Top Ten Tuesday #215

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these, I finally got to meet up with my friend Ellie, who I haven’t seen in almost two years over the weekend which was awesome & I’m getting my final grades for Uni tomorrow so I’m kind of freaking out about that, but fingers crossed everything will be okay!

Anyway, it’s Tuesday, so I have another Top Ten Tuesday for you all, courtesy of Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week we’re meant to be talking about our Unpopular Bookish Opinions, but honestly I don’t think I have that many? I could think of about three, and since that’s not really enough for a TTT, I decided to change the topic. Since it’s Pride Month and we don’t have any Pride themed prompts, I thought I’d share 10 LGBTQ+ books by LGBTQ+ authors. Since I couldn’t come up with 10 that I have read, I’m sharing 5 that I’ve read and 5 that I want to read (and if you guys have any recs for me, please leave them in the comments), so here we go: (I didn’t want to out anyone, so I’ve only chosen authors that I know have spoken about their sexuality online).

Books By LGBTQ+ authors that I’ve read:

1. Timekeeper Trilogy-Tara Sim

This is honestly one of my favourite fantasy trilogies out there, when you read a lot of YA fantasy, it’s difficult to find anything that feels new, but this series definitely did. It’s alternate Victorian era, steampunk, with a great romance between clock mechanic Danny and clock spirit Colton. Also Tara Sim has a way of crushing your heart that I’ve only ever found with my very favourite authors.

2. Shades of Magic Trilogy-VE Schwab

Anyone who has been following this blog for any length of time in the past three years knows how much I love this series. It’s pretty much everything I love about fantasy tied up in one book, a world that really sucks you in, a stabby female lead, a male lead who gets frequently exasperated by the girl’s antics, but secretly loves them and brilliant sibling relationships. It also has two great romances, one of which is a m/m romance that is just adorable.

3. Ace of Shades/King of Fools-Amanda Foody

Amanda Foody’s Shadow Game series has several main LGBTQ+ characters, & I love that it’s so normal in the world she’s created, there’s no homophobia, the LGBTQ+ characters are all allowed to just be, which I think is really great. Plus the Shadow Game series is just really great, there are so many awesome women (yay!), so many brilliant twists and turns & the world that she’s created, the 1920s-esque, fantasy Atlantic City, is just really cool!

4. The Gentleman’s Guide To Vice and Virtue-Mackenzi Lee

Yay for inclusive historical fiction! I definitely want to see more of this, so if you guys know of any other historical fiction which features LGBTQ+ characters then please let me know. This is my current read, and I’m nearly done with it, and I LOVE IT SO MUCH. Monty and Percy are such adorable dorks who love each other so much and won’t admit their feelings and I’m here for this!

5. For A Muse of Fire-Heidi Heilig

Jetta, the main character of this book is queer, biracial and mentally ill, which is something that is sadly not seen very often in books. She has the power to bind the souls of the dead to puppets, which is pretty darn awesome and the world, which is a combination of Asian cultures and Colonial French, works really well.

Books By LGBTQ+ authors on my TBR:

6. The Devouring Gray-Christine Lynn Herman

This is one of my most anticipated reads of the year, it was compared to The Raven Cycle and Stranger Things, which I think could make for a very cool combination and it just sounds wonderfully creepy and eerie, which is one of my favourite things. Two of the main characters are also bisexual, which is great and I follow Christine on Twitter and think she’s great, so I’m hoping for good things from this book.

7. Reign of The Fallen-Sarah Glenn Marsh

Honestly I was pretty hooked when I saw the cover of this one (it’s gorgeous!)  and then the synopsis just sealed it for me, a bisexual necromancer who is fighting to stop zombies from taking over her world? Yup, sign me up! This is on my TBR list for this year and I cannot wait to read it.

8. The Lady’s Guide To Petticoats and Piracy-Mackenzi Lee

Having almost finished The Gentleman’s Guide, I am ridiculously excited for this one because I love Felicity so much! I also don’t think I’ve ever read about an asexual character in a historical setting, so that is also super cool.

9. This Is Where It Ends-Marieke Nijkamp

I was really excited for this book before it came out and then I haven’t really heard all that much about it since. I bought it at YALC last year, so I’m hoping to get to it at some point, but all I really know about it is that it definitely has LGBTQ+ rep in it and that it’s about a school shooting.

10. Vengeful-VE Schwab

I really can’t wait to read Vengeful, I loved Vicious so much when I read it last year, but I just didn’t have time to read Vengeful and I’ve heard so much good stuff about it since then, that the women are the focus of this book and it has Victor being confirmed as canon asexual and I just can’t wait to get back to this world and these characters.

So that’s it for my list this week. I’ve definitely read more books by LGBTQ+ authors in the last few years than I did before, but I know I need to read more, so if you have any recommendations for me, then please share them in the comments! Have you read any of these? Did you like them? Let me know in the comments!

That’s all for this week, next week we’re talking about our Most Anticipated Releases For The Second Half of the Year, so July-December, which is always a super fun list to do. In the meantime, I should have a review of Gentleman’s Guide, and hopefully a Jo Talks post coming up sometime this week, so keep an eye out for those!