YA LGBTQ+

YA LGBTQ+

Celebrate LGBTQ+ voices by reading young adult books written by contemporary LGBTQ+ authors!


Compiled by:
Fern S.
All Out

Saundra Mitchell
- Editor
(Young Adult Fiction - Y All)

Take a journey through time and genres and discover a past where queer figures live, love and shape the world around them. Seventeen young adult authors across the queer spectrum have come together to create a collection of beautifully written diverse historical fiction for teens.


Aristotle and Dante Discover Secrets of the Universe

Benjamin Alire Saenz
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Saenz)

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.


The Black Flamingo

Dean Atta
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Atta)

Michael is a multiracial gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he's navigated what it means to be Greek-Cypriot and Jamaican––but never quite feeling Greek or Black enough.


Can't Take That Away

Steven Salvatore
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Salvatore)

When Carey Parker, a genderqueer teen who dreams of being a diva like their hero Mariah Carey, is cast as the female lead in the school musical, they must fight against discrimination and injustice from their closed-minded school administration.


Cemetery Boys

Aiden Thomas
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Thomas)

Yadriel, a trans boy, summons the angry spirit of his high school's bad boy, and agrees to help him learn how he died, thereby proving himself a brujo, not a bruja, to his conservative family.


Cinderella is Dead

Kalynn Bayron
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Bayron)

Teen girls are now required to appear at the Annual Ball, where the men of the kingdom select wives based on a girl's display of finery. Sophia tries to flee the ball, and finds herself hiding in Cinderella's mausoleum. Together with Constance, the last known descendant of Cinderella, Sophia vows to bring down the king once and for all.


A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

Shaun David Hutchinson
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Hutchin)

Sixteen-year-olds Noa, DJ, and Jenny awake on a spaceship, unaware of how they got there or what is coming, but soon Noa and DJ are falling in love.


Darius the Great is Not Okay

Adib Khorram
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Khorram)

Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life.


Dark and Deepest Red

Anna-Marie McLemore
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Mclemor)

A pair of red shoes seal to Rosella Oliva's feet, making her dance uncontrollably. They draw her toward a boy who knows the dancing fever's history better than anyone: Emil, whose family was blamed for the fever five hundred years ago. But there's more to what happened in 1518 than even Emil knows, and discovering the truth may decide whether Rosella survives the red shoes.


Each of Us a Desert

Mark Oshiro
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Oshiro)

Xochitl is destined to wander the desert alone, her one desire: to share her heart with a kindred spirit. One night, Xo's wish is granted--in the form of Emilia. But when the two set out on a magical journey across the desert, they find their hearts could be a match--if only they can survive the nightmare-like terrors that arise when the sun goes down.


Elatsoe

Darcie Little Badger
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Littleb)

Elatsoe can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. The picture-perfect facade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family.


The Extraordinaries

TJ Klune
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Klune)

Nick would rather write fanfiction about the feats of heroism and romantic entaglements he imagines for the very real superheroes who inhabit his city. When he meets Nova City's biggest hero (and his biggest crush), however, he resolves to become a superhero himself.


Felix Ever After

Kacen Callender
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Callend)

Felix Love has never been in love, painful irony that it is. He desperately wants to know why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. He is proud of his identity, but fears that he's one marginalization too many-- Black, queer, and transgender. When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages-- Felix comes up with a plan for revenge.


The Henna Wars

Adiba Jaigirdar
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Jaigird)

Nishat doesn't want to lose her family, but she also doesn't want to hide who she is. Flávia is beautiful and charismatic, and Nishat falls for her instantly. Nishat has a decision to make: stay in the closet for her family, or put aside her differences with Flávia and give their relationship a chance.


I Hope You Get This Message

Farah Naz Rishi
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Rishi)

News stations across the country are reporting messages that Earth has been receiving from a planet--Alma--claiming to be its creator. In seven days Alma will hit the kill switch on their "colony" Earth. True or not, for teenagers Jesse Hewitt, Cate Collins, and Adeem Khan, the prospect of this ticking time bomb will change their lives forever.


I Wish You All the Best

Mason Deaver
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Deaver)

After coming out as nonbinary, Ben must leave home and goes to live with a sister and her husband to finish the last year of high school.


I'll Be the One

Lyla Lee
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lee)

Skye Shin has heard it all. Fat girls shouldn't dance. Wear bright colors. Shouldn't call attention to themselves. But Skye dreams of joining the glittering world of K-Pop, and to do that, she's about to break all the rules that society, the media, and even her own mother, have set for girls like her.


Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Malinda Lo
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lo)

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown.


Like a Love Story

Abdi Nazemian
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Nazemia)

It's 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing. Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He's terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he's gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media's images of men dying of AIDS.


The Lost Coast

Amy Rose Capetta
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Capetta)

Danny didn't know what she was looking for when she and her mother spread out a map of the United States and Danny put her finger down on Tempest, California. What she finds are the Grays: a group of friends who throw around terms like queer and witch like they're ordinary and everyday, though they feel like an earthquake to Danny.


The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea

Maggie Tokuda-Hall
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Tokudah)

A desperate orphan turned pirate and a rebellious imperial daughter find a connection on the high seas in a world divided by colonialism and threaded with magic.


Miss Meteor

Tehlor Kay Mejia, Anna-Marie McLemore
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Mejia)

A teen who secretly arrived with the meteor that gave her small hometown its name discovers that she is turning back into stardust and teams up with her best friend in an effort to secure her human existence by entering a local beauty pageant that has always been won by thin, blonde, white girls.


The Music of What Happens

Bill Konigsberg
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Konigsb)

Maximo offers to help a Jordan, a fellow student in high school, with the food truck that belonged to Jordan's deceased father, and which may be the only thing standing between homelessness for Jordan and his mom; the boys are strongly attracted to each other, but as their romance develops it is threatened by the secrets they are hiding--and by the racism and homophobia of those around them.


Pet
Pet

Akwaeke Emezi
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Emezi)

In a near-future society that claims to have gotten rid of all monstrous people, a creature emerges from a painting seventeen-year-old Jam's mother created, a hunter from another world seeking a real-life monster.


Ruinsong

Julia Ember
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Ember)

In a world where magic is sung, two young women from rival factions must work together to reunite their country, as they wrestle with their feelings for each other.


Running With Lions

Julian Winters
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Winters)

Sebastian Hughes should be excited about his senior year: His teammates are amazing, and he's got a coach who doesn't ask anyone to hide their sexuality. But when his estranged childhood-best-friend Emir Shah shows up at summer training camp, Sebastian realizes the team's success may end up in the hands of the one guy who hates him.


We Are Okay

Nina LaCour
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lacour)

After leaving her life behind to go to college in New York, Marin must face the truth about the tragedy that happened in the final weeks of summer when her friend Mabel comes to visit.


Wilder Girls

Rory Power
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Power)

It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her. It began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home.


You Should See Me In a Crown

Leah Johnson
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Johnson)

Liz Lighty has always done her best to avoid the spotlight in her small, wealthy, and prom-obsessed midwestern high school. Instead she has concentrated on her grades and her musical ability in the hopes that it will win her a scholarship to elite Pennington College, but when that scholarship falls through she is forced to turn to her school's scholarship for prom king and queen, which plunges her into the gauntlet of social media and leads her to discoveries about her own identity and the value of true friendships.


Graphic Novels

The Avant-Guards Vol. 1

Carly Usdin
(Graphic Novels - GN Avant Guards v.1)

As a transfer student to the Georgia O'Keefe College for Arts and Subtle Dramatics, former sports star Charlie is struggling to find her classes, her dorm, and her place amongst a student body full of artists who seem to know exactly where they're going.


Beetle and the Hollowbones

Aliza Layne
(Juvenile Graphic Novels - J-GN Layne Beetle And The Hollowbones)

Twelve-year-old goblin and witch-in-training Beetle enlists her former best friend, Kat Hollowbones, to help stop Kat's sorceress aunt from demolishing the mall where Beetle's friend Blob Ghost is trapped.


Bloom

Kevin Panetta
(Graphic Novels - GN Panetta Bloom)

Now that high school is over, Ari is dying to move to the big city with his band―if he can just persuade his dad to let him quit his job at their struggling family bakery. Ari meets Hector, an guy who loves baking as much as Ari wants to escape it. As they become closer, love is ready to bloom.


Gender Queer

Maia Kobabe
(Graphic Novels - GN 921 Kobabe Kob)

Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity--what it means and how to think about it--for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.


The Magic Fish

Trung Le Nguyen
(Graphic Novels - GN Trung Magic Fish)

Tié̂n enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It's hard to communicate with your parents, but for Tié̂n, he doesn't have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he's going through? Is there a way to tell them he's gay?


Roadqueen: Eternal Roadtrip to Love

Mira Ong Chua
(Graphic Novels - GN Chua Roadqueen Eternal Roadtrip To Love)

Leo's the hottest senior at Princess Andromeda Academy, and her adoring fangirls have one goal: beat her in a road race and win the chance to date her! But when a mysterious girl named Vega takes her motorcycle away, Leo finds her heart may have been stolen, too.


Snapdragon

Kat Leyh
(Juvenile Graphic Novels - J-GN Leyh Snapdragon)

Snap's town had a witch. But in reality, Jacks is just a crocks-wearing, internet-savvy old lady who sells roadkill skeletons online--after doing a little ritual to put their spirits to rest. But as Snap starts to get to know Jacks, she realizes that Jacks may in fact have real magic--and a connection with Snap's family's past.


Taproot: A Story About a Gardener and a Ghost

Keezy Young
(Graphic Novels - GN Young Taproot)

Blue is having a hard time moving on. He's in love with his best friend. He's also dead. Luckily, Hamal can see ghosts, leaving Blue free to haunt him to his heart's content. But something eerie is happening in town, and when Blue realizes Hamal's strange ability may be putting him in danger, Blue has to find a way to protect him.