Top Ten Tuesday/ On My Summer TBR

Since June is Pride Month, my primary goal is to read LGBTI+ books, and I have approximately 40 on my Kindle. As I said in last week’s post, I had another list of LGBTI+ books I wanted to share, but didn’t, so today I’m looking at which of those titles are available to me and adding them to my TBR, which fits today’s prompt like a book to a bookshelf, pun intended Typically I got way more books that I needed but some of them I’m using them for the two readathons I’m taking part in. Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl, who has a new weekly topic.  

June 17: Books on My Summer 2025 to-Read List

Goodreads Blurb:

Romance is the last thing on Charlie’s mind.

On his first day at Valentine Academy for Boys, Charlie’s carefully crafted plan to hide his identity as the school’s only trans student is set in motion. Only to be immediately destroyed. Charlie has been assigned the worst roommate in the world (possibly the universe): Jasper Grimes, the boy who broke Charlie’s heart the year before he transitioned.

Except, Jasper doesn’t recognize Charlie.

Who knows how long until Jasper realizes the truth? Charlie has one shot at freedom and a dorm room all to himself, but only if he helps Jasper write love letters on behalf of their fellow students first. No problem. Charlie can help Jasper with some silly letters.

Long nights spent discussing deep romantic feelings with Jasper? Surely, no unintended consequences will arise…

Goodreads Blurb:

When Taylor Frost’s boss, Amy, flies him across the country to prep for her daughter’s sweet sixteen at the Storybook Endings Resort in the Catskills, the solo mission is well within his wheelhouse. Taylor is excellent at his job—except, he’s probably not supposed to flirt with the resort’s mountain man of a manager, Ethan Golding. Because the rugged older man is also the birthday girl’s father, aka Amy’s ex-husband. Oops.

For Ethan, his divorce seemed like the bad ending to his romantic story. And now, making his daughter’s sweet sixteen dreams come true is the closest he’ll get to the kind of magic happiness in fairy tales. Until adorable Taylor has him wondering if maybe this is just the beginning of a more erotic kind of bedtime story…

The only problem is Amy. And how very not okay she’d be with the chemistry between her assistant and her ex.

If only forbidden flings ever led to happily-ever-afters…

Archer Read is 27 and desperate to find his place in life. Five months ago, he quit his soul-destroying accounting job in Ohio and moved to Manhattan with dreams of making it on Broadway. And now he has nothing to show for it but a string of rejections. Even for a ray-of-sunshine like Archer, hope can only go so far. A musical revue at Shady Queens, a queer-friendly resort in the Catskills, is his last chance to break into show biz—otherwise, it’s back to Ohio, broke and hopeless. He arrives ready to dance his heart out, only to find he’ll be working with his teenage celebrity crush, the Broadway star Mateo Dixon.

What is Mateo doing working at Shady Queens? Besides barking orders and glaring at everyone…when he’s not absolutely smoldering at Archer on the dancefloor. As Archer tries to forget his teen crush and get to know the real Mateo, he’s caught up in a romance with his hot, temperamental bunkmate, Caleb. Between Mateo’s baggage and the dance crew’s drama—partying, flirting, breaking up, getting back together, then breaking up again—it’s no surprise when the show starts to fall apart. Archer quickly discovers that when it comes to dance, sometimes you can’t leave all your problems backstage.

Goodreads Blurb:

Ever since he was a kid, Fielder Lemon’s large, opinionated Italian-American family has lived next to Ricky DeLuca and his large, opinionated Italian-American family. For almost as long, Fielder has known that he wants to marry Ricky one day. And he thought Ricky felt the same way-until Ricky breaks up with Fielder, saying he needs to figure out who he is on his own.

One year later, Fielder is asked to be one of the best men in his cousin’s destination wedding on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, but there’s a his cousin is marrying Ricky’s sister. Fielder hasn’t talked to or seen Ricky once during the last entire, terrible year, but he hasn’t given up on his first love quite yet-and isn’t a wedding in an Italian lemon grove the perfect setting to rekindle their relationship? Except Ricky might have already moved on.

Now, Fielder has less than a week to win back Ricky’s heart while also trying not to ruin his cousin’s wedding. But if there’s one thing Fielder knows, it’s that when life gives you lemons, take a bite!

Goodreads Blurb:

On a morning much like any other, 30-something queer Brooklynite Wilder makes the miraculous discovery: suddenly, as if by magic, they can understand every language in the world. Dazed and disconnected, Wilder is found and taken in by a small coven of trans witches who have all become Awakened with mystical powers of their own. Quibble, a handsome portal traveler, Artemis, the group’s caretaker and seer, and Mary Margaret, a smart-ass teen with telekinetic powers all work to make the cagey and suspicious Wilder feel comfortable, both within their group and with the knowledge that magic is, in fact, real.  

Just as Wilder is finding their footing, a malicious AI threatens to dismantle the delicate balance of the coven and the world as they know it. Newly assembled and tenuously bound, the group scrambles to stay united as they parse the difference between difficult and dangerous, asking themselves continuously: is any consciousness—be it artificial, material, or magical—too dangerous to exist?

Goodreads Blurb:

In this collection of one novel and three stories, Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing.

In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.

Three startling stories surround Stag Dance: “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex. In “The Chaser,” a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, “The Masker,” a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.

Goodreads Blurb:

Unsex Me Here is a prayer book tied together by the strings of a corset. Glamorous ramblers, haunted by the sense of another world drawing near, wander in and out of its inexplicable twilight. From a West Texas town with a supernatural past to a stalactite cavern in the birthplace of Aphrodite, from hotel rooms to gardens to the far horizon of a thought, they seek the source of the disturbance in their minds. Heartbreak is not so far from rapture; holy babble is another kind of gossip. Every pilgrimage is as dense with symbolism as it is refined by desire.

Goodreads Blurb:

It’s kind of hard to graduate high school when you’re the prime suspect in an attempted murder.

Seventeen-year-old Eleanora Finkel just wants to finish her senior year and get the hell out of Texas. But when her club meeting inconveniently coincides with an attack on the school’s head cheerleader, she and her friends find themselves in the hot seat.

In order to clear their names and ensure the survival of their club for future queer teens, they’ll have to track down the real culprit themselves. But Eleanora is far from a professional detective; she’s riddled with anxiety, annoyingly attracted to the case’s cute victim, and her trusty crochet hook feels insufficient for fighting off a murderer. Can this ragtag group of unlikely sleuths find their way out of an entire freaking murder mystery before one of them is next?

Goodreads Blurb:

Quinn wants to save his bookshop, the last thing he needs is to fall in love…

Hay-on-Wye’s only queer bookshop is always a hive of activity. So when it’s threatened with closure, its owner Quinn Oxford is determined to do whatever it takes to save his beloved shop.

That is until romantic novelist Noah Sage arrives in town. Gorgeous, brooding and clearly unhappy to be there, Noah is the distraction Quinn doesn’t need. Noah has a history with Hay and it’s one he’d rather not face. But when the snow leaves him stranded, he’s left with no choice.

Hay is a small town, meaning Quinn can’t help but bump into Noah wherever he goes. And as the two grow closer together, is it possible that Noah’s feelings towards Hay will thaw? Can Quinn have a real-life romance and save his beloved bookshop? Or will he need a Christmas miracle…

Goodreads Blurb:

Billy Montgomery , a Houston-born New York transplant, aspiring novelist, and soon-to-be young divorcée is headed to Punta Mita for his sister’s destination wedding with a severe case of bad luck, a broken heart, and a sunny disposition about it all. As Man of Honor, he’s on a mission to make sure this weekend goes off without a hitch while shoving down his own feelings about being stabbed in the back by love.

Michael Evans , a mid-level public relations expert from Queens, can make anyone and anything look squeaky clean from the outside, but can he do it for himself? When he’s asked to fly into Ohio to give a tear-jerking speech at his estranged father’s funeral, he wonders if he’s met his ultimate PR match that may just send him into a spiral of his painful past.

Through a meet-cute gone wrong, a truly unfortunate baggage mix-up, and a run in with TSA, they find themselves stuck on standby in a New York airport for days on end, waiting on a miracle to get them to their respective destinations. While being stranded between overpriced souvenir shops and underwhelming airport cuisine, they find themselves learning more and more about one other, as well as exposing their own personal baggage that they’ve been carrying for far too long.

Alex