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.

American snark meets cutting British wit: I loved the texts/emails/calls between Alex, the American president’s son, and Henry, the British prince. The contrast between the two characters was riveting: the brash, ambitious young politico versus the cultured, smooth, royal prince with decades of tradition bred into his bones. Let’s face it: power is seductive, and these two enemies-to-lovers move in the highest-powered circles on Earth.

What gives this love story extra depth is the struggle of these highly visible men to deal with being gay/bisexual both in private and on the public stage. Prince Henry’s pain at having to suppress his true sexuality almost broke my heart. Thank goodness it’s a romance, so they find a way to be happy together in the end! 

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.

Walden is one of my favorite pure artists—one of those people whose drawings I look at and say to myself: “I could never draw like that even if I practiced for the rest of my life.”

She combines her jaw-dropping artwork with sensitive, nuanced writing. While her work is consistently brilliant, this book—a memoir of her time coming-of-age as a queer person while being a competitive figure skater—was one of my foremost inspirations for my book, which started as a similar queer sports memoir before morphing into semi-autobiographical fiction.

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.

Fairy-tale retellings are my favorite subgenre, and this book hit every right note for me. I loved the incorporation of stories, known and unknown to me, with art so beautiful there are days I pick this book up just to marvel at it.

The last one brought tears to my eyes, a feat that doesn’t happen often, superseded only by the end of the novel. I cannot recommend it enough.    

I’ve been a fan of Jen Wang since Livejournal was still a thing. Her stories have an indie yet accessible vibe, and her elegant brushwork is equally adept at capturing cute, expressive faces as it is at depicting detailed, flowing ballgowns. 

In this gorgeous graphic novel, a young seamstress becomes the confidante of a shy prince as he embarks on a journey of gender exploration (with soooooo many pretty dresses.) It captures the warm, nostalgic feeling of an intimate childhood friendship, the kind with its own secret language and lore.

This book falls on the younger side of this list. I’d say it’s more sparkling than spicy, and would be an appropriate gift (one you secretly steal and consume voraciously in a single sitting) for a middle-grade or early-YA reader.

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.