The Gay Book Club Certified Reviews

Morgan Ashton-Drake came home to Yorkshire to shut down his family's crumbling hotel. He did not plan on the sunshine receptionist, the ready-made found family, or the ghosts who've decided his love life is their next big project. The Haunted Hotel is grumpy/sunshine comfort reading at its coziest—funny, sweet, and impossible to put down. Check in. You won't want to leave.

A bank clerk by day and a denizen of London's queer underworld by night, Selby Bigge talks his way into a millionaire's mansion and straight into a murder—one he has to solve without letting anyone discover what he is. A Queer Case is a whip-smart, fair-play whodunit with the wit of Coward, the bones of Christie, and a gloriously queer heart. It won the Lambda for a reason.

Two boys flee a doomsday cult with nothing but each other and a bus ticket out of Wyoming—and discover cheeseburgers, cable TV, and the radical idea that loving each other was never a sin. Goodbye Paradise braces you for despair and hands you something tenderer: a first-love story about unlearning shame and building the family that finally lets you breathe.

A closeted teen in 1994, a library book hiding a secret, and a romance written one margin note at a time. Boy Like Me is funny, furious, and quietly devastating—a coming-of-age that's also a love letter to the books that find us when no one else will. Set in the shadow of Britain's "Don't Say Gay," it has never felt more urgent.

A.J. Truman's Single Dads Club is four cozy small-town M/M romances built on a premise I can't get enough of, which is grown, tired, imperfect men getting to be the romantic leads. It's funny, it's warm, it's shameless about the horny bits, and the happy ending is never once in doubt. Formulaic by design and proud of it. As comfort reading goes, this set is the real deal.

Hiro sees dead people—and they will not stop heckling him. Pair that with a grumpy homicide detective who doesn't believe in ghosts and you get Medium Trouble: creative, fast, and gleefully unserious paranormal mysteries that know exactly how ridiculous they are. Realism is not the point. Fun is.

Rain Christiansen sees dead people, and it cost him his FBI career and the man he loved. Five books of solid cold-case mysteries, razor-sharp banter, and a second-chance romance that earns every beat. The Spectral Files is paranormal procedural done right.

An American accidental heir, two enemy politicians on the run, and a prince who can't charm his own bodyguard — Jax Calder's Unlikely Dilemmas series is high-concept, fast, and shameless about its own implausibility. It stretches credibility at every turn and I didn't care once. Comfort reads with a pulse, and a B+ from me.

Nicolas DiDomizio's A Murder Most Camp is a tight, funny Adirondack whodunit with a snarky nepo-baby sleuth worth rooting for. A solid summer read.

Some weekends call for one beautiful literary novel. Others call for a 9-book romance series and a cleared calendar. Here are 7 of the best M/M romance series to binge—Lucy Lennox's Forever Wilde, Gregory Ashe's Hazard and Somerset, Sarina Bowen's Vino and Veritas, and more. Bring snacks.

Small town M/M is one of the coziest corners of the genre—and one of the most beloved. From Lucy Lennox's sprawling Forever Wilde universe to May Archer's chaotic Vermont towns to Riley Hart's emotionally weighty Fever Falls, here are 10 of the best to disappear into. Pour something hot, find a soft chair, and settle in.

Garth Greenwell's debut follows an American expat in Sofia who pays a young Bulgarian hustler for sex—and gets drawn into something more corrosive than either of them planned. The prose is extraordinary, the trauma rings true, and the characters feel real in the uncomfortable way real people are real. A book I respect more than I enjoyed, and one I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

P.J. Vernon's Bath Haus is a relentless gay thriller about a recovering addict whose anonymous bathhouse hookup turns into attempted strangulation—and the lies he tells his wealthy older partner to cover it up. Pacing is relentless, the final twist actually lands, and the book takes gay-specific power dynamics seriously. Major content warnings—go in with your eyes open—but if you can handle the darkness, it absolutely earns its A rating

Joe Westmoreland's autofictional road novel follows a young gay man hitchhiking from Kansas City to New Orleans to San Francisco across the 70s and 80s—and walks straight into the AIDS crisis. The characters feel like actual people, not types, and the ending earns every tear it gets. An essential book about a generation we owe more attention than we give.

Edward Cahill's Disorderly Men follows three gay men in early-1960s New York whose lives are upended the night a vice cop walks into a Greenwich Village bar. Smart, propulsive, beautifully researched—and anchored by Danny, a working-class character whose slowly rising rage is one of the rarest, most satisfying things in gay fiction.

Cat Sebastian's first contemporary romance is exactly what longtime fans want—two flawed adults with mental health stuff, ego stuff, and seven years of workplace beef finally seeing each other. The dialogue is exquisite, the character work is patient, and Sebastian treats queerness as read instead of as plot. Slow burn done right. B+.

A raw, atmospheric YA novel about two boys folding into each other so completely there's no oxygen left. K. Ancrum nails the codependency descent—two queer kids drowning together while nobody notices—but the ending lands a little too tidy for what the book has been doing. Read it in print; the audiobook misses the format. B.

A tender, lyrical YA queer romance about a touch-starved art thief and the boy he can't stay away from. The prose is beautiful, but the Greek myth never quite catches fire. One note: skip the audiobook—the very short chapters don't translate well to listening. B+.

L.A. Witt's Leave takes a stack of well-worn M/M tropes—fake dating, friends with benefits, stoic military man with a past—and does them with real care. What elevates it is one of the most honest portrayals of male sexual assault survivorship I've read in the genre. Heavy, well-researched, and earned. A solid B+.

Bryan Washington's Family Meal is a stark, devastating novel about a gay man falling apart after the death of his boyfriend—and the childhood best friend who keeps showing up with food. Fragmented, queer, alive, and full of kitchens that hum with love when no one can find the right words. Washington at full power. A solid A.