empowering read. Read Stef’s interview with the author on Autostraddle!

Miss Southeast by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

I can’t describe this superb collection of essays about growing up in the American South any better than Stef did in their review: “With an extraordinary amount of sensory detail and depth woven into every single essay, Rogers’ lyric prose illuminates the ways in which her initial freedom from the ‘suffocating’ culture of Guilford County would only be the first in a long series of battles against the often oppressive and exhausting natures of the systems and institutions that govern our lives.” Smart, readable, and thoughtful, this book is a must-read.

Poetry

Archive of Style by Cheryl Clarke

This collection of new and selected poems by Black lesbian feminist poet and essayist Cheryl Clarke is an essential publication of work by an icon. Reaching back to her writing from the 80s as well as brand new work, Archive of Style celebrates the diversity of Clarke’s creative output, from poems centred on joy and sensuality — “lick me and cover me. / i am, i am in love with you.” —to those focusing on politics and the loss of community members. Her often playful experimentation, like writing poems in the form of a letter and sometimes eschewing punctuation altogether, is on full display. This book deserves a prime spot on the bookshelves of anyone who cares about queer, feminist, and/or Black histories.

I Don’t Want To Be Understood by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

In Joshua Jennifer Espinoza’s latest stunning collection, she goes back to material might have seemed more appropriate for her first book, as Drew explains in her review on Autostraddle. Drew writes: I Don’t Want To Be Understood takes on “formative subject matter written with the craft and maturity of a seasoned writer. It’s as if it took that time and skill in order to properly approach these moments.” Drew also praises the book as “unafraid to take formal risks,” playing with formatting and punctuation and mixing literal and figurative narrative. Read these poems and let them surprise you as they did Drew.

The Sacred Heart Motel by Grace Kwan

Using an unusual overarching conceit, Grace Kwan’s poetry debut fully commits, taking readers on a tour of the titular motel’s rooms, bar, back alleys, fire escape, and other liminal spaces. It also investigates the ghosts left there from generations of visitors. The poems explore migration and placelessness as fitting to the transitory nature of the motel, but they also feature queer love and desire, music, and family. Lush images are plentiful throughout the collection: “That summer the knife slid so sweetly / into the navel orange on the chopping board / and our lips were so sticky / we kissed and they bled.” A major queer poet is announcing their arrival; pay attention!

El Ghourabaa edited by Samia Marshy and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch

This “queer and trans collection of oddities” is admittedly comprised of fiction and non-fiction in addition to a lot of poetry, but its work “celebrat[ing] the fullness of queer Arab and Arabophone identity” — as the editors write in their introduction — always feels poetic in spirit. The anthology ranges from an excerpt from the late great Lebanese lesbian poet Etel Adnan’s last poetry collection to three new pieces from Lambda award winning trans poet Trish Salah to many poems by writers for whom El Ghourabaa is their first publication. The book is a rich, full collection of diverse work that blazes right past issues like “What is it like to be queer and Arab?” and instead asks thought-provoking and playful questions about experimentation, desire, fun, music, sex, activism, grief, and much more. It’s obvious that El Ghourabaa is groundbreaking; it’s also exquisitely beautiful, and a lot of fun.

Bluff by Danez Smith

Black nonbinary poet Danez Smith’s latest poetry collection is a powerful reckoning. Emerging like a phoenix in the ashes from a place of guilt and cynicism, Smith writes to the future with infectious hope, rage, imagination, and honesty. The unique pieces in Bluff range from a long poem that is part map, part annotation, and part visual thesis to a photo collage. Smith’s commitment to holding multiple truths at once — like poetry’s potential complicity in capitalism and its power as artistic resistance — is remarkable.

Romance

A Little Kissing Between Friends by Chencia C. Higgins

The cheeky title of Chencia C. Higgins’s latest contemporary romance is a perfect reflection of the book’s humor and heart. Cyn and Jucee are best friends whose dynamic takes an unexpected turn one night. Is it worth risking their friendship though? This is the kind of romance that puts a big grin on your face while you’re reading. Also, as Sa’iyda puts it in her glowing review: “There is something extra sensual about the way Black women love on each other sexually, and the author[…] captured that sensuality so perfectly. I was absolutely fanning myself after each sex scene.” Here’s to grinning and fanning while reading.

A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell

It’s not hard to stand out in queer historical romance, especially if the main characters aren’t cis men, because there are depressingly few of them, but A Shore Thing would be remarkable even if the publishing market was full of Victorian romances starring a trans man and a cis woman. Full of fascinating, accurate details — 19th century bike races! 19th century artists! 19th century botany! — Joanna Lowell’s enchanting novel seamlessly integrates history into Kit and Muriel’s love story while remaining light-hearted and hopeful. If you don’t nearly die of the sweetness while witnessing Muriel and Kit fall in love, I’ll eat my hat.

Whenever You’re Ready by Rachel Runya Katz

This beautiful and moving contemporary romance puts two ex-friends back together on the path to love after the heartbreak of losing the friend who originally introduced them to cancer. Using the time-honored tradition of a queer friends road trip and elegantly incorporating Jewish Southern US history into the journey, Katz has crafted a lovely story that is as funny as it is sad. It’s especially noteworthy how queer Whenever You’re Ready’s approach to friendship is; it really understands the weight and intensity of (queer) friendship, and doesn’t forget that amidst its friends-to-lovers romance.

How You Get The Girl by Anita Kelly

With warmth and skill, Anita Kelly has penned a basketball romance that offers much-needed sapphic ace spectrum representation as well as the women’s basketball content we all need year round even in the WNBA off season. Using the conventions of a workplace romance — the heroines end up working together as high school basketball coach and assistant coach — Kelly also incorporates a very sexy plot device wherein Elle helps Julie address her dating insecurity by helping her “practise” just like she gets to do with sports. We all know where practice kissing leads! As Sa’iyda raves in her review: “Anita Kelly writes extremely hot sex scenes! … They’re a master with language and scene-setting, sparing no detail while avoiding anything gratuitous.”

Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao

Darcy Liao’s sophomore contemporary romance is an irresistible story about a femme trans woman discovering she’s bi when she falls in love with her new roommate, a cis butch lesbian. It is an absolute joy to watch Isabel and Mira slowly get to know each other, become vulnerable, do some personal growth, and fall for each other. Liao is particularly talented at creating sexual tension and conveying chemistry. The union election subplot and the compelling representation of queer Asian women (Isabel is Chinese and Mira is Indian) are icing on the cake of an already stellar story.

Science Fiction

Private Rites by Julia Armfield

In this quietly dystopian retelling of King Lear, Julia Armfield conjures a climate change apocalypse that is surprisingly banal, focusing on the everyday lives of three estranged queer sisters. Not only do the women live in a world where it never stops raining, they are also weighed down by childhood trauma, which resurfaces when their father dies. Haunting and pensive, but never without hope, Private Rites succeeds as both an engrossing family drama and a creative reimagining of the possibilities of apocalyptic science fiction.

In Universes by Emet North

Raffi, a non-binary physicist studying dark matter, is the protagonist in this beautifully strange multiverse novel. Like all brilliant science fiction, In Universes uses its speculative premise to investigate hard questions about our so-called real world: how do you lead a meaningful life? How do you cope with loving someone more than they love you? What would your life be like if you had made different choices? Also tackling themes of queer and trans identity, community, Judaism, and mental health, Emet North’s debut is a stunner, announcing their arrival in queer SF with a (big) bang.

Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado

Set forty years after the incredible discovery of “pocket worlds” — and the subsequent disillusionment of academics who hoped the small alternate realities would be sites of benevolent exploration — Time’s Agent is impressively original. Unflinching in its condemnation of corporate greed and rampant consumerism, the book speculates a grim outcome for these pocket worlds. But as much as it interrogates big institutions and ideas, the narrative is solidly grounded in scientist Raquel’s perspective and her tenuous relationship with her wife. The effect is an incredibly human and real story set in a strange uncanny world.

Power to Yield and Other Stories by Bogi Takács

Bogi Takács’s latest collection of stories is exemplary of eir signature blend of science fiction, fantasy, and the new weird. The resulting stories are as far ranging in topic as they are perceptive and unique. In one, an AI child with a soul encounters Jewish mysticism for the first time. In another, a student hatches a plan to escape from their apartment, which is partially sentient and requires blood donations from its resident. In another, a mother turns into a plant and struggles with planning her non-binary child’s bar mitzvah. Takács is a rare writer whose work in speculative fiction does truly fresh things and reimagines anew what speculative genres can do.

These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein

Izzy Wasserstein’s debut cyberpunk thriller manages to pack a lot into a small space, in terms of plot, genre, and character. Beginning with the murder of our trans woman protagonist Dora’s ex-girlfriend, the story rips along at a neck-breaking pace as Dora, who is a P.I., tries to stay ahead of her pre-transition clones, who may or may not be responsible for her ex’s death and might also be trying to kill her. Expertly blending noir mystery tropes with post-apocalyptic climate change world building, Wasserstein has created a spellbinding story that will have you staying up past your bedtime to read.

Young Adult Contemporary/Historical/Romance

Just Another Epic Love Poem by Parisa Akhbari

Told in lyrical prose as well as lyrical poetry, Just Another Epic Love Poem is a dazzling best-friends-to-lovers sapphic love story that centres around two girls’ neverending poetry project, a shared notebook they’ve kept for five years, alternately adding stanzas to an ongoing epic poem. Mitra, an introverted bisexual Iranian American teen, is a fascinating protagonist undergoing a coming-of-age that feels both genuine and extraordinary. If this wonderfully moving novel is what Parisa Akhbari writes her first time out of the gate, I can’t wait to see what her sophomore release will hold!

Time And Time Again by Chatham Greenfield

Cleverly using a time loop to explore themes of feeling stuck and aimless in life, Chatham Greenfield’s debut is a soothing, low-stakes contemporary romance featuring two disabled Jewish lesbians (one is also non-binary). For character-driven readers, this novel focused on Phoebe and Jess as fully fleshed out queer teens and their growing relationship is absolute perfection. Their conversations about disability (IBS and arthritis), anxiety, their futures beyond high school, their previous childhood friendship, and more are like eavesdropping on two real teens having an intimate talk.

How It All Ends by Emma Hunsinger

This incredibly charming and funny lower-end YA graphic novel is about a 12-year-old, Tara, who skips grade eight and starts high school a year early. Emma Hunsinger’s precise and expressive art matches the book’s authentic dialogue and emotions beautifully. Tara is a wonderfully realized character, as are all the secondary personalities. The tender relationship between Tara and her older sister is a particular high point, but How It All Ends’s biggest strength is how perfectly it captures the agonizing ordeal of having a first (queer) crush in tweendom.

Make My Wish Come True by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick

The only thing cuter than Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick’s real life love story — they met in a college writing class and now write sapphic love stories both together and separate — is this heartwarming Christmas novel that beautifully blends the beloved tropes of fake relationships, small town romance, and (ex)-friends-to-lovers. It’s impossible not to root for teen actor Arden and aspiring journalist Caroline. The charming secondary characters, like Arden’s grandma, will win you over as well. Don’t miss Sa’iyda’s interview with the authors on Autostraddle, where they discuss writing this book and being new moms.

A Bánh Mì for Two by Trinity Nguyen

Don’t start this sapphic romance set in Sài Gòn unless you’re ready to a) believe once and for all that love is not a lie; b) crave Vietnamese food; and c) get the travel bug. A Bánh Mì for Two tackles complex topics, like grieving a parent and being a second generation immigrant kid removed from your family’s culture, with grace and ease. But Trinity Nguyen also crafts a believable and sweet romance. In Sa’iyda’s review, she raves about the setting and the food being characters unto themselves and writes “The smells of the street food wafted right out of Nguyen’s words and straight into my nostrils. When the girls get caught in a monsoon, I felt like I needed a poncho.” This book has everything!

Young Adult Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

Spells to Forget Us by Aislinn Brophy

An ideal blend of fantasy and contemporary romance, Spells to Forget Us features a break-up between a witch, Luna, and non-magical girl, Aoife. By some twist of fate, both end up forgetting each other after their relationship ends, instead of only Aoife as intended, until they meet again and start dating anew. This clever plot device and twist on the time loop trope allow Aislinn Brophy to construct a unique and moving second chance romance, while also fitting in themes of inheritance, agency, learning self-confidence, and relationship growth. Luna and Aoife are vibrant, dynamic characters whose love story you do not want to miss.

Not For The Faint of Heart by Lex Croucher

This grumpy-meets-sunshine sapphic love story with good helpings of adventure, thrills, bad jokes, found family, and various hijinks is Lex Croucher at their best. Not For The Faint of Heart is a decidedly queer, feminist, and irreverent take on the legend of Robin Hood, featuring two lovable queer girls, one of whom is a member of the outlaw group the Merry Men, and the other who … has been accidentally kidnapped by the first one. Nonstop sparkling dialogue, charming characters whom you occasionally want to smack on the head, and honest-to-god tear-jerking scenes of personal growth are what I expect from Croucher at this point, and this book more than delivers.

The Fox Maidens by Robin Ha

This graphic novel that reimagines Korean myth puts a wonderfully queer and feminist twist on the tale of a nine-tailed fox who can turn into a woman who eats the livers of men. The 16th century Korean setting and the story’s dark tone are richly evoked with both words and art. The latter uses various limited color palettes to match each set of panels to particularly effective results in the many dynamic martial arts action scenes and gorgeous landscapes. Kai, our protagonist studying to be a warrior, is an irresistible character with authenticity and complexity struggling with issues related to family, inheritance, misogyny, and more. If you haven’t read Robin Ha yet, this is the best place to start!

The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag

This horror graphic novel is a knock-out on every level: a culmination of Molly Knox Ostertag’s excellent previous work in comics — The Witch Boy, The Girl from the Sea — but with new depth. Every element of this novel — story, characters, concept, and art — are expertly executed, particularly Ostertag’s innovative and strategic use of color and how she balances the darkness of the main plot with a compelling butch cis lesbian for bi trans femme romance subplot. What darkness? The protagonist “Mags” Herrerra is not only dealing with high school, taking care of her disabled abuela, and working a part time job; she’s got a bloodthirsty monster living in her basement.

I Am the Dark that Answers When You Call by Jamison Shea

The sequel to the deliciously horrific I Feed Her to the Beast and The Beast Is Me, I Am the Dark that Answers When You Call is a gripping continuation of the Black queer teen ballerina protagonist Laure’s made-a-deal-with-the-devil villain origin story. Jamison Shea presents Laure’s emotional landscape with all the complexity it deserves, tackling her experiences with grief, anger, and betrayal with utmost skill and compassion. As Laure struggles to balance her monstrous and ordinary lives, Shea skillfully and viciously forces her protagonist to figure out who she really is.

What were your favourite 2024 queer books? Share in the comments!

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