If you’re anything like me, you’re always searching for that next great work of fiction—something you can pick up but can’t put down, something that whips you up into its own story and simultaneously gets you to think about what parts of it reflect your own life. If you’re a little bit more like me, a good gay romance will sate your appetite while you search. Male-male and more often than not white-white relationships have historically enjoyed the most media representation of all LGBTQ subcommittees. On the one hand, that means countless queer experiences remain in the shadows, and people with less privileged identities may have difficulty finding themselves on general LGBTQ reading lists. On the other, this genre has a lot of books to choose from! Here I’ve ranked my favorite 10 of this guilty pleasure of mine. Read through to pick up your next summer read! Or simply peruse the ranking so you can feel like you’re the most well-read in your eating club (and end up finding one you’ll like).

10. Maurice by E. M. Foster

This entry is a bit of an outlier. Written by E.M. Foster in 1912, it was not published until after his death in 1971. The early 20th century Oxford and England it describes are foreign, and the cultural contexts, understandings of homosexuality, and certainly the author’s own idiosyncrasies, make the story a bit hard to understand. Lovers of English classics might find it more approachable and might even be swooned by its unconventional three-act structure. The main character, Maurice, was written to be the total opposite of E. M. Foster. He is physically attractive, bold, and sometimes selfish. His romance with another Oxford boy strains his relationships with his mother and younger sisters, and then with himself. 

9. Find Me by André Aciman

The sequel to Call Me By Your Name will please fans of Aciman’s writing but will disappoint those who came back thirsty for more Oliver and Elio. (If you’ve lived under a rock and don’t recognize those names, scroll to number 3 in this list). Connections to the first book are vague and not super relevant to the story. For better or worse, it is its own work. Split into three smaller narrations and a short concluding chapter, Find Me makes it clear that Oliver and Elio’s age gap, which caused quite a controversy among fans of the first story, was no fluke. An overwhelming focus on age-gap relationships in the novel could straddle the line between variations in the equally valid human experience and an author’s personal fetish. First, a straight man falls in love with a younger woman. Then, a younger man falls in love with an older man. Third, a man internally pontificates about his attraction to both a younger woman and a younger man. The bisexuals will clap. I should also warn it is disgustingly pretentious at times, though that might be right at home for you Princetonians. Also, fair warning, this book is quite, um, descriptive. 

8. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Perfect for people who wouldn’t get kicked out of the house when they came out, but whose parents aren’t hosting pride parties this June. I don’t remember much from this book other than the fact that I finished it in a day after watching the movie adaptation, Love, Simon. Many people criticize it for its simplicity and bi-erasure, but I found it comforting and empowering, as Simon deals with being honest with himself and with his friends over the course of his senior year in high school. The spin-off TV show, Love, Victor, will entertain fans who plowed through the book and original movie. 

7. In Memoriam by Alice Winn

The newest on this list, it starts out as a deceptively joyful love story between two English school boys and their friends in the early 1900s and turns into a full on war novel, akin to All Quiet on the Western Front. When German Gaunt is pushed to enlist in the English army to stave off nasty allegations about his family, idealistic Ellwood soon follows. Very fast-paced, very emotional rollercoaster, very good. 

6. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller somehow makes the Iliad accessible even for someone like me whose exposure to Greek mythology was limited to the Percy Jackson series. Achilles—brave, strong, and arrogant—is the best of the Greeks. His companion, Patroclus, is kinder and more measured. Their relationship is the core of the book, and it will sate your appetite for a love story, but it is not a mere romance novel. Its rootedness in mythology and classic literature makes it so much more. A best seller and absolute page-turner you don’t even have to be gay to enjoy. 

5. Lie with Me by Philippe Besson 

Originally published in 2017 in France where it won several awards, this potentially autobiographical novel was translated to English just two years later by actress Molly Ringwald of The Breakfast Club fame. It takes place in rural France of the 1980s and is narrated by the bookish son of the local school’s principal. He is destined to move on to bigger and better things (any small town Tigers in the chat?), unlike his secret lover, Thomas, whose working class background limits the paths he can take, in terms of career and love. What starts as a light and youthful romance grows into a much more complex drama as these two characters deal with the environments and expectations around them. Illicit romance, class tension, memory, yearning, and loss, all in a short 160 pages. 

4. Less by Andrew Sean Greer

I don’t remember much from the plot of this book. I do remember that it won the Pulitzer Prize and is hilarious while also being contemplative. Author Andrew Sean Greer tells a complex story about author Arthur Less, whose much older and much more famous poet husband had recently passed away. Their relationship was filled with love, poetry, and problems. Less recounts this history alongside his world travels, from Mexico to Paris to India. Short and probably worth a read. I found the sequel, Less is Lost, even funnier.

3. Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman

This book likely needs no introduction. Popularized by the 2017 film adaptation which also served as the breakout role for now A-list celebrity Timothée Chalamet, the book tells the same story in a different way. The main character, Elio, entertains us with flowery descriptions of the northern Italian countryside as well as his relations with Oliver. It’s smut, but elegant, somehow? There is an indulgence in art and culture that create a mesmerizing experience. Call Me By Your Name the book is an addictive page turner, but for all the busy Tigers out there who save up enough free time for one movie a month, the adaptation might be the way to go. And if you’re already in love with Guadagnino’s cinematography, visual metaphors, choice of music, and acting in the movie, you’ll be equally intrigued by the tension and desire that Aciman delivers on the page.     

2. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Short, complex, enthralling, poetic, the story is one of the first modern examples of gay love in literature, and certainly one of the first by a black author. Our complicated and often selfish protagonist, David, is a New York expat living in Paris. His fiancée is traveling through Spain while they both consider an impending marriage. He meets a handsome and poor Italian bartender named Giovanni and they fall in love as David struggles with his sexuality, pressures from his father back home, and his fiancée’s impending return. Giovanni’s Room, which stands out among an already stellar body of work, showcases Baldwin’s ability to conjure diverse, appalling, and relatable characters that illuminate universal aspects of the human condition. Not at all just for gay men, but for any reader. 

1. Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski

My top pick, Swimming in the Dark, sets its scene in the communist Poland of the 1980s. Familiar stigmas around gay life are made extreme by the authoritarian regime influencing every area of public life. Less intrusive “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” sodomy laws we’re used to in Western literature are actually threatened and acted upon. Tensions are high. The indulgent summer camp romance in the beginning is a foundation for a bigger story dealing with relationships challenged in different contexts and uncomfortable power dynamics. It is carried along with beautiful prose and relatable emotions. I could not put this book down. 

An Honorable and Dishonorable Mention

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

According to the internet, a gay novel. While it is a wonderful read and a classic that explores the privileges and assumptions around youth and physical beauty in contrast to true inner moral good (certainly relevant for the modern gay community), queer romance is absent from the story, so it’s not strictly a “gay novel.”

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

I just wanted to share my beef with this book. I couldn’t finish it, but for the first few hundred pages, I couldn’t put it down. The characters are interesting. Then they got a bit too interesting. What started out as a cozy portrayal of a group of friends living in New York City right out of college, morphed into, crudely put, trauma porn. My suspended disbelief fell and shattered about halfway through the 800-page novel, and I didn’t pick it back up. It began to feel like a challenge to make the reader cringe, both from the extreme goriness of the as well as from the unrealistic events. I found it on a Goodreads list of gay literature, thus spurring the creation of this (superior) list.