The most recommended sapphic books

Forrest’s Kate Delafield, a San Francisco homicide detective, is surely the most famous character in lesbian mystery fiction. She is also the first lesbian police officer. Although most of Forrest’s 10 Delafield novels deserve 5-star ratings, The Beverly Malibu goes far beyond the usual whodunit limits in that it revisits the terrible McCarthy era when minorities—including the LGBTQ community—were kicked down at by the elite. This is also the book where Kate meets her long-time lover Aimee. 

Claudia Lin is lying to her family. They want her to have a steady job and marry a nice Chinese man—but Claudia’s interests don’t lie in either direction.

Instead she secretly takes a job at an online-dating detective agency, verifying the profiles people post on dating sites. This premise had me from page one, and as I read, Claudia and her journey turned out to be just as compelling. Readers will come for a good plot hook, but they’ll stay for a satisfying character arc—this was the biggest takeaway for me here.

Claudia is looking for truths, about both the book’s central mystery (investigating the death of one of her clients) and about herself.

Sputnik Sweetheart was the first Murakami book I had ever read. The book had such an impact on me that I almost immediately went out and purchased his other titles.

It is perhaps more experimental than other titles I’ve recommended here, but I enjoyed its non-linear plot and the surreal elements included in the story. Reality and irreality become indistinguishable, and I found myself wanting to know more about Sumire’s haunting disappearance.

Maybe it’s because of my working-class roots, but Mary Saunders, an obscure but very real historical figure, is the sort of woman I wanted to root for. After all, it takes initiative, ingenuity, and not a small dose of impetuosity to rise from a lower-class schoolgirl to, well, some higher station. I was saddened to see how Mary’s yearnings to free herself from the shackles of her class forced her into prostitution at a young age. But when she made a dangerous misstep that set her on the run and landed her a position of a household seamstress, I couldn’t help but fear the worst for her. I was glued to the page in Emma Donoghue’s rich and provocative tale of this young girl’s quest for a better life.

The narrator in this book reminds me of Lise, the main character in Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat. Boulder is tired of life and her job, leaving her washed out. 

This book explores the lives of women in a triptych first-person style with little men in sight. The cynical unnamed narrator also happens to be a young lesbian navigating her life through sex and depression.

Routine affects peoples’ lives differently, and love has no boundaries, so as the story evolves over ten years, we find Boulder and Samsa discussing the possibility of having a child. A solid read about an existential crisis.

Writing about the internet is notoriously difficult but Sudjic swings it, sublimely. Although ostensibly set between London and New York, Sympathy almost transcends setting with its focus on millennial Alice Hare’s online haunting of writer Mizuku Himura. After becoming infatuated with Mizuku over Instagram, Alice maneuvers an IRL friendship, which spirals into sexual obsession and possessiveness. It’s a brilliant character study and meditation on alienation, online personas, and the algorithmization of attraction. 

Just from the book’s back cover description, I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did because any kind of cheating and love triangles are not my cup of tea in a romance novel. If you are the same, give this book a chance anyway. Jan—who cared for her husband for years—and the much-younger writer Terry never planned to fall in love, but when they do, the author handles it with complexity and integrity. It’s a book that will make you feel all the emotions the characters are going through. 

The first sapphic book I ever read, over 30 years ago, still holds a special place in my heart. The two women stumble into their attraction for each other in a way that is believable and tender, and they take a journey together that is still relevant to our times. While one woman, Lane, had previously thought a same-sex relationship could be a real possibility for her, the other, Diana, had literally no idea until she meets Lane and is swept off her feet by her feelings. Simply a lovely story that I’ve re-read many times.

This is a story about a personal trainer charged with helping a hockey star get back on the ice. While the focus is very much on the relationship rather than the hockey, I just adored the way Kris Bryant captures the ways an athlete puts so much of herself on the line both physically and emotionally. I love the way Kris writes this “all in” sort of character who charges after what she wants, both in and out of the arena. I think she captured the kind of personality we are all drawn to in people who have the drive to reach the pinnacle of their pursuits.

After a lifetime of dutiful marriage, the newly widowed Lady Slane shocks her family by striking out on her own, moving from London to a suburban cottage where she will live alone and please herself (for once!). Her decision rumbles through her grown children’s lives and inspires one of her great-granddaughters to pursue an independent life herself.

I love that this book focuses on an older woman (Lady Slane is 88 years old), proving that it’s never too late to live life on your own terms. And in Deborah, her great-granddaughter, we get a glimpse of the new sort of woman who was really making her presence felt in this period: young women exploring their independence and living very different lives from their parents and grandparents.