I’m not sure why publishers packed so many exciting queer releases into the third week of June, but here we are! There are so many titles out today on my personal TBR, including queer litfic, a feminist western, a sapphic YA slasher, and so much more. I really enjoyed Courtney Gould’s previous sapphic YA horror book, The Dead and the Dark, so I’ll definitely be picking up Where Echoes Die. Also, nearly every bisexual woman has a horror story about being “unicorn hunted,” so I’m definitely intrigued by The Spare Room, which dials up the “horror” part of that equation. Oh, plus what looks a heartwarming Black F/F friends-to-lovers romance in Can’t Let Her Go! And the second book in the Her Majesty’s Royal Coven series! And and and! Sorry to your bank account and you’re welcome to your TBR for this list.
Fiction
Old Enough by Haley Jakobson (Bisexual Fiction)
Savannah “Sav” Henry is almost the person she wants to be, or at least she’s getting closer. It’s the second semester of her sophomore year. She’s finally come out as bisexual, is making friends with the other queers in her dorm, and has just about recovered from her disastrous first queer “situationship.” She is cautiously optimistic that her life is about to begin.
But when she learns that Izzie, her best friend from childhood, has gotten engaged, Sav faces a crisis of confidence. Things with Izzie haven’t been the same since what happened between Sav and Izzie’s older brother when they were sixteen. Now, with the wedding around the corner, Sav is forced to reckon with trauma she thought she could put behind her.
On top of it all, Sav can’t stop thinking about Wes from her Gender Studies class—sweet, funny Wes, with their long eyelashes and green backpack. There’s something different here—with Wes and with her new friends (who delight in teasing her about this face-burning crush); it feels, terrifyingly, like they might truly see her in a way no one has before.
With a singularly funny, heartfelt voice, Old Enough explores queer love, community, and what it means to be a sexual assault survivor. Haley Jakobson has written a love letter to friendship and an honest depiction of what finding your people can feel like—for better or worse.
Mrs. S by K. Patrick (Sapphic Fiction)
In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a butch antipodean outsider arrives to take up the antiquated role of “matron.” Within this landscape of immense privilege, where difference is met with hostility, the matron finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body.
That is until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite—an assured, authoritative paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless summer, their unspoken yearning blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer fades, a choice must be made.
Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K Patrick’s bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.
Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens (Sapphic Western)
It’s the spring of 1877 and sixteen-year-old Bridget is already disillusioned when she arrives penniless in Dodge City with only her wits to keep her alive. Thanks to the allure of her bright red hair and country-girl beauty, she’s recruited to work at the Buffalo Queen, the only brothel in town run by women. Bridget takes to brothel life, appreciating the good food, good pay, and good friendships she forms with her fellow “sporting women.”
But as winter approaches, Bridget learns just how fleeting stability can be. With the arrival of out-of-towners—some ominous and downright menacing, others more alluring but potentially dangerous in their own ways, including a legendary female gunfighter who steals Bridget’s heart—tensions in Dodge City run high. When the Buffalo Queen’s peace and stability are threatened, Bridget must decide what she owes to the people she loves and what it looks like to claim her own destiny.
Mysteries and Thrillers
The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz (Bisexual Thriller)
Kelly’s new life in Philadelphia has turned into a nightmare: She’s friendless and jobless, and the lockdown has her trapped in a tiny apartment with the man she gave up everything for, who’s just called off their wedding. The only bright spot is her newly rekindled friendship with her childhood friend Sabrina—now a glamorous bestselling author with a handsome, high-powered husband.
When Sabrina and Nathan offer Kelly an escape hatch, volunteering the spare room of their remote Virginia mansion, she jumps at the chance to run away from her old life. There, Kelly secretly finds herself falling for both her enchanting hosts—until one night, a wild and unexpected threesome leads the couple to open their marriage for her.
At first, Kelly loves being part of this risqué new world. But when she discovers that the last woman they invited into their marriage is missing, she starts to wonder if they could be dangerous . . . and if she might be next.
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Romance
Can’t Let Her Go by Kianna Alexander (F/F Romance)
Peaches Monroe and Jamie Hunt are core members of their Texas friend squad and have so much in common. They’re successful at their careers in personal care. They take Austin’s “Keep It Weird” vibe to heart, each leaning into their own unique talents and sense of style. And they’re both ready to go on to even bigger things. Is pushing past the boundaries of friendship into something deeper one of them? The red-hot fantasy is there…but so is real life.
Jamie’s college dreams will take her far from her hometown. She’s already road-tripping to possibilities from San Antonio to Houston. And Peaches has obligations of her own. Not only is she planning to expand her business, but she’s taking care of her family after her mother’s passing, leaving her overwhelmed and under pressure.
No matter how perfect Jamie and Peaches are for each other, is this the right time for romance? Finding their true selves comes first. Only then can they hope to pursue a future of lasting love—together.
Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Shadow Cabinet (HMRC #2) by Juno Dawson (Sapphic Fantasy)
In the second installment of Juno Dawson’s “irresistible” fantasy trilogy (Lana Harper), a group of childhood friends and witches must choose between what is right and what is easy if they have any hope of keeping their coven–and their world–from tearing apart forever.
Niamh Kelly is dead. Her troubled twin, Ciara, now masquerades as the benevolent witch as Her Majesty’s Royal Coven prepares to crown her High Preistess.
Suffering from amnesia, Ciara can’t remember what she’s done–but if she wants to survive, she must fool Niamh’s adopted family and friends; the coven; and the murky Shadow Cabinet–a secret group of mundane civil servants who are already suspicious of witches. While she tries to rebuild her past, she realizes none of her past has forgotten her, including her former lover, renegade warlock Dabney Hale.
On the other end of the continent, Leonie Jackman is in search of Hale, rumored to be seeking a dark object of ultimate power somehow connected to the upper echelons of the British government. If the witches can’t figure out Hale’s machinations, and fast, all of witchkind will be in grave danger–along with the fate of all (wo)mankind.
Sharp, funny, provocative, and joyous, Juno Dawson’s sequel reimagines everything you think you knew about her coven and her witches in a story that spans continents and dives deep into the roots of England and its witchcraft. Ciara, Leonie, Elle, and Theo are fierce, angry, sexy, warm–and absolutely unapologetic as they fight for what they believe in, all in the name of sisterhood.
The Infinite Miles by Hannah Fergesen (Bisexual Sci-Fi)
To save the future, she must return to the beginning.
Three years after her best friend Peggy went missing, Harper Starling is lost. Lost in her dead-end job, lost in her grief. All she has are regrets and reruns of her favorite science fiction show, Infinite Odyssey.
Then Peggy returns and demands to be taken to the Argonaut, the fictional main character of Infinite Odyssey. But the Argonaut is just that … fictional. Until the TV hero himself appears and spirits Harper away from her former best friend. Traveling through time, he explains that Peggy used to travel with him but is now under the thrall of an alien enemy known as the Incarnate–one that has destroyed countless solar systems.
Then he leaves Harper in 1971.
Stranded in the past, Harper must find a way to end the Incarnate’s thrall … without the help of the Argonaut. But the cosmos are nothing like the technicolor stars of the TV show she loves, and if Harper can’t find it in herself to believe–in the Argonaut, in Peggy, and most of all, in herself–she’ll be the Incarnate’s next casualty, along with the rest of the universe.
Young Adult
Ode to My First Car by Robin Gow (Bisexual F/F YA Contemporary)
By the critically praised author of A Million Quiet Revolutions, this YA contemporary sapphic romance told in verse is about a bisexual teen girl who falls in and out of love over the course of one fateful summer.
It’s a few months before senior year and Claire Kemp, a closeted bisexual, is finally starting to admit she might be falling in love with her best friend, Sophia, who she’s known since they were four.
Trying to pay off the fine from the crash that totals Lars, her beloved car, Claire takes a job at the local nursing home up the street from her house. There she meets Lena, an eighty-eight-year-old lesbian woman who tells her stories about what it was like growing up gay in the 1950s and ’60s.
As Claire spends more time with Lena and grows more confident of her identity, another girl, Pen, comes into the picture, and Claire is caught between two loves–one familiar and well-worn, the other new and untested.
You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron (Sapphic YA Horror)
Charity has the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, The Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. The more realistic the fear, the better for business.
But the last weekend of the season, Charity’s co-workers begin disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity’s role as the final girl suddenly becomes all too real. If Charity and her girlfriend Bezi hope to survive the night, they’ll need figure out what this killer is after. As they unravel the bloody history of the real Mirror Lake, Charity discovers that there may be more to the story than she ever suspected . . .
Where Echoes Die by Courtney Gould (Queer YA Horror)
Beck Birsching has been adrift since the death of her mother, a brilliant but troubled investigative reporter. She can’t stop herself from slipping into memories of happier days, longing for a time when things were more normal. So when a mysterious letter in her mother’s handwriting arrives in the mail that reads Come and find me, pointing to the small town at the center of her last investigation, Beck hopes that it may hold the answers.
But when Beck and her sister Riley arrive in Backravel, Arizona, it’s clear that something’s off. There are no cars, no cemeteries, no churches. The town is a mix of dilapidated military structures and new, shiny buildings, all overseen by a gleaming treatment center high on a plateau. No one seems to remember when they got there, and when Beck digs deeper into the town’s enigmatic leader and his daughter, Avery, she begins to suspect that they know more than they’re letting on.
As Beck and her sister search for answers about their mother, she and Avery are increasingly drawn together, and their unexpected connection brings up emotions Beck has fought to keep buried. Beck is desperate to hold onto the way things used to be, but when she starts losing herself in Backravel―and its connection to her mother― she risks losing her way back out.
Nonfiction
Through the Groves by Anne Hull (Lesbian Memoir)
A richly evocative coming-of-age memoir set in the Florida orange groves of the 1960s by a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
Anne Hull grew up in rural Central Florida, barefoot half the time and running through the orange groves her father’s family had worked for generations. The ground trembled from the vibrations of bulldozers and jackhammers clearing land for Walt Disney World. “Look now,” her father told her as they rode through the mossy landscape together. “It will all be gone.” But the real threat was at home, where Hull was pulled between her idealistic but self-destructive father and her mother, a glamorous outsider from Brooklyn struggling with her own aspirations. All the while, Hull felt the pressures of girlhood closing in. She dreamed of becoming a traveling salesman who ate in motel coffee shops, accompanied by her baton-twirling babysitter. As her sexual identity took shape, Hull knew the place she loved would never love her back and began plotting her escape.
Here, Hull captures it all―the smells and sounds of a disappearing way of life, the secret rituals and rhythms of a doomed family, the casual racism of the rural South in the 1960s, and the suffocating expectations placed on girls and women.
Vividly atmospheric and haunting, Through the Groves will speak to anyone who’s ever left home to cut a path of their own.
