transmasc (adult)

Happy to provide! 🫡🤗

PageCreature

I LOVED a Shore Thing!!

PS, on IG there is a lovely account that is the IG platform for a discord group where a BUNCH of indie authors talk about their books. Monster Manor is the name and this list could expand by 10X its size if not more with adult books with trans masc MCs 💛

I only just finished that one a few days ago 🤯 took me a good while to get into it but then I didn't want it to end 🥹

Amazing recommendation, thank you!! 🙌🙏 I shall be checking that out intensely! 👀 In the meantime, do you already have any specific books on your mind that you'd like to see here?

PageCreature

That happened the first time I went to go listen to the audiobook last summer? When it first came out - tried again this Spring and FLEW thru it! I think it’s one you need to be in the mood for

I wish I did, a lot of the authors are queer and/or trans and so I have the authors mixed with the representation in their books so I cannot safely say!

I do recommend going to Church of the Mountain of Flesh and looking over the other list titled Indie Queer authors because THATS the book that caught my attention to recommend looking over Monster Manor - Church of the Mountain of Flesh was recc’ed in there

I was reading the physical copy, but you're right that I definitely wasn't in the mood for it when I started reading so I put it down for a few months 😅 super glad I finished it though 🙌

Ah yeah I know the struggle, there's definitely a few books I wanted to add but then wasn't sure anymore if I was thinking of the author or the characters. Happens to me a lot with stuff on my TBR, especially in cases where the book description doesn't say anything about the representation 🙈

Thank you! Might take me a bit to get to it, especially since I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to indie authors and and books, but I saved the list! 🙌

Plankton

Hi Jake! What a cool list! 🙂‍↕️🙌🏻 Just letting you know the links in the description don't seem to work, so maybe commenting them here and pinning the comment would be a better solution to direct people there! ☺️

Thank you!! 🙏🥰 Aaahhh I thought it worked because on web it's always been fine, but now I checked the app and oh my 🙈 Thank you for telling me, and especially the tip for the workaround! I'll be doing that as soon as I have the energy 🙏🙌

Plankton

Yesss no worries!! Happy to hear it helps- I guess the app and web still have some differences :)

cowboyemoji

if we survive this by raquel marie has a (bi) trans man as part of the main 4 cast

Yay thank you, I've added it to the list! 🤗

Oh wait, it's YA, right? I'll add it to YA list, sorry for getting confused about which of my lists I'm on, I didn't catch this in time 🥹

cowboyemoji

that's my bad 😭 i didn't consider it YA when i read it but i just still don't get what 'really' is supposed to be the cutoff between YA/adult

Noo don't worry, it's not a problem! The cutoff thing is really hard, so I mainly just go by the "official" category, like if the promo/marketing says it's YA I put it in YA etc.

wintersorbit

Hi, I just finished reading Time-Tripping Over You and saw that it was on this list. I just wanted to let you know that while it takes place in college, it's published by Page Street YA and, in my opinion, reads as if it was written for a YA audience, so it might be a better fit for the YA list.

Oohh that's interesting, thank you! I had seen it recommend as YA but when I saw it's set in college it felt weird to put it on the YA list. I was planning on reading it soon and checking for myself but I haven't gotten my copy yet. Could you tell me if the the characters are actually adults? Or how it would otherwise be more fitting for a YA audience? 🙏 If it's just the style I probably won't mind keeping it here, I have a wide range of genres/styles here as is and it does offer suggestions for a variety of tastes that way 😅

wintersorbit

Honestly, we really just need an established new adult age category for these kinds of books... But either way, I'd also understand why you'd want to keep this here, that's fair enough. I feel like it's more fitting for a YA audience because, while it's set in college, a lot of the time travelling that's happening takes the characters back to their middle and high school years. Thematically, a lot of what the characters are dealing with is related to their pre-college years and what they went through back then, so I would recommend this book to an upper YA audience instead of adults, personally. The main characters are 18 and 19 years old, in case that's relevant.

Ah so that's where (when?) the time-travelling leads, the description definitely left that out 🙈 It sounds like a special case and I do struggle with the fact that the characters are technically adults (and in college) since it doesn't aling with my goals for the YA list. It's a tough case and I'll try my best to prioritise reading the book once I manage to procure it, I feel like I need to see this for myself to decide which list should house the book 🙈 Major thank you for alerting me to the issue!! 🙏🙏

wintersorbit

•

Edited

Honestly, it's mostly publishing's fault for putting stories set in college into the YA category. I understand why they wouldn't want to put it in the adult category, but it also feels weird to put it in the YA category. There are quite a few college-set YA books that have been published in the past couple of years, and it doesn't seem like that's going to change. I'm thinking of books like Loveless by Alice Oseman, Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao, Moth Dark by Kika Hatzopoulou, and Icebreaker by A.L. Graziadei, all of which are queer books about college freshmen that are published by YA imprints, being marketed to a YA audience, and being put into YA sections in bookstores.

Yeah it is weird, and technically college would fit the literal meaning of "young adult" way better than teenagers in high school, but... I don't think they should be mixed together? Despite the fact that I read books from either of those "categories" (I wish they actually were that), I would like it to be obvious which they are. I have often been in the mood for a book set in college/uni and can't really find any because publishing hides them elsewhere 🥲

auggie

Yoinking so many of these right now, thank you for curating!

Yayy so happy you like it!! 🤗

A Bone in His Teeth by Kellen Graves, dark fantasy/queer monster romance with a trans man lead Reclaimed by Seth Haddon, queer fantasy romance with trans man lead

Thank you, A Bone in His Teeth is added! 🫡 I checked out Reclaimed and it's the third in a series, does it work as a standalone or are the previous ones necessary for the plot/world etc?

I think it works on its own! There's a bit of political and world-building context that the reader might miss out on, and a bit of the love interest's backstory, but frankly it's the most stand-alone (and best written) of the series thus far. It's one of those series where (with the exception of a prequel book for the first couple), each follows a different couple in a different location with an only loosely connected plot.

That sounds manageable, thank you for elaborating! 🙏 I've added it to the list now 🙌

Oh, also, there's a prominent POV character in The Ballad of Perilous Graves who is a trans man!

Wait that's an adult book?! 😲

Yep, despite having kids in the cast! It's shelved under general or adult fiction and among one of the sci-fi/fantasy awards it was nominated for/won was Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Nominee for Adult Literature (2023).

Amazing, thank you!! I have added it now! I don't know why the cover and the description had me so fooled, I totally thought it was YA, and I also didn't know about there being a trans character 🙈

Honestly it's a bit of an odd one in terms of its category and cover!

A couple you can add: The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais This Princess Kills Monsters by Ry Herman

Hi! Would you mind telling me a bit more about these two? I hadn't heard about them yet and I've been trying to find some info about the transmasc characters, but especially for The Witches of Moonshyne Manor I can't seem to find anything.

This Princess Kills Monsters is a retelling of “The Twelve Huntsman” — which is a weird and nonsensical fairy tale. The book is very funny and starts with a recounting of the fairy tale, including the line “What was up with the gender essentialist lion?” One of the major (good guy) characters is a trans man, and it’s a sweet reveal moment.

It’s been a while since I’ve read The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, so I can’t exactly recall how the story plays out. The main characters are all elderly. I seem to remember it being a character who can kind of magically change his gender presentation at will, before eventually dropping any pretense at feminity.

So I did a little more digging and found an interview with the author, it looks like the trans character in the book is a trans woman, which means the book unfortunately does not fit the scope of this list. I'm sure there's other lists where it would fit though!