First up is And They Were Roommates by Page Powars, which was published May of 2025. The story follows Charlie, who has started attending Valentine Academy for Boys as its very first transgender student, and is determined to hide his identity as he does so. The situation immediately becomes complicated when Charlie discovers his roommate is a boy named Jasper, the exact same Jasper who turned him down a year ago before he began his transition.
Powars’ book stood out to me as something I wanted to read because I grew up during a time where transgender or queer characters just weren’t shown in media. Once I discovered Powars’ work, I desperately wanted to discover what it was like to read a book written from an authentic experience on the matter. Paired with a hilarious-sounding plotline and a protagonist struggling with the fear of their gender identity being discovered, it wasn’t hard to decide to add this one to my list.
Second is The Assassin’s Guide to Babysitting by Natalie C. Parker, published in January of last year. It follows Tru, a 17-year-old girl with a superpowered Talent that makes her body completely indestructible. Tru has spent her entire life hiding herself and her powers from the world, has lost her parents to a mysterious murderer, and is going through high school balancing assassin training with her day to day. When Tru takes a babysitting job through an app designed for bounty hunters to find work and people to watch their kids, she ends up running with a baby strapped to her back and wondering why she wants to kiss the girl tracking her down.
The book features two female romantic leads, like Boteju’s book, but with the added twist of an urban superhero setting. I was curious to see how two girls falling for each other survived when placed into a premise a little more familiar to me, and how a queer romance plotline might change when it was a cog moving in the plot rather than serving as the entire external plot. Also, frankly, the concept of an indestructible teenage girl having to act as a casual babysitter and still ending up in a dangerous situation seemed too good to pass up.
Third on the list is Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar, a little older since it was published in May of 2021. It follows Hani, a social butterfly Bengali girl who decides to come out as bisexual to her group of friends. When her friends insist she can’t be bisexual if she’s only dated men, she lies and tells them she’s dating a girl named Ishu—who her friends don’t care for at all. Ishu has ambitions of being elected as the head girl at her high school, and Hani kickstarts a fake-dating scheme with her on the condition that she helps her reach that ambition.
This one uses the fake-dating trope like Boteju’s work, so once I saw it I started wondering what other executions of the same trope looked like. I was also happy to see the concept of a bi person being invalidated because they’re dating or have dated the opposite gender put to use and challenged in a story, so that sealed the deal in getting it on my TBR list.
The fourth and final book is Inkmistress by Audrey Coulthurst, the oldest on this list, which was published in March of 2018. Coulthurst’s book follows Asra, a demigoddess with magic that can shape the future by writing in her own blood. She lives with a girl named Ina, the mortal love of her life, and poses as a healer in a small village. When bandits threaten their peaceful life and the king refuses to assist, Ina begs Asra to help her discover her manifest, which will decide what animal she will be able to shapeshift into. Asra agrees, but her spell creates the worst possible outcome for both of them, with bandits destroying their home and Ina’s loved ones.
The plot of this one scratches an old, edgy itch that reminds me of the kind of fantasy book I might’ve read at an earlier time in my life, so nostalgia was a partial motivator to add it to my list. The magic system itself was also calling to me, but the deciding factor was the burning question of whether or not a relationship forged on deep love could survive catastrophic, unintentional tragedy.
These are admittedly biased toward my preferences, but I did try to put together a range of different experiences in the YA queer romance genre. Hopefully other readers find something they like on this list, or, like me, they discover a new genre they didn’t even know they could fall in love with.
Julia Smith, Pine Reads Review Writer and Editor