20 of the Best Queer Romances of All Time

You either end a road trip firmly in love, or determined to never see each other again. Alison Cochran’s 2024 romance forces two former childhood best friends into a winding cross country adventure with their dying former English teacher and his giant dog. While frenemies Logan and Rosemary are forced to use their time in close quarters to understand each other as people, it’s their teacher Joe’s search for some kind of romantic end to his life that swells this novel into something entirely memorable. 

Who will claim your body when you die? For lawyer Wallace, who’s spent most of his life obsessed with his practice, he’s not convinced that he’s dead even when he sits down in the pew of his own funeral. No one can see him, sure, but that sounds like a them problem. When a grim reaper deposits him in a tea shop for one week of purgatory, Wallace is overwhelmed at how little a life in his office chair seems to actually be worth. But as he learns the laws of what it means to be dead, including interacting with shop owner Hugo, Wallace is forced to reconcile where one life ends and another begins. This romance is set entirely in the afterlife, making it both unique and emotionally surprising. 

Paige Powars’ second novel is a campy romp through every high school trope imaginable, but pulled together by its main characters’ wit and hilarity. Trans teen Charlie is focused on making his way through his time at an all-boys high school without getting harassed or potentially kicked out — a prospect that would be much easier if his roommate wasn’t his former camp boyfriend, Jasper. Adding insult to injury, since Charlie transitioned after their relationship, Jasper doesn’t recognize him at all. The plot feels cooked up in a MadLibs factory, but what emerges is an achingly cute romance that’s hard to put down. 

Evelyn Hugo was a Hollywood icon known for her seven famous marriages, but when she approaches failing journalist Monique to write her biography, the story that unfolds gives readers a first hand look at how Hugo went from an unknown to a star actress with a lifetime full of untold secrets. People ridiculed, remembered, and loved her for her infamous marriages to famous men. But the real story Evelyn tells Monique is of her lifelong love with a woman — the late actress Celia St. James. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel takes much of its set dressing from the tabloid-driven life of Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor, but the novel’s description of classic Hollywood is just the background of this career-spanning and industry-defining novel.

This second-chance romance from Marie Rutkoski is the newest book on this list, coming out June 10. But the love story spans decades, from the first time Emily and Gen meet each other as children to their awkward run-in as adults. As girlfriends in their teens, they couldn’t make space, time, and warring life plans work out. But years later, their anxieties and circumstances are different. Gen is an Olympic athlete full of confidence, and Emily is in the midst of an abusive, emotionally consuming marriage. Rutkoski’s novel tackles divorce, abuse, and reconnection, but makes its mark in the subtle ways it shows rekindled love as a physical pull and a social mess.

When Viscount Marleigh is injured during the war, Marleigh, then living as a man, takes the opportunity to fake her death and transition — leaving her entire life behind to enter the world as Lady Viola. But interacting with her former best friend, Justin de Vere, the Duke of Gracewood, makes it clear that de Vere still isn’t over her death. Can she choose between the new life she’s scraped back for herself and the health of the only person she’s ever truly loved? This trans regency romp is emotive and wildly romantic, but a book where its trans heroine gets a happy ever after that’s both realistic and feels historically plausible is so rare that A Lady For A Duke remains an incomparable highlight of the genre.

Miel and Sam are best friends. She grows roses from her skin and he paints and hangs moons in the trees around him — and it’s nice to know someone collects stares the same way. This fantastical YA love story by author Anna-Marie McLemore straddles the line between a magical realism and a grounded reflection on the trans and immigrant experience, delivering a real-world understanding of the forces queer teens have to fight against while also giving readers an  escape from some of the harshest forces of reality.

The bond between Achilles and Patroclus is a mythic link that has maintained its importance from its first Greek inception to this tragic retelling from author Madeline Miller. Before Achilles becomes the violent, untouchable hero, he is the boy who shares a bedroll with Patroclus. The two are raised and trained together, following each other from open pastures to bloody, wind-swept battlefields. This classical expansion takes a lyrical approach to Patroclus’ devotion, ending with a sorrow that can only come from a true love. There’s a reason it’s sold close to 2 million copies, even as the average reader can only describe how hard they cried after finishing.

If tragedies end in funerals and comedies end in weddings, Gideon The Ninth should be the quintessential example of why queer romance can end with galaxy spanning declarations of the heart in front of behemoth killer bone monsters. This science fantasy comedy often carries the tagline of “lesbian necromancers in space,” but even for those who take a while to ease into sci-fi settings will be completely drawn in by such a detailed story of love placed in a crumbling, space knight setting. There had yet to be an expansive, queer science fiction work that so perfectly uses a mind-boggling sci-fi setting to thrust audiences toward a love story they don’t even realize they’re in the middle of.

This romance from Casey McQuiston is a salt-tinged romcom about two slutty bisexuals falling in love — but it  could also function as an advertisement for any Mediterranean country’s tourism board, thanks to its many gorgeous descriptions of salty wind and buttery seafood. When exes Kit and Theo accidentally book the same European food-and-wine tour, the two try to distract from their awkward feelings by starting a competition to see who can hook up with the most people. It should be fine — cause they’re over each other, right? The prose is welcoming and so enticing that readers find themselves neck deep into a full-throated novel about gender exploration before you can say ciao. Queer romances that explore gender without turning to PSA language are can be difficult to find, and McQuiston’s romance novel builds an instantly compelling case for her main characters’ eventual love story.

Have you and your closest seven friends ever fantasized about starting a commune on the outskirts of the nearest walkable city? You can read this instead. Immigrant Sneha has moved to Milwaukee after graduation, a perfectly middling city where she believes a new job and the ability to purchase appetizers at trendy bistros is one more step to reaching her American dream. Wealth isn’t just her bank account, it’s the freedom to work her way through the intricacies of an office career then clock out at five and pursue the women who interest her. But financial freedom — and its sudden departure — can’t actually change the brain chemistry that’s turning her waking hours into such a fraught, anxious mess. In All This Could Be Different, Sarah Thankam Mathews takes a finance-informed approach to romance and intimacy, which turns an American recession into fertile ground for entry level worker Sneha to process both her crippling depression and the intoxicating desire of attention without a cost.

The greatest aspect of This Is How You Lose The Time War is how utterly incomprehensible this book is to describe without spoiling the ending. Two futuristic rivals go from corresponding to something stronger — and possibly bigger than their entire military campaigns. It is Hugo and Nebula-award winning sci-fi speed run through every human emotion and a beautifully expansive romance — one that will come to define the popular novellas of the 21st century.

In Malindo Lo’s expansive queer coming-of-age-novel, Lily Hu’s life changes forever when she steps into San Francisco’s lesbian bar The Telegraph Club. The 17-year-old daughter of Chinese immigrants is trying desperately to figure out why attraction and safety don’t always feel secure in her Chinatown home. She and Kathleen Miller know they have a connection — but the two of them have to decide what that spark is worth, not only for themselves, but for their families. This YA novel by Malinda Lo took home the National Book Award winner in 2021 and builds a romance backed up by exquisite and meticulously recorded research. It’s about self discovery under a starry sky — and has enough in-depth personal growth to melt even the iciest of hearts.

Makkai’s Pulitzer-Prize nominated novel is not for the faint of heart — nor those looking for their next breezy summer romance. The Great Believers takes dual perspectives from present-day France and 1980s Chicago and blends them together to paint a harrowing epitaph for the queer generation lost to AIDS. Yale Tishman is working on securing his Chicago art gallery the greatest collection of paintings yet, lost works that could change the entire course of his career. But while work gets further engrossing, his personal and romantic life seems to be disintegrating in front of his eyes. Three decades later, Yale’s last true friend, Fiona, is thrust back into the memories of that never ending summer while she searches the streets of Paris for her missing daughter. Books that center on the AIDS crisis almost implicitly guarantee a hard ending to readers, but Makkai’s novel blends a perfect rhythm of heartbreak and tearful acknowledgement that not all loves are painless, but the memories alone make them worth it.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the WHistle Stop Cafe is the perfect example of a sapphic romance defined by all of the things said in between the actual lines of the book. The basis for the 1991 hit film Fried Green Tomatoes, Flagg’s recollection of best friends Idgie and Ruth includes (but is not limited to) sketchy barbeque, a criminal trial, two separate railway accidents, and aggressive onset menopause. None of these seem like the building blocks for the quintessential lesbian romance, which is what makes Fried Green Tomatoes such a classic tome. After all, what’s more romantic than two best friends devoting their entire lives to one another?

The source material for the Academy Award-nominated film starring Timothee Chalamet is a lush portrait of sticky, summer love affair between Italian teen Elio and Oliver, the American grad student staying in Elio’s home for the summer. Aciman’s book — which was followed up by the sequel Find Me in 2019 — makes first love seem like forever, and something that can slip away as easily as summer break. There has yet to exist such an instant and evocative queer classic.

Romance is often portrayed as an experience linked to youth — something to fall into young and only understand when you’re old enough to know what a 401k is. But Andrew Sean Greer’s 2017 novel Less makes readers root for the bumbling antics of Arthur Less by building a coming-of-age story for a middle-aged man who has already experienced what he considered to be the great love of his life, and yet finds himself alone in gay bars anyway. This semi-successful novelist who would rather Eat, Pray, Love his way across the country ahead of his 50th birthday than attend his ex-boyfriend’s wedding alone. Love doesn’t have to be a young man’s game, and Greer delivers a comedic and incredibly convincing argument that romance sometimes boils down to which partner kills the bugs. This Pulitzer-Prize winning novel is a comedic star — and a romance that has only gotten more compassionate every year since its publication. 

This historic novel is a romance book about an epic written for a poet. The book takes a biographical turn to tell the story of time-traveling gender bending writer Orland — who goes from English court to English court, rakishly flirting and enticing everyone from world leaders to historic poets — all without aging. Orlando also serves as a meta romance, since it’s widely understood that Woolf wrote the book as a personal tribute and love letter to her long-term lover and bestie Vita Sackville-West.

If you start to read this and begin imagining the scenes performed by Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett, you’re not hallucinating. Highsmith’s 1952 novel is the basis for the 2015 film Carol, which sees department store worker Therese form an unlikely but all-consuming love for married shopper Carol Aird. Highsmith’s literary career is defined by her genre-bending, often homoerotic thrillers, including Strangers On A Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. It wouldn’t be a Highsmith work without the tightening seams of suspense and homophobia written throughout the novel, but The Price of Salt remains both a historical novel and a surprising example of Highsmith leaving her characters if not with their dignity, then at least their love for each other.

There’s nothing soft or easy about Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin’s novel that has remained one of the greatest written works since its publication in 1956. The book follows an American, David, while he tries to spend his time in Paris recovering from the departure of his girlfriend, only to throw himself into a heated infatuation with Giovanni, a gay bartender. The book is intensely sexual and deeply contemplative, constantly throwing David’s desires next to his long-held shame about his sexuality. Yet the narrative remains undoubtedly romantic. There is no world in which the queer novel could exist in its current form without the work and scholarship of Baldwin.