Recent Additions to My LGBTQ+ TBR

Hi friends! 👋🏻 February is LGBTQ+ History Month in the UK (our Black History Month is in October) and I’ve found that recently I’ve been adding more and more queer books to my TBR without actively looking for them, which is a good thing in my opinion.

I tend to not talk about queer books as much as I used to because my tastes and what I want to read about could possibly land me in hot water with certain members of the community. I consider myself to be a queer woman but I don’t want to read about M/M relationships because it feels fetishistic for me to do that, I still prefer M/F pairings and I don’t have much interest in polyamory. Does that make me prejudiced towards people in those relationships? I don’t think so but I can see why other people want to read those dynamics, it’s just not for me.

When I add books to my LGBTQ+ TBR, I only add books that explicitly have queer characters, not characters who are “queer coded” and no characters who are hinted at to be queer without the author saying that they are. I’m not that good at figuring out which characters are queer coded and which are not, I need an author to shove it in my face. I’m also no longer considering whether or not a book is #OwnVoices because there has been a concerning amount of queer authors being forced to come out when they’re not ready because of vocal audience members demanding that only queer authors write queer books.

Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

It feels like it’s been a million years since I read the first Aristotle and Dante book, so I may have to reread it before jumping into this sequel, which I am very excited about. We do have the first book in the library I work in but not the second, so I’ll have to go to another library that I’m a member of to get it, but that’s fine because supporting libraries is something I am very passionate about. I do have three library cards, after all, and I’m gunning for a fourth.

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

I walk past this book pretty much every day at work and while the thickness of it is absolutely terrifying to me, I am always in the mood for queer horror*. I will admit that I know very little of what this book is actually about but I suppose that’s a good thing because I’ve been going into quite a few books without knowing much about them recently. All I can say for now is that I know it’s queer, it’s horror, and Goodreads is telling me that it’s Gothic, which checks a huge box for me.

*as a wee side note, I personally don’t agree with the idea that horror is ‘inherently queer’ because horror is something that is innate to humanity, it’s just that it tends to resonate more with queer people who are able to identify with outsiders characters.

What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo

I recently bought this book (and another) with a Waterstones gift card that my brother gave me for Christmas, and I didn’t actually know that it’s a queer book or that the author is non-binary until I added it to my Goodreads TBR. That’s a pleasant surprise since I was already excited for this book, to begin with, since I really want to read more werewolf books. A lot of the werewolf books that I’ve read don’t have the scary horror werewolves that I like (think The Wolf-Man or An American Werewolf in London rather than Twilight or The Wolves of Mercy Falls) and I’m hoping this one has some monstrous werewolves.

These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall

Hooray for more modern Gothic! It’s no secret that I love Gothic fiction, and one of my favourite aspects of Gothic is family secrets. There’s just something about big old money families having horrible secret pasts that speaks to my little dark soul and I can’t explain why. Goodreads is telling me that this book is “The Haunting of Hill House meets Knives Out” and while I haven’t read The Haunting of Hill House yet (or watched the TV show), I did love Knives Out so I’m very excited about this one.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

I mainly was drawn into this book by the cover. I’ve never really considered myself to be an art person, but I do love Francis Bacon’s paintings, especially his ‘Screaming Popes’, and this cover really reminds me of him. I don’t know what it is about art that features people with distorted faces but they really fascinate me.

But anyway, I’m not here to ramble about paintings, I’m here to talk about books. The Goodreads summary for this book is short and sweet, but it promises that it’ll be disturbing and somewhat brutal, and that is something that I am looking for.

The Lost Girls by Sonia Hartl

I couldn’t help myself from having at least one book about vampires, could I? And this one sounds like it’s got some humour to it, which I’m hoping will be a good thing. Humour doesn’t usually work for me in books because I’m the kind of person who needs to hear a joke rather than read it in order for me to get it, but hopefully, I won’t have that problem here.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

Finally, I couldn’t let this list be all horror so I went for some sci-fi. I’ve only read the first book in the Wayfarers series so far, but I enjoyed it so much that I bought the rest of the series pretty much as soon as I was able to. I have been purposely avoiding looking at anything to do with this book, whether that’s the plot summary or ratings and reviews from other people because I want to be able to experience it without any outside influences.

talk to me!

Have you added any LGBTQ+ books to your TBR lately?