New Sapphic Books This Year: Best New Sapphic Books of 2026

Is This a Cry for Help?

Emily Austin · January 13, 2026

• Published January 13, 2026
• Genre Literary fiction
• Romance Established couple (wives)
• Know first Grief, a mental-health crisis and book-ban protests

Darcy is a librarian with a wife, Joy, two cats and a house by the lake. Then news that her ex-boyfriend has died sends her spiraling into guilt and a breakdown, and when she returns to work, her branch is facing book-ban protesters and a fight over its programming.

Emily Austin writes anxious, funny, slightly disastrous women better than almost anyone, and this one aims that dark humor at grief and at who gets to decide what a library holds.

Why it belongs here: A married lesbian protagonist whose relationship is the steady ground under a very unsteady year.

Read it if: You loved the dark humor of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead.

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Chosen Family

Madeleine Gray · July 14, 2026 (US)

• Published July 14, 2026 (US)
• Genre Literary fiction
• Romance Friendship that is also a love story
• Know first Messy and bittersweet, not a romance arc

Nell meets Eve at twelve, at an all-girls school where she has given up on fitting in. Across the years that follow, through adolescence, share houses, gay bars and parenthood, the two love each other and hurt each other, with unspoken feelings always in the room.

It is a story about a bond that refuses to fit neatly into friendship, romance or family, and what happens when one of them walks away.

Why it belongs here: Queer women building a family on their own terms, and struggling to hold it together.

Read it if: You want sapphic relationships far messier than ‘will they finally kiss?’

First published in Australia and the UK; this is the US Mariner edition.

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Meet Me in the Garden

Nina LaCour · August 4, 2026

• Published August 4, 2026
• Genre Historical fiction
• Romance Central to the story
• Know first A family saga across decades

New Orleans, 1944. Odette is one of the glamorous Honoré sisters of the city’s Creole community, but she wants something her sisters don’t. Only her cousin Delphine knows her secret: she is in love with a woman, and she longs to be an artist.

In the hidden garden they share, both women dream of freer futures. Nina LaCour’s adult historical novel, inspired by her own Creole roots, follows what happens to those dreams.

Why it belongs here: One of the year’s biggest literary releases puts a woman’s love for another woman at its heart.

Read it if: You want slow, atmospheric historical fiction about family, art and hidden love.

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Long Island Girls

Gabrielle Korn · June 23, 2026

• Published June 23, 2026
• Genre Contemporary fiction
• Romance Central, on and off
• Know first Early-2000s indie music scene nostalgia

It’s 2005, and Susan is driving a car full of friends down the Long Island Expressway to an indie rock show when she meets Eliza, an unexpected passenger in the back seat. Their connection is immediate, electric and complicated from the start.

As Susan moves to Brooklyn and into the world of indie labels, the novel follows her through the scene she loves and the question of who actually gets to belong in it.

Why it belongs here: A coming-of-age story where the first great love is between two girls.

Read it if: You grew up on burned CDs and still think about the one that got away.

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Returns and Exchanges

Kayla Rae Whitaker · May 19, 2026

• Published May 19, 2026
• Genre Literary family saga
• Romance Forbidden attraction
• Know first Tragicomic, 1980s Kentucky

Christmas Eve, 1979: Fran Taylor runs Baker-Taylor’s, the family discount department store, with her charming husband and her kids on the registers. Across the 1980s, the business rises and falls, and Fran’s desire for her assistant manager, Wendy, threatens to upend everything she has built.

A big, funny, sad family novel, and a national bestseller.

Why it belongs here: Kirkus singles out Fran’s desire for Wendy as the novel’s central tension.

Read it if: You want a sprawling family saga with a woman risking everything for another woman.

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Waiting on a Friend

Natalie Adler · May 26, 2026

• Published May 26, 2026
• Genre Literary / speculative
• Romance Not a romance
• Know first AIDS-era grief

East Village, summer of 1984. Renata is a young dyke about town who can see ghosts, and she sees more of them every month as her friends die of what has just been named AIDS. When her best friend Mark dies and doesn’t come back to say goodbye, she starts to worry.

Then a police-like outfit begins clearing the neighborhood of anything inexplicable, and Renata realizes they are trapping ghosts.

Why it belongs here: A lesbian lead at the center of a story about queer community, grief and resistance.

Read it if: You want a funny, heartbreaking debut about the friends who hold each other up.

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Heap Earth Upon It

Chloe Michelle Howarth · February 3, 2026 (US)

• Published February 3, 2026 (US)
• Genre Literary suspense
• Romance Obsession, not romance
• Know first Stalking and dangerous fixation

January 1965. The orphaned O’Leary siblings arrive in the Irish village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their past. When their respected neighbors Bill and Betty Nevan take them under their wing, one sister forms an attachment to Betty that grows into something dangerous.

A creeping story of sibling rivalry and sapphic obsession from the author of Sunburn.

Why it belongs here: Its own publisher bills it as sapphic obsession, and it means the obsession.

Read it if: You loved Sunburn and want its rural Ireland with sharper teeth.

Loved the setting? Read our Sunburn review.

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Body Double

Hanna Johansson · April 7, 2026

• Published April 7, 2026
• Genre Literary thriller (translated from Swedish)
• Romance Central, and unsettling
• Know first Identity, deception

Naomi and Laura meet by chance when Naomi takes Laura’s coat by mistake in a department-store café. They fall in love, Laura moves in, and she reveals almost nothing about herself. Over time, Laura starts to look like Naomi, and then to take her place.

Meanwhile, a young woman transcribing recordings for a ghostwriter gets a strange message that will upend her life. Translated by Kira Josefsson.

Why it belongs here: A Hitchcockian thriller built entirely around a relationship between two women.

Read it if: You like quiet, eerie novels that make you distrust the person across the table.

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Almost Life

Kiran Millwood Hargrave · March 24, 2026 (US)

• Published March 24, 2026 (US)
• Genre Literary / historical romance
• Romance Central
• Know first Missed chances across decades

Erica and Laure meet on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur in Paris in 1978. Erica is a student enjoying her first summer abroad; Laure is studying for her exams. What begins that summer runs across decades.

People named it one of the best sapphic historical romances, and it is built for fans of One Day and Normal People.

Why it belongs here: A sweeping love story between two women, with all the ache of the years they lose.

Read it if: You want to be emotionally flattened in the best possible way.

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Superstars

Ann Scott (trans. Jonathan Woollen) · April 7, 2026

• Published April 7, 2026
• Genre Literary fiction (French cult classic)
• Romance Love triangle
• Know first 1990s rave scene and drugs

Louise is in her early thirties with a record contract, colorful roommates and a volatile place in the Paris lesbian scene. Having left rock for rave culture, she is tangled up with Alex, a DJ who has just started seeing a much younger woman.

First published in France in 2000, this is its first English translation.

Why it belongs here: Lesbian DJ love triangles in 1990s Paris, finally available in English.

Read it if: You want something grittier and stranger than a rom-com.

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Playing for Keeps

Alexandria Bellefleur · January 6, 2026

• Published January 6, 2026
• Genre Contemporary rom-com
• Romance Central, HEA
• Know first Rivals to lovers, steamy

Publicist Poppy Peterson’s star client, an NFL quarterback, makes a very public pass at pop darling Lyric Adair. Instead of a scandal, Lyric’s notoriously cool publicist Rosaline Sinclair tells Poppy that Lyric is interested too.

As their clients start an ill-advised whirlwind romance, the two rival publicists are forced together to protect them, with predictable consequences.

Why it belongs here: Lambda Literary Award-winner Bellefleur opened the sapphic romance year.

Read it if: You want polished, sexy, funny F/F romance.

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Get Over It, April Evans

Ashley Herring Blake · February 3, 2026

• Published February 3, 2026
• Genre Contemporary romance
• Romance Central, HEA
• Know first Clover Lake book 2; reads as a standalone

April Evans’s tattoo shop has closed, she’s broke, and she hasn’t dated since her fiancée left her for a younger woman. A summer job teaching art at a lake-town resort looks like her way out, until she meets her cabinmate, Daphne Love: the woman her ex left her for.

Daphne has no idea who April is, and she has just had her own heart broken.

Why it belongs here: Ashley Herring Blake is one of mainstream sapphic romance’s biggest names.

Read it if: You came to Blake through Delilah Green Doesn’t Care.

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Like in Love with You

Emma R. Alban · January 13, 2026

• Published January 13, 2026
• Genre Regency romance
• Romance Central, HEA
• Know first Rivals to lovers, steamy

Bath, 1817. Catherine Pine’s mother wants revenge on an old enemy, so Catherine is ordered to steal the suitor of the enemy’s daughter, the wildly popular Lady Rosalie. The trouble is that Rosalie is the wittiest, most intriguing woman Catherine has ever met.

Pitched as Mean Girls meets Northanger Abbey: what if the two rivals just… kissed?

Why it belongs here: A sharp, sexy historical romance with the love story front and center.

Read it if: You like Regency banter and rivals who can’t stop circling each other.

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Anderson in Bloom

Jennifer Dugan · March 3, 2026

• Published March 3, 2026
• Genre Contemporary romance
• Romance Central, HEA
• Know first Second chance, celebrity

Six years ago, former child star Andy Ducharme cut every tie in LA and disappeared into a flower shop in coastal New England. Then her ex and former co-star arrives in town with plans for a tell-all memoir.

An enemies-to-lovers, second-chance rom-com about hiding from your past until it walks through the door.

Why it belongs here: Dugan’s adult sapphic romance, endorsed by Ashley Herring Blake.

Read it if: You love celebrity romance with real history between the leads.

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Margin of Error

Rachel Lacey · February 3, 2026

• Published February 3, 2026
• Genre Contemporary romance
• Romance Central
• Know first Late-in-life coming out; a family mystery

Two years after an accident in Manhattan nearly killed her, Marin has left her husband, her job and her home. Now she’s teaching statistics in Vermont and ready to do something she has dreamed about for decades: date a woman.

The woman she can’t stop thinking about is Charlotte, whom she met the morning of the accident, and who has come home to solve her own mother’s thirty-year-old disappearance.

Why it belongs here: A new release from an established F/F romance author, with a later-in-life first sapphic romance.

Read it if: You like tender, hopeful romance with a second chance at life built in.

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In Her Spotlight

Amy Spalding · February 24, 2026

• Published February 24, 2026
• Genre Contemporary rom-com
• Romance Central
• Know first Out in Hollywood book 4; standalone

Tess Gardner is famous for playing Princess Platinum in a superhero franchise, and she wants to prove she can really act. She lands a stage role, only for the director to be replaced by Rebecca Frisch, whose heart a still-closeted Tess broke during summer stock a decade ago.

Why it belongs here: A second-chance sapphic rom-com set in the theatre world.

Read it if: You like second chances, backstage drama and a heroine finally coming out.

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The Rewind Effect

Morgan Lee Miller · August 11, 2026

• Published August 11, 2026
• Genre Speculative romance
• Romance Central
• Know first Memory loss, betrayal

After a car accident wipes most of her memories, Jamie Kessler undergoes an experimental procedure to get them back. One name keeps returning: Mallory Ziegler, the woman she met in an AOL chatroom at nineteen, fell madly in love with, and somehow lost.

The deeper she digs, the harder she falls again. But some memories were buried for a reason.

Why it belongs here: A second-chance romance with a science-fiction twist.

Read it if: You like dual timelines, old feelings and a love that memory couldn’t erase.

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Chasing a Melody

A. L. Brooks · August 26, 2026

• Published August 26, 2026
• Genre Small-town romance
• Romance Central
• Know first Eagle Cove series; nonbinary love interest

Melody has spent her adult life running from feelings, jumping between jobs, towns and part-time lovers. Now she’s taken a job in Eagle Cove, a town she once left in a hurry. Gray, who works at the local animal shelter, is happy with no-strings fun too.

Then the town works its magic on both of them.

Why it belongs here: A cozy, connected small-town series from an established indie F/F author.

Read it if: You want a comforting return to a community you can live in for a while.

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With All My Haunted Heart

Isabel Sterling · September 8, 2026

• Published September 8, 2026
• Genre Paranormal romance
• Romance Central, HEA
• Know first Cozy witchy romance

Witch Pippa Ainsley is losing clients to a DIY magic shop. When a friend hires her to check his new B&B for ghosts, his unfairly attractive co-owner, Elle Thompson, has a different job in mind: she wants Pippa to haunt it.

Why it belongs here: Cozy, enchanting sapphic romance, one of September’s big releases.

Read it if: You want witches, ghosts and a slow slide into love.

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The Second Draft

Carrie Byrd · April 29, 2026

• Published April 29, 2026
• Genre Contemporary romance
• Romance Central
• Know first Older heroines; best friends to lovers

No one has ever melted Anne Lowell’s icy exterior, not even the husband of thirty years she has just divorced. She has her warm-hearted best friend and neighbor, Sadie, and she’s content. Really. Until she realizes her feelings for Sadie are more than friendship.

Why it belongs here: A lesbian romance about finding desire, and courage, later in life.

Read it if: You want older heroines and a friends-to-lovers slow reveal.

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Codename Lotus

Yiliana Ferran · March 22, 2026

• Published March 22, 2026
• Genre Romantic suspense (indie)
• Romance Central
• Know first Domestic abuse backstory, pregnancy

When Saanya Hazra’s abusive husband turns up dead and strangers test the locks on her London flat, her brother sends her into hiding at a Swiss villa, under the protection of his best friend Naomi, the woman Saanya once secretly adored and who is now engaged to a man.

Why it belongs here: An indie sapphic romance with real stakes and a pining backstory.

Read it if: You like forced proximity with danger outside the door.

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Chameleon

Pip Landers-Letts · April 17, 2026

• Published April 17, 2026
• Genre Contemporary (indie)
• Romance Slow burn
• Know first Leamington Bloom series; standalone

Dr Catherine Truscote has spent her life ordering other people’s chaos. When a scandal cracks her controlled world, a warm new upstairs neighbor and a flirtatious stranger online start slipping past her defenses.

Why it belongs here: A slow-burn, grown-up sapphic novel from a Kindle Storyteller Award winner.

Read it if: You like guarded heroines letting someone in one step at a time.

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Cleopatra

Saara El-Arifi · February 24, 2026

• Published February 24, 2026
• Genre Historical fantasy
• Romance Present; bisexual heroine
• Know first Big, sensual historical epic

Cleopatra tells her own story, pushing back against the historians who called her a seductress and the poets who sang of her bloodlust. The author of Faebound and The Final Strife reimagines one of history’s most mythologized women.

Kirkus notes that this Cleopatra loves freely, both men and women.

Why it belongs here: A bisexual reframing of a woman history has flattened for two thousand years.

Read it if: You want ambitious, subversive historical fantasy.

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The Fox and the Devil

Kiersten White · March 10, 2026

• Published March 10, 2026
• Genre Gothic fantasy
• Romance Central, and dangerous
• Know first Serial killer, vampires, gore

Anneke comes home to find her father, the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, murdered, and an unnervingly beautiful woman standing over his body. Armed with the latest forensic techniques, she assembles a team to hunt the killer, whose victims stretch across Europe.

Her obsession becomes something else entirely.

Why it belongs here: A gothic sapphic romance from the author of Lucy Undying.

Read it if: You want blood, danger and desire rather than cute paranormal romance.

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Witch of the Shadow Wood

Tori Anne Martin · March 10, 2026

• Published March 10, 2026
• Genre Cozy romantasy
• Romance Central
• Know first Hansel and Gretel retelling with revenge

Fifteen years ago, Greta’s father traded her to the witch in the woods, and her brother Hans left her there. Now called Miria, she is a witch herself, in love with a young woman she rescued in the forest, who has just been forced into an engagement with Hans.

So Miria is leaving the woods: to stop the wedding, save the woman she loves, and get her revenge.

Why it belongs here: A feminist fairy-tale retelling with a sapphic love story at its core.

Read it if: You loved The Spellshop but want a little more bite.

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The Impossible Garden of Clara Thorne

Summer N. England · April 7, 2026

• Published April 7, 2026
• Genre Cozy romantasy
• Romance Central
• Know first Grumpy/sunshine, one bed

Clara Thorne is the magically gifted gardener of the town of Moss. Then a goddess sends her to the cursed town of Dwindle to grow a garden in under a month, with the absurdly sexy, annoyingly cheerful Hesper Altanfall as her protector. Clara’s secret: her magic doesn’t work outside Moss.

Why it belongs here: A stunningly cozy, sexy debut, and Rebecca Thorne is a fan.

Read it if: You want quests, a grumpy heroine, a surly hedgehog and shared tavern beds.

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The Book of Blood and Roses

Annie Summerlee · January 15, 2026

• Published January 15, 2026
• Genre Dark academia romantasy
• Romance Central
• Know first Callisto Chronicles book 1; hunter and vampire

Vampire hunter Rebecca Charity goes undercover at a Scottish Highlands university where vampires and humans study side by side, searching for a lost book of ways to kill vampires. Then she meets Aliz Astra, heir to one of the most powerful vampire families, and the most beautiful woman she has ever seen.

Why it belongs here: Billed as the sapphic romantasy debut of 2026.

Read it if: You want enemies to lovers at a vampire academy.

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Love, Gods and Sinners

Camille Chong · June 11, 2026

• Published June 11, 2026
• Genre Urban fantasy
• Romance Central, spicy
• Know first UK release; ebook on Amazon US

Harper and Tia are roommates and interns at the same tech company. They clash, they fight, they flirt. By night, Tia is the descendant of the Moon Goddess and Harper is secretly Raven, heir to the villainous Foxes, and each clan has just ordered them to kill the other.

Why it belongs here: A messy, flirty, enemies-to-lovers new-adult debut.

Read it if: You want K-Pop Demon Hunters energy, but older, queerer and spicier.

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Year of the Mer

L. D. Lewis · April 7, 2026

• Published April 7, 2026
• Genre Epic fantasy
• Romance Engaged couple
• Know first Duology book 1; dark magic pacts

Arielle got her happily ever after; her granddaughter Yemi did not. Her father was assassinated, her mother is dying, and when a coup takes her throne, only her fiancée and bodyguard Nova stands with her. The one being who can help her win it back is the sea witch.

Why it belongs here: A Little Mermaid legacy story with a sapphic heir and her fiancée at its center.

Read it if: You want dark, political fantasy under the sea.

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Nightshade and Oak

Molly O’Neill · February 3, 2026

• Published February 3, 2026
• Genre Historical fantasy
• Romance Slow burn
• Know first Iron Age Britain

Mallt, the goddess of death, is accidentally turned human by a wayward spell, and she is hopeless at mortal life. She teams up with Belis, warrior daughter of Boudicca, on a perilous journey to the afterlife to restore her powers, and animosity slowly turns to attraction.

Why it belongs here: A funny, moving F/F slow burn from the author of Greenteeth.

Read it if: You want myth, banter and a goddess learning to light a fire.

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Daughter of the Hunt

K Arsenault Rivera · March 17, 2026

• Published March 17, 2026
• Genre Romantasy (myth retelling)
• Romance Central
• Know first Oath of Fire book 2

Iphigenia’s family offers her as a sacrifice to Artemis without her consent. Horrified, the goddess takes her as a disciple instead, teaching her the hunt, and then the ways of the body. But the Pelops curse still hangs over Iphigenia’s siblings.

Why it belongs here: A goddess falls for her sacrifice in this sapphic myth retelling.

Read it if: You love Greek myth retold with the women in charge.

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Wayward Souls

Susan J. Morris · March 17, 2026

• Published March 17, 2026
• Genre Gothic mystery
• Romance Slow-building
• Know first Harker & Moriarty book 2

Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, and Dr Helena Moriarty, daughter of the criminal mastermind, head to Ireland six days before Samhain to find two missing agents, with Jakob Van Helsing watching Sam for any sign she’s become a monster.

Why it belongs here: A Victorian monster-hunting partnership with electric chemistry between the two women.

Read it if: You love Penny Dreadful and literary legacy characters.

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Moss’d in Space

Rebecca Thorne · June 30, 2026

• Published June 30, 2026
• Genre Cozy science fiction
• Romance Slow-burn subplot
• Know first New series

Torian Razner has bought a starship that has been abandoned for a century and is covered in moss. The moss turns out to be a snarky organic computer, and the immortal alien who built it wants its ship back. Her ex-captain Amelia would like everyone to know she called this.

Why it belongs here: A cozy space romp from the author of Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea.

Read it if: You want found family, sarcastic AI and a slow-burn F/F thread.

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Hell’s Heart

Alexis Hall · March 10, 2026

• Published March 10, 2026
• Genre Science fiction
• Romance Subplot
• Know first Explicit; Moby-Dick in space

Earth is dead, and humanity survives on fuel harvested from gargantuan space monsters. Our narrator joined the hunt to get paid, and maybe laid, and ended up following an obsessed captain into the skies of Jupiter after the Möbius Beast.

Why it belongs here: Moby-Dick reimagined with a trans woman narrator whose relationships are with other women.

Read it if: You want strange, filthy, genre-blending queer SF.

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Nobody’s Baby

Olivia Waite · March 10, 2026

• Published March 10, 2026
• Genre Cozy sci-fi mystery (novella)
• Romance Budding side romance
• Know first Dorothy Gentleman book 2

Aboard a luxury interstellar liner where fertility is meant to be paused, a baby is left on the doorstep of ship’s detective Dorothy Gentleman’s nephew. Dorothy has to find out who left him and why, before her rule-bound rival classifies the child as contraband.

Why it belongs here: From the author of The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics, with a gentle sapphic thread.

Read it if: You want Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple.

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On Sundays She Picked Flowers

Yah Yah Scholfield · January 27, 2026

• Published January 27, 2026
• Genre Southern Gothic horror
• Romance Central, uncanny
• Know first Child abuse backstory

Seventeen years after escaping her abusive mother, Judith Rice lives alone in a cottage deep in the Georgia woods. Then a beautiful, unsettling woman appears on her doorstep, and Jude is caught between her desire for this stranger and the violence she can feel just under her own skin.

Why it belongs here: Sapphic desire drives this haunting debut, now reissued by a major publisher.

Read it if: You loved Sorrowland and want your horror lyrical.

Originally self-published in 2020; this is the new Saga Press edition.

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Spoiled Milk

Avery Curran · March 10, 2026

• Published March 10, 2026
• Genre Gothic horror
• Romance Queer desire, rivals
• Know first Death, rot, body horror

1928, Briarley School for Girls. When Violet, the school’s brightest star and the girl Emily would do anything for, falls to her death, Emily and her rival Evelyn agree it was no accident. They turn to séances, and Violet’s spirit arrives with a warning, as rot begins to spread through the school.

Why it belongs here: Malory Towers meets The Conjuring, and Julia Armfield loved it.

Read it if: You want gory, tender, sexy boarding-school gothic.

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Bone of My Bone

Johanna van Veen · May 26, 2026

• Published May 26, 2026
• Genre Folk horror
• Romance Central
• Know first War violence, necromancy

Bavaria, 1635. A young nun, Sister Ursula, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape marauding soldiers and find the gilded skull of a saint. Reunite it with the body, the legend says, and a wish will be granted. A necromancer wants it too.

Why it belongs here: A sapphic folk-horror tour de force from a Bram Stoker Award nominee.

Read it if: You loved The VVitch and The Salt Grows Heavy.

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The Red Sacrament

Sara Hinkley · July 7, 2026

• Published July 7, 2026
• Genre Vampire horror
• Romance Not the focus
• Know first Violence, 19th-century Paris

Paris, 1869. At the Théâtre Saint-Siméon, ageless actors perform only at midnight, and a vampire coven feeds on just enough of the audience to survive. Then a witch and two vampires from a very different world shatter their careful peace.

Why it belongs here: One of 2026’s darker queer releases, for readers who want disturbing over comforting.

Read it if: You love Silvia Moreno-Garcia and gothic Paris.

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The Brides

Charlotte Cross · July 7, 2026 (US)

• Published July 7, 2026 (US)
• Genre Gothic horror
• Romance Secret love, not an HEA
• Know first Dracula retelling; not everyone survives

1884. Mafalda travels to Budapest, and her secret love, Lucy, follows from London with a chaperone and a lady’s maid who has the Sight. An invitation from a nobleman leads all four women to Castle Dracula, and to his monstrous plans.

Why it belongs here: The story of the brides of Dracula, with a doomed sapphic romance at its heart.

Read it if: You want feminist gothic horror.

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A Thousand Monstrous Forms

Saratoga Schaefer · September 15, 2026

• Published September 15, 2026
• Genre Gothic horror
• Romance Central, toxic
• Know first Bluebeard retelling; abuse themes

Artist Poppy Reed marries Celia Marie Fox, a wealthy art dealer with an infamous romantic reputation, after six months together. At Celia’s isolated manor there is just one rule: never go into the basement.

Why it belongs here: Bluebeard reimagined as a marriage between two women.

Read it if: You want gothic horror about control and the stories we tell about love.

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Freddie and Stella Got Hot

Maggie Horne · January 27, 2026

• Published January 27, 2026
• Genre YA rom-com
• Romance Slow burn
• Know first Revenge plot

Freddie and Stella plan to take down their former best friend turned queen bee, Levi Preston, by winning the award she wants most. But as they climb the social ladder, old feelings between Freddie and Levi rise to the surface.

Why it belongs here: Kirkus calls it a swoonworthy slow burn; all three girls are queer.

Read it if: You want Mean Girls with a sapphic twist.

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Better Catch Up, Krishna Kumar

Anahita Karthik · January 27, 2026

• Published January 27, 2026
• Genre YA rom-com
• Romance Central
• Know first Bisexual heroine; road trip across India

Krishna is a self-described bi disaster who has spent a whole summer in India flirting with her neighbor Amrit and never been kissed. When her flight home is delayed, she ropes in her cousin-turned-nemesis Priti for a cross-country dash to seal the deal. First love turns up somewhere unexpected.

Why it belongs here: A bi heroine’s road-trip rom-com, and a reminder that sapphic YA is bigger than any one label.

Read it if: You want a funny, cheeky road trip with kissing at the end.

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Charmed and Dangerous

Shelly Page · March 24, 2026

• Published March 24, 2026
• Genre YA paranormal rom-com
• Romance Central
• Know first Fake dating

Monroe Bennett, a junior agent at the Bureau of Mystical Affairs, is tracking a rogue love charm through her high school. Then the Bureau Director’s daughter, Iris, asks Monroe to fake date her to make her ex jealous.

Why it belongs here: A charming sapphic romance with magic and fake dating.

Read it if: You love fake dating and small-town magic.

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Girls Like Us

Jennifer Dugan · May 5, 2026

• Published May 5, 2026
• Genre YA / new adult romance
• Romance Central
• Know first Sequel to Some Girls Do

Ruby and Morgan fell for each other in their senior year. Now Morgan is running track on scholarship hours away while Ruby studies automotive engineering at home, and long distance, new friends and big opportunities are testing everything.

Why it belongs here: The sequel fans of Some Girls Do have been waiting for.

Read it if: You want to know what happens after the first kiss.

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Queerleaders

Olivia A. Cole & Ashley Woodfolk · May 19, 2026

• Published May 19, 2026
• Genre YA rom-com
• Romance Central
• Know first Fake closet

At Oak Haven High, legend says that if you make the cheer squad, you’re queer. Accused of only recruiting queer girls, captain Davie is told to sign a straight athlete. She picks Kendall, who turns out to be bisexual, and the two have to keep that secret until Nationals, while falling for each other.

Why it belongs here: Bring It On meets She Drives Me Crazy, from the authors of Call Your Boyfriend.

Read it if: You want pure queer joy with pom-poms.

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This Must Be the Place

Kelly Quindlen · May 26, 2026

• Published May 26, 2026
• Genre YA contemporary
• Romance Central
• Know first Found family

Eighteen-year-old Louisa Wade inherits a gay bar from her late great-uncle, a football legend in Rustin, Alabama. Determined to keep The Frisky Cricket open, she collides with Aubrey Calhoun, the sharp-tongued daughter of the university’s new football coach.

Why it belongs here: Queer joy and community from the author of She Drives Me Crazy.

Read it if: You want to save a gay bar and fall for the wrong girl.

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Hallie’s Rules for a Recovering Romantic

Jessica Lewis · July 7, 2026

• Published July 7, 2026
• Genre YA rom-com
• Romance Central
• Know first Companion to Nav’s Foolproof Guide

Six-times-heartbroken Hallie heads to a prestigious summer academic camp with one rule: no romance, all summer. Her gorgeous, icy roommate Julia has other ideas.

Why it belongs here: A sapphic summer rom-com about reinventing yourself.

Read it if: You like roommates to lovers and cracking an ice queen.

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Where Lost Girls Go

Kody Keplinger · July 7, 2026

• Published July 7, 2026
• Genre YA thriller
• Romance Central thread
• Know first Cult, coercive control

Five girls live with Sol in a cabin in the Kentucky mountains. They call each other sisters, and Iris owes Sol everything. Then a new girl, Rose, arrives, and as Iris falls for her, Rose makes her question everything about life in the woods.

Why it belongs here: Lesbrary says the romance between Iris and Rose is integral, not peripheral.

Read it if: You want a tense cult story with a love that breaks the spell.

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The Darkness Greeted Her

Christina Ferko · February 3, 2026

• Published February 3, 2026
• Genre YA horror
• Romance Sapphic thread
• Know first OCD, abusive-parent trauma

Penny’s abusive father is dead, but she still hears his voice urging her to hurt people. She spends the summer at a therapy camp in the Appalachian woods, where she starts seeing things that can’t be there, and a monster begins stalking the girls.

Why it belongs here: Pitched as Yellowjackets meets Smile, and billed as sapphic horror.

Read it if: You want YA horror that takes mental health seriously.

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The Hyacinth Labyrinth

Jamie Pacton · June 2, 2026

• Published June 2, 2026
• Genre YA fantasy
• Romance Slow burn, friends to lovers
• Know first Fae courts

Hyacinth is the unmagical daughter of Queen Mab. When she learns her missing father was last seen heading for a library at the heart of a treacherous labyrinth, she sets off with her friend Chloe, a human stablehand trapped in Faerie.

Why it belongs here: Girls with swords, tiny dragons and a sapphic slow burn.

Read it if: You loved Sorcery of Thorns or Emily Wilde.

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To the Death

Andrea Tang · February 10, 2026

• Published February 10, 2026
• Genre YA fantasy thriller
• Romance Central, rivals
• Know first Grief, revenge, violence

Samantha Chan wants revenge on Mateus Blackwood for her brother’s death in an illegal magical duel. His daughter Tamsin wants out of her father’s shadow. When the two meet across a dueling circuit, rivalry and attraction collide.

Why it belongs here: Dueling sapphic magicians, in a story ‘that kisses with a split lip’.

Read it if: You want the sharper, bloodier end of YA romantasy.

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The Secret World of Briar Rose

Cindy Pham · June 2, 2026

• Published June 2, 2026
• Genre YA fantasy
• Romance Queer romance
• Know first Grief; Sleeping Beauty retelling

A hundred years after the last heir of Gyldan fell into eternal sleep, a jaded thief named Corin searches the kingdom’s tunnels for her runaway sister, and finds a hidden portal into the sleeping princess’s dream world.

Why it belongs here: A #1 New York Times bestselling queer fairy-tale retelling.

Read it if: You want lush escapist fantasy with real emotional weight.

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Charity and Sylvia

Tillie Walden · June 16, 2026

• Published June 16, 2026
• Genre Graphic novel (true story)
• Romance Central, a 44-year life together
• Know first Based on real diaries and letters

Weybridge, Vermont, 1807. Charity Bryant arrives trailing rumors from Massachusetts and immediately catches the eye of Sylvia Drake. For the next 44 years the two women build a life, and a tailoring business, together, openly, in 19th-century New England.

Why it belongs here: Tillie Walden draws the real history of a lesbian couple who defied their century.

Read it if: You love queer history and gorgeous comics.

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Bite Me

Jennifer Dugan & Kit Seaton · August 25, 2026

• Published August 25, 2026
• Genre YA graphic novel
• Romance Central
• Know first Vampire and slayer

Poe is turned into a vampire in her senior year, and her crush, Jolie, turns out to be a slayer who drives a stake through her heart. Poe survives, and now she can’t tell which is stronger: her thirst for blood or for revenge.

Why it belongs here: A sapphic vampire-and-hunter romance in comic form.

Read it if: You want enemies to lovers with fangs.

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Straight to the Source

K-Ming Chang · November 3, 2026

• Published November 3, 2026
• Genre YA romance / mystery
• Romance Central, rivals
• Know first Out in November

Aspiring journalist Wendy Lin wants to witness the downfall of her nemesis Helen Ouyang, who is also her childhood best friend and maybe still her crush. Chasing a story, Wendy uncovers a fire that tore apart their Taiwanese American community a decade ago, with Helen at its center.

Why it belongs here: I Kissed Shara Wheeler meets Last Night at the Telegraph Club, from the author of Bestiary.

Read it if: You love rivals to lovers with an investigation attached.

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