11 Queer Books to Vote for in the Final Round of the Goodreads Choice Awards

It’s always nice when one of the biggest literary fiction titles of the year is queer. This is a bestseller that comes highly recommended by authors like Tommy Orange, Lauren Groff, John Green, Clint Smith, and more. It follows Cyrus, a twentysomething queer poet who has been numbing his pain with drugs and alcohol. His mother was killed when her plane was shot down over Tehran in a senseless act of violence by the U.S. military. His father recently died of a heart attack. As he becomes sober, Cyrus goes looking for meaning, and he finds it by researching martyrs. When he hears about an artist dying of cancer in an exhibition at a museum, he is determined to meet her. —Danika Ellis

Inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lost Story follows two boys who once went missing in the West Virginia woods. Now, 15 years later, one lives as an artist with no memory of what happened in the six months they were gone, while the other works as a missing persons investigator to help other lost children. Rafe has kept Jeremy in the dark for all these years about what happened to them all those years ago in a magical land full of wonder and danger. But now that another girl has gone missing, the two will have to reconnect and face their shared past as they venture into a magical land once again. —Rachel Brittain

The story starts unassumingly enough. A young woman and her long-term partner purchase a house, intending to fix it up and flip it. One evening, the doorbell rings. It’s a man who allegedly grew up in the house, and he wants to show his family around. Eve lets them in…and soon finds it impossible to get rid of them. As the night goes on, a sense of creeping dread builds, and things go slowly but wildly off the rails. Is Eve losing it? Overreacting? Slipping into an alternate dimension? Terrified as I was, I nevertheless made it to the end and still don’t know. —Steph Auteri

Also in this category: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

This is a romantasy-mystery that has been all over TikTok since its release in the UK — and now it’s available in the States! Thank goodness, because it is such a delightful romp. It’s a magical murder mystery set aboard a cruise ship containing the emperor of Concordia and the twelve heirs of the provinces. Each of the heirs has a special secret magic unique to them, except for Ganymedes Piscero, the disappointment of his family. Which is too bad because when someone on the ship starts murdering the magical heirs, Ganymedes has no way of protecting himself and not much of a chance of discovering the killer without the help of magic. Can he solve it on his own before it’s too late? —Liberty Hardy

This award-winning book follows siblings Greta and Valdin as they contend with an eccentric, multiracial family, queerness, and just trying to figure it all out. Valdin is doing superficially well after having been dumped by his boyfriend a year ago—his colleagues are only occasionally weird about his Maaori heritage, and he has intermittent sad sex with a friend—when work sends him from New Zealand to Argentina, where his ex is. Meanwhile, Greta has her own bubbling sadness. She’s experiencing unrequited pining, and her family is in a state made even more perplexing by her brother’s sudden, secretive move to South America. —Erica Ezeifedi

Andrew and Thomas bond over their shared love of twisted fairytale stories, which Andrew writes endlessly. But then Thomas begins acting strangely, showing up with blood on his clothes. Andrew discovers he’s been battling monsters at night, the same monsters that Andrew invented in his stories and Thomas drew. The two of them battle every night to stop the monsters from hurting anyone else, which brings them even closer into an obsessive, toxic relationship. But the monsters are getting stronger, and Andrew begins to wonder if they only way to stop them is to kill their creator. —Danika Ellis