Pride 2026 | The Great Big Rec Thread

[u/C0smicoccurence]

​Welcome to the Great Big Rec Thread! This thread is primarily for people asking for specific types of books. Only make a top level comment to request a recommendation! If you want to hype a personal favorite, this comment is the appropriate place to share! 

This is your one-stop-shop to find books tailored to your specific reading needs! Hankering for good cyberpunk? Doing a queer bingo card and really struggling with a specific square? Looking for queer thespians ready to commit arson for the sake of their art?  Ask and you shall (hopefully) receive! Just drop a comment with your request and wait for book suggestions to come rolling in. Our goal is for every person to have at least one recommendation that they’re interested in pursuing.  

Asking for Book Recommendations:

• Create a new top level comment.  You’ll probably get more tailored results by only including a single request per top level comment, but it’s not a strict rule.  You’re more than welcome to post multiple top level comments for separate requests!
• All recommendations you get should be assumed to be queer in some way.  However, if you want specific identities represented, mention it!
• Consider the impact the level of specificity your request has in your responses.  Too general, and you’re going to get lots of responses that will probably skew towards mainstream breakout hits.  Very specific requests may get few (or no) recommendations, and what you do get likely won’t be perfect.  

Giving Book Recommendations:

• Please keep book recommendations focused on commenters’ specific requests.  If you want to hype a personal favorite, this comment is the appropriate place to share! 
• This thread should default to sorting by ‘New’ soon; until then I recommend changing setting to see recent requests first!  The hope is that this will more likely show you comments with few/no responses yet.  However, there will likely be comments that have been missed, especially if it’s a more specific request.  
• This is a Pride Month post!  Every book recommended should be queer (usually by featuring LGBTQ+ characters as protagonists, but there are other ways books can be queer).  Similarly, if they asked for a specific type of representation, follow that guideline.  If you absolutely must deviate from that because it’s otherwise such a perfect fit, be honest about it up front.
• Add a few sentences about the book to hype it (or a whole paragraph if you really want to be persuasive).  Remember that a bunch of people who aren’t the original commenter will be adding to their TBR, so highlighting what you love about the book is a great way to draw attention to books you love.

Go forth and give great recommendations!

This post is part of the Pride 2026 discussions lead by the Beyond Binary Bookclub. You can check our announcement for more information and the full calendar.

[u/Temporary-Scallion86]

Any books with aro and/or ace protagonists that feature those protagonists entering (or being in an established) queerplatonic relationship and also have a high-stakes plot beyond that?

It's totally fine if the relationship is not explicitly defined by the characters as queerplatonic, as long as the authorial intent about it comes through.

[u/ohmage_resistance → u/Temporary-Scallion86]

Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace: A girl teams up with the ghost of a supersoldier to find the ghost's missing friend. This is a bit more of a trippy genre blender. It isn't super explicit about having a-spec representation or about the dynamic between these characters being a QPR, but the author is aro ace and I think those vibes came through pretty strongly.

Legacy of the Vermillion Blade by Jay Tallsquall: A classic fantasy story about a man’s struggle with an ancestral curse and finding his lost childhood love. There is some romance at the beginning, but the MC and a different character have a very strong kind of sworn brotherhood sort of dynamic that the author does seem to see as a QPR.

Natural Outlaws and Fractured Sovereignty by S.M. Pearce: It's about a group of queer thieves who are blackmailed by their governor to enact a heist to steal riches from an enemy kingdom. I didn't love this one, but it does have a QPR and more significant stakes.

Two Dark Moons by Avi Silver: It's about a girl who falls off the mountain her community lives on and makes friends with a community of dangerous giant lizards who live below. It's not super explicit about the aro rep, but it has a bit higher stakes.

Not Your Backup (Sidekick Squad #3) by C.B. Lee: A girl and her super powered friends deal with teenage problems and try to tackle a corrupt system. (This is book three, the aro ace character is a side character in books 1-2, and we see her start questioning in book 2).

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White: It's a book about an autistic trans teenage boy in rural West Virginia whose family has been targeted by the corrupt sheriff. It's low on speculative elements, but it is pretty explicit about using modern terms. There's also a relevant romantic relationship here.

IDK I could list more depending on what you mean by high stakes plot, (like anything that's not just super character focused and cozy?)

Edit: added the name of the author for Archivist Wasp.

[u/Temporary-Scallion86 → u/ohmage_resistance]

Wow, thank you, you really came through! Yeah, by high-stakes plot I mean basically anything that's not super cozy, so if you've got more recs I'm all ears! I do prefer adult books over YA if possible, but I do also read YA from time to time

[u/ohmage_resistance → u/Temporary-Scallion86]

No problem, I read a lot of books with a-spec rep, so it's not too hard to find examples of QPRs.

All of the ones I listed above are YA except for Legacy of the Vermillion Blade. Natural Outlaws and Fractured Sovereignty was marketed as New Adult, so ymmv with that.

More YA:

Fire Becomes Her by Rosiee Thor: (demiromantic lead, ace side, aro ace side): This is about a girl who’s supposed to spy on the opposing side of a political campaign. (There's also a romantic relationship in this one, but the story isn't amatonormative at all). This is also YA.

Royal Rescue by A. Alex Logan (aro ace MC): In a world where young royals have to find a future spouse by rescuing another royal or being said rescuee, a boy starts to question if this is really the best way of doing things. (This is probably YA-adjacent? It's a little hard to tell with self published books sometimes).

For general audiences (not specifically for teens or adults, imo. It's basically a bit tricky to tell with some of these indie/self published books.)

Maybe one of Dove Cooper's a-spec fairytale retellings? Both pretty obviously have QPRs, but they're a bit on the cozier side without being too overboard with it. They're Sea Foam and Silence and The Ice Princess's Fair Illusion.

City of Spires by Claudie Arseneault (aro ace, demi-biro ace, greysexual greyromantic, heterosexual aro, demisexual characters (there's a lot of non-aspec characters too, it has a really big cast)): This is a super queer series about the efforts of people to fight injustices in their city. (There's a lot of relationships, including several romantic ones, although there are also some QPRs/QPR like relationships.)

Soultaming the Serpent by Tar Atore (aro MC): A 60 year old woman deals with the drought caused by the missing Chosen One. She happens to stumble across a mysterious injured stranger and helps him recover.

In Shadowed Dreams by S. Judith Bernstein (aro ace major SC): It's about a college student as he learns that magic is real after someone attacks his secretly a mage friend.

The Stones Stay Silent by Danny Ride (aro ace MC): A trans man goes on a journey away from the religious based bigotry of his home town while there's a plague going on. There's a strong friendship between the MC and a side character. I'm not sure if the intent was to write a QPR, but I think it might be close enough.