Read beautiful. Read diverse.

Lauren l EST l Proud YA reader 

[diverse-reads]

Welcome!

Hello! Welcome to Diverse-Reads. This blog is run by me, Lauren, an English major working in publishing (most recently @ Hachette and HarperCollins). All of the books featured on this blog feature underrepresented minorities in publishing and media. I hope you enjoy your stay and come away with a few new books to add to your TBR!

What I do:

- Book photography

- Book recommendations

- Book and publishing news

- Quotes, edits, and fancasts

- Booklr community discussions, live reads, and book clubs (TBR!)

Where else can you find me?

- My Goodreads (feel free to friend me!)

- My Pinterest

[wine-darktea]

"Be careful of offering your life to a witch," he said. "You never know what we might do with it." "It's all right, I'm hardly using it," I promised.

— Natasha Pulley; The Hymn to Dionysus

[the-bi-library]

Here are bisexual books out in 2025!!! I hope you enjoy the post!

This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list.

You can find a goodreads list of this here.

[asthewintersun]

day 01/100 | one hundred days of books

i've spent this week reading ninth house, after finally getting my hands on it last november. i recall there being controversy when it was first released, but honestly, i still don't understand why it provoked so much anger. the book comes with its own undercurrents of anger, and with so much still unresolved i don't expect that to end any time soon, but there's also something cathartic in it, every time a man gets brutalised for his misogyny, every time alex gets to truly show who she is. this was definitely not an easy read, but it was a powerful one.

[rainbowcrate]

🌈 Hey, Reading Rainbows happy Saturday! It’s our final post for Aromantic Awareness Week! To wrap up with a bang, we have 24 books featuring aromantic MCs or nonfiction books with a focus on aromanticism. These are all new recommendations from our earlier reels and our post from last year. If you missed our reels, we’ll repost them in our stories!

What’s your favorite aro book? Drop us the title and author in the comments! Authors please feel free to self-promote your aro books in the comments!

Aromanticism is not a one size fits all. These characters live full and varied lives from all backgrounds. Aro characters can exist in every genre, even romance! While there’s still a way to go to break down amatonormativity, reading aro books is just one step!

Books listed above their respective graphics.

ID: A post of seven slides. All slides have a background made up of the aromantic flag which has five stripes: dark green, light green, white, gray and black. Overlaid is an opaque white square in the middle with a thin white outline surrounding the square. The first slide reads “24 Aromantic Books for Aromantic Awareness Week”. The 24 is in aro flag colors while the text below follows the aro flag color scheme. Slides 2-8 have four book covers in two rows of two each. End ID.

She Who Brought the Storm by Vaela Denarr & Micah Iannandrea

Bones of Green & Hearts of Gold: Non-Asexual Aromantic Stories by K.A. Cook

Cinnamon Roll by Anna Zabo

The Thread that Binds by Cedar McCloud

The Reckless Kind by Carly Heath

Tower in the Crooked Wood by Paula Johanson

Royal Rescue by A. Alex Logan

The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl

Fourth World by Lyssa Chiavari

With You Forever by Chloe Liese

The Black Tree by Michón Neal

Margins & Murmurations by Otter Lieffe

Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

Tarnished are the Stars by Rosiee Thor

Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson

Take Me to Your Nerdy Leader by Hailey Gonzales

Weapon UwU Vol 1: Godkillers by SJ Whitby

First Test by Tamora Pierce

It Sounds Like This by Anna Meriano

Not Your Backup by C.B. Lee

Ace & Aro Journey: A Guide to Embracing Your Asexual or Aromantic Identity by The Ace & Aro Advocacy Project

Aro Eros Arrows: Integrated Non-Monogamy Book 1 by Michón Neal

Hopeless Aromantic: An Affirmative Guide to Aromanticism by Samantha Rendle 

Amazing Ace, Awesome Aro: An Illustrated Exploration by Victoria Barron

[queerliblib]

DID YOU KNOW, we have a whole curated list of our more academically-geared non-fiction??!

[logarithmicpanda]

Heaven Official's Blessing (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu)

I read the ~3000 pages of this series in 11 days lmao

Slow burn queer romance between an Heaven Official and a Ghost King

Lots of mysteries - the main story covers a relatively short time but delves back into flashbacks over a period of 800 years

Nice balance of humor and darker topics

(also shout out to the pretty illustrations on the covers and inside, I love them)

8.5/10 for the series

(volumes 4 and 6 are my faves and I'd individually rate them 9/10)

[wine-darktea]

Snow is the best excuse to stay inside and read some poetry ❄️

[ash-and-books]

Traduttore, traditore. An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. Currently sitting in a coffee shop reading this book, I’m about 139 pages in and I’m completely hooked. It’s so fascinating to unpack what it means to learn a language separate from your own native language, the way we pick languages that impact our surroundings and the way languages themselves function. As someone who’s studied languages from English, Spanish, Latin and French, it’s fascination to realize that despite speaking English primarily now it wasn’t my first language. My first language was Vietnamese and how I lost it over time but have started regaining it and what that means to me. ☕️📝📚

[dragonbadgerbooks]

Tarot October BPC: October 13, 2023 The Chariot - Anticipated Release

Iron Widow and Heavenly Tyrant (Coming April 30, 2024) by Xiran Jay Zhao Game of Thrones Tarot Deck

[minoritiesinpublishing]

15 Chronic Illness And Disability Memoirs That Just Might Change The Way You See The World

You won't be able to put these down.

[aroaessidhe]

aro & ace book lists masterpost

#aspec books / aro & ace books database (tinyurl.com/aspecbooks)

A couple notes:

These are books I have read, with the occasional exception. I always state when I have not read a book I’m including in a post. May add to and edit posts when I read more relevant books.

I mostly include books I recommend, but to varying levels (and sometimes I'll include some I dislike but they might be worthwhile for someone else) There will of course be some of my personal bias to what I prefer (SFF, YA contemporary)

I prioritise books with aspec main characters. Will include the occasional side character if I have a gap to fill and it’s reasonably significant and/or the author is aspec. Like, would it be worth it to read the book just for this character?

The things I am choosing to group on are based on commonalities I’ve noticed. If I group by one thing but not something similar it's because there's not enough I've read to make a worthwhile post!

Most posts encompass ace & aro & the spectrums (because there's a lot of overlap in the books) but some are one or the other, and I've generally marked them as such here

under the cut, as I will be frequently updating as I post more

asterix* & smalltext means the same post is being linked for a second time (for example if it's gender and genre specific, it might be under both sections)

identity

gender/sexuality

trans part 1 / part 2

aroallo books

aroace girls (contemporary YA)

ace girls (contemporary YA)

ace girls (YA low sff)

relationship

queerplatonic

f/nb

m/nb

other

autistic aspecs

aro books by authors of colour

genre

broad

Graphic novels

YA contemporary (aro)

YA contemporary (ace girls)*

YA contemporary (aroace girls)*

YA low sff (girls)*

YA speculative fiction (aro)

middle grade (aro)

adult: high fantasy (aro)

adult: historical/contemporary fantasy/etc (aro)

historical (1900-1990)

space (opera, or general space setting)

specific

assassins

dragons

fey

ghosts

robots/cyborgs

other/misc

some no-romance books centering a friendship

a few fav aro books

[slaughter-books]

Day 18: JOMPBPC: Young Adult

[aroaessidhe]

Aro & Ace books: M/nonbinary ships

Aces Wild - ace MC, ace nonbinary love interest

Meet Cute Diary - ace nonbinary love interest

Tears In The Water - acespec gender questioning MC, demi love interest

Help Wanted - ace nonbinary MC

Blasted Research - ace nonbinary MC

The Story of the Hundred Promises - arospec MC, other aro characters & themes

The Wolf Among The Wild Hunt - aroace MC (QPR)

Our Bloody Pearl - ace man / aroacespec agender MCs

Assassins: Nemesis - grey-ace nonbinary MC

#aspec books / aspec database

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

JOMP BPC - October 3rd - Faceless

feat. Even Though I Knew the End by CL Polk

[transbookoftheday]

Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Tsai

Unwieldy Creatures, a biracial queer, nonbinary retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, follows the story of three beings who all navigate life from the margins: Plum (she/her), a queer biracial Chinese intern at one of the world’s top embryology labs, who runs away from home to openly be with her girlfriend only to be left on her own; Dr. Frank (she/her), a queer biracial Indonesian scientist who compromises everything she claims to love in the name of science and ambition when she sets out to procreate without sperm or egg; and Dr. Frank’s nonbinary creation, painstakingly brought into the world due to complications at birth that result from a cruel twist of revenge, only to be abandoned. Plum struggles to determine the limits of her own ambition when Dr. Frank offers her a chance to assist with her next project. How far will Plum go in the name of scientific advancement and what is she willing to risk?

[c-leadraw]

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas alt-cover

Prints available here