Most Anticipated 2022 LGBTQ Books

Is it cheating to start my “most anticipated” list with one I’ve already read? In fact, I read it in one sitting and stayed up later than I meant to doing it. This is one that might hit too close to home, because it is a dystopian set during a respiratory illness pandemic. It follows a group of teenagers in juvie who are abandoned there and have to figure out how to survive, and it includes a non-binary point of view character.

This is a take on the “magical girl” manga genre, but with a trans boy main character! As someone who group up with Sailor Moon cartoons, I can’t wait to see this trans take on the tropes of this subgenre.

While the idea of some sort of calamity or illness befalling one sex has been done before, it’s almost always with trans people as an afterthought (at best). In this post-apocalyptic survival story, two trans women and a trans guy band together to try to survive in a world where people with high levels of testosterone are suffering a horrible fate — and the group’s survival comes at a grisly cost.

This is an Australian YA novel about two Aboriginals boys falling in love, one of whom is still in the closet. This and Fire Song by Adam Garnet Jones are the only M/M Indigenous YA books I’ve heard of, but please let me know if you have read any other queer Indigenous YA, because I’d love to add them to my TBR!

I cannot contain myself with my excitement for this middle grade fantasy. There is a magical school with houses and it’s trans-inclusive! Check out this adorable video from the author about it. I am definitely Goose House. I haven’t been able to get details about the queer content, but it’s definitely trans-inclusive, and it sounds like there’s a trans main character as well as sapphic main characters, but I should know for sure closer to the pub date!

Okay, this is definitely the most hyped up book on this list, but I couldn’t resist. I, too, was swept up in One Last Stop, so I can’t wait to see their take on a sapphic YA romance.

Speaking of new releases by authors I loved last year, you might remember that The Chosen and the Beautiful was one of my favourite reads of 2021, so it was a no brainer to put her 2022 sapphic release on this list! I am shielding my eyes from learning any more, because she’s already an auto-read author for me now.

Then I have a couple of books that have been on my most-anticipated list since the titles were announced, long before they even had release dates! Who can resist that cover and title, I ask you? Besides, this summary of the book as a Reddit post made me cackle: “I (16F) got sent to a Catholic school with my brother (15M) after getting outed at my old school. I’m not out at the new school, but there’s this openly queer girl (16F) there who makes my gay heart do happy little flips. How do I date her without letting her know I’m gay?”

I am obligated to read this book from the title alone. I truly would read this based on just that. But the cover is also adorable — 2022 is really the year of amazing illustrated queer covers. Do I know nothing else about this? Yes. And I want to keep it that way.

Rebecca Barrow wrote one of my favourite YA books of all time, This Is What It Feels Like, so course I have to pick up her newest sapphic YA novel. This one is about Luca, who lives on an island that’s an idyllic tourist destination — that also is plagued with unexplained deaths of young women, including her best friend. And Luca thinks she might be next.

This is an India-inspired fantasy about four estranged royal siblings searching for a source of magic to prevent the country from being engulfed in war. Each sibling has their own agenda and complicated relationships with the others, but they’ll have to work together to complete this quest. This one has a gay main character.

While picture books with LGBTQ parents have existed since Heather Has Two Mommies, it’s still pretty rare to have picture books that star queer kids, and the ones that do tend to be about boys. That’s why it warms my heart to see Love, Violet, which is about Violet’s crush on Mira and wanting to give her a Valentine! Adorable.