Hi friends 👋🏻 It’s not a secret that I have been on a huge horror kick recently, but I’m a huge fan of any kind of book that doesn’t take place in an entirely realistic setting. I always do make an effort to read more diversely in other genres and find books that treat diversity as a normal thing, which I think should be expected of fantasy and sci-fi books.
I did try to find fantasy books for this list but it turns out that I’m not a big fantasy reader 🤷‍♀️ Sci-fi and horror are my go-to genres after all, so all of the books here are from those two genres. Also, some of these books may not be considered Queer by other people, but this is my list and my definition of a Queer book may differ from yours. (also, I’m aware that the header image says ‘spec-fic’ but it turns out that I was using the term incorrectly and very few of these books are spec-fic.)
also, if you know what movie the gif is from, we are now best friends.
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers - I finally read The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet earlier this year and although it took me a while to read because of the slow pace, I really enjoyed it. I knew there is a Queer relationship in this series but it definitely took me by surprise when I got to the part of the book where the couple started their relationship. This series takes place in a future where sexuality just isn’t an issue for people anymore, and it was nice to read that. It’ll probably be a while before I get to A Closed and Common Orbit because my TBR is pretty much set until October, so I should read it in November for Sci-Fi Month.
Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu - I’m currently reading this book, but I’m taking it very slowly because my brain’s tolerance for older books has gone down a lot in recent years. Fourteen-year-old me could handle that at her own pace, but twenty-five-year-old me is a lot more impatient. The fact that this is a WLW vampire book from the Georgian period is part of why this book is so well known and I’m interested to see how the representation then fares when compared to the representation we have now. Also, gay vampires. What’s not to like?
Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff - Listen, I know that some people likely won’t class this book as LGBTQ+, but I do because Fin and Zila are explicitly said to be queer (I think Scarlett is too but I might be remembering wrong). I absolutely adore this series and I’m sad to see it come to an end, but I’m also excited because the second book ended on such a huge cliffhanger that I’m itching to find out what happens next.
The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave - I’m not usually keen on books that are retellings of stories that used to be copyrighted (Alice in Wonderland, Tarzan, Peter Pan etc.) but I am interested in this book because it tells the story of Dracula’s Brides from their point of view, rather than the sexualised way that they’re usually depicted in. Goodreads is telling me that this book is Queer, but the back of the book itself doesn’t say anything about that, so hopefully Goodreads is right about that.
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas - I’ve been wanting to read this book for so long because I became bored with books about European witchcraft so fast and have wanted to see more diverse witch books, and I’m so glad that this book exists. I don’t know a lot about brujerĂa but I do believe that we can learn a lot through fiction, so I’m excited to see what goes on in this one.
Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite - I have had this book on my TBR for years and it’s definitely time for me to actually read it instead of sitting around thinking about reading it. I read somewhere a while back that pretty much every single character in this book is queer, which means that it has smashed the scale for queer representation in a single book. Plus, more vampires! That’s always a good thing.
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What Queer sci-fi and horror books are on your TBR?
