All year round is a good time to read books featuring LGBTQ+ characters and relationships, but this Pride Month it’s especially on our minds. YA has seen an explosion in characters who show a wider range of gender and sexuality – here are just a few books to read this June and some upcoming titles to look forward to in the coming months.
Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro
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One of the pleasures of Anger Is a Gift is the casual diversity of Moss’s Oakland home – his friend Bits is nonbinary, Moss is gay, another one of his friends has two moms, and it’s all perfectly normal – just part and parcel of how the real world looks. This novel about a group of teenagers struggling to find justice as their school is overtaken by an increasingly menacing police presence resonates with the power of a strong, close-knit, and inclusive community.
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
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Seanan McGuire’s novel asks the question: what happens to children who’ve gone to magical lands after they come home? Many of them find their way to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Nancy is one of those children, struggling to adjust to the non-magical world – and find her way back to the one that feels more like home. The heroine, Nancy, is asexual, and that doesn’t help her feeling out of place – but her new friends at the Home are more accepting and welcoming than most.
Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler
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When Isoka’s ability to access the Well of Combat is discovered by the Empire, she’s sent on an impossible mission: steal Solition, a legendary ghost ship—a ship from which no one has ever returned. If she fails, her sister’s life is forfeit. Determined to face the challenge on her own, the last thing Isoka expects is to find herself befriending and even falling for another girl captured on the ship.
The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen
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Caleb Michaels is an Atypical, an individual with enhanced abilities. Which sounds pretty cool except Caleb’s ability is extreme empathy—he feels the emotions of everyone around him, including one his classmates, Adam. Adam’s feelings are big and all-consuming, but they fit together with Caleb’s feelings in a way that he can’t quite understand.
The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis
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Charlotte Nicole Davis’ debut novels follows Aster, Violet, Tansy, Mallow, and Clementine—the Good Luck Girls. After Clementine accidentally murders a man, the girls are on the run, searching for a legend that has been passed from on Good Luck Girl to another. While this book is full of adventure, readers will also enjoy the romance that blossoms between Tansy and Mallow.
