My newest YA novel, Home Field Advantage, is your typical cliché sports romance between a high school quarterback and aspiring cheer captain…except that they’re both girls. Sports is such a fascinating setting for queer YA to me, because it adds a whole extra social dynamic of being teammates and how that can work for or against you, depending on the culture and who you are. It’s also a great venue for subversion of gender norms, which is always welcome to me! And in general, I really just love protagonists who are really passionate about what they do. If they happen to be queer as well, that’s just a nice bonus!
Amber McCloud’s dream is to become cheer captain, but it’s an extra-tall order to be spirited when the quarterback of your team has been killed in a car accident. Watching Robbie get replaced by newcomer Jack Walsh is brutal. And when it turns out Jack is actually short for Jaclyn, all hell breaks loose.
The players refuse to be led by a girl, the cheerleaders are mad about changes to their traditions, and the fact that Robbie’s been replaced by a QB who wears a sports bra has more than a few Atherton Alligators in a rage. It quickly becomes clear that Amber only has a future on the squad if she helps them take Jack down. Just one problem: Amber and Jack are falling for each other.
She Drives Me Crazy does a fantastic job mashing up two of the greatest tropes—enemies-to-lovers and fake dating—and combining them with a spin on the classic sports romance genre by having both basketball player Scottie and cheerleader Irene be girls. It’s not all fun and games—Scottie is nursing a breakup in a painfully relatable fashion—but it is a lot of fun and games, and Quindlen definitely knows how to write romance, too.
“A little sweet, a little sharp.” —Booklist, starred review
High school nemeses fall in love in Kelly Quindlen's She Drives Me Crazy, a queer YA rom com perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli and Casey McQuiston.
After an embarrassing loss to her ex-girlfriend in their first basketball game of the season, seventeen-year-old Scottie Zajac gets into a fender bender with the worst possible person: her nemesis, Irene Abraham, head cheerleader for the Fighting Reindeer.
Irene is as mean as she is beautiful, so Scottie makes a point to keep her distance. When the accident sends Irene’s car to the shop…
Fitzsimons’s debut, about a stealth trans soccer player named Spencer who’s crushing on a teammate at a new school, is sweet, funny, warm, sporty, and all too relevant. When Spencer’s benched due to the F on his birth certificate, he can either ride the pine with the secret intact, or fight for his right to be on the field, outing himself in the process and risking his crush.
Love, Simon meets Bend It Like Beckham in this feel-good contemporary romance about a trans athlete who must decide between fighting for his right to play and staying stealth.
“A sharply observant and vividly drawn debut. I loved every minute I spent in this story, and I’ve never rooted harder for a jock in my life.” – New York Times bestselling author Becky Albertalli
Fifteen-year-old Spencer Harris is a proud nerd, an awesome big brother, and a David Beckham in training. He's also transgender. After transitioning at his old school leads to a year of isolation and bullying, Spencer gets…
Lundin writes one of the best explorations of internalized and externalized misogyny I’ve ever read in this contemporary YA about Mara, a lesbian who needs a new sport when she’s bounced off of basketball for a fight and finds herself fighting to join football. She’s soon joined by four other girls (including both her crush and her enemy) aiming to join with her, which pisses her off—why do they have to turn it into some girl power thing when she just genuinely loves the sport? But the way things play out teaches Mara a lot about who’s really on her team.
“What if I played football?” I ask. As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I feel stupid. Even suggesting it feels like I’ve overstepped some kind of invisible line we’ve all agreed not to discuss. We don’t talk about how Mara is different from other girls. We don’t talk about how Mara is gay but no one says so. But when I do stuff like this, I worry it gets harder for us all to ignore what’s right in front of us. I direct my gaze to Quinn. “What do you think?” “I think it’s frickin’ genius,” he says.…
Dugan is one of my absolute favorite authors of queer YA, and this romance between out-and-proud track star Morgan and closeted Ruby is a perfect illustration why, merging a fun high school setting and passionate main characters with the very relevant situation of managing your public level of queerness. It’s thoughtful and sweet, romantic and funny, and above all, real.
In this YA contemporary queer romance from the author of Hot Dog Girl, an openly gay track star falls for a closeted, bisexual teen beauty queen with a penchant for fixing up old cars. Now available in paperback!
Morgan, an elite track athlete, is forced to transfer high schools late in her senior year after it turns out being queer is against her private Catholic school's code of conduct. There, she meets Ruby, who has two hobbies: tinkering with her baby blue 1970 Ford Torino and competing in local beauty pageants, the latter to live out the dreams of her…
River McIntyre is a swimmer; at least that’s one element of their identity that’s safely and publicly established. But when he ends up “swimming” in the wrong place—a shark tank—it kicks off a journey of self-discovery that will change them forever. It’s such a brilliant path, taking place over the course of years and through different IDs and realizations, and I love the way everything—including River’s chosen name—always comes back to the water.
An achingly honest and frequently hilarious coming-of-age novel about an Arab American trans swimmer fighting to keep their head above water in a landlocked Midwestern town.
River McIntyre has grown up down the street from Sea Planet, an infamous marine life theme park slowly going out of business in small-town Ohio. When a chance encounter with a happy, healthy queer person on the annual field trip lands River literally in the shark tank, they must admit the truth: they don't know who they are-only what they've been told to be. This sets off a wrenching journey of self-discovery, from internalized…
As a young doctor, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the death of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the War, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is Oregon: the Ku Klux Klan is gaining influence, homosexual acts are illegal, and such a relationship will jeopardize Carl’s promising medical career.
Musician Jimmy Harper has his own dreams for the future and his own obstacles to overcome before he will allow himself to accept Carl’s love. More than a gay love story, Acquaintance is a deep dive into gay and lesbian history based on extensive period research of the 1920s.
As a young surgeon, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the loss of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the war, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is Oregon: the Ku Klux Klan is gaining influence, homosexual acts are illegal, and such a relationship will jeopardize Carl’s promising medical career. Musician Jimmy Harper has his own dreams for the future and his own obstacles to overcome before he will allow himself to accept Carl’s love. Acquaintance is a…
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