As I spend most of my time writing somewhat heavy, and complex stories, I often feel the need to escape - and my guilty pleasure is LGBT+ romance novels.
Perhaps it’s seeing people like me represented on the page, something that I had no access to growing up. Maybe I’m just a sucker for romance. Put those two things together and you get something quite special.
While LGBT+ romance (or fiction in general) has been around for centuries (Oscar Wilde, E. M. Forster, Jeanette Winterson, Jamie O’Neill are just some of the awesome authors in this genre) it’s only really become “mainstream” in recent years, in part thanks to books like the wildly popular Red, White & Royal Blue, which Amazon recently turned into an even more wildly popular movie - Amazon said it was the top watched film worldwide on the platform for three weeks after it’s release.
There seems to be an ever increasing number of fabulous books in this genre - here are three of my favorites that I’ve read recently.
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance - Foz Meadows
Combine politics, a murder mystery, a bit of magic and some gay romance and you have, in my opinion, the perfect recipe for a gripping story. Set in a late-medieval-esque fantasy world, A Strange and Stubborn Endurance follows the story of two men - Vel, a disgraced nobleman who is being shipped off to marry a stranger in another kingdom for a political alliance, and Cae, another nobleman, a famous warrior - and the man Vel ends up marrying.
“Yours is a strange and stubborn endurance, Velasin. Just like your mothers.”
Meadows is quite lyrical with their writing, which makes the story feel more ‘epic’ in scale, and helps create multi-layered characters and lush locations. I also liked how the POV jumped between Vel and Cae, as well as how the author tackles some heavy and dark themes. The romance gets steamy as the story progresses but in a way that really worked with their individual character development. When you read it you’ll see why.
If you fall in love with the story, there’s also a sequel.
Wolfsong - TJ Klune
This one is for all the gays who grew up watching Twilight, thought Jacob was far hotter than Edward, and wondered why he bothered chasing Bella when there were so many other gorgeous werewolves around.
The story follows a young boy, Ox, who’s father told him he would never amount to anything. Now. living with his mother in a small rural American town, their neighbors seem somewhat unusual. As he grows up he becomes close to the neighbor's son, Joe Bennett. It turns out the Bennett family are all werewolves. During the novel A LOT happens - some of it quite dark - and at times you feel your heart breaking for the characters. It’s a hard book to put down.
“So he pressed his forehead against mine and breathed me in and there was that sun, okay? That sun between us, that bond that burned and burned and burned because he’d given it to me. Because he’d chosen me. And I got to choose him back.”
Klune’s writing style and structuring is also quite different, which added another dimension to the storytelling.
There are also several other books in this series, each from the perspective of a different character in the universe. I love it when authors do this - it keeps a series fresh and adds depth to characters that audiences have already fallen in love with.
The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen - KJ Charles
This is the easiest read of the three, but no less entertaining. The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen follows the story of Gareth Inglis, who finds himself inheriting his father’s estate in an area of 19th century England called ‘The Marsh’. This backwater part of the country is also home to a notorious smuggler clan led by the dashing Joss Doomsday.
You can imagine the delicious tension between the two men.
“If you want something, you ask for it. You told me so, before. Is that always how you get what you want?”
The novel is a really digestible length, the writing is super accessible, and the is story entertaining and fun. A noble and a criminal hooking up - who could want anything else?
I also have the sequel, A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, which, like the Wolfsong series, follows the story of another character in the original novel. It’s just as delicious as the first book.
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