The Best Queer Books of the Year, According to All the Lists
Here are the queer books showing up on the Best Books of the Year lists!
‘Tis the season for Best Books of the Year lists! Even though we still have about six weeks left of 2023, most of the major lists have already come out, including Book Riot’s! I wanted to see which queer books got mentioned the most on these lists, so I dove into some of the biggest ones that have been posted so far: Book Riot, Publisher’s Weekly, Barnes & Noble, Indigo, Time, Oprah, Vulture, and Harper’s Bazaar.
A huge disclaimer here: this is just based on the books I saw that I knew were queer. I’m sure I’m missing some, but I couldn’t research each of the hundreds of books between all these lists to doublecheck. Let me know in the comments if you see any I missed!
Most of the queer books included were mentioned on only one list. I’ve included the five books that were named multiple times — plus five more of my picks that were only mentioned once — but if you want to see the full list of all the queer books I spotted, that’s below the paywall at the end of the post.
Without further ado, let’s jump into the best queer books of 2023, according to the biggest end of the year lists!
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (Time, Vulture, Publisher’s Weekly)
Pageboy by Elliot Page (Time, Indigo)
Learned By Heart by Emma Donoghue (Indigo, Harper’s)
Death Valley by Melissa Broder (B&N, Oprah, Harper’s)
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll (Amazon, Indigo)
Bellies by Nicola Dinan (Book Riot)
Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business by Roxane Gay (B&N)
Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls by Kai Cheng Thom (Indigo)
Blackouts by Justin Torres (Time)
The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor (Harper’s)
Did your favorite queer book of the year make it on this list? Let me know in the comments! And paid subscribers can see the 27 other queer books I spotted on this list below.
27 More of the Best Queer Books of 2023
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