I read a lot of queer young adult books and as a result, frequently get asked for recommendations. There are about a million booklists out there (I've used many of them myself) but so many include books that I would never, ever recommend to an actual human queer and/or trans person. Many more are full of books that are so-so or even pretty good, but I wanted to make a list that is only made up of books I absolutely, completely, totally love. The books I can't stop talking about even when I'm not being asked for recommendations. Which means this is a kind of short list. I'll add to it as I fall in love with more. Including very casual and probably not very useful micro reviews. In no particular order.

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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
- Benjamin Alire Sáenz (2012)

​Where do I even start with this one? If you know me, you’re probably already sick of hearing me talk about how much I love this book. Set in the late 80s in Texas, this one’s about two boys trying to figure out what it means to grow up, be Mexican, fall in love, and watch the rain (among other things). Sáenz is a poet and every corner of this novel shines with his poetic sensibility—it’s sparse, sweet, meandering, and captivating, all at once. IT’S PERFECT, okay? Actually, I do have one minor critique that we can discuss once you’ve read the book. Which you should go do immediately. Heads up for some violence and homophobia, including very upsetting transphobic violence (that happens entirely offscreen. I guess this is kind of a spoiler but I’m over violence being saved as a plot twist so I don’t care; now you’re spoiled). Also featuring unbearable tenderness and true love. Even just writing this tiny paragraph has made me so excited about this book that I might have to go read it again right now. 

Two Boys Kissing 
- David Levithan (2013)

​One of my go-to’s. Told from the perspective of a generation that died from AIDS-related illness and featuring an interweaving cast of characters in an assortment of situations that involve kissing, not kissing, breaking Guinness World Records of kissing, wishing you were kissing—that sort of thing. It’s sweetly overwrought in that perfect David Levithan way while still facing some difficult realities, so heads-up for some suicide ideation and the inevitable homophobia (the latter primarily occurs offscreen). Including a wide and wonderful variety of characters from different cultural and racial backgrounds in a no-big-deal kind of way, despite what one might think from the cover. Featuring my favourite depiction of a gay trans kid in YA lit—not like there’s a lot of competition but still—though we don’t get to spend as much time with him as I’d like. Never enough time with the gay trans kids! Be prepared for some delicious overstated poeticisms and a relentless search for hope. Also to fall in love, if you like that sort of thing. 

Boy Meets Boy
- David Levithan (2003)

I read this when I was sixteen, approximately sixteen times (okay, probably more). In 2003, it was the first queer YA book I’d seen that was actually a love story with a happy ending. In fact it was the first queer YA love story with a happy ending to come onto the scene, period. Like, it was initially described as a fantastical and utopian novel because the place in which it’s set—which is fictional—actually supports gay people. The Boy Scouts in this town went rogue when the larger Scouting organization decided it didn’t like gay people; they left and became the Joy Scouts instead. Stuff like that. Never mind that there’s a major character still living in regularville and experiencing homophobia throughout the entire novel—it’s still a totally unrealistic imagining of a world that could never be, according to the people who officially review books. WHATEVER. All I know is that this book is super sappy in a way that is best appreciated through a teenage mindset, that it made me dream of queer love coming true (always with the relentless hope from David Levithan), and is essentially the reason I wanted to write YA. That said, it treats its trans characters as larger-than-life forces of super drama, super style, and super sass. And also kind of super sweetness, so it’s a bit complicated. 

Skim
- Mariko Tamaki & Jillian Tamaki (2008)

Witchcraft, teen goths, the early 90s, explorations of being mixed-race and fat, snappy comebacks, beautiful and haunting drawings: what more do you want? No, seriously—what? I’ve read this graphic novel too many times to count now and there’s always something new to discover in each reading. Skim is a skeptic Wiccan who’s dabbling in unrequited feelings (for her hippie English teacher) and all the accompanying confusion and heartbreak. There’s a lot of back-biting and popularity contests happening in her world but there’s also unexpected connection, friendship and maybe even love. Heads up for a plot that unravels from the central point of a minor character’s offscreen suicide. Let me say a few key things one more time: witchcraft, teen goths, gays. 

My Heartbeat
- Garret Freymann-Weyr (2002)

A bizarre and enchanting read. The premise is confusing and kind of uncomfortable: fourteen-year-old Ellen is in love with her older brother’s best friend; Link and James (the brother and the best friend) are full of tension and un-talked-about love for each other, but then James falls for Ellen too and things get…complicated. Set in an affluent New England community, so there’s a lot of frequenting art galleries, discussing therapy, planning for college, and disappointing your parents. I like it very much for Ellen’s voice, which is original, naïve, curious, and incredibly intuitive. Besides which, though no one ever mentions the word bisexuality, it offers a beautiful and quiet exploration of bisexual identity and experience. Twelve (or so) years after first reading this, I continue to be drawn in by how characters in totally different places in their lives find connection with each other without ever trying to be somewhere other than exactly where they’re at. A remarkable thing.

I'll Give You the Sun
- Jandy Nelson (2014)

Okay, so you like art? You have feelings? You once had a feeling about the ocean and/or another human? Cool, you should probably read this book. Alternating perspectives between twins and taking a giant leap through time halfway through (leaving much unsaid in the middle), this tackles familial ghosts, loss, creation, destiny, magic, love—just the little things. Set in a surfing town somewhere in California, everything about this book feels sun-kissed and briny and lush. One twin is a painter and the other a sculptor (more or less; real life is messier than these simple categories) and as we switch between their perspectives, we also switch between seeing the world through their art forms. Like, Noah (THE GAY ONE) actually describes things he’s seeing as painting titles, so basically the imagery is out of control. Also the feelings. Totally out of control.

Ash
- Malinda Lo (2009)

Malinda Lo is the genius behind the amazing blog Diversity in YA and maintains another blog on her own website that is your new go-to directory for anything you ever wanted to know about queer and/or POC representation in YA lit. She also writes incredible novels because she’s a generous and giving human angel. Ash is a fairytale, a queer and magical Cinderella story (literally, it’s a retelling of Cinderella). At its heart, it’s about grief and love—and the intersection between the two. Lo’s writing always feels to me like this delicate, deliberate winter bloom; it can be a little cold and removed and then it bursts into colour all of a sudden and you can’t look away. Expect all the usual difficult things that happen in fairytales and be sure to also expect the unexpected—the queer, the quiet, the sideways magic.

Huntress
- Malinda Lo (2011)

If you were wondering, Huntress is even gayer than Ash, as well as sharper, colder, and stronger. Set in the distant past before the events of Ash in the same somewhat-fantastical-fairytale-mythic version of China (sort of, in that fairytale way), Huntress follows a classic quest journey, full of running and jumping and fighting and sleeping outside by a fire and being gay. In this world, it’s no big deal to be gay, just like it’s no big deal to be a badass female fighter, so there’s lots of space to explore the actual complexity of real feelings and relationships. Did I mention that Malinda Lo is a genius? 

Hard Love
- Ellen Wittlinger (1999)

This one’s been a companion of mine since I was in high school. Sure, some pieces of it now feel a little dated, but the underlying wrestle with unrequited love is basically always relatable (unfortunately). In this case, a straight cis dude falls for an awesome, brazen lesbian. I’ve always loved how this book complicates queerness through how tenderly it treats both Gio and Marisol's friendship, as well as their own agency and anger with one another. Plus, it’s all about zine culture from pre-Internet days. Includes ruminations on class, race, and family (Marisol is Puerto Rican, adopted, and raised in a pretty affluent family; she’s got her sexuality all sorted but is trying to figure everything else out). I return to this one whenever I want to remember how to honour a multitude of feelings toward someone. And when I want to give myself credit for how challenging it can be to hold all those feelings—some contradictory—at once. Bittersweet in all the necessary ways.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post
- Emily M. Danforth (2013)

Painfully realistic and set in 1990s rural Montana (so definitely dominated by white small town characters), this book is for you if you love slow wanders through hot summer weather and incredibly articulate, tender and observant protagonists. There is literally a lot of wandering around and describing the weather, with the best and smartest words possible. A lot of time elapses throughout this novel, which is very long and twists in surprising and strange ways, including spending the entire second half at a degaying program. Think But I’m a Cheerleader except not funny or satire or campy or, like, fake, unfortunately. Many very sad and hard things happen in this book and there is some seriously heavy digging into the legacy of homophobia that Christianity can bequeath to individuals, communities, and culture at large. The writing is fantastic—dense, vivid, and languid simultaneously. Plus there’s just great lesbian greatness happening in this story. I picked this one up in Powell’s Books in Portland and then took a night train down to Oakland and read the entire thing instead of sleeping a wink (story of my life).

Fans of the Impossible Life
- Kate Scelsa (2015)

I picked this up randomly at the library and was blessed to discover that my gift for grabbing unlabeled and absolutely brilliant queer fiction off the stacks remains as strong as ever. If we were doing a facilitated check-in and had to name our superpowers, that would be mine; I’ve always been able to select great gay stuff from the library shelves without any research or even rainbow stickers. I have queerly magnetized fingers. Anyway, this book does everything I love and more—it’s clever, so poignant I spent a lot of time crying, and it doesn’t take the easy way out. Three protagonists, three points-of-view (we move from first person to second person to third person, depending on the character we’re following), three points of entry into a complex, queer and lifesaving set of friendships. Not to mention it’s rife with art, fashion, and great conversation. There’s so much going on here: mental health struggles (including living through being institutionalized), mixed-race identity, surviving the foster care system, finding your voice. One of the most nuanced, multi-layered and touching YA books I’ve ever read. 

Wonders of the Invisible World
- Christopher Barzak (2015)

Ghosts, time travel, curses, family secrets, seriously swoon-worthy gay kisses (etc.); this book has it all. Its central premise of storytelling as an act of magic is executed so well that it almost becomes a bit meta. Read it and you’ll see what I mean. Kind of slow to start but once you’re in, you are in—hold on and don’t let go. My hope is that this book is the start of a new world of queer YA: sure, they deal with “the gay thing” and have to consider possible homophobia from the people around them, but all that takes a backseat to the actual romance, which is terribly sweet and inspiring and makes the jaded and cold-hearted believe in love once again. And the romance itself weaves seamlessly into the larger plot, which sees Aiden and Jarrod chasing ghosts through layers of time and space. Barzak delves into how family inheritance—the good, the bad, the destructive, the guilty—affects us throughout generations and through our bodies. It’s very slightly spooky; enough that I had to read it in the daytime but not so much that I got nightmares later (since everything gives me nightmares I think this is a pretty good barometer for the scaredy-cats). Magic all around. 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
- Stephen Chbosky (1999)

This was a dusty library find when I first read it. Many years have passed since then and it’s become so talked about (not to mention turned into a big-name feature film) that it almost seems silly to include it on this list. It’s starting to feel a little overdone—that whole infinite reference—but it also remains a gorgeous, truthful and challenging read that still tugs at the ol’ heartstrings. An epistolary novel (meaning it’s written as a set of letters), this one’s set in the early 90s amongst a subculture of Rocky Horror fanatics, mix-tape makers, and literary dreamers. Major heads-up for big trauma around abuse, plus a whole lot of internalized homophobia and some resulting violence from that. I fell right into love with the gay character, Patrick, but also with the way in which Charlie, the protagonist, approaches his friend’s sexuality—he’s so open in his desire to give love and support that he takes on a kind of queerness himself. The book you bond over with sensitive and artistic strangers when you’re seventeen (and then those strangers turn into friends for life).

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
- Becky Albertalli (2015)

I read this very recently all in one go. It was after midnight and I regret nothing. This book has the band of nerds—a wonderful mix of art geeks, the sexually nervous, and Harry Potter fanfic readers—that you’ve been waiting for because they feel so real it’s actually embarrassing. There are a lot of side characters swirling around Simon (or Jacques, his email alter ego) and somehow they all manage to be distinct, multi-dimensional and memorable. Some advanced writing skills right there. The main plot is a classic boy-meets-boy-online-and-falls-in-love-by-email-until-real-life-intervenes twisting around a school production of Oliver! (just for the musical theatre weirdos). Despite immediately and accurately guessing the secret identity of the mysterious cyber love interest Blue (I’m really good at those kinds of guessing games, what can I say), I loved every second of reading this book and turned the pages very rapidly to find out what happened next. Includes complex explorations of many different kinds of friendship, authentic and understated representation of race in suburban Atlanta, and so much geekery it’s hard to keep up. Funny, moving, and any other word you want to hear that will convince you to read this right now.

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HONOURABLE MENTION

George
- Alex Gino (2015)

This is an honourable mention because it’s not YA at all; the main character is in the fourth grade so it’s very much a middle grade novel. But it is literally the only book with a trans character that I love. There’s very little trans lit for kids and teens to begin with and most of what’s out there is written by cis folks. Plus, most of it is totally painful, to be honest. There’s not a single YA book featuring a trans character that I would recommend without some very big disclaimers. Admittedly, there are probably like three that I haven’t read and maybe they’re all perfect. Unlikely, but possible. In the meantime, there’s George. Guaranteed to give you feelings and make you want to cheer. If you can quote any parts of Charlotte’s Web, you’ll love this book even more. Absolutely required reading for middle grade and anyone who was ever young once (that means you).