Here are 100 books that Meet Cute Diary fans have personally recommended if you like
Meet Cute Diary.
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I am a queer Latinx author and avid reader. Long before I became an author, I was devouring books and losing myself in fantasy worlds. When I got older, I realized how few books in the market looked like me. I didn’t feel represented in the literary world. Now, I create queer fantasy novels that feature strong women of color in sweeping Latin American-inspired settings for future generations.
Cemetery Boys was the first time I truly felt represented in a fantasy novel, and once I started, I couldn’t put it down.
The navigation of family dynamics in the story is brilliant - we follow Yadriel, a gay Latinx trans teen whose family is made up of brujas (women) and brujos (men). The struggle to find his place in that system, and the way that his family members seem accepting in one moment, then dismissive in another is unbearably relatable for many queer kids growing up in Latinx households.
In an effort to prove his worth to his family (and himself) Yadriel accidentally summons the ghost of a very cute dead boy, and together they go on a journey full of both danger and self-discovery.
Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can't get rid of him.
When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.
However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school's resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He's determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose…
I am a former book editor turned writer and a lover of literature in all forms. Young adult literature will forever be my favorite. Though I’m no longer “young,” I have two teenagers who love YA as much as I do and we bond over these stories. Since one prefers contemporary & urban fantasy, and the other likes dystopian & epic fantasy, I read a lot of everything! I particularly enjoy books with characters who triumph over extreme adversity, and if you do too, then you'll like the books on this list.
This review perfectly summed
up this book but neglected to mention it has a spectacular cover, which I’ll
admit was the first thing that drew my eye. The story also features a bi-racial
main character, and since my children are multi-racial, I love seeing this
representation. Because I’m an unapologetic book nerd, I adored the many
literary references. And I always love a good road trip! All in all, this is
one character-driven YA novel you won’t want to miss.
“This debut has it all: music, books, aliens, adventure, resistance, queerness, and a bold heroine tying it all together. ”—Ms. Magazine
Can a girl who risks her life for books and an Ilori who loves pop music work together to save humanity?
When a rebel librarian meets an Ilori commander…
Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of Earth and the invading Ilori resulted in the death of one-third of the world’s population. Today, seventeen-year-old Ellie Baker survives in an Ilori-controlled center in New York City. All art, books and creative expression are illegal, but Ellie breaks the rules…
Growing up, I never saw myself fully represented in fiction. I only glimpsed pieces of my younger self reflected in novels about queer or queer-coded characters, and so I made it my life’s mission to give teenage me exactly what he wanted. As a YA author whose queer male readers are not always young adults, the message I get the most is, “I wish I had this as a teen.” While I often feel this way as well, I still know that reading the five books I recommended (as well as my own) at any age is life-affirming for queer men like myself.
Like my book and my first recommendation, this book is a humorous and poignant YA novel that stars a flawed, fleshed-out main character who makes me feel embarrassingly seen (starting to see a pattern?)
Despite spreading the dangerous notion that Whataburger is better than In-N-Out, this book is a realistic, enjoyable coming-of-age novel that hits all the right notes.
A poignant, funny, openhearted novel about coming out, first love, and being your one and only best and true self.
Julian Luna has a plan for his life: Graduate. Get into UCLA. And have the chance to move away from Corpus Christi, Texas, and the suffocating expectations of others that have forced Jules into an inauthentic life.
Then in one reckless moment, with one impulsive tweet, his plans for a low-key nine months are thrown-literally-out the closet. The downside: the whole world knows, and Jules has to prepare for rejection. The upside: Jules now has the opportunity to be his…
I am Sonora Reyes, author of The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School. As a queer Mexican-American, I’ve only ever written (and probably only ever will) write stories about queer characters of color like myself. Growing up, I never had access to books that represented people like me, and it fills me with so much joy to see all the representation that exists today. I write for the queer kids of color who desperately need to see themselves in fiction. I write for my teenage self. For the kids who think they’re alone. For the kids who want to see joy in their own stories. And, most importantly, for myself, as I am today.
Don’t Date Rosa Santos is one of the only books I’ve ever been able to read more than once (I’ve read it three times!). It made me laugh and cry and hug the book to my chest. I still am not over this book, and may never be! It’s my all-time favorite comfort read.
For fans of Gilmore Girls and To All the Boys I've Loved Before, this effervescent love story from debut author Nina Moreno will sweep you away.
Rosa Santos is cursed by the sea—at least, that's what they say. Dating her is bad news, especially if you're a boy with a boat.
But Rosa feels more caught than cursed. Caught between cultures and choices. Between her abuela, a beloved healer and pillar of their community, and her mother, an artist who crashes in and out of her life like a hurricane. Between Port Coral, the quirky South Florida town they call…
My name is Sara Jo Easton, and I’m the bisexual author of the Zarder novels, a fantasy series where a race of dragon-like creatures called Onizards learns to get past their prejudices. When I was at a book signing for my third book, The Blood of Senbralni, a strange man loudly declared I was part of an agenda to turn people to homosexuality and Satan with my evil dragons. To be clear, I am not and will never be affiliated with Satan. I made a vow that every book I wrote from that point forward would have at least one LGBTQ+ romance with a happy ending to annoy people like that man.
You might believe that I chose this book solely based on the title.
I can’t deny finding the idea of having the cover out and actively reading it in front of the kind of people wanting to ban LGBTQ+ books is a tantalizing one. That said, the real reason I chose this book is it is a helpful guide to the LGBTQ+ community that uses inclusive language and describes the different ways people identify with copious amounts of humor and quotes from members of the community.
It has important information about a wide variety of topics that I wish were around in an easy-to-read format when I was younger. There are frank sex education discussions in this book, which is vital information to fill in the gaps in sex education in most schools. I have this one saved for when the younger members of my family are ready to start…
The bestselling young adult non-fiction book on sexuality and gender! Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender. Queer. Intersex. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who's ever dared to wonder. This book is for YOU. This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it's like to grow up LGBTQ also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums, not to mention hilarious illustrations. Inside this revised and updated edition, you'll find the answers to all the questions you ever wanted to ask, with topics like:Stereotypes-the facts…
I'm a cartoonist with a transgender-biography and I write trans characters into my stories. Even though I value the growing awareness of transgender representation by all writers, those that were written by people with trans-experience carry special significance. I've written a graphic novel and many autobiographical, fictional, and documentary short stories. These works have centered on the themes sexual identity, gender roles, youth culture, family, social structures, and social history. With my work I aim to shed light on issues that are lesser known, with a strong social focus and the intention of using the storytelling medium and the comic format as a way of making the complex understandable.
Body Music is a lyrical compilation of short stories that play in the city life of Montreal. Each story is a small insight into the intimacy shared between two or more people. Very tenderly the author shows how love and connection are as unique and personal as people are different. It was heart-warming to read trans characters who were just one more way in the myriad of ways of being human.
Julie Maroh's first book, Blue Is the Warmest Color, was a graphic novel phenomenon; it was a New York Times bestseller and the controversial film adaptation by French director Abdellatif Kechiche won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. Maroh's latest book, Body Music, marks her return to the kind of soft, warm palette and impressionistic sensibility that made her debut book so sensational.
Set in the languid, European-like neighborhoods of Montreal, Body Music is a beautiful and moving meditation on love and desire as expressed in their many different forms?between women, men, and gender non-conformists alike,…
I'm a cartoonist with a transgender-biography and I write trans characters into my stories. Even though I value the growing awareness of transgender representation by all writers, those that were written by people with trans-experience carry special significance. I've written a graphic novel and many autobiographical, fictional, and documentary short stories. These works have centered on the themes sexual identity, gender roles, youth culture, family, social structures, and social history. With my work I aim to shed light on issues that are lesser known, with a strong social focus and the intention of using the storytelling medium and the comic format as a way of making the complex understandable.
The visual world Bishakh Som creates has so much personality that I could forget everything around me while I read it. Her main character is a queer goth punk, which is one of the reasons why I had wanted to read it because I love anything punk and queer. She navigates the relationship to her family as a Bengali American, the relationship to herself, to being an artist and all the while also exploring her trans identity. Bishakh Som takes the reader in and out of the fiction, weaving in both herself and her fictional character. It meant a lot to me that by doing this she poises transitioning as a deeply human process of flaws, personal growth, and beauty.
The meticulous artwork of transgender artist Bishakh Som gives us the rare opportunity to see the world through another lens.
This exquisite graphic novel memoir by a transgender artist, explores the concept of identity by inviting the reader to view the author moving through life as she would have us see her, that is, as she sees herself. Framed with a candid autobiographical narrative, this book gives us the opportunity to enter into the author's daily life and explore her thoughts on themes of gender and sexuality, memory and urbanism, love and loss.
I have been writing about LGBTQ+ culture for magazines and newspapers for almost a decade, and am a voracious consumer of queer stories. Queer literature makes our various needs and desires as a community come alive on the page, and helps us to connect with and understand one another. Reading LGBTQ+ books is a way to learn about contemporary queer life, and work out what more we can be doing to help those more marginalised than us.
This book is written with the utmost clarity – making an incisive and digestible argument why liberation for trans people fits into wider fights for socialism and justice for minorities. With chapters on why “T” belongs in “LGBT” and why trans inclusion should be core to feminist movements, it’s an essential read for LGBTQ+ people and their allies.
'Few books are as urgent as Shon Faye's debut ... Faye has hope for the future - and maybe so should we' Independent
'Unsparing, important and weighty ... a vitally needed antidote' Observer
'Takes the status quo by the lapels and gives it a shaking' Times Literary Supplement
Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized 'debate' which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals…
I'm a cartoonist with a transgender-biography and I write trans characters into my stories. Even though I value the growing awareness of transgender representation by all writers, those that were written by people with trans-experience carry special significance. I've written a graphic novel and many autobiographical, fictional, and documentary short stories. These works have centered on the themes sexual identity, gender roles, youth culture, family, social structures, and social history. With my work I aim to shed light on issues that are lesser known, with a strong social focus and the intention of using the storytelling medium and the comic format as a way of making the complex understandable.
I love this brightly colored collection of short stories, Gumballs. The author Erin Nations writes about situations and scenarios that explain a lot of the daily troubles in a trans person's life. The comics are in part autobiographical about his current life, in part about his childhood experience of being a triplet, and in part about fictional characters. The many different stories that range from serious to very funny, never get boring and are easy and fun to read. I recommend it for queer people to relate to and people who want to learn about being queer while also having a good laugh. As a trans person, reading the comic shows me I am not alone with those daily problems.
Gumballs dispenses an array of bright, candy-colored short comics about Erin's gender transition, anecdotal tales of growing up as a triplet, and fictional stories of a socially inept love-struck teenager named Tobias. The wide-ranging series is filled with single-page gag cartoons, visual diaries of everyday life, funny faux personal ads, and real-life horror stories from customers at his day job. Gumballs offers a variety of flavors that will surely delight anyone with a taste for candid self-reflection and observations of humanity. This book collects Gumballs #1-4, plus 32 pages of brand-new content! Gumballs tips its hat to the classic alt-comic…
I’m a queer, nonbinary, Muslim, immigrant writer who has been reading their whole life and writing for part of it. I learned to write by reading–by devouring all kinds of books across different genres and paying attention to how words create feelings, worlds, and chronologies. I also learned to live by reading–I didn’t grow up with models of how to live a life that was true to my identities and so I read everything I could find about experiences that were adjacent to my own. The emergence of queer Muslim literature has been exciting to follow, and I try to read everything in the field.
At its core, this book is a mystery: a trans Syrian-American’s journey to find out what happened to his mother and how she was connected to an artist whose journal he finds.
But what I loved most about this book is the meditations on gender, on spirituality, and on birds. This book is an ornithologist’s dream.
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award—Barbara Gittings Literature Award Named Best Book of the Year by Bustle Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions, Electric Literature, and HuffPost
From the award-winning author of The Map of Salt and Stars, a new novel about three generations of Syrian Americans haunted by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts—a “vivid exploration of loss, art, queer and trans communities, and the persistence of history. Often tender, always engrossing, The Thirty Names of Night…
