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Danika Ellis
June 14, 2025
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The best and most-anticipated books of the summer lists are popping up all over the place, and as is my wont, I’ve been combing them for queer books. I looked through the Atlantic, AV Club, Goodreads,
Kirkus Reviews,
LA Times, Lit Hub, New York Times, Publishers Weekly,
Town and Country, USA Today, and
Vulture lists and found 30 queer titles mentioned.
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As always, I’ve likely missed some—I don’t yet have a 100% accurate book gaydar. Still, I’m pretty happy with the number of titles I spotted. 12 were mentioned on multiple lists, while 18 only appeared on one. Shout out to the Goodreads list for including 16 queer titles, a full 20% of their total list. (Now go buy them from a queer-owned indie bookstore.)
Unfortunately, there are very few queer books by authors of color that made it onto any of these lists. While queer books have an uphill battle in getting published and then getting sufficient marketing, that’s exponentially more true for queer books by authors of color. A few of the ones that did appear on these lists are
Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan,
Hot Girls With Balls by Benedict Nguyễn,
Forest Euphoria by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, and
Walk Like a Girl by Prabal Gurung.
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Here are the 30 best queer books of the summer, according to all the lists. Join All Access to read this article Get access to exclusive content and features with an All Access subscription on Book Riot. -
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Are any of these on your summer TBR? Let’s chat in the comments!