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At the halfway point of the year, I like to take a look at how my reading is going so far. I’m mostly keeping on track with my goals, and I feel like I’ve been enjoying the books I’m picking up, for the most part. To get a visual of 2025 in reading, though, I decided to rank all the queer books I read from January to June.
After I slotted them in their various tiers, I realized I actually had quite a few “just okay” reads this year—most of which are not bad books, but they’re just not the perfect books for me. None of them put me in a slump, though, and I also have quite a few I really liked.
Here are my rankings for the best queer books I’ve read in 2025 so far, including new releases and backlist titles.
All Access members, read on for my completed tier ranking!
My favorites of the year so far are I Shall Never Fall In Love by Hari Conner, The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie, Sympathy for Wild Girls: Stories by Demree McGhee, Awakened by A.E. Osworth, Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel, The Original by Nell Stevens, and Everfair by Nisi Shawl (which was a reread).
As for the “No thank you”s, I Can Fix Her by Rae Wilde was just not a horror novel that worked for me. The Elegant Courtly Life of the Tea Witch, though, was a manga volume with the beginning of a relationship between an adult and a 12-year-old love interest, so NO THANK YOU indeed.
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