Never Say Never

Never Say Never by Rachael Sommers is a slow burn, age-gap romance that highlights how we should allow ourselves to be happy, especially when happiness comes so rarely.

Camila Evans has finalized her divorce. But it’s okay because she doesn’t need love to build a television empire and raise her son, Jaime, alone. What she needs is a nanny, someone who will care for Jaime as if he was their own. But finding someone who is competent, nurturing, and can elevate to her standards has proven difficult. 

Emily Walker is fresh out of college, bright, a little naive, and new to New York City. She’s charming, caring, and has been completely infatuated with Camila long before she walked into her office to interview for the nanny position. It’s a little unsettling to be working for the woman she’s had a crush on for years. 

The more time they spend together, the more the sparks of desire threaten to ignite. Professional lines start to blur, but Camila is steadfast in resisting temptation. 

Rachael Sommers is a great writer of lesbian romance. 

Sommers, Rachael. (2021). Never Say Never. Germany: Ylva Publishing. 

Ocean's Echo

Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell

Rich socialite, inveterate flirt, and walking disaster Tennalhin Halkana can read minds. Tennal, like all neuromodified “readers,” is a security threat on his own. But when controlled, readers are a rare asset. Not only can they read minds, but they can navigate chaotic space, the maelstroms surrounding the gateway to the wider universe.

Conscripted into the military under dubious circumstances, Tennal is placed into the care of Lieutenant Surit Yeni, a duty-bound soldier, principled leader, and the son of a notorious traitor general. Whereas Tennal can read minds, Surit can influence them. Like all other neuromodified “architects,” he can impose his will onto others, and he’s under orders to control Tennal by merging their minds.

Surit accepted a suspicious promotion-track request out of desperation, but he refuses to go through with his illegal orders to sync and control an unconsenting Tennal. So they lie: They fake a sync bond and plan Tennal's escape.

Their best chance arrives with a salvage-retrieval mission into chaotic space—to the very neuromodifcation lab that Surit's traitor mother destroyed twenty years ago. And among the rubble is a treasure both terrible and unimaginably powerful, one that upends a decades-old power struggle, and begins a war.

Tennal and Surit can no longer abandon their unit or their world. The only way to avoid life under full military control is to complete the very sync they've been faking.

This is Maxwell's second book in the same universe. I love what she does with gender presentation!

Maxwell, Everina. (2022). Ocean's Echo. New York: Tor.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders

A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic--with very unexpected results--in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, and the power of love.

Jamie is the average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, generational trauma, and an esoteric dissertation proposal. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch.

Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.

Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.

Now it's up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.

Charlie Jane Anders is one of my favorite authors. I will read everything she publishes! This is a great book with fully formed characters. Read it today.

Anders, Charlie Jane. (2025). Lessons in Magic and Disaster. New York: Tor. 

Houseswap 101

Houseswap 101 by Jaime Clevenger is a fun lesbian romance novel.

When Devyn Lancaster comes home from a busy shift at the hospital, the last thing she expects to find is a woman weed-whacking her garden. It gets worse when she learns her ex-husband invited the woman to trade houses with him—all without telling her a thing about the plan.

Robbie Price was looking forward to a month-long vacation in San Diego. A break from the Seattle rain in exchange for doing a few home repair projects and taking a cute dog to the beach seemed well worth a house swap. Then she meets her coworker’s ex-wife.

For Robbie and Devyn, even tolerating each other feels impossible at first. And neither expect to learn to like each other. But at the end of the month, parting ways is what feels impossible.

Jaime Clevenger is a great go-to writer when looking for a great queer romance. 

Clevenger, Jaime. (2024). Houseswap 101. FL: Bella Books.

The Candidate

The Candidate by Tracey Richardson is a lesbian / bisexual romance.

Presidential candidate Jane Kincaid--gorgeous, dynamic and extremely driven--is taking the country by storm, passionately outlining her blueprint for America. Voters quickly fall in love with her... and so, unwittingly, does Secret Service Agent Alexandria Warner.

Their mutual attraction begins to take on a fiery life of its own, and soon Jane fears that their intense feelings for each other are a tinder box that could destroy the landscape of her career... and alter the history of the country.

Jane had always expected the road to the White House would exact a high personal toll. She just never knew how high... until she's forced to choose between her heart and her political destiny.

Richardson, Tracey. (2008). The Candidate. Florida: Bella Books. 

Hotshot

Hotshot by Clare Lydon is a lesbian sports romance.

Sloane Patterson is the ultimate hotshot: a US soccer sensation whose arrival in the UK causes quite the stir. She’s got the game, the fame, the looks, the fiancée. But looks can be deceiving.

When Sloane’s life starts to unravel, Salchester Rovers’ new hire, Ella Carmichael, helps her pick up the pieces. But as the lines between their professional and personal lives blur, tensions surface. Now, Sloane’s goal of helping the team win the league and FA Cup has a significant addition: win Ella’s heart.

Lydon is a great go-to author for lesbian romance. If you like a British accent, list to the audiobooks.

Lydon, Clare (2023). Hotshot. ?: Custard Books.

Detransition, Baby

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters is a tour du force novel about womanhood, family and so much more. This is one of the best books I have read this year.

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.

Buy this book today. Then read everything else Torrey Peters ever publishes, she is that good a writer and storyteller.

Peters, Torrey. (2021). Detransition, Baby. New York: One World.

My Best Friend's Honeymoon

My Best Friend's Honeymoon by Meryl Wilsner is a queer friends-to-romance novel.

Elsie Hoffman has been engaged to her college boyfriend for a year and a half. Ginny Holtz has been in love with Elsie for almost a decade and a half.

When Elsie discovers her fiancé already planned their wedding and honeymoon as a surprise and she’s expected to be in a white dress in seven days, she swiftly realizes she’s let herself become too comfortable with a future she never wanted. She breaks things off, and a week later is on a plane to the Caribbean for her non-refundable honeymoon with her best friend Ginny instead.

Ginny thinks it’s high time Elsie learned how to speak up for herself. So, they make a deal with her. For the next week, Elsie can have whatever she wants, wherever, however, and whenever she wants it, as long as she asks. They never expected Elsie to want them.

What starts as choosing activities and taking selfies soon turns to toe-curling kisses and much, much more.

Meryl Wilsner writes sexy, fun queer romance. Read one of her books today!

Wilsner, Meryl. (2025). My Best Friend's Honeymoon. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.

Rainbow Black

Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash is a novel set in one of the latest US witch hunts, the Satanic Panic of the 1990s.

Lacey Bond is a 13-year-old girl in New Hampshire growing up in the tranquility of her hippie parents’ rural daycare center. 

Then the Satanic Panic hits. It’s the summer of 1990 when Lacey ’s parents are handcuffed, flung into the county jail, and faced with a torrent of jaw-dropping accusations as part of a mass hysteria sweeping the nation. When a horrific murder brings Lacey to the breaking point, she makes a ruthless choice that will haunt her for decades.

 As an adult, Lacey mimes a normal life as the law clerk of an illustrious judge. She has a beautiful girlfriend, a measure of security, and the world has mostly forgotten about her. But after a tiny misstep spirals into an uncontrolled legal disaster, the hysteria threatens to begin all over again.

 Rainbow Black is an addictive, searing, high-octane triumph, an imaginative tour de force about one woman’s tireless desire to be free.

Thrash, Maggie. (2024). Rainbow Black. New York: Harper. 

Martyr!

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is a beautifully told story that encompassed enough to be an epic, but personal enough to be intimate. A masterclass in writing along with a moving story.

Cyrus Shams has always been lost. He’s grown up tangled in the mysteries of his past – an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter, and his mother, whose plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby. Now, newly sober and maybe in love, he’s headed for an encounter that will transform everything he thought he knew. Can a final revelation change the truth of Cyrus's life?

Electrifying, funny, and all-consuming, Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! is a masterpiece. Read this book.

Akbar, Kaveh. (2024). Martyr! New York: Random House.

Just Kiss Her

Just Kiss Her by Clare Lydon is a romance where Brook falls for the one person who is off limits.

When Brooke's best friend Noah asks her to pose as his girlfriend for his sister’s resort wedding, she can't refuse. Sure, she’s a lesbian, but it's a free holiday. How hard can it be to fake it for a few days?

Harder than Brooke imagined when she meets Noah's mum, Jen. Sophisticated, confident, and utterly gorgeous, Jen is everything Brooke wants. With each sizzling glance, casual touch, and chance encounter, an irresistible attraction pulls Brooke towards the one woman she can’t have.

As their holiday in paradise unfolds, this scorching love triangle is about to reach its breaking point under the hot Mexican sun. Jen is strictly off-limits, but Brooke's heart doesn't care for rules. Can she keep her feelings buried, or will she just kiss her?

Clare Lydon’s latest is a deliciously tempting age-gap romance where a fake girlfriend falls for the mother she can't have. 

Lydon, Clare. (2024). Just Kiss Her. ?: Custard Books

Atmosphere

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is an epic novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond; mission specialists John Griffin and Lydia Danes; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

This is a great book! Go get a copy today from your local bookstore or library.

Reid, Taylor Jenkins. (2025). Atmosphere. New York: Ballantine,

Maybe This Will Save Me

Maybe This Will Save Me by Tommy Dorfman is a memoir that is at times heartbreaking, at times hopeful, but always reads as an honest look at her life.

For years, Tommy Dorfman turned her back on her thoughts and emotions, hoping they’d simply go away.

After a lifetime of confusion, she finally gained clarity around her gender and began to transition.

But there were still parts of herself she’d locked away, elements of her story that she needed, for the first time, to fully confront.

Maybe This Will Save Me is Tommy's story, told the cards of that tarot pull. For the first time, she opens up about: growing up the youngest of five children while grappling with her identity; the turbulent she spent as a teenager, numbed by drugs and alcohol; her early aspirations of stardom and the hard fought path she forged to get there;  the long night that led her to finally seek treatment for addiction; her breakout role in 13 Reason Why; the relationships that shaped her.

Dorfman, Tommy. (2025). Maybe This Will Save Me. Toronto: Hanover Square.

Chemistry Lessons

Chemistry Lessons by Jae is a lesbian friends to romance story.

Kylie and Regan have been best friends since kindergarten, supporting each other through thick and thin.

While everyone thinks they would be perfect for each other, they insist there’s no chemistry between them—and Regan should know since she’s a chemistry teacher.

To prove it, they agree to a little chemistry experiment: they’ll go on three dates with each other.

So what if their gazes start to linger and accidental touches no longer feel platonic? They chalk it up to the romantic atmosphere—until a friendly good night kiss turns passionate.

Can their friendship go back to the way it was before? Do they even want it to? Or will they risk losing what they have for a chance at love?

Jae is always a good author choice when you are in the mood for a queer romance. Her books are always available on audiobook.

Jae. (2021). Chemistry Lessons. Germany: Ylva Verlog.

Love at First Set

Love at First Set by Jennifer Dugan is a fun queer romance with someone off limits.

The gym is Lizzie’s life—it’s her passion, her job, and the only place that’s ever felt like home. Unfortunately, her bosses consider her a glorified check-in girl at best, and the gym punching bag at worst.

When their son, Lizzie’s best friend, James, begs her to be his plus one at his perfect sister Cara’s wedding, things go wrong immediately, and culminate in Lizzie giving a drunken pep talk to a hot stranger in the women’s bathroom—except that stranger is actually the bride-to-be, and Lizzie has accidentally convinced her to ditch her groom.

Now, newly directionless Cara is on a quest to find herself, and Lizzie—desperate to make sure her bosses never find out her role in this fiasco—gets strong-armed by James into “entertaining” her. Cara doesn’t have to know it’s a setup; it’ll just be a quick fling before she sobers up and goes back to her real life. After all, how could someone like Cara fall for someone like Lizzie, with no career and no future?

But the more Lizzie gets to know Cara, the more she likes her, and the bigger the potential disaster if any of her rapidly multiplying secrets get out. Because now it’s not just Lizzie’s job and entire future on the line, but also the girl of her dreams.

Dugan has written another fun, sexy romance. Once you read her, you will go back and read the rest of her books—or listen to them on audiobook.

Dugan, Jennifer. (2023). Love at First Set. New York: Avon.

One Weekend in Aspen

One Weekend in Aspen by Jaime Clevenger is hot!

Fresh out of a ten-year relationship, Emily Brookstone wants to let loose. But she’s not exactly the let-loose type. When she gets invited to spend a no-strings-attached weekend in Aspen with eight other women, the words ‘good for you’ come to mind. Maybe a fling with a charming stranger is just what she needs.

Alex Murphy travels the world for her job. She has no trouble getting dates wherever she lands and life is full of short-term escapades and fantasy weekends. Yet finding someone to share life with feels impossible. Until she meets Emily.

What happens on one snowy weekend in Aspen could change everything. But is a gamble on love worth all the risk?

Read this.

Clevenger, Jaime. (2021). One Weekend in Aspen. New York: Bella Books.

So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color

So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color by Caro de Robertis is a book queer folks have been waiting for!

So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations—who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers.

De Robertis creates a collective coming-of-age story based on hundreds of hours of interviews, offering rare snapshots of ordinary life: kids growing up, navigating family issues and finding community, coming out and changing how they identify over the years, building movements and weathering the AIDS crisis, and sharing wisdom for future generations. Often narrating experiences that took place before they had the array of language that exists today to self-identify beyond the gender binary, this generation lived through remarkable changes in American culture, shaped American culture, and yet rarely takes center stage in the history books. Their stories feel particularly urgent in the current political moment, but also remind readers that their experiences are not new, and that young trans and nonbinary people today belong to a long lineage.

de Robertis, Caro. (2025). So Many Stars. New York: Algonquin Books.

Overtime

Overtime by Tracey Richardson is a great lesbian-bi romance.

Professional hockey star Sarah Brennan can handle brutal body checks and playoff pressure, but studying Irish literature under the sharp-eyed Professor Claire Joyce might be her toughest challenge yet. Claire’s disdain for athletes is legendary—and personal, thanks to a failed marriage to a pro athlete. The only catch? Her hockey-obsessed ten-year-old daughter worships the ice Sarah Brennan skates on.

As Sarah contemplates life after her final season, she finds herself drawn into the warm orbit of Claire’s small family. But with Claire’s walls built as solid as center ice, it’ll take more than a hat trick to prove that sometimes the best plays happen after the final whistle.

Richardson has written a great romance set around sports and literature. 

Richardson, Tracey. (2025). Overtime. New York: Bella Books.

Love Next Door

Love Next Door by Rachael Sommer all stars when a gorgeous, tattooed woman moves in next door to a baker and her son.

Reserved tattoo artist Riley Foster has just moved apartments and can’t take her eyes off the single mom who lives next door. Riley is trying very hard not to succumb to the cliché of falling for the straight girl as she gets to know Kim Jackson, an outgoing baker with an adorable nine-year-old son.

A friendship forms and Riley even finds herself roped into playing Kim’s fake girlfriend to get her meddling family off her back.

What could go wrong…except for Kim suddenly questioning whether she’s not as straight as she thought! As the sexual tension slowly builds, it’s hard not to wonder whether they’d be good together for real. But is it worth risking a great friendship if Riley doesn’t feel the same way?

Sommers has written a beautiful friendship to romance story with two fully formed characters with whom you will want to be friends. 

Sommers, Rachael. (2024). Love Next Door. Germany: Ylva Publishing.

Skye Falling

Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie is the story of a woman who has built her life around travel, partly as a way to avoid close relationships. 

When she was twenty-six and broke, Skye didn’t think twice before selling her eggs and happily pocketing the cash. Now approaching forty, Skye still moves through life entirely—and unrepentantly—on her own terms, living out of a suitcase and avoiding all manner of serious relationships. Maybe her junior high classmates weren’t wrong when they voted her “Most Likely to Be Single” instead of “Most Ride-or-Die Homie,” but at least she’s always been free to do as she pleases.

Then a twelve-year-old girl tracks Skye down during one of her brief visits to her hometown of Philadelphia and informs Skye that she’s “her egg.” Skye’s life is thrown into sharp relief and she decides that it might be time to actually try to have a meaningful relationship with another human being. Spoiler alert: It’s not easy.

Things get even more complicated when Skye realizes that the woman she tried and failed to pick up the other day is the girl’s aunt, and now it’s awkward. All the while, her brother is trying to get in touch, her mother is being bewilderingly kind, and the West Philly pool halls and hoagie shops of her youth have been replaced by hipster cafés.

With its endearingly prickly narrator and a cast of characters willing to both challenge her and catch her when she falls, this novel is a clever, moving portrait of a woman and the relationships she thought she could live without.

McKenzie has written a smart, fun tale of Skye rethinking her plan to keep running from people, make peace with her past, and maybe building a chosen family. Great views of West Philly and it's past.

McKenzie, Mia. (2021). Skye Falling. New York: Random House.