The Best Recent LGBTQ+ Books to Read for Pride Month, According to Goodreads
June is only a few days away, which means it’s time to start planning Pride celebrations! And for readers, that means building a themed TBR. It’s always a good time to read queer books, but Pride is the perfect excuse to bump those books to the top of your TBR. If you’re not sure where to start, Goodreads has put together a list of 84 LGBTQ+ books published in the past five years that they recommend reading for Pride.
This list is just adult LGBTQ+ fiction and memoirs, but you can also check out the Goodreads list of 84 LGBTQ+ romances to read for Pride — that one was put together by Adriana Herrera, author of queer romances like American Dreamer and An Island Princess Starts a Scandal.
Both these lists are just a tiny sample of the incredible LGBTQ+ books out there for you to read for Pride and all year round. If you want to keep up with new LGBTQ+ book releases and also get queer book recommendations in your inbox every week, sign up for our twice-weekly Our Queerest Shelves newsletter. (Paid subscribers get a third bonus newsletter every week.) You can also browse through Book Riot’s many LGBTQ book recommendation posts in our LGBTQ category. We have hundreds of queer book lists and essays to get you started!
Without further ado, here is a sample of the 84 recent LGBTQ+ books Goodreads recommends for Pride month! These include literary fiction, fantasy, westerns, dystopia, horror, and much more.
Recent LGBTQ+ Fiction
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
Memorial by Bryan Washington
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Interesting Facts about Space by Emily R. Austin
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
The Guncle by Steven Rowley
Blackouts by Justin Torres
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Bellies by Nicola Dinan
Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens
Exhibit by R.O. Kwon
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang
Chlorine by Jade Song
Recent LGBTQ+ Memoirs
Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
¡Hola Papi! by John Paul Brammer
Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin
Love Is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar
High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez
Lost & Found: A Memoir by Kathryn Schulz
How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir by Shayla Lawson
Ma and Me by Putsata Reang
The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation by Raquel Willis
Check out all 84 recommendations on Goodreads.
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