100 books like Heartstopper

It took me months to pick up Carry On after it initially caught my eye on the bookshelf. It was everything I could have wanted.

It is a less problematic Harry Potter, if Harry and Draco ended up getting together. It shows a really authentic representation of unrequited queer love and recognizing one’s own queer identity. It is character-driven, but also full of fun magic adventure. I love a book that knows how to give you exactly what you want.

When you screech, "do not talk to me the boys are about to kiss" to your partner, it becomes necessary to recommend the book to everyone you know.

Does RWRB need more recommendations? Maybe not. But it has to be first on my list because it was the book that got me back into romance. Not only is it laugh-out-loud funny, the relationship between Henry and Alex is so authentic, it will make your heart sing. Yes, they are in ridiculous positions in the world, but it is their love that drives the story.

Hilarious, heartwarming, and sexy. If you are just diving into gay romance, this is the place to start.

Boys are one way; girls are another; that’s the way it has always been. But when Aster finds himself ineluctably drawn to the magic that should only be the province of the women in his family, he begins to realize some rules are not only antiquated, they can do material harm to the soul. Ostertag deftly uses the supernatural as a simple and elegant metaphor for the thousand indignities we can heap upon the queer and gender nonconforming, with an art style that simultaneously insists upon and celebrates the multiplicity of bodies and expressions that are our lived experience and belie these closed and closeting norms. An ingenious allegory, smartly and briskly told with charm and generosity.

Spinning is a memoir of the author starting from when she was in fifth grade, when her family moved from New Jersey to Texas.

Tillie had been training as a figure skater and her training changed along with her school, friends, and entire life. It’s a coming-of-age story, fully based in reality, about letting go of some things in order to grow into your true self.

The art is spare and honest. It’s mostly line work in a kind of grey mauve hue with pops of yellow.

This is the story of two young men, one rich, one homeless but it’s not a simple rescue me type story. Laurie and Sasha reach out desperately to one another from their different worlds, and against all odds begin an affair, hidden in the attics of Laurie’s sumptuous home and on the bleak moorland of a Romani encampment. For Laurie, it’s a delicious sexual awakening, and Sasha returns his affections, opening up to him a whole new world of freedom. But Sasha has secrets, and a murky, violent past. 

I’ve reread this book countless times. Harper Fox’s writing is breathtaking and it’s so comforting to read characters you can’t help but adore falling in love and finding their way through conflict to a safe and happy ending.

Many books have kissing in the forest, but how many are about kissing the forest itself?

Fenton has watched countless hunters enter his forest to claim a wish by killing the white-tailed stag. Each hunter has taken: a sip from the stream, a flower from the vine, wood to light a fire. Each hunter has subsequently died.

Prior is different; he takes nothing, instead asking for a god’s assistance in waking his sister from her sleeping sickness. Fenton—who is the forest and the white-tailed stag and a son of Old Nan and also, definitely, a god—decides to pack up the forest and help Prior out.

Where I come from, that sort of thing will get you a little kiss or two at the very least.

A beautifully written coming-of-age tale. And another book I have read many times. The descriptions are so sensuous and evocative of a hot summer in the French countryside that it’s easy to lose yourself in them. This story isn’t a straightforward romance and reading about deeply flawed but very human characters are ultimately what gives me comfort with this one.

Language is powerful. For those of us who are children of immigrants, language can also be a barrier.

In this beautiful graphic novel, Nguyen, shows how stories shared among parents and children can help us bridge language gaps between us. The way he adapts well-known fairytales to fit within the framework of the Vietnamese diaspora is so flawless that I felt they were a part of my own family’s retellings.

Also, the illustrations are beautiful. Novels like this remind us that even though we may be different, at our core we want to love and be loved for who we are.

A wonderfully charming fairy tale with gorgeous cartooning and character design from creator Jen Wang, this inclusive story features an unlikely, complicated, and ultimately heartwarming relationship between a shy prince with a secret and an ambitious seamstress with the vision to make his forbidden dreams come true. Managing to handle complex issues of identity and personal expression with aplomb, this graphic novel is a great fit for teen and tween readers. It’s equally easy to imagine an animated or live-action version of this feel-good fantasy full of grace, emotion, and spirit. 

A rough-and-tumble gaggle of middle-schoolers on the C-string girl's soccer team navigate first crushes, coming out, queer identity, and relationships – and being really, really bad at soccer. Johnson’s perfect ear for tween voices is matched by a frenetic art style that pops with crisp energy and a delirious, bouncy pace that rebounds around its panoply of League Of Their Own-esque characters like a soccer ball zig-zagging across its field. All the cheers, all the skinned knees, all the dizzying emotions and close friendships of the tween years come rushing back.