The Best Queer Books of 2025

The average person would probably identify Bram Stoker’s Dracula as the progenitor of the considerable canon of vampire fiction, but scholars and enthusiasts alike trace the genre back to Carmilla, the Gothic—and extremely lesbian—1872 novella written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. While sapphics everywhere thank Sheridan Le Fanu for his service, Kat Dunn’s juicy Hungerstone expertly recasts Carmilla’s story from a much-needed female perspective.

When Erica Skyberg decides to transition, she is 35 years old, recently divorced, and working as an English teacher in rural South Dakota. So she turns for support to the only other trans woman she knows: her 17-year-old student Abigail. At turns hilarious and heartwarming, Emily St. James’s novel follows along as the two form a halting—but increasingly joyful—friendship.

Detransition Baby was a tough act to follow, but with this delightful follow-up to her acclaimed debut novel, Torrey Peters has pulled it off admirably. The titular narrative—which follows a lumberjack exploring gender in preparation for an upcoming dance—sits cheekily alongside tales of gender apocalypse and taboo romance in this novel-and-stories collection.

It starts as a joke. But after her best friend suggests she “marry rich,” the unnamed narrator of Mariam Rahmani’s clever debut novel decides to tackle that goal with all the investment and fervor she was previously channeling into her academic career. Over the course of a single summer, she sets out to go on 100 dates with suitors of all genders in hopes of landing a marriage proposal by the beginning of the next semester.

It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Dylan Mulvaney’s work that the actress and It girl is just as charming in her memoir as she is on TikTok. Tracing her life from her pre-transition childhood through her sudden rise to fame as an out trans influencer, Mulvaney offers readers an intimate perspective on her journey to womanhood.

A lesbian romance between a clown and a magician is no laughing matter in the latest novel from the acclaimed author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth. When Cherry (the clown) meets Margot the Magnificent, she is shaken from her complacency on both a personal and a professional level. Before long, however, Cherry must decide exactly how much she wants to risk for her new relationship—and her art.

She’s a singer, drag queen, reality star, and now author—what can’t Bob do? Coming hot on the heels of a scene-stealing run on Peacock’s The Traitors, the drag queen’s debut novel takes place in a world where dead luminaries have spontaneously started coming back to life. When Harriet Tubman shows up and calls upon disgraced music producer Darnell to help her produce a hip-hop album about her legacy, Darnell is forced to confront his own past alongside hers.

Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa have never met in person, but they share a past: As teenagers, they found each other online and tried to build a video game together called Saga of the Sorceress. Eighteen years later, all three trans women unknowingly live within a stone’s throw of one another in the New York City metro area. Still reeling from a recent near-death experience, Abraxa decides to resurrect the video game—a decision that draws all three back into one another’s orbit.

Having freshly abandoned their gender, their name, and their corporate job, the unnamed narrator of Zee Carlstrom’s exhilarating debut is in the midst of a “bender to end all benders” when they learn that their conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing. So they do the only logical thing: They steal a car and embark on a road trip from Chicago to Arkansas in search of him.

IYKYK: Jasmine Guillory has been a pillar of the romance community ever since she burst onto the rom-com scene with her first novel, The Wedding Date, in 2018. But it wasn’t until earlier this year—seven years into her juggernaut career—that LGBTQ readers finally got a Guillory romance to call our own. Flirting Lessons follows Avery, a bisexual event planner in Napa Valley, who turns to local lesbian heartthrob Taylor to teach her how to flirt with women. Equal parts sweet and steamy, the result is more than worth the wait.

Years after fleeing from the anger of his father—a reverend and doctor—protagonist Davis is preparing to marry the man of his dreams in New York City...without his disapproving parents in attendance. But when he learns during his wedding reception that his father has been in a terrible car accident, Davis must confront the past to determine where exactly their relationship went so wrong.

Rebecca meets The Haunting of Bly Manor in acclaimed YA author Christina Li’s adult debut, a sprawling Hollywood gothic about inherited trauma and the real cost of the American Dream. The legendary (and reclusive) actress Vivian Yin is dead, and at the reading of her will, Vivian’s daughters learn that their childhood home has been left not to them but to an entirely separate family. Both racing to stake their claim, the two families move into Vivian’s crumbling mansion, where they soon find themselves haunted not just by grief but by a far more sinister force.

Gurung’s creative vision has made him a mainstay in the fashion world ever since launching his eponymous label in 2009. This year, he brought that singular voice to literature with this stirring memoir, which follows Gurung’s journey from his childhood in Nepal to his immigration to the U.S. and meteoric rise as a designer.

These days, people love to compare any and every lyrical queer love story to Call Me by Your Name. But Marisa Crane’s much-anticipated follow-up to I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself makes a strong case for the comparison with its lucid, longing-filled prose. The story follows high school basketball players Mack and Liv as they navigate love, grief, and the challenges of early adulthood.

In his second novel, acclaimed poet and author Ocean Vuong follows Hai, a 19-year-old in small-town Connecticut who begins the story on the brink of taking his life. It’s only when an elderly woman suffering from dementia intervenes that he reconsiders. He soon takes a position as caretaker to the woman, a widow named Grazina, which results in the two forming a life-changing friendship over the course of the following year.

It’s fitting that the publishing industry’s first definitive biography of trailblazing LGBTQ activist Marsha P. Johnson was penned by a similarly singular Black transgender woman: renowned artist and organizer Tourmaline, whose work has garnered recognition from TIME, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Tourmaline renders Marsha’s remarkable life in vivid, electric prose, depicting every stitch of her story with all the reverence and precision it deserves.

You likely learned Tommy Dorfman’s name from her breakout performance on the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. Or maybe you know her by her reputation as a fashion icon. But with her new memoir on her transition, queerness, and recovery from addiction, Dorfman shows that she’s much more than a name: She has a powerful and compelling voice of her own—one the world deserves to hear.

More than anything, 30-year-old trans woman Max craves contentment and stability—and she thinks she’s finally found those things in Vincent, her new boyfriend. But when the consequences of an entanglement from Vincent’s past begin to surface, Max must decide how to weigh her partner’s past against their present relationship.

Following a brutal breakup, memoirist Melissa Febos decided to spend three months celibate for the first time in almost 20 years of dating. Those three months ultimately stretched into a year—which, as she chronicles in her latest lyrical work of nonfiction, turned out to be one of the most creatively and spiritually fulfilling periods of her life.

In Vaishnavi Patel’s alternate version of 1960s India, the region was never liberated from British rule. There, protagonist Kalki is a young woman coming into herself, both by exploring her queerness and by engaging in small acts of rebellion against the oppressive regime. But as she grows increasingly involved with her city’s burgeoning independence movement, she is forced to decide whether she would rather save her community or herself.