*The demisexual character inĀ Radio Silence is not the narrator, but he’s the second biggest character in the book, and as far as I know, the only character with this label in mainstream YA, so I opted to include it here
It’s Pride Month, which means a whole lot of LGBTQIAP+ books are on sale! (And some of them are just cheap year round. Basically, this post is a collection of stuff that’s under five bucks.)
Due to my personal life being a little hectic right now (*insert wave from very cute new baby*) I’m just throwing all categories and genres together in one post, but hopefully that’ll inspire people to find something brand-spankin’-new they might not have checked out otherwise!
(Please note I’m assembling this post nearly a week in advance of its going up. It’s possible some of the sale prices will no longer apply. Sorry about that if so.)
(Just about all links are Amazon Affiliate. Money earned via these links goes back into the site.)
This was Drearās Bluff. Nothing bad happened here. People didnāt disappear.
College was supposed to be an escape for Emily Skinner. But after failing out of school, sheās left with no choice but to return to her small hometown in the Ozarks, a place run on gossip and good Christian values.
Sheās not alone. Emilyās former best friendāand childhood crushāJody Monroe is back with a baby. Emily canāt resist the opportunity to reconnect, despite the uncomfortable way things ended between them and her momās disapproval of their friendship. When Emily stumbles upon a meth lab on Jodyās property, she realizes just how far theyāve both fallen.
Emily intends to keep her distance from Jody, but when sheās kicked out of her house with no money and nowhere to go, a paying job as Jodyās live-in babysitter is hard to pass up. As they grow closer, Emily glimpses a future for the first time since coming home. She dismisses her worries; the meth is a means to an end. And besides, for Emily, Jody is the real drug.
But when Emilyās role in Jodyās business turns dangerous, her choices reveal grave consequences. As the lies pile up, Emily will learn just how far Jody is willing to go to save her own skināand how much Emily herself has risked for the love of someone who may never truly love her back.
When Felix Yz was three years old, a hyperintelligent fourth-dimensional being became fused inside him after one of his fatherās science experiments went terribly wrong. The creature is friendly, but Felixānow thirteenāwonāt be able to grow to adulthood while theyāre still melded together. So a risky Procedure is planned to separate them . . . but it may end up killing them both instead.
This book is Felixās secret blog, a chronicle of the days leading up to the Procedure. Some days itās business as usualātime with his close-knit family, run-ins with a bully at school, anxiety about his crush. But life becomes more out of the ordinary with the arrival of an Estonian chess Grandmaster, the revelation of family secrets, and a train-hopping journey. When it all might be over in a few days, what matters most?
Itās been two years since Sam broke up with the only other eligible gay guy in his high school, so to say heās been going through a romantic drought is the understatement of the decade. But when Meg, his ex-Catholic-turned-Wiccan best friend, suggests performing a love spell, Sam is just desperate enough to try. He crafts a list of ten traits he wants in a boyfriend and burns it in a cemetery at midnight on Friday the 13th.
Enter three seemingly perfect guys, all in pursuit of Sam. Thereās Gus, the suave French exchange student; Jamie, the sweet and shy artist; and Travis, the guitar-playing tattooed enigma. Even Samās ex-boyfriend Landon might want another chance.
After a shout-out from one of the Internetās superstar bloggers, Natasha āTashā Zelenka finds herself and her obscure, amateur web series, Unhappy Families, thrust into the limelight: Sheās gone viral.
Her show is a modern adaptation of Anna Kareninaāwritten by Tashās literary love Count Lev Nikolayevich āLeoā Tolstoy. Tash is a fan of the forty thousand new subscribers, their gushing tweets, and flashy Tumblr GIFs. Not so much the pressure to deliver the best web series ever.
And when Unhappy Families is nominated for a Golden Tuba award, Tashās cyber-flirtation with Thom Causer, a fellow award nominee, suddenly has the potential to become something IRLāif she can figure out how to tell said crush that sheās romantic asexual.
Tash wants to enjoy her newfound fame, but will she lose her friends in her rise to the top? What would Tolstoy do?
The year is 1994 and alternative is in. But not for alternative girl Tabitha Denton; she hates her life. She is uninterested in boys, lonely, and sidelined by former friends at her suburban high school. When she picks up a zine at a punk concert, she finds an escapeāan advertisement for a Riot Grrrl meet-up.
At the meeting, Tabitha finds girls who are more like her and a place to belong. But just as Tabitha is settling in with her new friends and beginning to think she understands herself, eighteen-year-old Jackie Hardwick walks into a meeting and changes her world forever. The out-and-proud Jackie is unlike anyone Tabitha has ever known. As her feelings for Jackie grow, Tabitha begins to learn more about herself and the racial injustices of the punk scene, but to be with Jackie, she must also come to grips with her own privilege and stand up for whatās right.
Sarah Cook, a beautiful blonde teenager disappeared fifteen years ago, the same night her parents were brutally murdered in their suburban Ohio home. Her boyfriend Brad Stockton – black and from the wrong side of the tracks – was convicted of the murders and sits on death row, though he always maintained his innocence. With his execution only weeks away, his devoted sister, insisting she has spotted Sarah at a local gas station, hires PI Roxane Weary to look again at the case.
Reeling from the recent death of her cop father, Roxane finds herself drawn to the story of Sarah’s vanishing act, especially when she thinks she’s linked Sarah’s disappearance to one of her father’s unsolved murder cases involving another teen girl. Despite her self-destructive tendencies, Roxane starts to hope that maybe she can save Brad’s life and her own.
This is book 2 in the Community series. Synopsis contains spoilers for book 1.Ā
Holden Payne has it all . . . or so he thinks. As heir to the founder of the Communityāan organization that finds, protects, and manages psychicsāheās rich, powerful, and treated like royalty. But after a series of disappearances and murders rock the Community, heās branded the fall guy for the scandal and saddled with a babysitter.
Sixtus Rossi is a broad-shouldered, tattooed lumbersexual with a man-bun and a steely gaze. Heās also an Invulnerableāsupposedly impervious to both psychic abilities and Holdenās charms. Itās a claim Holden takes as a challenge. Especially if sleeping with Six may help him learn whether the Community had more to do with the disappearances than they claimed.
As Holden uncovers the truth, he also finds himself getting in deep with the man sent to watch him. His plan to seduce Six for information leads to a connection so intense that some of Sixās shields come crashing down. And with that comes a frightening realization: Holden has to either stand by the Community that has given him everything, or abandon his old life to protect the people he loves.
āUnder the Gaydarā features books you might not realize have queer content but do! And definitely belong on your radar.
This time around we’re looking at books with major characters on the ace spectrum thatĀ don’t have that info in the blurb (and haven’t been on every post about this since the beginning of time; at this point I assume most people have discovered books like Quicksilver by RJ Anderson) – hopefully this will help expand your library a bit!
This Song is (Not) For You by Laura Nowlin – Though the book doesn’t include the label “asexual,” discussion of being a romantic asexual (and finding your place in a romantic relationship) is a significant portion of this 2016 contemporary YA.
Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate – Redgate’s debut is delightfully infamous for being the first mainstream YA to feature an on-page Pansexual main character, but among the 7 POVs is another queer character on his own journey to figuring out he’s aromantic asexual. As with the above, you won’t see the word on the page, but you won’t be able to miss it, either.
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan Maguire – Portal fantasy with ace rep and atmosphere to spare, from one of SFF’s most popular prolific authors.
Overexposed by Megan Erickson– M/M NA Romance with an on-page demisexual main character. I think that’s maybe all I need to say about that?
Radio Silence by Alice Oseman – I don’t usually feature books in which the character in question isn’t a POV character, but the presence of a major on-page demisexual character in YA is just too great to ignore! If you’re not in the UK, where it released in 2016, make sure you nab this one as soon as it’s available where you are.
27 Hours by Tristina Wright – Coming out in October 2017, this sci-fi YA features a host of underrepresented POVs, including one who’s ace.
Before I Let Go by Marie Nijkamp– Releasing in January 2018, this fabulous Alaska-set contemporary YA I have read and you have not (#CPlove) features an (#ownvoices) ace MC.
For some more instances of on-page labels in non-POV characters, check out Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham, Lunaside by JL Douglas, and Honestly Ben by Bill Konigsberg! And do check out this interview with Erica Cameron, to see which of her books apply as well!
The great outdoors isnāt so great for Sydney It-Girl Lien Hong. Itās too dark, too quiet, and there are spiders in the toilet of the cabin she is sharing with friends on the way to a New South Wales music festival. To make matters worse, sheās been separated from her companions and taken a bad fall. With a storm approaching, her rescue comes in the form of a striking wilderness ranger named Claudia Sokolov, whose isolated cabin, soulful voice and collection of guitars bely a complicated history. While they wait out the weather, the women find an undeniable connectionāone that puts them both on new trajectories that last long after the storm has cleared.
Tommy and Ozzie have been best friends since second grade, and boyfriends since eighth. They spent countless days dreaming of escaping their small townāand then Tommy vanished.
More accurately, he ceased to exist, erased from the minds and memories of everyone who knew him. Everyone except Ozzie.
Ozzie doesnāt know how to navigate life without Tommy, and soon suspects that something else is going on: that the universe is shrinking.
When Ozzie is paired up with new student Calvin on a physics project, he begins to wonder if Calvin could somehow be involved. But the more time they spend together, the harder it is for him to deny the feelings developing between them, even if he still loves Tommy.
But Ozzie knows there isnāt much time left to find Tommyāthat once the door closes, it canāt be opened again. And heās determined to keep it open as long as possible.
Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion.
Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family. She is told she is their salvation – the only person capable of boarding the Mokshi, a world-ship with the power to leave the Legion. But Zan’s new family is not the only one desperate to gain control of the prized ship. Zan finds that she must choose sides in a genocidal campaign that will take her from the edges of the Legion’s gravity well to the very belly of the world.
Zan will soon learn that she carries the seeds of the Legion’s destruction – and its possible salvation. But can she and her ragtag band of followers survive the horrors of the Legion and its people long enough to deliver it?
In the tradition of The Fall of Hyperion and Dune, The Stars are Legion is an epic and thrilling tale about tragic love, revenge, and war as imagined by one of the genre’s most celebrated new writers.
Hard Wired, by Megan Erickson and Santino Hassell (13th)
My FallenCon agenda is simple: sit on a couple of panels and let people meet the real me. Jesse Garvyāmod of a famous Twitch channel and, if I ever come out of my shell, future vlogger. I definitely didnāt plan to sleep with a moody tattooed fan-artist, but heās gorgeous and canāt keep his hands off me. There’s a first time for everything, and my first time with a guy turns out to be the hottest experience of my life.
But the next day, I find out my moody fan-artist is Ian Larsen AKA Cherryāsomeone I’ve known online for years. And he’d known exactly who I was while shoving me up against that wall. Before I figure out whether to be pissed or flattered, the con ends.
Now we’re back online, and he’s acting like nothing happened. But despite the distance between us, and the way he clings to the safety of his online persona, we made a real connection that night. I don’t plan to let him forget.
“You go through life thinking thereās so much you need. . . . Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother.”
Marin hasnāt spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy sheās tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything thatās been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.
On the isolated desert island of Shiara, dying young is inevitable. The clan comes before self, and protecting her home means Khya is a warrior above all else.
But when following the clan and obeying their leaders could cost her brother his life, Khya’s home becomes a deadly trap. The only person who can help is Tessen, her lifelong rival and the boy who challenges her at every turn. The council she hoped to join has betrayed her, and their secrets, hundreds of years deep, reach around a world she’s never seen.
To save her brotherās life and her island home, her only choice is to trust Tessen, turn against her clan, and go on the runāa betrayal and a death sentence.
Ten years ago, Peter Pan left Neverland to grow up, leaving behind his adolescent dreams of boyhood and resigning himself to life as Wendy Darling. Growing up, however, has only made him realize how inescapable his identity as a man is.
But when he returns to Neverland, everything has changed: the Lost Boys have become men, and the war games they once played are now real and deadly. Even more shocking is the attraction Peter never knew he could feel for his old rival, Captain Hookāand the realization that he no longer knows which of them is the real villain.
Zane Jaffe has almost lost track of what conception cycle sheās in. (Thatās a lie: this is cycle thirteen.) Sheās fake-dating her pal Mildred to get her best friend off her back, but judging by how hot it was when they accidentally kissed, her feelings might be somewhat less platonic than sheād thought.
And sheās decided that healing the fractured local queer community can only be accomplished through a party. Or maybe itās actually a wake. Whatever it is, itāll take place at Club Fredās, and there will be alcohol.
Trying to conceive is an unholy rollercoaster of emotions, and Mildred wonāt let them kiss again until Zane figures out how she feels. Between the wake (exhausting as hell, and thatās just the fun stuff), the constant up-down cycle of trying to get pregnant, and saving the world in the meantime, Zane has no idea. Fall in love with Mildred isnāt on her list, but maybe itās time to let go of that rigid future sheās been working toward, and instead embrace the accidents that can lead to something better.
Think positive.
Donāt worry; be happy.
Keep calm and carry on.
Maeve has heard it all before. Sheās been struggling with severe anxiety for a long time, and as much as she wishes it was something she could just talk herself out of, itās not. She constantly imagines the worst, composes obituaries in her head, and is always ready for things to fall apart. To add to her troubles, her momāthe only one who really gets what Maeve goes throughāis leaving for six months, so Maeve will be sent to live with her dad in Vancouver.
Vancouver brings a slew of new worries, but Maeve finds brief moments of calm (as well as even more worries) with Salix, a local girl who doesnāt seem to worry about anything. Between her dadās wavering sobriety, her very pregnant stepmom insisting on a home birth, and her bumbling courtship with Salix, this summer brings more catastrophes than even Maeve could have foreseen. Will she be able to navigate through all the chaos to be there for the people she loves?
Fin and Bettyās close friendship survived Finās ninth-grade move from their coastal Maine town to Manhattan. Calls, letters, and summer visits continued to bind them together, and in the fall of their senior year, they both applied to NYU, planning to reunite for good as roommates.
Then Betty disappears. Her ex-boyfriend Calder admits to drowning her, but his confession is thrown out, and soon the entire town believes he was coerced and Betty has simply run away. Fin knows the truth, and she returns to Williston for one final summer, determined to get justice for her friend, even if it means putting her loved onesāand herselfāat risk.
But Williston is a town full of secrets, where a delicate framework holds everything together, and Fin is not the only one with an agenda. How much is she willing to damage to get her revenge and learn the truth about Bettyās disappearance, which is more complicated than she ever imaginedāand infinitely more devastating?
Hard Wired (February 13th) Author: Megan Erickson and Santino Hassell Genre/Category: Contemporary Romance Rainbow details: Gay Why put it on your radar?
Please tell me you’re already reading the Cyberlove series and so this excellent writing duo and their internet-centric m/m Romance series needs no introduction…
10 Things I Can See From Here (February 28th) Author: Carrie Mac Genre/Category: Contemporary YA Rainbow details: Lesbian MC Why put it on your radar?
This is one of those amazing mental health YAs that digs really deep into the reader’s brain, a la OCD Love Story, and I think it’s gonna be huge for readers with severe anxiety looking to see themselves reflected. Also, gay. Very gay.
The Tiger’s Daughter (October 3rd) Author: K. Arsenault Rivera Genre/Category: Fantasy Rainbow details: Lady lovin’ Why put it on your radar?
It’s a Mongolian-inspired Fantasy starring two female warriors who have to save the world from demons. Like. Come on.
The Edge of the Abyss (April 18) Author: Emily Skrutskie Genre/Category: YA Sci-Fi Rainbow details: f/f Why put it on your radar?
Because it’s a sequel to one of my favorite YAs of last year and I am dying to know the outcome of The Abyss Surrounds Us’s slow-burn pirate romance!
Storm Season (February 2nd) Author: Pene Hanson Genre/Category: Contemporary Romance Rainbow details: f/f Why put it on your radar?
How cute is the promise of a romance between an Aussie It Girl and park ranger??
Note: All of the above are by Black authors as well. To add a more titles to your list, a couple that aren’t: Out of Frame by Megan Erickson (NA) and Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley (YA)