Recs if you like Chlorine...

An emergent subgrene by and about strange women on themes of female rage, sisterhood, hunger, attraction, beauty, motherhood, violence, and much more.

every struggled to find actual lesbian/sapphic books when at the library or bookstore? so did I!

bc of said struggle, I started to curate a personal list of books that either has lesbian MCs and/or featured a primary sapphic romance.

i haven't read all of these, but I do try my diligence in confirming that they meet the above perimeters, since many books claim to be sapphic when they're not. this is an ever updating list, only fiction for now!

horror books with a queer focus, including queer stories and central characters

are you sick of being recommended stephen king when you ask for a horror novel? have you picked up a book expected to be scared, but the scariest thing about it was a woman being needlessly tormented and gaslit? have you read 4627473 books about a man in a haunted house and need something different?

if so, this list is for you :)

a masterlist of horror by anyone who isn't a straight cis white man, started in 2022 and brought to pb in 2026.

in progress

Basically, a huge list of every book I ever heard features sapphic characters.

I have not read all of these, so I cannot be sure of the amount of the time on page of the sapphic characters or of the quality of the books.

Some of these I do not plan to read at all, since they are not my style. If you feel like a book doesn't belong here, let me know.

For my favs / read, check out my other lists & shelves.

Open to suggestions for more titles.

Don't shoot the messenger.

Books that are atmospheric, emotionally unsettling, beautifully written, a little weird, and linger long after you finish them.

All the lesbians books I can find. If you have any book you want me to add please comment ❤️

in the first edition of ‘the monstrous-feminine’, barbara creed challenges the dominant representation of women in horror films as victims, arguing that patriarchal ideology constructs women as monstrous because of their sexuality (or lack thereof).

later, creed reinterprets the monstrous-feminine as a being who embraces her body and reclaims her otherness. in line with this contemporary vision, these are books which use horror to redefine notions of ‘womanhood’.

recommendations welcome!

Book titles that represent reasons you might go to the doctor, what you might say to each other, or what treatments might be offered to cure your ailments. It's up to you to decide what is what😉

(This is not a commentary on these books or authors! The focus of this list is purely on the titles---but if you find a favorite new read here, I'd love to know🤭)

these books are both aligned with and offer a queering of ‘weird girl literature’, a genre that manipulates horror, dark comedy, and/or surrealist elements to excavate the internal world of complex and unconventional characters. they are deviant, daring, and perverse reads for the weird queers among us.

*girl in quotation marks to allow this list to extend beyond the binary. recommendations welcome!

Fiction & nonfiction books that explore the complexities and traumas of mother-child relationships or in which such relationships play a central role. While many books on this list are what I’d classify as including “mommy issues” there are others that are more about the different perspectives and nuances of the mother-child (often specifically mother-daughter) relationship. Some books center the child, some the mother, some both.

Suggestions are welcome.

the gurls NEED to read horror books 💋 i wouldn’t say these are all horror but that’s left to the reader to make that assumption

Following women on journeys to do weird and maybe violent things.

Horror stories (in all of its forms/subgenres) from Asian authors!

Recs welcome!

As you turn the first page, a wave of dread consumes you. You see a library ticket at the front; 'The Library of Jurgen Leitner'. Who is this man? And why does this book seem to have such a horrible effect on your mind, your body, the world?

(For The Magnus Archives enthusiasts. Suggestions welcome though I may be a bit picky 🤓)

Horror books with a page count of 200 pages or less.

Before we started defining novellas by word count, they were defined as being any book less than 200 pages. Source: my Analysis of Short Stories & Literature professor in community college. I loved that class. But he loved James Joyce. So, ymmv, I guess.

If we are going to do Qwordy's the Hardest Reading Challenge You'll Ever Do 3.0 - we should probably get some Pagebound badges along the way! I'm specifically going to be adding books from Quests and readalongs that go past the July start date and match at least one of these title prompts: Periodic Table, Familial Terms, Rainbow of Words (also Joseph's coat), Numerical Titles, Titular Counting 5+, Pun in the Title, and First & Last Name in the Title. Recommendations welcome!

pink, sophisticated & sometimes fatale <3 (added some essential nonfic & poetry!)