Book bans are currently sweeping the nation, and between them and all the homophobic and transphobic laws going into effect, supporting trans media is more important than ever.
Thankfully, both YA and adult fiction have seen an impressive surge in great titles starring trans characters written by trans authors, and while a number of them are included below, rest assured it’s only the tip of the iceberg, with other notable books including sci-fi Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki; historical Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg; romantasy The Calyx Charm by May Peterson; and YA romances Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee; The Heartbreak Bakery by AR Capetta; and Always the Almost by Edward Underhill.
Whether you want to read more trans fiction, support more trans writers, find more really good books, or all of the above, this list provides the perfect collection of YA and Adult titles to get you started. (Though yes, there are great reads for even younger audiences, from picture books like When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff and Kaylani Juanita to middle grades like Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker and Dear Mothman by Robin Gow.)
So kick back with a steamy romance, a bloody historical, a magical journey, or something else entirely–we’ve got you covered.
Chef’s Choice by TJ Alexander
Why You’ll Love It: It’s a rare T4T romance that combines the excellent tropes of sunshine-grump and fake dating with a foodie spin and crafts a pair that feel perfectly made for each other.
Luna is a pansexual trans woman with a gift for learning languages, Jean-Pierre is a straight, French trans man who’s impossible to read, and their adventures are sweet and hilarious and sexy and you just wanna root for them so hard. (Plus, Alexander’s a great author to know for trans romance—start from the beginning of their catalog with nonbinary romance Chef’s Kiss and get yourself set for a cozy trans m/m this winter called Second Chance at New Port Stephen.)
Publisher’s Description: When Luna O’Shea is unceremoniously fired from her frustrating office job, she tries to count her blessings: she’s a proud trans woman who has plenty of friends, a wonderful roommate, and a good life in New York City. But blessings don’t pay the bills.
Enter Jean-Pierre, a laissez-faire trans man and the heir to a huge culinary empire—which he’ll only inherit if he can jump through all the hoops his celebrity chef grandfather has placed in his path. First hoop: he needs a girlfriend, a role that Luna is happy to play…for the right price. She’s got rent to pay, after all! Second hoop: they both need to learn how to cook a series of elaborate, world-renowned family recipes to prove that Jean-Pierre is a worthy heir. Admittedly, Luna doesn’t even know how to crack an egg, but she’s not going to let that—or any pesky feelings for Jean-Pierre—stop her.
Another swoon-worthy and heartwarming queer love story from a charming new voice in romance.
Beating Heart Baby by Lio Min
Why You’ll Love It: This one’s for the anime fans, the kids who grew up on internet friendships, and definitely for fans of Alice Oseman’s Radio Silence and/or James Xie’s All Kinds of Other. It’s an incredibly relatable and current story, about two boys who became extremely close online and seemed to be tipping into something other than friendship when one disappeared completely, and the pleasure and pain of reconnecting and shattering all over again until finally forming who they were meant to be, both individually and together.
Publisher’s Description: When artistic and sensitive Santi arrives at his new high school, everyone in the wildly talented marching band welcomes him with open arms. Everyone except for the prickly, proud musical prodigy Suwa, who doesn’t think Santi has what it takes to be in the band.
But Santi and Suwa share painful pasts, and when they open up to each other, a tentative friendship begins. And soon, that friendship turns into something more. . . .
Will their fresh start rip at the seams as Suwa seeks out a solo spotlight, and both boys come to terms with what it’ll take, and what they’ll have to let go, to realize their dreams?
Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane
Why You’ll Love It: Deane’s debut is a bloody, brutal, innovative, clearly well researched take on the tale of Achilles, spinning the Greek warrior into a trans woman who’d escaped to live as herself but returns to embark on a war with some divine intervention. It’s thrilling, terrifying, a little sexy, and extremely epic, but definitely not for the faint of heart.
Publisher’s Description: Achilles has fled her home and her vicious Myrmidon clan to live as a woman with the kallai, the transgender priestesses of Great Mother Aphrodite. When Odysseus comes to recruit the “prince” Achilles for a war against the Hittites, she prepares to die rather than fight as a man. However, her divine mother, Athena, intervenes, transforming her body into the woman’s body she always longed for, and promises her everything: glory, power, fame, victory in war, and, most importantly, a child born of her own body. Reunited with her beloved cousin, Patroklos, and his brilliant wife, the sorceress Meryapi, Achilles sets out to war with a vengeance.
But the gods—a dysfunctional family of abusive immortals that have glutted on human sacrifices for centuries—have woven ancient schemes more blood-soaked and nightmarish than Achilles can imagine. At the center of it all is the cruel, immortal Helen, who sees Achilles as a worthy enemy after millennia of ennui and emptiness. In love with her newfound nemesis, Helen sets out to destroy everything and everyone Achilles cherishes, seeking a battle to the death.
An innovative spin on a familiar tale, this is the Trojan War unlike anything ever told, and an Achilles whose vulnerability is revealed by the people she chooses to fight…and chooses to trust.
Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
Why You’ll Love It: Kacen Callender is simply a master at so many things (Middle Grade! Adult Fantasy! Sure! Why not!) and he really delivered something unlike any other in this book that doesn’t just explore complex romantic feelings, but gender feelings that continue even after you’ve already come out as trans.
It has no shortage of drama and angst, from blackmail and catfishing to confusing romantic feelings and identity questions, making it as entertaining as it is heartfelt. (It’s also, as far as I know, the only traditionally published YA with on-page demiboy representation.)
Publisher’s Description: Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after.
When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle….
But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.
Felix Ever After is an honest and layered story about identity, falling in love, and recognizing the love you deserve.
For the Love of April French by Penny Aimes
Release Date: August 31, 2021 from Carina Adores
Why You’ll Love It: Besides being deeply sexy (and I mean deeply–Aimes manages to seamlessly blend BDSM and cozy love in a way that shows as much care as this pair shows each other), is there anything more wonderful than a great character coming to learn and accept that they deserve a life as exceptional as they are? You will want the best for April and you will love seeing her find it.
Publisher’s Description: April French doesn’t do relationships and she never asks for more.
A long-standing regular at kink club Frankie’s, she’s kind of seen it all. As a trans woman, she’s used to being the scenic rest stop for others on their way to a happily-ever-after. She knows how desire works, and she keeps hers carefully boxed up to take out on weekends only.
After all, you can’t be let down if you never ask.
Then Dennis Martin walks into Frankie’s, fresh from Seattle and looking a little lost. April just meant to be friendly, but one flirtatious drink turns into one hot night.
When Dennis asks for her number, she gives it to him.
When he asks for her trust, well…that’s a little harder.
And when the desire she thought she had such a firm grip on comes alive with Dennis, April finds herself wanting passion, purpose and commitment.
But when their relationship moves from complicated to impossible, April will have to decide how much she’s willing to want.
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar
Why You’ll Love It: Pain and poetry coalesce in Joukhadar’s lyrical tale that uniquely explores the intersection of being trans and Arab through the eyes of a mourning Syrian American son. It’s a story of community, mourning, found family, and the many ways love finds us.
Publisher’s Description: Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria.
One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s—and his grandmother’s—in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn’t and has never been alone, he has the courage to officially claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare.
As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.
Birthday by Meredith Russo
Why You’ll Love It: So much more than a friends-to-lovers romance, Russo’s sophomore novel takes two twining paths, alternating POVs while also playing out over the course of more than half a decade. It’s a fascinating storytelling choice for any narrative, but especially one in which one of the protagonists comes to the realization that she’s a trans girl. Russo’s something of a pioneer of YA trans girl lit, and if you’ve already loved If I Was Your Girl, definitely give this one a go, too.
Publisher’s Description: Two best friends. A shared birthday. Six years…
ERIC: There was the day we were born. There was the minute Morgan and I decided we were best friends for life. The years where we stuck by each other’s side―as Morgan’s mom died, as he moved across town, as I joined the football team, as my parents started fighting. But sometimes I worry that Morgan and I won’t be best friends forever. That there’ll be a day, a minute, a second, where it all falls apart and there’s no turning back the clock.
MORGAN: I know that every birthday should feel like a new beginning, but I’m trapped in this mixed-up body, in this wrong life, in Nowheresville, Tennessee, on repeat. With a dad who cares about his football team more than me, a mom I miss more than anything, and a best friend who can never know my biggest secret. Maybe one day I’ll be ready to become the person I am inside. To become her. To tell the world. To tell Eric. But when?
Six years of birthdays reveal Eric and Morgan’s destiny as they come together, drift apart, fall in love, and discover who they’re meant to be―and if they’re meant to be together.
A Shot in the Dark by Victoria Lee
Why You’ll Love It: Victoria Lee’s first adult venture immediately makes its mark, skilfully crafting a fraught, sexy, deeply warm relationship between two photographers in recovery who instantly hit it off at a queer club in the city (she’s cis and pan, he’s trans and straight), only to to find that they’re teacher and student. As they grapple with their inconveniently timed and unignorable attraction, they also help each other heal from hurts both past and present. It’s trans, it’s Jewish, it’s fun, it’s sad, it’s…pretty much everything.
Publisher’s Description: Elisheva Cohen has just returned to New York after almost a decade away. The wounds of her past haven’t fully healed, but four years of sobriety and a scholarship to study photography with art legend Wyatt Cole are signs of good things to come, right? They could be, as long as Ely resists self-sabotage. She’s lucky enough to hit it off with a handsome himbo her first night out in the city. But the morning after their mind-blowing hookup, reality comes knocking. When Wyatt Cole walks into the classroom, Ely realizes the man she just spent the night with, the man whose name she couldn’t hear over the loud club music, is her teacher.
Everyone in the art world is obsessed with Wyatt Cole. He’s immensely talented and his notoriously reclusive personal life makes him even more compelling. But behind closed doors, Wyatt’s past is a painful memory. After coming out as transgender, Wyatt was dishonorably discharged from the military and disowned by his family. Since these traumatic experiences, Wyatt has worked hard for his sobriety and his flourishing art career. He can’t risk it all for Ely, no matter how attracted to her he is or how bad he feels about insisting she drop his class in exchange for a strictly professional mentorship. Wyatt can help with her capstone photography project, but he cannot, under any circumstances, fall in love with her in the process.
Through the lens of her camera, Ely must confront the reason she left New York in the first place: the Orthodox community that raised her, then shunned her because of her substance abuse. Along the way, Wyatt’s walls begin to break down, and each artist fights for what’s right in front of them—a person who sees them for all that they are and a love that could mean more than they ever imagined possible.
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
Why You’ll Love It: Possibly the first YA with a trans protagonist and by a trans author to hit the New York Times bestseller list, this paranormal romance is so much fun, so romantic, and so affirming, you won’t want to leave the world of Yadriel and his friends. (And the good news is, you don’t have to, because this book was so beloved, it’s getting a sequel.) Thomas is one of those “Everything he writes turns to gold” kind of authors, so for more of his trans rep when you finish this one, treat yourself to a copy of The Sunbearer Trials.
Publisher’s Description: When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.
However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.
Bellies by Nicola Dinan
Why You’ll Love It: I personally know more people who’ve navigated romantic relationships shifting and changing through transition than I do books exploring that situation, so Dinan’s debut had me sold on premise alone. Then it completely won me through its complex relationships, immersive travels, found family, honest conversations, and mouthwatering descriptions of Malaysian food.
Publisher’s Description: It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a magnetic young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom’s awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming’s orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he’s already mapped out their future together. But shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.
From London to Kuala Lumpur, New York to Cologne, we follow Tom and Ming as they face tectonic shifts in their relationship and friend circle in the wake of Ming’s transition. Through a spiral of unforeseen crises—some personal, some professional, some life-altering—Tom and Ming are forced to confront the vastly different shapes their lives have taken since graduating, and each must answer the essential question: Is it worth losing a part of yourself to become who you are?
Man O’War by Cory McCarthy
Why You’ll Love It: Cory McCarthy’s primarily made their name in SFF, but this raw, nuanced, romantic messy gender journey is about as real as it gets, showcasing how the path to understanding your identity can be extensively winding and rife with trial and error, especially when you have more than one marginalization in the mix. (In addition to being queer and trans, River is Lebanese American.)
Publisher’s Description: Man o’ wars are not jellyfish, and River McIntyre is not happy. River doesn’t know why they’re unhappy—though perhaps it has something to do with the way they relate more to captive marine life at the local acquarium than to the people around them. That is, until they have a run in with Indigo “Indy” Waits on the annual class field trip. Face-to-face with an affirmed queer person, River leaps out of the closet and into the shark tank. Literally. What follows is a wrenching journey of self-discovery that spans years and winds through layers of coming out, transition, and top surgery, promising a free life for River with so much more than happiness: A life that’s full of trans joy and true love.
Coffee Boy by Austin Chant
Why You’ll Love It: A must-read for fans of New Adult fiction in particular, this m/m romance between a political intern and an uptight campaign strategist is fun, sexy as hell, and, at novelette length, the perfect beach read. It’s a delightful slow burn that crackles with heat as Kieran, who’s out as trans at work for the first time in his life, and Seth, who has an obvious crush on their straight boss, initially clash, then find their way into mutual respect, and then, well, bow chicka bow wow.
Publisher’s Description: After graduation, Kieran expected to go straight into a career of flipping burgers—only to be offered the internship of his dreams at a political campaign. But the pressure of being an out trans man in the workplace quickly sucks the joy out of things, as does Seth, the humorless campaign strategist who watches his every move.
Soon, the only upside to the job is that Seth has a painful crush on their painfully straight boss, and Kieran has a front row seat to the drama. But when Seth proves to be as respectful and supportive as he is prickly, Kieran develops an awkward crush of his own—one which Seth is far too prim and proper to ever reciprocate.
A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett
Why You’ll Love It: Casey Plett is a pioneer of modern trans fiction, and this award-winning short story collection has been an entryway into it for many a reader, present company included. It offers a number of different perspectives and relationships and glimpses into living different lives as a trans woman. As a bonus, the brand-new edition contains an afterword from Plett herself.
Publisher’s Description: By the author of Little Fish and A Dream of a Woman: eleven unique short stories featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love in settings ranging from a rural Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn. These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show that growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but will never be predictable.
The Witch King by H.E. Edgmon
Why You’ll Love It: Found family lovers in particular will find plenty to love about Edgmon’s debut YA fantasy and its charming cast, which accompanies some delightful romance tropes and a fun world of witches and fae, magic and royalty. Best part? It’s a duology opener, so when you’re done devouring it, you get to live on in this consuming world for a whole other book. (And then come November, you get to start all over again with Edgmon’s new nonbinary fantasy series, Godly Heathens.)
Publisher’s Description: In Asalin, fae rule and witches like Wyatt Croft…don’t. Wyatt’s betrothal to fae prince Emyr North was supposed to change that. But when Wyatt lost control of his magic one devastating night, he fled to the human world.
Now a coldly distant Emyr has hunted him down. Despite transgender Wyatt’s newfound identity and troubling past, Emyr claims they must marry now or risk losing the throne. Jaded, Wyatt strikes a deal with the enemy, hoping to escape Asalin forever. But as he gets to know Emyr again, Wyatt realizes the boy he once loved may still exist. And as the witches face worsening conditions, he must decide what’s more important—his people or his freedom.
The Companion by E.E. Ottoman
Why You’ll Love It: Why read a book with just one trans main character when you can have three, all of whom get entangled in a romance together, and in a cozy mid-century setting, no less? Ottoman’s been the go-to author for indie trans historical romance for years, so truly, you can start anywhere in his catalog and find something to love.
Publisher’s Description: New York, 1948.
After years of trying to break into New York City’s literary scene, Madeline Slaughter is emotionally and physically exhausted. When a friend offers her a safe haven as the live-in companion to reclusive, bestselling novelist Victor Hallowell she jumps at the chance to escape the city.
Madeline expects to find rest and quiet in the forests of Upstate New York. Instead, she finds Victor, handsome and intensely passionate, and Audrey Coffin, Victor’s mysterious and beautiful neighbor.
When Victor offers her a kiss and the promise of more, Madeline allows herself to become entangled even as Audrey is also claiming her heart. The only problem is that Audrey and Victor are ex-lovers with plenty of baggage between them. As Madeline finds herself opening up and falling in love with both she starts to wonder, can there be a future for all three?