Tag Archives: Ciera Burch

Happy Holigays

Happy Asexual Visibility Day 2026!

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Today on the site we’re celebrating Asexual Visibility Day (aka International Asexuality Day) as we do, with books starring asexual main characters or about asexuality! For even more recs, check out last year’s post.

Children’s

Love Looks Like Lola by Cody Daigle-Orians and Siân Coules-Milne (August 21, 2026)

What does love look like? Is it holding hands? Sharing kisses? Getting married? When Claire spends the weekend with her amazing Aunt Lola, she discovers love can look like many things.

While watching her parents’ wedding video, Claire wonders why Aunt Lola never got married. Lola explains that she’s aroace – asexual and aromantic -which means she’s complete just as she is and loves people through friendship, care, and connection. Through their time together, Claire meets the friends, neighbours, and chosen family who make up Lola’s community and realises that love isn’t only about romance or marriage, but about kindness, respect, and belonging.

Love Looks Like Lola introduces asexual and aromantic identities and helps children see that love isn’t one-size-fits-all. With warmth, humour and heart, it invites readers to explore the many ways love can look and reminds us that every kind of love is worth celebrating.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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Happy Holigays

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day 2026!

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Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day! In celebration, here are a whole bunch of books that center queer girls and women in sports! (For even more recs, check out these past posts!)

This post is sponsored in honor of the audiobook release of Out of Our League, out now from Recorded Books!

Buy it: Libro.fm | Audible | Apple

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Continue reading Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day 2026! →

Happy Holigays

Happy Black History Month 2026!

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It’s Black History Month, and we’re celebrating as we do with books by Black authors (almost entirely) starring Black characters! For even more titles, check out past years’ posts.

Picture Books

Dancing with Water by Gwendolyn Wallace and Tonya Engel

An intergenerational story about a nonbinary child who learns the tradition of well digging in this picture book about community, hope, and protecting the Earth’s water.

As soon as Kit’s old enough to ride in Grandpa’s truck, they begin joining him to dig wells for their community. Grandpa is magic. He can feel the weather in his bones, and he’s able to dance with water. With just a tree branch in his hand, Grandpa sways and spins over the land until he finds a spot to dig a hole into the waiting earth. When the water springs up, Grandpa and Kit jump for joy.

As new hotels and factories pop up across town, clean water becomes harder to find. Sometimes, no water flows at all. Kit is sad for Grandpa—and for Earth. But one day, Grandpa senses that Kit is ready to dance with water too. Grandpa reminds Kit that the energy and strength of their people flows through the water. As they wait and watch for fresh, clear water to flow up from the ground again, Kit recognizes the power shared between themself and Earth.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading Happy Black History Month 2026! →

TBRainbow Alert!

Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Middle Grade: January-June 2026

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Brady Mason’s Perfect Fit by Nicole Melleby (January 13th)

Brady Mason couldn’t care less about fashion. She likes what she knows: baseball, comfortable clothes, and pork roll with egg and cheese. When Brady’s friends notice that she looks strangely like fashion editor Elena Lavigne, they start the rumor that Brady is Elena’s long-lost daughter. They’ll make a few TikTok videos, get some fun buzz online about their similarities, and that will be the end of it.

But when a DNA test confirms that Brady is Elena’s long-lost daughter, she’s summoned to Manhattan to live with her. The only problem: Elena’s high-fashion life clashes with Brady’s tomboy antics, and Elena doesn’t know how to be a mother any more than Brady knows how to be a daughter. But the more time passes, the more Brady sees what they have in common, and she starts wondering…if she and Elena are both searching for a family, could the two of them be the right fit?

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Middle Grade: January-June 2026 →

Fave Five

Fave Five: Black Sapphic Contemporary YA Romance

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Out of Step, Into You by Ciera Burch

Nav’s Foolproof Guide to Falling in Love by Jessica Lewis

Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson

If We Were a Movie by Zakiya N. Jamal

I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm by Mariama J. Lockington

New Releases

New Releases: May 20, 2025

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Young Adult Fiction

Out of Step, Into You by Ciera Burch

You can’t outrun love.

Taylor and Marianna were each other’s whole world – best friends, running partners, practically sisters – until Marianna moved away and Taylor promptly ghosted her. When the former best friends turned rivals end up on the same cross-country team three years later, everything is a competition… and a reminder of past feelings, as well as blossoming new ones.

Marianna runs because she’s angry.The oldest child of a single mother, she knows all about responsibility – for her siblings, at her part-time job. She just has to stay focused and be faster than the past nipping at her heels if she wants to secure a new, brighter future. With or without Taylor.

Taylor runs to prove herself. The only child of an almost-Olympian, she’s no stranger to high expectations. With enough effort, she knows she can immortalize herself with a state record and make her parents proud. Then, she can figure out her own passion. Shedefinitely doesn’t have time to untangle her feelings towards Mari.

Can this pair figure out a way to work together before their past catches up with them?

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading New Releases: May 20, 2025 →

Happy Holigays

Happy Black History Month 2025!

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Happy Black History Month! Like the other eleven months, it’s an excellent time to buy queer books by Black authors! For even more recs, check out previous years’ posts!

Middle Grade

Camp Twisted Pine by Ciera Burch

Eleven-year-old Naomi loves all things outdoors—birds and beetles, bats and bunnies—in theory. She explores nature in the best possible way: the cold, hard facts in books. So when her parents’ announcement of their impending divorce comes hand in hand with sending Naomi and her younger twin brothers to summer camp while they figure things out, it’s salt in the wound for Naomi and her avoidance of hands-on experience.

Camp Twisted Pine could be worse. The counselors are nice, and Naomi likes her cabinmates, especially Jackie, whose blunt personality and frank dislike of the camp draws Naomi in quickly. Jackie is also hard of hearing and uses a hearing aid, and the girls quickly develop a routine of sign language lessons in their free time, which Naomi sees as a welcome break when all the s’mores-making and nature walks get to be a bit much.

But the campers aren’t the only ones who roam the grounds of Camp Twisted Pine. When people start to go missing, including Jackie, Naomi has to find a way to save everyone—and herself. Her practical knowledge of the outdoors may still be rudimentary at best, but she has years of studying and the scientific method to fall back on. Can Naomi identify and stop the dangerous predator before it’s too late?

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading Happy Black History Month 2025! →

TBRainbow Alert!

Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Young Adult Fiction: January-June 2025

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Today’s post is sponsored in honor of the upcoming paperback release of Sydney Taylor Honor book Going Bicoastal, coming May 27th from Wednesday Books!

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The Last Bookstore on Earth by Lily Braun-Arnold (January 7th)

The world is about to end. Again.

Ever since the first Storm wreaked havoc on civilization as we know it, seventeen-year-old Liz Flannery has been holed up in an abandoned bookstore in suburban New Jersey where she used to work, trading books for supplies with the few remaining survivors. It’s the one place left that feels safe to her.

Until she learns that another earth-shattering Storm is coming . . . and everything changes.

Enter Maeve, a prickly and potentially dangerous out-of-towner who breaks into the bookstore looking for shelter one night. Though the two girls are immediately at odds, Maeve has what Liz needs—the skills to repair the dilapidated store before the next climate disaster strikes—and Liz reluctantly agrees to let her stay.

As the girls grow closer and undeniable feelings spring up between them, they realize that they face greater threats than the impending Storm. And when Maeve’s secrets and Liz’s inner demons come back to haunt them both, they find themselves fighting for their lives as their world crumbles around them.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Young Adult Fiction: January-June 2025 →