Classics Gone Queer

LOVESICK FALLS

by Julia Drake

This book has a fairy-tale feel that only the muggy and mysterious days of summer contain. I’m dubbing it the SUMMER YEARNING novel. It’s chlorine-scented hair. Rips in your jean shorts from hopping fences. Sunscreen and sunburn. Get ready for queer summer love! AND friendship—after all, this book is like a friendship bracelet you never want to cut off!

This queer take on As You Like It features first loves, friend breakups and madcap mix-ups, from award-winning author Julia Drake.

Celia Gilbert is the perfect friend—loyal, trustworthy, and committed to mending her best friends’ broken hearts.
 
She’s the reason the trio is spending the summer in Lovesick Falls, the idyllic little town where Touchstone’s sort-of-uncle’s cabin was waiting to be house-sat by three unsupervised (but totally responsible) teenagers.
 
After all, Celia, Ros, and Touchstone have been best friends since childhood. Sure, Celia is in love with Ros, and Touchstone was once in love with Celia — but that’s the beauty of a place like Lovesick Falls. If you fell in love, you could fall out.
 
Unless you can change the other person’s mind.

They started the summer closer than ever. Will living together tear them apart?

EMMETT

by L. C. Rosen

This has to be one of my all-time favorite covers! It’s giving Clueless. I’m obsessed with any Jane Austen retelling (Emma in this case), and with the hilarious L. C. Rosen. If you’re looking for a read with laughter AND heart, look no further!

Emmett Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence and had lived nearly eighteen years in the world with very little to distress or vex him.
 
Emmett knows he’s blessed. And because of that, he tries to give back: from charity work to letting the often irritating Georgia sit at his table at lunch, he knows it’s important to be nice. And recently, he’s found a new way of giving back: matchmaking. He set up his best friend Taylor with her new boyfriend and it’s gone perfectly. So when his occasional friend-with-benefits Harrison starts saying he wants a boyfriend (something Emmett definitely does NOT want to be), he decides to try and find Harrison the perfect man at Highbury Academy. 
 
Emmett’s childhood friend, Miles, thinks finding a boyfriend for a guy you sleep with is a bad idea. But Miles is straight, and Emmett says this is gay life – your friends, your lovers, your boyfriends – they all come from the same very small pool. That’s why Emmett doesn’t date – to keep things clean. He knows the human brain isn’t done developing until twenty-five, so any relationship he enters into before then would inevitably end in a breakup, in loss. And he’s seen what loss can do. His mother died four years ago and his Dad hasn’t been the same since. 
 
But the lines Emmett tries to draw are more porous than he thinks, and as he tries to find Harrison the perfect match, he learns that gifted as he may be, maybe he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to love. 
 
Modern and very gay, with a charmingly conceited lead who is convinced he knows it all, and the occasional reference to the classic movie Clueless, Emmett brings you lush romance all while exploring the complexities of queer culture—where your lovers and friends are sometimes the same person, but the person you fall in love with might be a total surprise.

ASH

by Malinda Lo

This is a top-tier book for me. You may know Malinda Lo from her book Last Night at the Telegraph Club. In this novel, she takes the classic Cinderella and turns it on its head- in the best way possible! It’s evocative, unforgettable, and just plain gorgeous. A book I wish I had read when I was younger!

The haunting, romantic lesbian retelling of Cinderella and modern queer classic by award-winning author Malinda Lo–now with an introduction by Holly Black, a letter from the author, a Q&A, and more!

In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed by grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Their friendship, as delicate as a new bloom, reawakens Ash’s capacity for love–and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.

Entrancing and empowering, Ash beautifully unfolds the connections between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

MISMATCHED

by Anne Camlin, Isadora Zeferino

“A chaotically queer retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma.” —Alice Oseman, creator of Heartstopper.

UMMMM, the queer graphic novel queen has spoken, y’all! I LOVE THIS COLORFUL AND CHAOTIC BOOK! It’s sweet as candy! It’s Emma! But with social media! More makeup! And OH SO QUEER!

A teen social media star learns he can’t control everything in this delicious, queer graphic novel adaptation that relocates Jane Austen’s Emma to a modern-day high school in Queens, New York.

Evan Horowitz has it all: beauty, brains, and a not-so-secret flair for matchmaking! An Insta influencer with a talent for makeup and a taste for romance, he’s no stranger to playing cupid for those hopelessly clueless in finding love.

Evan is obsessed with three things in life: makeup, social media, and matchmaking! When he’s not influencing his Instagram followers or ruling over his school’s Genders and Sexualities Alliance, he loves to poke his nose into his friends’ romantic relationships, as he’s confident he knows what’s best for them.

So when shy transfer student Natalia shuffles into school one day, Evan can’t help but get his hands messy! With so many matches to choose from, it’s not long before he sets a plan in motion for Natalia—much against the better judgement of his level-headed best friend, Davi.

But he takes things too far, creating a web of drama that spirals out of his control. Can Evan learn to put the people closest to him before his misguided ambition? Or will he lose them and his own chance at romance, too? 

THE WINTER DUKE

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Part Sleeping Beauty, part Anastasia, ALL feminist fantasy! The Winter Duke is a spellbinding story about choosing what’s right in the face of danger. Oh, and our brave heroine Ekata gets engaged to a warrior bride. Who is also her brother’s ex-betrothed. Need I say more???????

She survived the curse. Now she must survive the throne.

All Ekata wants is to stay alive — and the chance to prove herself as a scholar. Once Ekata’s brother is finally named heir to the dukedom of Kylma Above, there will be nothing to keep her at home with her murderous family. Not her books or her experiments, not her family’s icy castle atop a frozen lake, not even the tantalizingly close Kylma Below, a mesmerizing underwater kingdom that provides her family with magic. But just as escape is within reach, her parents and twelve siblings fall under a strange sleeping sickness, and no one can find a cure.

In the space of a single night, Ekata inherits the title of duke, her brother’s captivating warrior bride, and ever-encroaching challengers from without — and within — her ministry. Nothing has prepared Ekata for diplomacy, for war, for love…or for a crown she has never wanted. If Kylma Above is to survive, Ekata must seize her family’s magic and power. And if Ekata is to survive, she must quickly decide how she will wield them both.

The Winter Duke is an enchanted tale of intrigue by Claire Eliza Bartlett, author of the acclaimed young adult fantasy novel We Rule the Night.

THE LAST TRUE POETS OF THE SEA

by Julia Drake

Another absolute heart-wrencher from the impeccable Julia Drake. This queer retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night has humorous highs and tear-jerking lows. I’m obsessed with Liv and Violet. And did I mention that Madeline Miller (of The Song of Achilles) is a huge fan? Grab the tissues, everyone!

Fans of Far from the Tree, We Are Okay and Emergency Contact will love this epic, utterly unforgettable contemporary novel about a lost shipwreck, a missing piece of family history, and weathering the storms of life. 

The Larkin family isn’t just lucky—they persevere. At least that’s what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. When the Lyric sank off the coast of Maine, their great-great-great-grandmother didn’t drown like the rest of the passengers. No, Fidelia swam to shore, fell in love, and founded Lyric, Maine, the town Violet and Sam returned to every summer. But wrecks seem to run in the family: Tall, funny, musical Violet can’t stop partying with the wrong people. And, one beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life.

Shipped back to Lyric while Sam is in treatment, Violet is haunted by her family’s missing piece—the lost shipwreck she and Sam dreamed of discovering when they were children. Desperate to make amends, Violet embarks on a wildly ambitious mission: locate the Lyric, lain hidden in a watery grave for over a century. She finds a fellow wreck hunter in Liv Stone, an amateur local historian whose sparkling intelligence and guarded gray eyes make Violet ache in an exhilarating new way. Whether or not they find the Lyric, the journey Violet takes—and the bridges she builds along the way—may be the start of something like survival.

Epic, funny, and sweepingly romantic, The Last True Poets of the Sea is an astonishing debut about the strength it takes to swim up from a wreck.

EVERYTHING GLITTERED

by Robin Talley

OK, so this one isn’t exactly a retelling, but it’s EVERYTHING! If you love the classic The Great Gatsby, this one is for you. It’s in Roaring Twenties, but with queer main characters, it gives us the representation from a time we don’t often see!

In this queer historical thriller from a New York Times bestselling author, society girls try to find a murderer in a city filled with secrets and stunted by shame. Perfect for fans of Last Night at the Telegraph Club.

It’s 1927 and the strict laws of prohibition have done little to temper the roaring ’20s nightlife, even in the nation’s capitol. Everyone knows the booze has never stopped flowing, especially among the rich and powerful, and seventeen-year-old Gertrude and her best friends Clara and Milly are determined to get a taste of freedom and liquor, propriety be damned.

But after sneaking out of the Washington Female Seminary to visit a speakeasy, they return to discover that their controversial young headmistress, Mrs. Rose, has been murdered.

Reeling from the death of her beloved mentor, Gertrude enlists her friends in her quest to clear Mrs. Rose’s reputation, while trying to keep her own intact. But in Prohibition Washington, it’s impossible to sidestep grifters, bootleggers, and shady federal agents when investigating a murder. And with all the secrets being uncovered, Gertrude is finding it harder and harder to keep her attraction to her best friends hidden. 

A proper, upscale life is all Gertrude has ever known, but murder sure makes a gal wonder: Is all that glitters really gold?