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A couple of days ago, I shared 15 of the Most-Anticipated Queer Books of 2025, but of course, that’s just scratching the surface. There are so many queer books coming out this year that look fantastic. I’ve got about 400 titles in a spreadsheet now—and that’s just the ones we know about now! Fall is the biggest season in publishing, and most of those haven’t been publicized yet.
I’m always interested in which queer books break through to the mainstream reading world, so in addition to reading dozens of lists of upcoming queer books, I’ve also combed through six of the biggest mainstream lists of most-anticipated books of 2025 and pulled out the queer books I spotted. I used lists from Book Riot (naturally), Goodreads, Time, Vulture, Lit Hub, and Barnes & Noble (Fiction, Nonfiction, YA).
This involved scrolling through hundreds of books and noting the queer books that jumped out at me, so I’ve almost certainly missed some. Let me know in the comments if you spotted any queer books on several of these lists that I didn’t include here! I’ve included any queer books that showed up on multiple lists—plus a few honorable mentions that were only on one.
The #1 most anticipated queer book of 2025 is definitely The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong, the author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, which appears on five of the six lists. I actually haven’t been able to find any confirmation that this has a queer main character, but it’s categorized as LGBT and is on many queer books of 2025 lists, so it’s a pretty good bet.
Here are the rest of the most anticipated queer books of 2025, according to the biggest lists.
The Most-Anticipated Queer Books of 2025
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Barnes and Noble, Lit Hub, Vulture, Time, Goodreads)
Stag Dance by Torrey Peters (Lit Hub, Vulture, Time)
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab (Book Riot, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads)
The Dry Season by Melissa Febos (Lit Hub, Vulture, Time)
They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran (Barnes and Noble, Goodreads)
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