I have made it my mission to collect all of the gay romance novels I can find! I’ve also written about LGBTQ+ graphic novels if you want to check out that post as well! Cuffing season is officially here, the magical cold winter months when we find ourselves wanting to start a relationship and hibernate. It’s definitely the time for reading heartwarming and spicy romances! It used to be much harder to find LGBTQ+ romance novels, but I’m proud to put together a list of 22 books for you to check out!
1. Kiss Her Once For Me – Gay Romance Novels
Ellie found work at a local coffee shop, just to get through the days until Andrew, the shop’s landlord, proposes a shocking, drunken plan: a marriage of convenience that will give him his recent inheritance and alleviate Ellie’s financial woes and isolation. They make a plan to spend the holidays together at his family cabin to keep up the ruse. But when Andrew introduces his new fiance to his sister, Ellie is shocked to discover it is Jack, the mysterious woman she fell for over the course of one magical Christmas Eve the year before. Now, Ellie must choose between the safety of a fake relationship and the risk of something real.
This one is perfect for the holidays and will make a great gift!
2. What If It’s Us
Arthur is only in New York for the summer, but if Broadway has taught him anything, it is that the universe can deliver a showstopping romance when you least expect it. Ben thinks the universe needs to mind its business. If the universe had his back, he wouldn’t be on his way to the post office carrying a box of his ex-boyfriend’s things. But when Arthur and Ben meet-cute at the post office, what exactly does the universe have in store for them…? Maybe nothing. After all, they get separated. Maybe everything. After all, they get reunited. But what if they can’t nail a first date even after three do-overs? What if Arthur tries too hard to make it work and Ben doesn’t try hard enough? What if life really isn’t like a Broadway play? But what if it is?
3. A Little Bit Country
Emmett Maguire wants to be country music’s biggest gay superstar, a far reach when you are seventeen and living in Illinois. But for now, he’s happy to do the next best thing: Stay with his aunt in Jackson Hollow, Tennessee, for the summer and perform at the amusement park owned by his idol, country legend Wanda Jean Stubbs. Luke Barnes hates country music. As the grandson of Verna Rose, the disgraced singer who had a famous falling out with Wanda Jean, Luke knows how much pain country music has brought his family. But when his mom’s medical bills start piling up, he takes a job at the last place he wants: a restaurant at Wanda World. Neither boy is looking for romance, but sparks fly when they meet, and soon they’re inseparable. Until a long-lost secret about Verna and Wanda comes to light, threatening to unravel everything.
4. The Charm Offensive
Dev Deshpande has always believed in fairy tales. So it’s no wonder then that he’s spent his career crafting them on the long-running reality dating show Ever After. As the most successful producer in the franchise’s history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns. But then the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star. As Dev fights to get Charlie to connect with the contestants on a whirlwind, worldwide tour, they begin to open up to each other, and Charlie realizes he has better chemistry with Dev than with any of his female co-stars. But even reality TV has a script, and in order to find happily ever after, they’ll have to reconsider whose love story gets told.
5. Never Been Kissed – Gay Romance Novels
Wren Roland has never been kissed, but he wants that movie-perfect ending more than anything. Feeling nostalgic on the eve of his birthday, he sends emails to all the boys he (ahem) loved before he came out. Morning brings the inevitable “Oh God What Did I Do?”, but he brushes that panic aside. Why stress about it? None of his could-have-beens are actually going to read the emails, much less respond. Right?
It’s a gay version of “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before”!
6. Honey Girl
With her newly completed Ph.D. in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls’ trip to Vegas to celebrate. She is a straight-A, work-through-the-summer certified high achiever. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t know, until she does exactly that.
7. Boyfriend Material
Luc O’Donnell is tangentially, and reluctantly, famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he’s never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad’s making a comeback, Luc’s back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything. To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship…and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. Unfortunately, apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened. But the thing about fake dating is that it can feel a lot like real dating. And that’s when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don’t ever want to let them go.
8. Mistakes Were Made
When Cassie Klein goes to an off-campus bar to escape her school’s Family Weekend, she isn’t looking for a hookup, it just happens. Buying a drink for a stranger turns into what should be an uncomplicated, amazing one-night stand. But then the next morning rolls around and her friend drags her along to meet her mom, the hot, older woman Cassie slept with. What should have been a one-time fling quickly proves impossible to ignore, and soon Cassie and Erin are sneaking around. Worst of all, they start to realize they have something real. But is being honest about the love between them worth the cost?
I love seeing “older” women represented here!
9. Payback’s A Witch – Gay Romance Novels
Emmy Harlow is a witch but not a very powerful one, in part because she hasn’t been home to the magical town of Thistle Grove in years. Her self-imposed exile has a lot to do with complicated family history and a desire to forge her own way in the world, and only the very tiniest bit to do with Gareth Blackmoore, heir to the most powerful magical family in town and casual breaker of hearts and destroyer of dreams. On her first night home, Emmy runs into Talia Avramov, an all-around badass adept in the darker magical arts, who is fresh off a bad breakup . . . with Gareth Blackmoore. Talia had let herself be charmed, only to discover that Gareth was also seeing Linden, unbeknownst to either of them. And now she and Linden want revenge. Only one question stands: Is Emmy in? But most concerning of all: Why can’t she stop thinking about the terrifyingly competent, devastatingly gorgeous, wickedly charming Talia Avramov?
10. Pumpkin
Waylon Russell Brewer is a fat, openly gay boy stuck in the small West Texas town of Clover City. His plan is to bide his time until he can graduate, move to Austin with his twin sister, Clementine, and finally go Full Waylon so that he can live his Julie-the-hills-are-alive-with-the-sound-of-music-Andrews truth. So when Clementine deviates from their master plan right after Waylon gets dumped, he throws caution to the wind and creates an audition tape for his favorite TV drag show, Fiercest of Them All. What he doesn’t count on is the tape getting accidentally shared with the entire school. . . . As a result, Waylon is nominated for prom queen as a joke. Clem’s girlfriend, Hannah Perez, also receives a joke nomination for prom king. Waylon and Hannah decide there is only one thing to do: run and leave high school with a bang. A very glittery bang. Along the way, Waylon discovers that there is a lot more to running for prom court than campaign posters and plastic crowns, especially when he has to spend so much time with the very cute and infuriating prom king nominee Tucker Watson.
Such an awesome queer YA book that warms your heart!
11. One Last Stop – Gay Romance Novels
Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showed up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there is one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old-school punk rocker. She is literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it is time to start believing in some things, after all.
12. Red, White, & Royal Blue
When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, and genius, his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper and more dangerous than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations.
This is my favorite book that I’ve read so far this year!
13. She Gets The Girl – Gay Romance Novels
Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus. But when Alex, fresh off a bad (but hopefully not permanent) breakup, discovers Molly’s hidden crush as their paths cross the night before classes start, they realize they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex volunteers to help Molly learn how to get her dream girl to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she’s not a selfish flirt. That she is ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can’t deny Alex knows what she is doing with girls, unlike her. As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they are the ones falling…for each other.
14. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” is not just a story about love; it is a story about survival. Neither a happy nor a sad story, Evelyn Hugo’s story of her queer identity could be the secret life that any of our grandparents, aunts, uncles, godmothers, and neighbors could have lived. Even now, nearly 70 years later, there are still those living a lie to protect themselves and their loved ones.
This story is such a beautiful way to connect to queer history.
15. Read Between the Lines
Rosie starts up an online relationship with her favorite lesbian romance author, Brie. But she doesn’t know that Brie is just Jane’s pen name. When Rosie learns that her bookstore’s lease has been terminated by Jane’s family’s business, romance moves to the back burner. Even though they are at odds, there’s no denying the sparks that fly every time they are together. When their online identities are revealed, will Jane be able to write her way to a happy ending, or is Rosie’s heart a closed book?
16. No Rings Attached – Gay Romance Novels
Lia Harris is tired of being the odd one out. She’s never quite fit in with her uptight family, and now that her roommates have all found love, she is starting to feel like a third wheel in her own apartment. Fed up with her mother’s constant meddling in her love life, Lia drops hints about a girlfriend she doesn’t have. But with her brother’s London nuptials approaching, she needs to find a date to save face. Lia turns to her best friend, Rosie, for help, and Rosie delivers with the fun, gorgeous Grace Poston.
17. Written in the Stars
Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy… a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother, and Elle’s new business partner, expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date? Because… awkward. Darcy begs Elle to play along and she agrees to pretend they are dating. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family during the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve.
18. County Your Lucky Stars
Margot Cooper doesn’t do relationships. She tried and it blew up in her face, so she’ll stick with casual hookups, thank you very much. But now her entire crew has found “the one” and she is beginning to feel like a fifth wheel. And then fate (the heartless bitch) intervenes. While touring a wedding venue with her engaged friends, Margot comes face-to-face with Olivia Grant, her childhood friend, her first love, her first, well, everything. It has been ten years, but the moment they lock eyes, Margot’s cold, dead heart thumps in her chest.
These two books are in the same universe by the same author!
19. Carry On – Gay Romance Novels
Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen. That’s what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he’s probably right. Simon’s feelings about Baz are… complicated. Half the time, Simon can’t even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor’s avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there’s a magic-eating monster running around, wearing Simon’s face. Baz would be having a field day with all this if he were here — it’s their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon’s infuriating nemesis didn’t even bother to show up.
This is a trilogy that I absolutely devoured! Simon and Baz’s relationship grows throughout all three books.
20. Delilah Green Doesn’t Care
When Delilah’s estranged stepsister, Astrid, pressures her into photographing her wedding with a guilt trip and a five-figure check, Delilah finds herself back in the godforsaken town that she used to call home. She plans to breeze in and out, but then she sees Claire Sutherland, one of Astrid’s stuck-up besties, and decides that maybe there’s some fun (and a little retribution) to be had in Bright Falls, after all. Having raised her eleven-year-old daughter mostly on her own while dealing with her unreliable ex and running a bookstore, Claire Sutherland depends upon a life without surprises. And Delilah Green is an unwelcome surprise…at first.
Love seeing single moms/non-traditional families represented here!
21. A Little Light Mischief
Lady’s maid Molly Wilkins is done with thieving and cheating and stabbing and all the rest of it. She’s determined to keep her hands to herself, so she really shouldn’t be tempted to seduce her employer’s prim and proper companion, Alice. But how can she resist when Alice can’t seem to keep her eyes off Molly?
22. The Perks of Loving a Wallflower
As a master of disguise, Thomasina Wynchester can be a polite young lady or a bawdy old man. She’ll do whatever it takes to solve the cases her family takes on. But when Tommy’s beautiful new client turns out to be the highborn lady she is secretly smitten with, more than her mission is at stake.
These two are giving us the gay Bridgerton story we all want in our lives!
I hope you found your next read to keep by your side this cuffing season!
XO Court