LGB fiction for young people

[BookIdeas]

I'm deliberately posting this on this thread, not the Children's Books one (yet).

Has anyone any recommendations for well-written YA/teenage fiction (both sexes) that is very supportive of young people questioning their sexuality or identifying as LGB? Ideally it will have no mention of TQ+ etc. stuff or, if it does, is clearly critical of gender ideology. Does anyone know of any reading lists? I can't find anything online - everything seems to end up signposting trans.

I'm asking because I may be in a position to recommend books to young people in a non-school setting and my knowledge of YA LGB fiction is limited. I want to do some background reading myself. Thanks.

The Percy Jackson Heroes of Olympus series includes a main character coming to terms with being gay. I won't vouch for his other series though.

The Skandar series (AF Steadman) includes some LGB characters, treating the relationships in a wonderfully normalised way. It may be aimed at the lower end of your age range, although I quite enjoyed them myself.

I’m not really in the YA fiction loop but one book that occurred to me, which I read as a teenager, was Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, which is a semi-autobiographical story of growing up as a lesbian. It came out in the eighties, before the TQ+ was a thing.

The Magnus Chase stories (the Norse Percy Jackson equivalents, same author) have a daughter of Loki who shifts between male and female with a trans-y vibe, maybe avoid those.
And definitely avoid the Strangeworlds series (a very female they/them author) who has the main male character out of the blue remove a binder 🙄

Heartstopper Alice os(e)man got my dyslexic teenager reading. He is questioning his gay sexuality. Although there is T involved the books are very much about friendships of the ND/ non-popular kids.

Thanks. These suggestions are very helpful, and the warnings are as useful as the recommendations. I'd forgotten about Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. It's been years since I read that. I suppose going back to books published before TQ+ became mainstream may be one way of standing a better chance of selecting LGB without the T etc, although it's not completely failsafe.

My daughter likes the Heartstopper books. They seem very popular in general with her age group (13).

I don’t know how well-known it is in the UK, but in the US at least, Annie On My Mind is pretty much the classic YA lesbian novel.

Most YA “gay books” written before 2005 or so are solely focused on LGB with no trans content.

I've read all of Oseman's books but this was before I'd really become aware of the magnitude of the impact of gender ideology. Some of her other novels are very TQ+ focussed and I need to re-read them to check if any are ok. I agree that the Heartstopper ones are very strong on LGB representation and friendship. As far as I know there's nothing else quite like them.

The Netflix series is slightly different because it makes 'Elle's' storyline more important and it looks unrealistic with a 15 yr old boy 'transitioning' alongside an unproblematic move to an all-girls school, participating as a girl at sports day, having a supposed heterosexual relationship (but imo a gay one) and sleeping in the girls' hotel room on the school trip to France. The closure of GIDS, the WPATH files, the CASS report, the tightening of government guidance for schools etc. have all happened since the series was filmed. It will be interesting to see how things are managed in the 3rd series, due to be released this October, and how Oseman writes the final book (and script if a 4th series is commissioned). She's apparently writing the book now.

As a 90s schoolgirl I remember reading a 70s American novel called Happy Endings Are All Alike (about high school lesbians). Always useful to have friends with older sisters with more interesting bookshelves.

I probably need to point out it contains a graphic rape scene (certainly no trigger warnings back in the day).

Thanks for this recommendation. I hadn't heard of it before.

The reason I wrote that earlier LGB books may not be completely failsafe was because I realised that Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series, aimed at an adult audience, was very affirming of the idea of 'TQ+' although the first six books (which I read in the 1980s) pre-dated gender ideology taking off big-time. I wasn't sure how widespread this acceptance of TQ+ was or if it was just focussed on places like San Francisco, or if had started to creep into fiction being written for young people too. Maybe Tales of the City was a unique series of books, a bit like Heartstopper is now.

Books I've enjoyed that haven't been mentioned here so far include The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar (and lots of her other books) Alex in Wonderland (and lots of other books) by Alex James Green, Aristotle and Dante discover the Secrets of the Universe, Gwen and Art are not in Love, pretty much everything by Becky Albertalli, I kissed Sharra Wheeler and Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, Afterlove by Tanya Byrne, Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Melinda Lo, More than This by Patrick Ness. Also Cinderella is Dead, The Atlas Six, They Both Die at the End, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, and Six of Crows.

None of the books I've mentioned are gender critical, but the stories focus on characters who are lesbian, gay or bisexual.

K D Edwards' modern fantasy 'Tarot Sequence' series is hugely enjoyable, and might make a nice change from the current glut of RW&RB copycats.

@Scribl - I'm in the middle of the audiobook of the second book in that series right now!

Maybe more for older kids than YA but I read 'boy meets hamster' by birdie Milano fairly recently which is about gay holiday romances (boys though from memory I think there is a female best friend who is bi). I don't remember anything relating to gender identity - I probably wasn't specifically looking out for it though. Wouldn't take long to read it and check, it's not very long.

I think I would have noticed if it was full of references to gender identity though as I was reading it to see if I thought it was suitable for my son.

Dianne Duane's fantasy series "The Door Into ..." (Fire/Shadow/Sunset/Starlight) is great for this. It's set in a world where bisexuality is the assumed default (although no one is criticised or shamed if they have a preference one way or the other) and there's no hangups or fussiness about sexuality, masturbation or polyamory being in any way dirty or wrong. However the main plots of the books are nothing to do with sex/sexuality, the plots are more about epic struggles and battles and the fight between good and evil (plus plenty of dragons). The other stuff is just there as background and occasional bits of character development.

I absolutely adore the series (and the author's a sweet-heart as well - if you're not on the Patreon, I'd strongly recommend) but if the brief is books with no T content then it may be that Laine is a potential no-go from the last couple of books?

OP, it's a gorgeous series with some topics incredibly well-handled and an amazing world-build but there is a non-binary teen in the later books.

I actually don't have any issue with how the author presents this and handles it. They're a very much 'older teen' , already working, it's a slow exploration of the idea, and there's zero mention of anything else re surgery, drugs etc. I do also appreciate that the author specifically shows surrounding characters, including immediate family, not getting pronouns bang on every time and this being seen as normal and not a huge great thing.

It's strongly written, with time spent showing evolving relationships, including a supporting character who is openly happy to take a relationship at the pace his partner needs with no pressure. It's relatively rare in a gay romance novel for them not to jump straight into bed but there's only one mildly graphic sex scene in three books and a couple of novellas so far.

If you're going to be recommending to teens, I'd read first to check your own comfort level. There are some definitely adult topics and themes in the books - one of the lead character's background has some very dark moments, there's discussion of prostitution in the 2nd book, and the other lead swears A LOT :-) - but they are well worth reading and there are some genuinely lovely moments, including one of the best truly platonic (and staying that way) male/male relationships I've seen depicted.

In a similar vein - Black Dog Blues by Rhys Ford and its follow ons may be a good fit.

Annie On My Mind is just the sweetest book. Liza, who goes to an exclusive private school in New York, meets Annie, a cab driver’s daughter, when they’re both wandering around the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their friendship grows deep very quickly and they realize they have romantic feelings for each other, but they don’t feel they can tell anyone because it’s 1982. The crisis comes when Liza is feeding her teachers’ cats while they’re out of town, realizes she and Annie now have a private place to have sex, and another teacher unexpectedly arrives at the house and sees Annie half-naked and running to hide. It looks pretty bleak for a while, but has a happy ending that always leaves me a little teary.

I graduated from high school in 2004, and I don’t remember much trans content in YA books until Julie Anne Peterson’s Luna that same year. (I read pretty much all the YA gay books in the public library through maybe 2008.) One character I remember is BJ in Rainbow Road (2006), who is sort of interesting in hindsight. BJ is living “stealth” and is discovered to be MtF trans when s/he refuses to get changed in the girls’ locker room - very different from these days!

I have more recommendations, but I wonder if teenagers today might find them dated. Do you still want them?

@ginnybag Ah, yes, of course you are absolutely right. I was thinking of main characters. I think it says a lot about the series that I simply want to hang out with everyone in it!

Red, White, and Royal Blue doesn’t have much trans content, but what it does have is very TRA-supportive.

I know a lot of people liked that book, but personally, I couldn’t stand it. It has this childishly black-and-white view of American politics - Democrats angels! Republicans demons! - and the characters, who are supposed to be in their early twenties, talk like they’re 15. Also, Casey McQuiston is a nonbinary-identifying they/them, and edited her book in subsequent editions because readers told her they felt “triggered” and “unsafe” by a brief reference to Israel. 🙄

And she doesn’t understand the structure of the British monarchy, either. The back cover, at least of the edition I read, referred to the fictional queen’s grandson as the Prince of Wales. 😱

That's how I 'read' the series too. (Writing is my day job, so listening to audio stops me from mentally editing😅)

I cannot wait for more, and I am not usually a YA/NA fan.

#TeamBrand

(Here ends the derail!)

Edit: Luna is by Julie Anne Peters, not Julie Anne Peterson.

Flying Tips for Flightless Birds by Kelly McCaughrain is a nice book with a couple of young gay characters. I don't remember anything TQ+ related.

Flying Tips for Flightless Birds amzn.eu/d/hHxaJ41

More thanks to everyone for these recommendations.

@UnimaginableWindBird & @Scribl I'm another avid audiobook listener and since I've got heaps of spare credits atm, I've added the first Tarot novel, and Flying Tips for Flightless Birds to my audio library. UWB, thanks for the Patrick Ness suggestion too. I loved the Chaos Walking trilogy (on audio again) so I'll give More Than This a go. I knew that Ness was gay but, out of curiosity, have just Googled his name together with 'trans', and he was sounding very much in favour. I think it makes sense for me to to keep an eye on where authors stand on TQ+ ideology even if their books are not obviously promoting it, although of course their beliefs may change.

@YankSplaining - more titles, even 'dated' ones, would be great. I suppose it would make sense for me to stick to books still in print, or available as ebooks or audio, but I'd be interested anyway, and other people on here might be too. I've ordered a s/h copy of Annie.