Romantic gay books

The source material for the Academy Award-nominated film starring Timothee Chalamet is a lush portrait of sticky, summer love affair between Italian teen Elio and Oliver, the American grad student staying in Elio’s home for the summer.

Who will claim your body when you die? This classical expansion takes a lyrical approach to Patroclus’ devotion, ending with a sorrow that can only come from a true love. This is an enemies to lovers story about how, sometimes, opposites can attract.

It’s so refreshing to read a book that doesn’t center high schoolers or younger, especially as I grow up and start to see myself more in 30-year-olds than 16-year-olds. Rutkoski’s novel tackles divorce, abuse, and reconnection, but makes its mark in the subtle ways it shows rekindled love as a physical pull and a social mess.

When Viscount Marleigh is injured during the war, Marleigh, then living as a man, takes the opportunity to fake her death and transition — leaving her entire life behind to enter the world as Lady Viola.

I definitely need to re-read at some point to see if it deserves to be this high up, but for now it is! Immigrant Sneha has moved to Milwaukee after graduation, a perfectly middling city where she believes a new job and the ability to purchase appetizers at trendy bistros is one more step to reaching her American dream.

With Teeth

Author: Kristen Arnett

Release Date: June 1st, 2021

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This is one of those books that I was thinking about for a long time after I finished reading. To be honest, I was expecting this book to be a slog due to how “educational” it was purported to be, but in fact this was just the opposite.

Before Achilles becomes the violent, untouchable hero, he is the boy who shares a bedroll with Patroclus. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel takes much of its set dressing from the tabloid-driven life of Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor, but the novel’s description of classic Hollywood is just the background of this career-spanning and industry-defining novel.

It’s messy as hell, but so are real people! I liked this book more than Delilah Green, mostly because Iris’ love interest was fun to learn about. It is Hugo and Nebula-award winning sci-fi speed run through every human emotion and a beautifully expansive romance — one that will come to define the popular novellas of the 21st century.

In Malindo Lo’s expansive queer coming-of-age-novel, Lily Hu’s life changes forever when she steps into San Francisco’s lesbian bar The Telegraph Club.