The Best Queer Reads of 2023

Growing up in the Middle East, Lamya H was terrified of being different. So when she realized she was attracted to girls, she covered it up—until she found solace and representation in the last place she expected: the Quran. Lamya’s intimate, daring memoir follows her through adolescence and into adulthood as she navigates coming out, emigrating to New York City, and building an openly queer life she once wouldn’t have thought possible.

Described as a gender-flipped update of the film Taxi Driver for the gig-economy generation, Guns’ debut novel follows Damani, a queer Tamil rideshare driver who finds herself entranced by a rich white passenger named Jolene. Just as Damani and Jolene begin to embark upon a romance, Jolene crosses the ultimate line.

Ezra and Orson have been best friends—and sometimes more—since meeting at Last Chance Camp as teenagers. In that time, they’ve built a lucrative career together as scam artists, and now they’re ready to launch their greatest scam yet: Nulife, a company that promises its customers instant enlightenment. But what seems like a sure thing quickly spirals out of control.

Little’s sumptuous debut novel follows Elsie, a 28-year-old poet in London whose life is falling apart. When her childhood best friend, Juliet, resurfaces in her life, Elsie quickly turns to her for comfort. But as Juliet and Elsie rekindle their friendship, Elsie begins to notice sparks of something more—something she’s finding it increasingly difficult to ignore.

Incisive and insightful, Argy’s debut novel is about so much more than a burgeoning romance between two contestants on a fictional version of The Bachelor (although it’s also that, should this be enough to pique your interest). It’s also a thoughtful meditation on female competition, love and beauty as currency, and the many other threads underpinning America’s obsession with reality television.

Black and Indigenous Gabrielle is used to organizing her life around her volatile father’s desires. She has the ability to change the color of her skin—a skill which her mother, Tallulah, expects her to use to pass as white so as not to upset him. He wants her to spend the year after high school studying piano in order to improve her chances at getting into a pre-med program, so she starts taking classes from queer, dark-skinned Dominique. When Gabrielle turns to Dominique for comfort in the aftermath of a crisis, she finds the promise of everything she’s been missing from her life: creativity, confidence, and love.

Mickey Hayward has it all: a devoted girlfriend, a glamorous media position—until all of a sudden she doesn’t. When she unexpectedly loses her job, she pens an impassioned manifesto against the racism and sexism she’s endured as a Black woman in her line of work, then flees to her hometown. When Mickey’s letter blows up in the aftermath of a media scandal, she discovers that the public attention she always thought she wanted may not be what she actually needs after all.

“Frankenstein, but make it queer” is the basic premise behind this Gothic debut novel. It’s 1853, and Victor Frankenstein has been missing for years when his great-niece Mary decides to use his research to secure her own future as a renowned scientist. The decision sends Mary and her husband Henry on a quest across continents, and in the process, Mary finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about love and ambition.

The author of the standout 2020 novel Real Life is back with a novel about a chosen family of artists living and working in Iowa City. As Seamus, Ivan, Fatima, and Noah navigate love, sex, and an uncertain future, the friends hurt each other again and again and must ultimately decide how much they are willing to sacrifice for art and friendship.

Possanza moved to Brooklyn in search of queer life, and she found it: sports clubs featuring the world’s largest LGBTQ+ swim team, trailblazers commemorated on landmark placards around the city, and more. Her own experience inspired her to seek out the stories of lesbian elders across the city, from activists to drag kings to poets. The result is a century-spanning memoir-meets-archive of lesbian life in New York City.

As she finishes out her sophomore year of college, Savannah can feel herself settling into the life she’s always wanted: openly bisexual, part of a close-knit queer friend group, and ready to date again after a disastrous failed situationship. But when Sav learns that her childhood best friend Izzie has gotten engaged, she’s confronted with trauma she thought she’d buried long ago.

Page’s hotly awaited memoir is many things at once: a Hollywood tell-all; a lyrical story about queer becoming and gender discovery; a cautionary tale about the suffocating pressures of public life; and, arguably, the most anticipated queer book of the year.

When her popular crush Luis starts paying attention to her, Ariana Ruiz is ecstatic—until she runs into him at a party, and things between them escalate without Ari’s consent. Even worse, the rumors that quickly spread around school are more focused on labeling Ari as “easy” than on calling Luis out for his predatory actions. But when she meets a group of students who are determined to expose Luis, Ari sees an opportunity to achieve justice… and possibly even fall in love along the way.

Ask any queer woman and she’ll tell you that the lesbian bar is a vanishingly endangered species: as of November, there were 27 left in the whole country, down from over 200 in 1987. (To be fair, that’s not counting the new bars that have popped up in 2023, including two in Los Angeles alone.) Instead of mourning the dearth of dedicated lesbian spaces, Burton decided to do something about it, embarking on a cross-country road trip to catalog the bars that still remained. The result is a rollicking and thoughtful travelogue that weaves in Burton’s own personal history as an ex-Mormon married to a trans man.

The former Nylon Editor in Chief and author of the essay collection Everyone (Else) Is Perfect is back with her first work of fiction, a futuristic cli-fi novel that casts a harsh light on the dangers of corporate cis feminism. In a rapidly warming world, safety is guaranteed only to those who are accepted to live in the “Inside”—a series of enclosed, weather-safe cities around the world. When several women are drawn into the new Inside being constructed by a Jacqueline Millender, a billionaire women’s rights advocate, they soon find that their survival is not as assured as they expected.

When Tom meets Ming at a university drag night, he envisions their burgeoning relationship as a boy-meets-boy romance for the ages—until they move to London after graduation, and Ming reveals that she is a trans woman. Over years and continents, Tom and Ming must navigate their changing relationship and social circle in the wake of Ming’s transition.

Set against the backdrop of New York City, this new adult graphic novel follows a group of Canadian college students on a spring break trip to New York City: Zoe and Dani, two best friends attending different schools, joined by Dani’s dormmate Fiona. But when Zoe and Fiona strike up a flirtation, tensions within the group come to a head.

Set in the late 1800s, Lucky Red is a Western like you’ve never seen before: a story of reinvention, sex work, found family, and queer self-discovery. Penniless and alone by the time she reaches Dodge City, sixteen-year-old Bridget quickly accepts work at the Buffalo Queen, the only woman-owned brothel in town. When a group of ominous outsiders roll into town, Bridget is forced to determine just how much she owes to the ones she loves.