Summer is in full swing, and it's the perfect time to sit back in the sun with a new book. Here are our most anticipated LGBTQ+ releases being published this month!
Starting with a bang (literally 😉) on the 1st of July, delve into the erotic world of the fae with The Apples Hung Like Stars by Ali Williams. You can expect a sapphic retelling of Tam Lin with plus size rep and a heroine with ADHD!
People have warned me away from the Golden Apple, that it's not a place for nice girls. But something draws me there anyway...to this club run by Dommes with magic at their fingertips.
Because I'm not as nice a girl as I seem. And when Cliodhna promises a night of exquisite pleasure, I'm ready to sign away my very soul in exchange.
Welcome to the Godstouched Universe, where the Gods interfere in the lives of mortals, magic leaks back into our world, and love conquers all. The Apples Hung Like Stars is a sapphic Tam Lin retelling.
On the 2nd of July comes Forbidden Love by Kristen Zimmer, a sapphic mafia romance.
She is your father’s deadliest rival. You’ve been taught to hate her. But what if you can’t resist her?
Jules
From the moment I learned my father was the head of the biggest crime family in Boston, I vowed I would never have anything to do with his “business.” Until Rowan.
When our eyes locked for the first time across that crowded room, her emerald eyes lit an unstoppable fire in me. And when she showed me the warm heart she’s hidden from the world, I knew I couldn’t live without her.
But there’s a twisted war between our rival families. Her father is taking out my loved ones like it’s a sport.
So, instead of running from their seedy underworld, I will stand and fight for her. Because now I finally understand what could drive a person to kill…
Rowan
At first, I just wanted to see if I could tempt the holier-than-thou daughter of my enemy, try the forbidden fruit. But Jules was nothing like the others. She made me work for it.
I’ve done bad, bad things as my father’s second-in-command. Things I’m not proud of. But she stripped all that guilt away.
I don’t have to watch my back with Jules. She is the only person who truly sees me. And I’m addicted.
But as the tension between our families reaches boiling point and more people get hurt, I know our time is running out. I’ll betray my own father to keep her safe…
But will it be enough?
Full of intense passion and irresistible desire, this wickedly steamy and gritty FF mafia romance is perfect for fans of Penelope Douglas, Sara Cate, J.T. Geissinger and Nicole Fox.
On the 3rd, travel to NYC with Shannon O'Connor's new sapphic, "FLETCHER-coded", second chance romance, Eras of Us, featuring a lesbian MC.
River:
The last person I ever expected to run into at the LULY concert was the former love of my life, Aspen Wheeler. She was a brand new lesbian artist, and at Madison Square Garden, an arena that must hold more than thousands the chance of us running into each other felt like one in a million.
But as she hugs me, all of my old feelings come rising to the surface. It’s like the last 4 years never happened, and I wonder what it would be like to stay in her arms forever.
Aspen:
Running into River at a LULY concert wasn’t on my list of possibilities, but when we hugged it was like no time had past. Which is how I ended up in her bed and waking up the next morning. We both try to play it off like it’s nothing, but I can’t be the only one feeling something. So when we have the chance to see each other again, of course I take it. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen with seeing my first love?
If you love FLETCHER, Sapphic romances, and second chances with your first love, then you’ll love this book!
Expect more fireworks than usual on the 4th! Sunset to Sunrise by Barbara Winkes promises an unmissable lesbian romance.
When ice meets ice, can passion melt away the pain?
Isabel Windsor is confident in her leadership qualities. When her bosses send her to a seminar at the International Leadership Institute for Women after a confrontation with a client, she sees it as an affront. She is determined to make it clear that she doesn’t need any help.
Grace McAllister has decided to make the best of a bad situation: After getting fired, she plans to start her own business, and hopes to make connections at the same institute. What she doesn’t expect is to run into a woman she has met before—Isabel.
Sparks fly—again—when Isabel and Grace try to navigate these complicated circumstances. Against the picturesque backdrop of Quebec City, they must decide whether they want to be enemies or allies in the cutthroat business world, and if there’s a future for them beyond another chance meeting.
(Sunset to Sunrise was previously published in the anthology Queen vs. Queen: She meets her Match)
Also releasing on the 4th, dive into YA enemies to lovers romance, Lover Birds, by Leanne Egan, featuring ADHD rep!
When Isabel Williams moves to Liverpool, she criticises seemingly everything in Eloise Byrne’s life – her city, her accent, her trademark boldness – so if, when she catches Isabel staring, Eloise feels her pulse race, it must be because they hate each other. It surely couldn’t be for any other reason, could it? Eloise needs to get her ADHD under control in time for A-Levels, but when she meets Isabel, school becomes the least of her concerns. What begins as outright contempt turns into an oddly satisfactory rivalry, but for their rivalry to shift further into romance, their relationship must withstand Isabel's classism, Eloise’s distrust, and whatever secrets their friends are hiding from them.
With a wonderful cast of characters, an irresistible romance, and an incredibly moving and powerful portrayal of ADHD, Lover Birds is an unmissable debut from an extraordinary new voice in YA fiction.
If dark fantasy and thriller with an achillean romance is more your vibe, try The Boy The Monsters Made by Ronan Graves, featuring schizophrenia representation, a pansexual MMC, a trans love interest, family with polyamorous parents, and characters over forty. This one releases on the 10th!
GRIFFIN THOUGHT THE MONSTERS ONLY LIVED IN HIS HEAD.
He was fine with that. In fact, it was far more preferable than his father sitting him down to talk about the regular visits from the things that go bump in the night and hearing him say “yeah bud, I see them too.”
The delicate fabric weaving Griffin’s sense of normalcy unravels when his best friend, Jude, is called upon to do the work of a fractured relic for apathetic gods: The Reapers.
SENTINEL WILLIAM “MOZ” MOSLEY is demon-host turned renowned demon-hunter, labelled a madman for storming from his wife’s sham funeral. His family are the only ones who believe she’s still alive until a flame from his past is drawn out to join the search. The thin line between the horrors of monsters and the evils of man is a visible distinction to them. Until the bodies begin to appear.
A string of grisly murders plague the restless capitol city, leaving both the Royal Sentry and Brightloch Police Department scrambling to solve them first. Haunted by visions of faces that shortly after turn up in the macabre crime scenes, Griffin knows that he owes it to the victims to find their killers. With a suspect list that includes an ancient demon of the crossroads and a band of Oracles gone rogue, Griffin and his family find themselves way in over their heads.
We can't wait to get our hands on Above us the Sea by Ania Card, out on the 11th!
Maybe when we looked away from it, it could only be for a fragmented moment. Maybe our gaze always returned, our eyes always finding the sea.
It's after a night in Cardiff's loudest gay bar that Toni first lays eyes on Gav, a retired Welsh boxer, and his boyfriend Karol, an aspiring Polish photographer. The trio soon falls into an intimate, ambiguous love triangle. After a tragic event at a beach in Swansea, the trio is ripped apart, and Toni escapes to London, becoming caught between a convenient, loveless relationship and an illicit, lustful affair. Lost halfway between the British future she has always wanted, and the Eastern European past she has been running from, Toni can only wonder where and with whom she really belongs.
Above Us the Sea is an ode to the tangled remains of lost loves and the imprints left by grieving souls, yearning for connection. This is a story of aching and emerging, intimacy and distance, set against an increasingly hostile landscape.
On the 17th, watch out for Loser of the Year by Carrie Byrd, a contemporary romance with a Jewish lesbian MC and a bisexual butch MC.
An enemies-to-lovers, opposites attract sapphic romance about daring to take a risk, even if it burns you.
Mattie Belman’s life has gone from dismal to desperate. After the loss of her acting career, her marriage, and her usual optimism, she’s back home teaching high school theater. Maybe it’ll be a fresh start.
St. Rita’s arrogant soccer coach Jillian Reed sees Mattie’s musical as an outrageous distraction for her champion players. When Jillian declares war, Mattie is far too stubborn to back down.
But as Mattie discovers there might be more to Jillian than spectacle, fire, and ego, she gets dangerously close to her iron-willed colleague. Can she avoid temptation? Or will the growing flame in Jillian’s dark eyes ignite them both?
Shepard DiStasio brings Bind You by Blood on the 22nd, a dark fantasy with a non-binary, chronically ill MC, trans characters, he/him lesbians, disabled characters, bi rep, and aro and ace rep.
Lose the weapon found again, and the world will pay the price.
Lose the boy they buried once, and Drake will lose their mind.
The Caranthian Mountains have finally welcomed home the last Theós; but Drake is broken and maimed, and the boy they lost fifty years ago has returned like a vengeful ghost intent on their damnation. With betrayal shadowing their every step, Drake vows to abandon their pursuit of revenge if only it means they can survive long enough to escape the frozen mountains; to return to the Sānctī.
But the sea of fate parts its tide for no godling. For at the end of the road lies Tolos: the crown jewel of the Delphinusian Empire, where nothing is as it seems, and cruelty reigns.
The dead roam amongst the living. Thousand-year old myths draw golden blood. The voice in Drake's head walks beside them while kingdoms stumble. Two ruinous queens blaze a path to hell. And if Drake doesn’t reckon with their reflection soon, they may just usher in the end of times.
The second book of the Sins of the Divine series, Bind You by Blood delves into the pursuit of justice against all reason, the marks we leave on those we love the most, and the ghosts whose footsteps we follow.
On July 23rd, get stuck in a time loop with YA speculative sapphic romance, Time and Time Again by Chatham Greenfield, which features disabled Jewish characters.
Phoebe Mendel has been living the same day for a month. On August 6th she fell asleep with a stomachache and woke up to find the space-time continuum broken. Ever since, she's been stuck living the same sweltering summer day over and over (and over and over) pancakes with Mom in the morning, Scrabble with Dad in the afternoon, and a constant, desperate search for answers on how to escape the time loop and make it to her appointment with a doctor who will take her irritable bowel syndrome seriously. It's the same thing day after day--until Phoebe's childhood crush Jess hits her with their car and comes crashing into the time loop, too.
Now stuck together, Jess convinces Phoebe to break out of her routine and instead use their days to have fun. With virtually no consequences, Phoebe and Jess can do whatever they want! From draining their bank accounts to snag concert tickets, to enacting (mostly) harmless revenge, to late-night road trips, Jess pulls Phoebe further and further out of her comfort zone--and deeper and deeper in love with Jess. But the more Phoebe falls, the more she must grapple with dreams of a future that may be impossible to reach.
Katy Haye is back with an MM pirate romance on the 24th. The Merchant and his Lout takes place in a queernormative world and surrounds a queer friendship group in the form of a pirate crew!
A touch-starved meets handsy-free-spirit MM pirate romance.
An easy job? Funny, they all start that way...
Ozzo and his fellow pirates aren’t averse to a little kidnap and ransom. But their victims don’t usually volunteer themselves.
Zakaria wants revenge. His parents just threw away everything he did for their family business and made his younger sister their heir. Fine. He’ll get kidnapped by pirates and they’ll soon see what a mistake they’ve made.
Except they don’t. When his family refuses to pay the ransom, Zakaria realises the danger he’s in. The pirates still need a payoff. If he’s not to be sold into slavery, he needs to make himself useful. Quickly. But it’s hard to think straight when irritatingly attractive pirate Ozzo keeps pushing him off-balance with his muscles and his grin and his gruff protectiveness that Zakaria never knew he wanted.
Zakaria wants to trust Ozzo to keep him safe, but he trusted his family and look where that left him. These people are pirates, and definitely not to be trusted – whatever his heart says.
And on July 27th, Running with the Wolf by Bryony Rosehurst drops in ebook. This paranormal shifter x witch romance follows sapphic characters running through Europe.
Beatrice Blackstone has always believed herself to be ordinary — until her first vision.
When she sees the death of someone else and feels their pain as though it’s her own, her grandmother reveals that she is a witch, and the chilling visions are the consequences of her coven being hunted.
The only way for Beatrice to stay safe as she explores her newly awakened magic is with werewolf and bodyguard-for-hire, Leighton Myers, at her side. But as the two are pursued through Europe in an attempt to track down Beatrice’s coven before the hunters, Beatrice soon discovers that Leighton has secrets of her own that may just endanger everyone. Will their developing feelings get in the way of what’s important, or will Beatrice find more than just magic in her strange new world?
Finally, The Blonde Dies First by Joelle Wellington is a YA horror/thriller featuring Black sapphics, and releases on the 30th.
A group of friends fight to choose their own fates in this trope-savvy, self-referential young adult thriller from the acclaimed author of Their Vicious Games, about a demonic force that acts according to horror movie rules in the spirit of the Scream movies.
Devon is always being left behind by her genius twin sister, Drew. At this point, it’s a fact of life. But Devon has one last plan before Drew leaves for college a whole year early—The Best Summer Ever. After committing to the bit a little too much, the twins and their chaotic circle of friends learn why you don’t ever mess with a Ouija board if you want to actually survive the Best Summer Ever, and soon find themselves being hunted down by…a demon?
But while there’s no mistaking the creeping, venomous figure is not from around here, their method doesn’t feel very demonic at all. In fact, it’s downright human—going after them in typical slasher movie kill order. And that means Devon, the blonde, is up first and her decade-long crush, Yaya, is the Final Girl who must kill or be killed to end the cycle.
Devon has never liked playing by anyone else’s rules though, not even a demon’s, and the longer this goes on, the more she feels Drew and Yaya slipping away from her even as she tries to help them all survive. Can they use their horror movie knowledge to flip the script and become the hunters instead of the hunted? Or will their best summer ever be their last?
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