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🧲 Books like this

At Swim, Two Boys

Jamie O'Neill · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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The Song of Achilles

Madeline Miller · 368 pages

This is the story of the seige of Troy from the perspective of Achilles best-friend Patroclus. Although Patroclus is outcast from his home for disappointing his father he manages to be the only mortal who can keep up with the half-God Archilles. Even though many will know the facts behind the story the telling is fresh and engaging.

First LoveLGBTQ+ ProtagonistSexual OrientationComing of Age
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In One Person

John Irving · 448 pages

A New York Times bestselling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a "sexual suspect," a phrase first used by John Ir

LGBTQ+ ProtagonistFirst LoveComing of AgeForbidden Love
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All the Pretty Horses

Cormac McCarthy · 301 pages

*All the Pretty Horses* is a novel by American author Cormac McCarthy published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. Its romanticism (in contrast to the bleakness of McCarthy's earlier work) brought the writer much public attention. It was a bestseller, and it won both the U.S. National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Along with *The Crossing* (1994), and C*ities of the Plain* (19

First LoveTragicForbidden LoveComing of Age
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Almost Life

Kiran Millwood Hargrave · 384 pages

First LoveSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistForbidden Love
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Blue Is the Warmest Color

Julie Maroh · 160 pages

"Blue is the Warmest Color is a graphic novel about growing up, falling in love, and coming out. Clementine, a high school student, has an average life: she has friends, family, and the romantic attention of the boys in her school. When her openly gay best friend takes her out on the town, she wanders into a lesbian bar where she encounters Emma: a punkish, confident girl with blue hair. Their att

LGBTQ+ ProtagonistFirst LoveComing of AgeSexual Orientation
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Learned by Heart

Emma Donoghue · 338 pages

Sexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistFirst LoveForbidden Love
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Tipping the Velvet

Sarah Waters · 480 pages

Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-h

LGBTQ+ ProtagonistFirst LoveSexual OrientationComing of Age
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Forbidden LoveSexual OrientationTragicLyrical Prose
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A Visitation of Spirits

Randall Kenan · 257 pages

From Publishers Weekly As its title suggests, a powerful strain of mysticism runs through this story of personal awakening in a black North Carolina family, but first-time novelist Kenan has a rare gift for naturalism as well, capturing the texture of farm life with vivid detail. The novel follows Horace Cross, a brilliant, tormented teenager who is his family's greatest hope, through a night whe

Sexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistComing of AgeTragic
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Brokeback Mountain

Annie Proulx · 61 pages

This is a duplicate. Please update your lists. See https://openlibrary.org/works/OL265677W

Sexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistTragicForbidden Love
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Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin · 224 pages

Considered an 'audacious' second novel, GIOVANNI'S ROOM is set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence. This now-classic story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity.

Sexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistForbidden LoveTragic
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Call Me by Your Name

Andre Aciman · 256 pages

It's the summer of 1983, and precocious 17-year-old Elio Perlman is spending the days with his family at their 17th-century villa in Lombardy, Italy. He soon meets Oliver, a handsome doctoral student who's working as an intern for Elio's father. Amid the sun-drenched splendor of their surroundings, Elio and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will

LGBTQ+ ProtagonistSexual OrientationForbidden LoveFirst Love
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The Sorrows of Young Werther

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 177 pages

Forbidden LoveComing of AgeTragicLyrical Prose
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong · 256 pages

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once

Sexual OrientationFirst LoveLGBTQ+ ProtagonistComing of Age
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The Devil in the Flesh

Raymond Radiguet · 128 pages

First LoveComing of AgeTragicForbidden Love
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Silhouette of a Sparrow

Molly Beth Griffin

During the summer of 1926 in the lake resort town of Excelsior, Minnesota, sixteen-year-old Garnet, who dreams of indulging her passion for ornithology, is resigned to marrying a nice boy and settling into middle-class homemaking until she takes a liberating job in a hat shop and begins an intense, secret relationship with a daring and beautiful flapper.

Sexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistComing of AgeForbidden Love
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The Last of the Wine

Mary Renault · 386 pages

The Last of the Wine is Mary Renault's first novel set in ancient Greece, the setting that would become her most important arena. The novel was published in 1956 and is the second of her works to feature male homosexuality as a major theme. It was a bestseller within the gay community.

Sexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistComing of AgeLyrical Prose
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Odd Girl Out

Ann Bannon · 192 pages

In the 1950s, Ann Bannon broke through the shame and isolation typically portrayed in lesbian pulps, offering instead women characters who embraced their sexuality. With Odd Girl Out, Bannon introduces Laura Landon, whose love affair with her college roommate Beth launched the lesbian pulp fiction genre.

First LoveLGBTQ+ ProtagonistSexual OrientationForbidden Love
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Araby

James Joyce

A young boy in love with his friend’s sister promises to bring her back a gift from the Araby bazaar when he learns she cannot go. It is only later that night that the boy is able to make it to the bazaar and by the time he arrives, most of the stalls are closed and only late night activities are taking place between young women and men.

IrelandFirst LoveComing of AgeLyrical Prose
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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Benjamin Alire Saenz · 368 pages

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

LGBTQ+ ProtagonistFirst LoveSexual OrientationComing of Age
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Annie on My Mind

Nancy Garden · 233 pages

This groundbreaking book is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. This book is so truthful and honest, it has been banned from many school libraries and even publicly burned in Kansas City.

LGBTQ+ ProtagonistFirst LoveSexual OrientationComing of Age
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Under the Udala Trees

Chinelo Okparanta · 332 pages

Ijeoma, a young Nigerian girl displaced during their civil war, begins a powerful love affair with another refugee girl from a different ethnic community. When the pair are discovered, they must learn the cost of living a lie amidst taboos and prejudices. Even as her nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Ijeoma seeks a glimmer of hope for a future where a woman mi

LGBTQ+ ProtagonistComing of AgeSexual OrientationForbidden Love
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Every Day

David Levithan · 330 pages

Every morning A wakes in a different person's body, in a different person's life, learning over the years to never get too attached, until he wakes up in the body of Justin and falls in love with Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon.

Sexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistForbidden LoveComing of Age
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Bee Sting

Paul Murray · 645 pages

IrelandTragicComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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