Archives de catégorie : LGBT+

THE SUMMER LOVE STRATEGY de Ray Stoeve

A sweet and swoony YA rom-com about two friends making a pact to find summer romance like they’ve seen in the movies—and finding love where they least expect it along the way!

THE SUMMER LOVE STRATEGY
by Ray Stoeve
Abrams, May 2024
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

Hayley always has a crush. The problem is, her crushes never like her back. After her latest unrequited love—a girl from her basketball team—gets a boyfriend, she decides she’s done falling for girls who are unavailable. Her best friend, Talia, wants romance too, but rarely gets crushes on anyone, and she’s tired of watching Hayley get her heart stomped on over and over. So the two girls make a pact: they’ll help each other find summer love by putting themselves in situations that always lead to romance in movies.

To help carry out their summer love strategy, they make a list of all the places they could find their real-life rom-com: the beach, the Pride parade, the pool, a MUNA concert, and a party. But as they go to each place and try to find the one, it seems like they just can’t catch a break—they don’t know how to talk to cute strangers, someone mistakes Hayley as straight, and Hayley does a truly unfortunate DIY haircut (that she cannot be held responsible for––it was a crisis!). But when Talia and Hayley finally manage to score dates, will they be able to get out of their own way and really dive into the romances they deserve? Or is summer love not as far off as Hayley thought?

“This excellent addition to the slew of YA friends-to-lovers romance  novels offers a nuanced portrayal of an autistic sapphic trans girl in Talia and a lesbian with ADHD and anxiety in Hayley…[The novel] genuinely shines when it zeroes in on Hayley and Talia’s friendship and blossoming romance. Readers will feel like they’re in a teen summer romance themselves.” –Booklist

« Hayley and Talia’s story has all the butterfly-worthy moments of first love…Readers will appreciate that neurodivergence is normalized and represented positively in the novel: In addition to Talia, two other members of their friend group are autistic. A charming friends-to-lovers summer romance.” –Kirkus

« THE SUMMER LOVE STRATEGY is a bear hug in book form; it’s a love story within a love story. Intimacy takes so many beautifully complicated forms here. These are friends who care enough to carve out space for each other’s differences, even as they feel their way through shifting relationship dynamics. Stoeve explores what it means to find new ways to love a person you know by heart—and they tackle it with such specificity and care. This one’s going to make so many people feel seen. » –Becky Albertalli, New York Times bestselling author of Simon Vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Ray Stoeve is the author of the young adult novel Between Perfect and Real, which received a starred review and was a 2021 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, and Arden Grey. They also contributed to the young adult anthology Take the Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance. They received a 2016–2017 Made at Hugo House Fellowship and created the YA/MG Trans and Nonbinary Voices Masterlist, a database that tracks all books in those age categories written by trans authors about trans characters. When they’re not writing, they can be found gardening, making art in other mediums, or hiking their beloved Pacific Northwest.

THE RULES OF ROYALTY de Cale Dietrich

The Princess Diaries meets Red, White & Royal Blue in this delightful queer romance about two princes of neighboring nations who fall in love.

THE RULES OF ROYALTY
by Cale Dietrich
Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press, December 2024

American-raised Jamie has just found out that he’s the prince of a small country, and now he’s being thrown head first into the world of royalty with no idea how to navigate it. Erik, the reluctant “spare” prince of the country next door, who’s dealing with family drama of his own, agrees to show him the royal ropes after they meet at an event. In the following months, between archery lessons, balls, a ski trip, and even a royal wedding, they must find out what they each want from their future as royals, and if that future can include the two of them together.

Cale Dietrich is a YA devotee, lifelong gamer, and tragic pop punk enthusiast. He was born in Perth, grew up on the Gold Coast, and now lives in Brisbane, Australia. His debut novel, The Love Interest, is his first novel.

MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING de Zee Carlstrom

A loud, fast-paced debut that punches the road-trip novel right in the face.

MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING
by Zee Carlstrom
Flatiron, Spring 2025
(via Neon Literary)

The newly nameless narrator of MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING has rejected the gender binary, flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate job, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is drinking enough booze for two people.

A call from their mother with the news that their conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing, launches the narrator from Chicago to Deep Red Arkansas in a stolen car and their new bestie in tow a self-proclaimed « garbage goth » with her own emotional baggage (and someone on her tail). Along the way. they unpack the narrator’s childhood, one ruled by the whims of their father’s anger and paranoia, and a recent personal loss they would rather eat glass than face.

An unflinching interrogation of class rage, economic (im)mobility, the liberal/conservative divide, toxic masculinity, and the rot at the heart of capitalism, Make Sure You Die Screaming is the loud, funny, tragic, fucked-up enby road-trip novel of our times.

Zee Carlstrom is a creative director and writer from Illinois. They live in Brooklyn.

THE DISCO WITCHES OF FIRE ISLAND de R. B. Fell

THE DISCO WITCHES OF FIRE ISLAND is a smart, sexy story of love, romance, magic, and the power of community, sure to captivate readers of Alexis Hall, Casey McQuiston, and Madeline Miller.

THE DISCO WITCHES OF FIRE ISLAND
by R. B. Fell
Alcove Press, May 2025

It’s 1989, the height of the HIV/AIDScrisis, and Joe Agabian has hopped on the ferry to spend his first summer in Fire Island Pines, a popular beach destination for young gay men. Joe is grieving the death of his boyfriend Elliot, who died two years earlier from AIDS. Though Joe is HIV negative, he remains lost – in nearly every sense – and hopes spending the summer away from NYC will help him find his way.

He quickly finds himself enmeshed with a group of long-time locals, including an older couple – Howie and Lenny – who may or may not have mystical powers, and a gorgeous ferryman – Fergal – who can’t keep his eyes off Joe. When Joe begins seeing a mysterious figure – whom he refers to as Gladiator Man – around the island, Howie and Lenny grow fearful, certain Gladiator Man’s presence, which somehow only Joe can sense, is a harbinger of terrible things to come.

Howie and Lenny are longtime protectors of the island and its inhabitants, and that protection has never been more needed. But now that one member of their coven has fallen ill with AIDS, they aren’t strong enough to use their powers to full effect, and Joe is the one caught in the metaphorical crossfire.

Blair Fell, writing as R.B. Fell, writes and lives in New York City, where he has been an ASL interpreter for the Deaf since 1993. His acclaimed debut novel The Sign for Home was published by Simon & Schuster in 2022. Fell’s television work includes Queer as Folk and the Emmy Award-winning California Connected. He’s written dozens of plays, including the award-winning plays Naked Will, The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, and the downtown cult miniseries Burning Habits. His personal essays have appeared in HuffPost, Out, Daily News, and more.

WORK NIGHTS d’Erica Peplin

A wry, warm, and irresistible debut following a young queer woman who finds herself in a love triangle with an unobtainable intern and a quick-tempered musician, set between the sterile office of a newspaper and the intoxicating night scene of New York City, and pitched as Sally Rooney meets The Devil Wears Prada.

WORK NIGHTS
by Erica Peplin
Gallery, June 2025
(via Frances Goldin Literary Agency)

It’s 2015 and Jane Grabowski, a self-described “dumpy dyke,” is living in Bushwick and working in advertising at the nation’s most storied newspaper. By day, she is reluctantly dragged into a glamorous, precarious, and changing industry, and into the lives of a motley crew of office workers, who alternately horrify and delight her. By night, she goes out with the cool and flighty Madeline Navarro, an ostensibly straight, staggeringly pretty Guatemalan intern with an expensive lifestyle. Despite many signs to the contrary, it feels like Madeline might be the one—except her visa is about to run out.

Also, Jane keeps running into Addy, a temperamental, deeply moral, slightly uncool singer-songwriter. Something shifts, and Jane finds herself spiraling, terrifyingly, towards love. But Madeline’s feelings are shifting too, and it feels truly impossible—and maybe unnecessary—to choose. As small betrayals pile up, alongside the soulless dramas of work, Jane finds herself stuck and desperately unhappy. She’s determined to grow up, quit her job, and change her life. But the comforts of the known, and the thrill of the chase, keep pulling her back, until all her unmade decisions collide.

Wry, tender, and acutely attuned to the spiky intimacies of love, work, and friendship, Work Nights delves deep into the existential conundrums of finding your way in a cold, capitalist world—a world that is also occasionally alight with beauty and strangeness. It joins the small but growing cannon of novels examining the casualties of modern offices, from Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End to Halle Butler’s The New Me and Sarah Thankam Mathews’ All This Could Be Different, and writers like Kristen Arnett, Rachel Khong, Elif Batuman, and Sally Rooney, whose smart, offbeat protagonists are alert to the delusions of the world around them, though not always to their own.

Erica Peplin is a writer from Detroit, Michigan, now based in Brooklyn. Her short stories and essays have appeared in n+1, Joyland, The Millions, McSweeney’s, Autostraddle, The Brooklyn Rail, The Village Voice, Cosmonauts Avenue, Another Gaze, and Hobart. From 2015-16, she worked in the advertising department of the New York Times. Since then, she’s worked as a shipping clerk, a high school custodian, and a restaurant server.