(I rarely ever post on Reddit so I'm sorry if the formatting sucks
I'm looking for a book that meets most of the following categories
Required: YA/Teen, Fiction
Optional:
Gay (preferably male) protagonist and/or deuteragonist
I'd like it to be rather subtle (i.e. plot happens and main character just so happens to be gay) but it doesn't have to be
Fantasy
think titles like Gregor the Overlander, Beyond the Deepwoods, and
Dystopian
Hunger Games, Divergent, Scythe, etc.
Plausible fiction and alternate history fiction
39 clues, two can keep a secret, that sort of thing.
Mythology
Anything Rick Riordan or Rick Riordan Presents
Not looking for:
Exclusively romance
Anything that puts the plot or world building BEHIND the endless lusting over each other.
Sci-fi
I did like Ender's Game, and Lorien Legacies but I don't reallly like anything else, especially Dune.
Western
Here are some books i read in the past and liked:
Felix Yz
Spirit Animals series
Lorien Legacies Series
Bliss Bakery series
Superhero comics, (fav runs are 2015 Squirrel Girl, Krakoa era X-Men, and all of young avengers)
Mystwick Series
Here are some I didn't like… like, at all:
Dune
Walk Two Moons
Batman, pretty much entirely
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5 Comments
At the risk of being obvious: If you like Rick Riordan, have you read *Magnus Chase*? I suppose the protagonist would be called >!pansexual, his love interest being gender fluid,!< without it being the main plot in any way.
A Neon Darkness and The Infinite Noise (which is partly a romance but not fully) both by Lauren Shippen
I sent the post to my fiance who reads a lot of queer novels, but I can give a hand
Lesbian: Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree a high fantasy book with a DnD inspired setting, the plot is fairly simple: Viv, an orc, decides that she’s done with adventuring and decides to retire and open a coffee shop, and falls in love with her barista/employee/friend. It’s a slice of life with plot book, very very well paced imo but the chapters are quite short, perfect for quick reads tho!
Their relationship serves as one of the driving forces of the story, but it’s not their romance that is, it’s mostly the protagonist learning to trust and let her guard down, the romance itself feels fairly organic and unintrusive, it just happens as the shop grows.
Masc gay: I believe the Six of Crows books from Leigh Bardugo have a queer romance in their main cast, haven’t read them yet (the first entry has been on my bedside table for the last six months… The first two chapters are great tho!) but they have receive a lot of praise and the Netflix show ain’t bad! From what I gathered, it’s a plot heavy dark steampunk setting with magic elements, and also 2 guys from the main cast start dating somewhere along the way ! I don’t believe there is a main character per se as you follow a team, but I think it fits your deuteragonist category well enough !
More historical and less subtle, the Tales of the City from Armistead Maupin are centered around queerness as a whole, it’s writing by a gay man for the gay community as a whole and as much as I’m not sure it fits the bill here, they might be worth a look still, it gathers a large diversity of queer characters in time, but does center romance and other forms of self exploration a lot more than the rests, the two first suggestions here where about books were the world was the driving force behind the plot, the Tales of the City stories are carried by the character’s feelings instead.
I am currently reading and enjoying *”Yesterday is History”* by Kosoko Jackson (Gay teen discovers thanks to a liver transplant – they can time travel).
Also check out anything by Bill Konigsberg (especially “*The Music of What Happens*”) or Abdi Nazemian (especially *”Only This Beautiful Moment”*).
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala