Feature: Pride 2026 TBR & Giveaway

June is here and so is our annual tradition of reading every queer book we can get our hands on, crying at fictional characters, and losing sleep over slow burns that took three hundred pages to pay off. This year’s Pride TBR is stacked and we are not apologizing for any of it.

This year’s list has everything: sapphic romance, trans history, inherited gay bars, Regency courtesans, and a movie tie-in we have been waiting on for years. There is something here for whoever you are and however you want to feel this month. Check out our Bookshop for even more recs!

And because we love sharing the bookish love, we’re also hosting a giveaway over on IG to help kick off your Pride reads!

Christy’s TBR

Pride is every month but we always use June to take it to the next level, and this year my TBR is stacked (like always). I have Alexandra Villasante’s speculative queer romance Fireblooms, Jude St. Jude’s Where You’ll Find Us about a trans teen who finds a refuge for queer kids across decades, Olivia A. Cole and Ashley Woodfolk’s sapphic cheerleading rom-com Queerleaders, Natalie Zina Walschots’ Hench (and it’s sequel, Villains), Kelly Quindlen’s This Must Be the Place about a girl who inherits a gay bar from her secret great-uncle, Anna Cowan’s sapphic Regency romance The Duke, and Hayley Kiyoko’s Girls Like Girls just in time for the film adaptation hitting theaters June 19th. 

Kelly’s TBR

Clearly I want to read a bunch of this years releases, many of which are hot off the presses just in time for PRIDE Month, and quite a few are shared with Christy’s list. A couple not mentioned yet, are Jamie Pacton’s sapphic cozy fae adventure, The Hyacinth Labyrinth, it is a standalone, yet set in the same world as The Absinthe Underground (which is wonderful so read it too!). I am planning to read the cozy-fantasy The Field Guide to the Formally Villainous by Autumn K. England, (the adult penname of MK England, who we are massive fans of their books), and of which I did read when it was still a choose your own adventure web book, so I can’t wait to read this fully formed novel now!

I hope to read the YA sapphic sports romance, Smash or Pass by Birdie Schae, I love volleyball & sports romances so I am excited. Adding in another new YA contemporary called Lake Life by Tanya Boteju, which is about making your crush jealous, with some fake-dating, while trying to help save your mountain town from corporate takeovers (which with data centers these days, I bet this hits close to home for many). I feel like I need another romance to help me get as many books read as possible, and for some reason romance goes faster for me, so I will add You Won’t Forget Me by Mazey Eddings, whose Late Bloomer was really great!

Who doesn’t love time-slips and time-travelling tropes, it’s one of my favorite themes, so I will be reading Time-Tripping Over You by Brennon Lane, where a trans college student studying Physics, ends up reliving parts of his past over and over again…which you can imagine is weird for someone who has transitioned, and finds himself getting to know another guy from his past who is also experiencing some of the same time-travelling. I also hope to get to Devils We Know by L.T. Thompson, which is the queer pirate adventure sequel to Devils Like Us!

And of course these are all just hopefuls, but it’s all queer all month, and you know I will be reading QUEER ALL YEAR!



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Queerleaders

by Olivia A. Cole, Ashley Woodfolk
Published by: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
on May 19th, 2026
Genres: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, Young Adult
Bookshop
Goodreads

Two cheerleaders find themselves inconveniently tumbling head over heels for each other in this satirical, sapphic teen rom-com that’s Bring It On meets She Drives Me Crazy.

Oak Haven High doesn’t have cheerleaders—it has queerleaders.

It’s a fun coincidence that every new varsity cheerleader since Davie Cathee took the squad by storm three years ago is—or soon comes out as—queer.
But when a rumor sparks that this season, newly minted captain Davie has been specifically recruiting queer members only, Davie is accused of “discrimination” against straight students. She’s given an ultimatum: recruit a straight athlete for the team or the funding for their competitive cheer season will take a major tumble.

Enter Kendall Hayes, the edgy, mysterious new girl. When Davie sees that Kendall has a boyfriend, she quickly convinces her to join the squad. Problem solved.

Until she finds out that Kendall’s actually bisexual…and newly single.
Now Kendall and Davie are faced with having to keep those details under wraps until nationals, which only gets more complicated when they start falling hard and fast for each other. Can Kendall go back in the closet long enough to save the squad? Or will Davie find the courage to love her new crush out loud, even if it might mean the end of the queerleaders?

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