This post is sponsored by Penguin Random House Canada in honor of The Vinyl Diaries: Sex, Deep Cuts, and My Soundtrack to Queer Joy by Pete Crighton. Big hearted, funny, thoughtful, and wildly entertaining, The Vinyl Diaries is a celebration of sex, music and the discovery of our true selves.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Indigo
Continue reading New Releases: May 13, 2025
Saddlehill Academy by Jessica Burkhart (MG)
The Key to You and Me by Jaye Robin Brown (YA)
The Ride of Her Life by Jennifer Dugan
Pas de Deux by E.J. Noyes
Prize Money by Celeste Castro
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!)
All these months of staring at the wall?
All these months of feeling weak?
It’s ending—
I’m going back to fencing.
And then it’ll be
like nothing ever happened.
No one knows hard work and dedication like Valentina Camacho. And Vale’s thing is fencing. She’s the top athlete at her fencing gym. Or she was . . . until the accident.
After months away, Vale is finally cleared to fence again, but it’s much harder than before. Her body doesn’t move the way it used to, and worst of all is the new number one: Myrka. When she sweeps Vale aside with her perfect form and easy smile, Vale just can’t accept that. But the harder Vale fights to catch up, the more she realizes her injury isn’t the only thing holding her back. If she can’t leave her accident in the past, then what does she have to look forward to?
Continue reading Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day 2025!
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!
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.
Continue reading Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Young Adult Fiction: January-June 2025
Playing for Keeps by Jennifer Dugan (YA)
Love and Sportsball by Meka James
Hoops & Heartstrings by Eliza Lintzski
Wake Up, Nat & Darcy by Kate Cochrane
How You Get the Girl by Anita Kelly
Magic is in Delilah Bea’s blood. Her absentee father is the world’s most famous cursebreaker, while all the women in her family are fated to never find true love. So when Delilah graduates her magical training and must complete her Calling, she has the perfect task in mind—to break the Bea family curse.
But Delilah’s Calling is hijacked by Kieran Pelumbra, a member of the wealthiest and most powerful family in the country, and breaking his curse suddenly becomes her official assignment. Every generation, a pair of Pelumbra twins are doomed, with one twin draining the other of their life and magic. Each day, Kieran grows weaker while his sister Briar gets closer to…something monstrous.
As Delilah and the twins set out on their quest, they quickly realize that breaking the Pelumbra curse isn’t going to be simple. For one, the Pelumbra family doesn’t actually want their curse broken—and they’ve sent hunters after them to ensure they fail. Secondly…it’s Briar. There’s just something about her that gets under Delilah’s skin and makes her want to kiss the perpetually grumpy look off her face. But with time running out for the twins and Delilah’s own curse getting in the way, they may not stand a chance of finding their Happily Ever After.
Cool for the Summer and Going Bicoastal by Dahlia Adler
Wish You Weren’t Here by Erin Baldwin
The Summer of Jordi Perez and No Boy Summer by Amy Spalding
Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson
Hot Dog Girl and Melt With You by Jennifer Dugan
Playing for Keeps by Jennifer Dugan (f/f YA)
The Prospects by KT Hoffman (m/m)
Unwritten Rules by KD Casey (m/m series)
Heart of the Game by Rachel Spangler (f/f)
You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian (m/m Histrom)
Bonus: These are all prose novels, but for a graphic novel series, check out Grand Slam Romance by Ollie Hicks and Emma Oosterhouse (f/f)
First in a full-color graphic novel series for emerging readers about accepting yourself and others from up-and-coming author-illustrator Meggie Ramm, creator of the comic strip The Littlest Dungeon Guard and cohost of the Pop! Whiz! Bang! comics podcast.
Batcat loves being all alone in their home on Spooky Island. Up in their tree house, they pass the time playing video games and watching TV. But when Batcat suddenly finds themself haunted by an annoying, ice cream–stealing ghost, they visit the local Island Witch for a spell to remove their ghastly guest permanently!
With their Ghost-B-Gone spell in hand, Batcat travels across Spooky Island to gather ingredients—to the Cavernous Caves where the bats tell them they’re too round to be a bat, and to the Whispering Cemetery where the cats will help only if they commit to being a true cat. But Batcat is neither and that’s what makes them special, right?
Noah Frye just had the Best Summer Ever. Not only did she have an epic time at science camp, but her new camp friend Jessa is going to Noah’s school in the fall. Noah can’t wait to introduce Jessa to her best friends Zoey and Luna when classes start. But when the friend group is reunited after their summer apart, something seems to have changed: Zoey and Luna have discovered boys, and now it’s all they want to obsess over.
Suddenly, it feels like Noah is the odd one out in their friend group, especially since Noah hasn’t ever even considered boys in that way. When Noah finds herself caught in a lie about having a boy crush of her own, she decides she’ll do anything to fit in with her friends again—even if that means using the scientific method. Noah’s crush experiment is simple: find a boy, fake a crush until it turns real, and get her friends back. But that might be easier said than done, especially when Noah can’t stop thinking about Jessa. What ensues is a hilarious and heartwarming turn of events in this queer contemporary middle grade story about friendship, first crushes, and self-discovery.
