“The hardest thing in the world is to live only once. But it’s beautiful here, even the ghosts agree.”
Pride Month is the perfect time to celebrate stories that reflect the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ experiences, identities, and voices. Whether you’re looking for heartfelt queer romance, powerful literary fiction, or the most exciting new releases, the right Pride books can help you connect with perspectives that are too often underrepresented in mainstream reading lists. We here at What We Reading have brought together both the best new queer books and iconic favourites, offering something for every kind of reader. From moving coming-of-age stories to bold depictions of identity, love, and community, these picks highlight the richness and diversity of queer literature today.
They All Fall In Love At The End – Haili Blassingame
Kicking off our list of the best Pride books is Haili Blassingame’s new queer novel, They Fall in Love at the End. It is the fall of 2024, and twenty-four-year-old Cat is in an open relationship with her college sweetheart, Jay. Nonmonogamy isn’t just a hot trend she’s trying. It’s a sliver of freedom in a world eager to wrestle it from her for being a black woman going after what she wants with reckless abandon.
While political tensions roil the campus where Cat is earning her creative writing degree, she finds herself drawn to Jay’s best friend, Tristan, who is in a monogamous relationship. And then she meets Tristan’s girlfriend, Nia, an art student with a pull of her own. Cat is determined to have it all – or blow up her life trying. But in art, politics, and love, true liberation may take more time than rewriting the old scripts. It may mean inventing something entirely new.
Star Shipped – Cat Sebastian
Simon and Charlie, actors on a long-running sci-fi show, can’t stand one another. They’ve spent nearly a decade quarrelling over the spotlight, and everyone in the industry knows it. Simon would rather never have to see Charlie again, but reluctantly agrees to stage a very public friendship during the short time before he moves on. When Charlie needs to leave town to deal with a family emergency, this means Simon must come along too.
The more he gets to know Charlie, the more Simon begins to suspect he’s underestimated his former coworker. Simon also realises that after seven years, Charlie might know him better than anyone ever has. Still, Simon is about to move three thousand miles away, so whatever’s starting between him and Charlie can never amount to anything, right?
The Tuxedo Society – Paul Rudnick
When struggling actor Andrew Birnbaum gets invited to have dinner with the exclusive Tuxedo Society by his best friend, Brock, his life takes an unexpected turn. What seems like a group of wealthy socialites gathering for gossip and cocktails soon spirals into a world of espionage, danger, and hilarity. Andrew soon meets Reggie O’Malley, who recruits him to join the society’s most covert mission to protect national security.
The stakes escalate when Andrew and his comrades are sent on a jet-setting mission to uncover the truth about an ancient artefact. Along the way, they clash with oligarchs, crooked senators, and a smarmy televangelist with sinister plans for world domination in this wild spy thriller ride perfect for Pride month.
I Love You Don’t Die – Jade Song
For as long as she can remember, Vicky has been obsessed with death, being the only inevitability in life. Yet, though living in Manhattan and working her dream job is all she’s ever wanted, she still struggles to have meaningful connections – or find any meaning at all – in her life. Too often, she spends the day in bed, only drawn out from time to time by her best friend, Jen.
That changes when a dating app leads her into a throuple with an artist and a labour organiser, who offer the exact sort of love she needs. But all things must come to an end eventually. As doubts grow over the love in her life, the oddly comforting abstraction of death becomes something else altogether. With everything starting to feel hollow and temporary, Vicky must decide how to keep moving forward.
Meeting New People – Daniel M. Lavery
Sixtysomething, twice-divorced Barbara is at a crossroads. In the midst of her emotional uncertainty, she looks back on the dissolution of the nine best friendships in her life, in hopes of figuring out how to optimise finding her tenth, and hopefully final, best friend. Barbara is acerbic, opinionated, and wrong about many things, but she also doesn’t shy away when she’s at fault.
The turning point of her predicament comes from Barbara’s choice, in friends, between (too-young) Caitlyn and the (unsuitable) Other Barbara. Will she repeat the exciting mistakes of the past, or will she try a new kind of mistake for a change? One of the best LGBT books for Pride, Meeting New People is an ode to the possibility of joy from one of the world’s most inventive and brilliant writers.
Girl’s Girl – Sonia Feldman
Fifteen-year-old Mina’s entire world is her two best friends, but after an unexpected kiss, the established dynamics of their trio quickly unravel. Everything that was once shared openly, from clothes to secrets, now feels impossibly fragile. Loyalties shift, and tensions shimmer across the long days of this pivotal summer, where the girls have nowhere new to go and everything new to feel.
Looking back, an adult Mina traces the undercurrents of longing that shaped her first experiences of desire. The rituals of girlhood become threads in a delicate, volatile web of intimacy, in which everything feels achingly fleeting and permanently etched. Loving one person, Mina learns, can change the way we love everyone else – including ourselves. Bold, vulnerable, and sharply observant, Girl’s Girl is a sundrenched and dewy snapshot of modern girl culture set in the blaze of one suburban Midwest summer.
Bromantasy – Máire Roche
Juniper O’Reilly is good at only two things: demolishing a pint of mead and finding the perfect skincare routine. Everything else falls to Juniper’s best friends, Mo Elmthorn. But when Juniper accidentally volunteers them both for a quest to kill a fearsome monster, he knows he’s finally gotten in over his head. Juniper hates camping, he hates the dark, and he knows all those foraged mushrooms aren’t going to sit well in his stomach. One thing he doesn’t hate is how good Mo’s thighs look in his questing pants.
But there’s no time to think about that. There’s a monster to hunt, and their future is on the line. But monsters come in all shapes and sizes. When Juniper and Mo realise that the terrifying beast they’ve sworn to kill is just a scared little girl torn from her family, they’re off to find not only the true villain of the story, but maybe even a happy ending.
Is This A Cry For Help? – Emily R. Austin
Darcy’s life turned out better than she could have ever imagined. She is a local librarian, while her wife, Joy, runs a bookbinding business. Rounding out their ideal life is two cats and a sun-soaked house by the lake. But when Darcy learns that her ex-boyfriend, Ben, has passed away, she spirals into a pit of guilt and regret, leading to a breakdown and medical leave from her library. When she does return, she is met by unrest in her community, resulting in a call for book bans and a second look at the branch’s upcoming DEI programs.
Through the support of her community, colleagues, and the personal growth that results from examining her previous relationships, Darcy comes into her own agency and truest version of herself. Is This a Cry for Help? presents a moving portrait of queer life after coming of age, and explores questions about sexuality, community, and the importance of libraries.
Nothing Tastes As Good – Luke Dumas
Retail worker Emmett Truesdale has never fit the Southern California mould of six-pack, suntanned masculinity. Over three hundred pounds, he carries the weight of his childhood trauma and millennial ennui around his waist and in his soul. After trying out every diet under the sun, he remains stuck. Desperate for help, he enrols in a clinical trial for a new product called Obexity. The results are as terrifying as they are miraculous; as Emmett sheds the pounds, every facet of his life improves.
Unfortunately, Obesity comes with some killer side effects, including lost stretches of time and overwhelming cravings. Worse, people who were cruel to him have started vanishing. When the police warn of a cannibalistic killer on the loose, he fears that Obexity is turning him into a monster. But how can he give it up now that people are finally beginning to treat him like he’s human?
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Ignore All Previous Instructions – Ada Hoffmann
Kelli Reynolds loves creating stories more than anything in the world. But on Callisto, a generative AI company called Inspiration owns everything, including all the media, and only Inspiration determines which stories can be told. Kelli has a rare and coveted job in which her autism is to her advantage. She edits AI output into “appropriate” stories for Inspiration’s massive TV audience. Her proudest creation is the pirate Orlando – a dashing do-gooder based on the stories she used to tell her friends.
Reenter Kelli’s ex-boyfriend, Rowan, the person Kelli based Orlando on. Back when they were teenagers, their relationship was a secret. Kelli had thought that Rowan, a trans man, was her schoolmate Em, a girl. Rowan is tangled up in the black market after he needed to get money for gender reassignment surgery. He needs Kelli’s help with something illegal.
Last First Kiss – Julian Winters
They say you never forget your first kiss. But Jordan Carter wishes he could forget the one he shared with Jamie Peters as a teen. And the one they almost shared again last year before Jamie made it clear he wasn’t the “right” man for Jordan to be with while he’s figuring himself out. Now, Jordan’s fully focused on his career at his family’s event planning company and ready to move on – until his boss assigns him to plan a new client’s high-profile wedding. The bride’s man-of-honour? None other than Jamie.
As things ramp up, the closer they get to the wedding, so does Jordan’s relationship with Jamie, with sarcastic asides turning into steamy hook-ups. But can Jordan afford to pursue Jamie if he’s still unsure who he is? Another one of the best books for Pride, Last First Kiss is a second chance romance about finding yourself – and the love of your life.
The Emperor Of Gladness – Ocean Vuong
One late summer evening in East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in the pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes his caretaker. Over the span of a year, the two of them build a life-altering bond.
Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labour, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its core, it is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul.
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Missing Sam – Thirty Umrigar
When Aliya and Samantha have a fight one night, Samantha goes for a run early the next morning – and doesn’t come back. Aliya reports her as missing, but as a gay and Muslim daughter of immigrants, she’s immediately suspected by her neighbours in Samantha’s disappearance. Scared and furious and feeling isolated as everyone doubts her innocence, Aliya makes one wrong choice after another.
All the while, Samantha is being held captive, strategising how to escape before things escalate further. Meanwhile, Aliya must fight to prove her innocence in the public eye and save her wife. But is safety ever truly possible, even if Samantha is rescued? Missing Sam captures the terror manifested in today’s political climate, and the real dangers of being brown and queer in modern America.
I Leave It Up To You – Jinwoo Chong
A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr wakens to is one he hardly recognises. He’s been asleep for two years, and he realises it’s been ten years since he saw his family. Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, back into the waiting arms of his parents, and to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant.
As he steps back into the life he abandoned, he embraces new roles. There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned existence. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might, once again, prove too tough to resist. A highly entertaining and poignant take on second chances and self-discovery, I Leave it Up to You pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing, perfect if you’re looking for your next great queer read.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
