Tag Archives: This Must Be the Place

Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Young Adult Fiction: January-June 2026

I, in the Shadows by Tori Bovalino (January 13th)

Maybe this is possession; maybe this is truly what it is to be haunted.

There’s a ghost hanging out in Drew Larpin’s new room. He’s a fellow Pine Hollow high schooler named Liam, and technically, it’s his old room. Now he’s stuck haunting it―unsure of how he died or why he hasn’t moved on to the afterlife. Drew knows she has to help him. . . . She has to figure out how to resolve Liam’s earthly regrets. Otherwise, he’ll degrade―just like any ghost who hangs around the living for too long―until all that’s left is a hungry, mindless husk of who he used to be.

So, Drew interviews Liam about his life, getting the rundown on her new classmates in the process. She slowly falls into Liam’s old group of friends, experiencing their grief with the painful knowledge that Liam is watching it all play out from right beside her. Things get more complicated when Drew realizes she and Liam share a hopeless attraction to valedictorian-to-be, walking sunshine Hannah Sullivan. Liam was Hannah’s best friend in life, and at first, he doesn’t seem to mind being Drew’s wingman in death. But his unrequited feelings boil under the surface. The spectral energy cast off by his emotions is so powerful that it catches the attention of something truly sinister.

It’s lurking in the woods, watching Liam, attracted by the intensity of his grief and frustration. Whatever this “Watcher” has in store for him, it’s a fate far worse than death. Drew is determined to save him from it. But with Hannah slowly catching on that Liam might not be totally gone, the tangled mess of everyone’s emotions only draws the Watcher closer. It becomes a race against the clock to help Liam come to terms with his own death―even if it means shattering the fragile, painful normalcy his loved ones have built in his absence.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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Happy Lesbian Visibility Day 2024!

Happy Lesbian Visibility Day 2024! We’re celebrating with these lesbian protagonists, and you can too! For more recs, check out past years’ posts! 

Young Adult

We Got the Beat by Jenna Miller

Jordan Elliott is a fat, nerdy lesbian, and the first junior to be named editor in chief of the school newspaper. Okay, that last part hasn’t happened yet, but it will. It’s positive thinking that has gotten Jordan this far. Ever since Mackenzie West, her friend-turned-enemy, humiliated her at the start of freshman year, Jordan has thrown herself into journalism and kept her eyes trained on the future.

So it’s a total blow when Jordan discovers that she not only didn’t get the editor in chief spot, but she’s been assigned the volleyball beat instead. And who is the star and newly crowned captain of the volleyball team? Mackenzie West. But words are Jordan’s weapon, and she has some ideas about how to exact a long-awaited revenge on her nemesis. Then things get murky when forced time together has Mack and Jordan falling back into their friendship, and into something more. And when Mack confesses the real reason she turned on Jordan freshman year, it has Jordan questioning everything—past, present, and future.

If Jordan lets her guard down and Mack in, will she get everything she wants, or will she be humiliated all over again?

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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January 2024 Deal Announcements

Adult Fiction

Author of LOVE AT 350 Lisa Peers‘s MOTOR CITY BABY, a sapphic romance about a woman’s efforts to save a club she managed—and where she fell in love—with a Detroit indie rock star in the ’90s, until the rock star dropped out of the industry and the woman’s life; a blowout benefit concert forces her to reckon with her past and find happily ever after where she least expects it, to Katy Nishimoto at Dial Press, by Frances Black at The Literary Counsel (world).

Continue reading January 2024 Deal Announcements