Book recommendations for pride!
Okay, I know I'm kind of late but we should all be reading queer books whether it's pride or not, so here goes.
Felix Ever After: contemporary fiction/romance following a 17 year old trans masculine teenager named Felix Love, who is in an arts summer school program with his best friend Ezra, when he starts to get bullied by an anonymous person. Thinking it must be Ezra's ex, he starts to catfish him and slowly develops a relationship with him, but everything is not as it seems...
wonderful story, very heartwarming at times but also horrifically relatable for trans teenagers, I really liked the emphasis on self discovery and how Kacen Callender doesn't encourage toxic relationships with the ending, perfect.
Outdrawn: rivals to lovers romance between two comic artists Noah and Sage who have to work together on a comic. Very funny and also quite relatable for some in terms of family dynamics, also I find it rare that you'll see queer romance where both characters are black with no stereotyping (from what I could tell, I'm European so yk)
This Is How You Lose The Time War: Sci-fi novel about two time agents Blue and Red, who are on opposite teams, and fall in love through leaving each other love letters.
Made me ball like a baby, I love the way they start off every letter with a new colour related nickname for each other, and using two authors for the separate agents really helped it feel authentically like two different people.
Glasgow Boys: Two guys Finlay and Banjo, one who's aged out of foster care and is now in nursing school, and one who is finally out of a care home and in a foster family with two generally caring foster parents. Both of them come from the same care home, and an incident before they went their separate ways has left both ignoring each other, and Banjo feeling extremely guilty. As he settles into nursing school, Finlay rekindles his relationship with an old friend Akash, and as Banjo settles in at his new school, he meets a wonderful girl Alena.
Absolutely loved this, a way less stereotypical, and more relatable depiction of foster care, plus chronic illness representation. Both love stories are beautiful but the story between Finlay and Banjo is just immaculate, seeing them both develop and change to forgive one another and learn to love others is so heartwarming, I cried so hard the entire way through, and it brought me out of a reading slump. One of my favourite books of all time
These are just some that I would recommend but I would also recommend checking out indie bookstores, your local library, other creators and just generally browsing yourself as that's how I found these books. I also have a top recommendations page on my blog with more book recs if anyone is interested.
