Published in May 2025, Let Them Stare follows Sully, a nonbinary 18-year-old trying to leave the little town of Hearst, Pennsylvania. Their escape plan goes awry when their internship falls through, leaving them stuck in Hearst with virtually no resources. Enter Brad, one of the few queer people in town, and a handbag haunted by a drag queen. Let Them Stare is a novel that highlights queer history, with a mystery and romance plot to balance out the heavier moments.
Content Warning: Suicide, child death, grief
Released in 2019, Everything Grows is a historical fiction novel following Eleanor Fromme. Set in 1993, 15-year-old Eleanor has to grapple with the emotional turmoil of her mother attempting suicide and her bully, James, succeeding in his own attempt. Encouraged by her English teacher, Eleanor writes to James as a way to work through her emotions. This leads Eleanor down a path exploring her emotions and her own identity, finding a support system when it feels like everything around her is crumbling. Everything Grows is a nuanced depiction of a genderqueer teenager navigating the trouble of high school, finding oneself, and dealing with major life changes all at once.
Content Warning: Abusive parents, obsession
Glitch Girl! is a middle grade poetry novel published in March 2025 starring a trans girl, J—. Struggling with her ADHD and still figuring out her identity, J— finds herself enraptured with the video game “Coaster Boss” and uses it as an escape from reality. Showcasing three years of J—’s life throughout middle school, Glitch Girl! is a novel focused on learning to accept oneself for who you are, and realizing that you are not alone. There will be people like you, and people who will enjoy who you are, not who society expects you to be.
A bit of an older work, Mooncakes is a graphic novel published in October 2019. A paranormal romance, the protagonist, Nova Huang, is a Chinese-American witch working at the bookshop owned by her two grandmothers. Rumors of a white wolf reunite Nova with her childhood crush Tam Lang: a hard-of-hearing nonbinary werewolf. Tam and Nova work together to uncover a cult trying to harness the magic werewolves possess, and along the way rekindle the romance from their youth. Mooncakes is a magical romance praised for its casual representation of queer identities focused on characters of color.
A sci-fi fantasy romance, Costumes for Time Travelers follows Calisto and Fawkes running through time to prevent the eradication of time travelers altogether. Published in May 2025, Costumes for Time Travelers has switching points of view (POVs) and a place-out-of-time that acts as a central hub for time travelers, a place for them to visit and get resources from clothing to language translations for all their time-traveling needs. While a shorter read compared to other novels on this list, the relationship between Calisto and Fawkes is cozy and the fantastical plot makes the representation feel more normal, showcasing queerness as just another everyday thing.
When looking for books starring queer protagonists, I went in wanting to highlight genderqueer protagonists specifically. Whenever I browse queer books, I often see a focus on romance—and a lot of the ones here are also romance books!—but it takes some digging to find books that branch out beyond the queer community’s sexuality spectrum. With the amount of prejudice being aimed at transgender people today, I wanted to bring attention to some books that uplift that part of our community.
Grace McCool, Pine Reads Review Writer & Editor