I’ve recently fallen I love with reading again and want to renew my old bookshelf. As a queer person myself I’m specifically looking for queer romance books to read. Set anytime before the 21st century. Sapphic or gay relationships, maybe even trans but I highly doubt I’ll find a trans Western book 😭. Before the 21st century as in anything before 2000, for example when the nuclear family was a big thing or western times.
Requirements: Setting before 21 century and queer romance
by Key-Condition-6588
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**Almost Like Being in Love** by Steve Kluger
The booktuber ink and paper blog on YouTube reviews a lot of contemporary queer romance novels you can get some inspiration there
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Melinda Lo and Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. Tipping the Velvet deals a lot more with coming to terms with your queer identity, but there’s romance as well.
Let’s see. Authors who write queer historicals:
Alexis Hall – he writes contemporary too but also lots of historicals. I believe you’ll want to start with A Lady For A Duke – a trans woman feels obliged to help the best friend she grew up with who is suffering a lot more from her “death” than she realized.
KJ Charles – writes nothing but queer historicals.
Cat Sabastian – also writes a few contemporaries but mostly historicals
E E Ottoman – he writes mostly historicals, often trans and poly too. Start with The Companion
I also highly recommend We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Berry – set in the 1980s, queer, trans rep, really interesting perspective in the writing.
If you’re willing to read contemporary Anita Blake’s books commonly feature nonbinary main characters.
And if you are ok with contemporary horror Freydis Moon writes horror (Haunted House style) with trans characters. Actually there’s a handful of horror/thriller by trans authors featuring trans characters, it’s just not my genre so I don’t note the others off the top of my head.
Here’s a Goodreads list of romance books featuring trans characters: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/71292.Romance_Featuring_Trans_Characters
And here’s a Goodreads list of books that came out in 2022 with trans main characters: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/167027.2022_books_with_trans_main_characters
Hopefully that will get you started.
Sarah Gailey, Upright Women Wanted is probably the closest I’ve found to a western with trans characters, it’s an alternate past but it also has rebel librarians and really what’s not to like about that.
Her River of Teeth series (alternate early settlement New Orleans where they really did let hippos loose in the swamps) is also super queer and just wild and kind of has a western vibe.
If you’re into Greek mythology, I suggest “The song of Achilles by Madeline Miller”! 🙂