Spread Those Pages for Sapphic/Bi Book Recommendations

Admin
Sep 23, 2024
5 min read

Spread those pages, humans! It's time for sapphic September and bi-visibility month! And I've got book recommendations!

Note, I am lumping sapphic September and bi-visibility together not because there isn't amazing recs with bi-sexual characters. Rather, it's the importance of sapphic and bi books because sapphic can be bi and bi can be sapphic.

If you would like to see more bi-books, then please follow this link to a Tumblr post. (Yes, Tumblr still exists.)

Below are (some) my favorite sapphic/ women-loving-women books based on the most common genres I read. This is obviously not an extensive list. (I'll tell you to go back to Tumblr.)

Favorite Sapphic Contemporary Romance

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner

Age gap romance, best friend's mom, college... when did one night stands get so complicated? Such a good romance book and so spicy!

Shortened synopsis: When Cassie Klein goes to an off-campus bar to escape her school’s Family Weekend, she isn’t looking for a hookup—it just happens. Erin Bennett came to Family Weekend to get closer to her daughter, not have a one-night stand with a college senior.

What should have been a one-time fling quickly proves impossible to ignore, and soon Cassie and Erin are sneaking around. Worst of all, they start to realize they have something real. But is being honest about the love between them worth the cost?

That Summer Feeling by Bridget Morrissey

This is the only book that made me ever want to go camp... and I haven't wanted to go since.

Shortened synopsis: When new friends invite her to spend a week at their reopened sleepaway camp, Garland and her sister decide it's an opportunity to enjoy the kind of summer getaway they never had as kids. She ends up rooming with Stevie, a vibrant former park ranger who is as charming as she is competitive.

Amid camp tournaments and moonlit dances, Garland continues to be pulled toward the beautiful blonde outdoorswoman who makes her laugh and swoon. Summer camp doesn't last forever, but if Garland can learn to trust her heart, the love she finds there just might.

Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni

Bro is the one who should be sorry. This is a great book that I ate in one sitting!

Shortened synopsis: When Nar’s non-Armenian boyfriend gets down on one knee and proposes to her in front of a room full of drunk San Francisco tech boys, she realizes it’s time to find someone who shares her idea of romance.

With Erebuni as her wingwoman, the events feel like far less of a chore, and much more of an adventure. Who knew cooking up kuftes together could be so . . . sexy? Her worlds will inevitably collide, but Nar is determined to be brave, determined to claim her happiness: proudly Armenian, proudly bisexual, and proudly herself for the first time in her life.

Favorite Sapphic Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Horror Books

Fractured Fables by Alix E. Harrow

These are two novellas about breaking fairytale norms in favor of the villain. Yes please!

Shortened synposis: In A Spindle Splintered, it's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday. When she was young, an industrial accident left her with a rare condition and no one who has it has lived to twenty-two.

Then, in A Mirror Mended, Zinnia discovers there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White's Evil Queen has found out how her story ends and she's desperate for a rewrite. Will Zinnia accept the queen's poisonous request for a rewrite and save them both from the hot iron shoes that wait for them? Or will she try another path?

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

This is a Great Gatsby retelling, which I didn't know that I needed from Jordan Baker's point of view.

Shortened synopsis: Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She's also queer, Asian, adopted, and treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

I like vampires... like really like vampires. This is gothic, hanging a little less on the romance than other books on this list.

Shortened synopsis: Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper, seeking a bloodmaid.

Countess Lisavet, who presides over this hedonistic court, is loved and feared in equal measure. Lisavet is magnetic, and Marion is eager to please her new mistress. But when her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing in the night, Marion'll need to learn the rules of her new home--and fast--or its halls will soon become her grave.

Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper

One of my favorite books of all time isn't for the faint of heart. This is filled with gore and sci-fi. My advice would be just go with the flow.

Shortened synopsis: Within forty-eight hours, Yaya Betancourt will go from discovering teeth between her thighs to being hunted by one of the most powerful corporations in America.

When ABP corporate goons upend her life, she realizes her secondary teeth might be evidence of a new experiment for which she’s the most advanced test tube... a situation worsened when Yaya’s condition sprouts horns, tentacles, and a mind of its own.

Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

Another one of my favorite books with sci-fi and horror.

Shortened synopsis: A virus tears across the globe, transforming its victims in nightmarish ways. As the world collapses, dark forces pull a small group of women together.

Erin, once quiet and closeted. Savannah, a professional BDSM switch. Mareva, plagued with chronic tumors.

Bloom by Deliah S. Dawson

This book puts the "meat" in meet cute.

Shortened synopsis: Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers’ market. Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she’s not the one doing the devouring…

I have so many favorite books, but I really had to narrow it down here. This was as close I could get to one.

While I'm here, I should note that my Castle of Skulls series is sapphic/bi urban fantasy horror, so it's really no wonder why I love fantasy horror.

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