Sweet, Sexy and Rebellious: Summer’s New Romance Novels
Mainstream publishers are fully embracing queer love stories, our columnist writes: “I would call it an embarrassment of riches but what it really is, of course, is pride.”
Credit.Ryan Gillett
May 27, 2021
Time was I could have covered every queer romance novel put out by mainstream publishers and still have had room to spare in this column. Small and independent presses have been nurturing L.G.B.T.Q. romance authors forever, and digital self-publishing opened up still more doors, but up until very recently, the big traditional houses had far more queer villains than queer romance leads.
The latest installment of Alyssa Cole’s Runaway Royals series How to Find a Princess, out today, a riff on Anastasia finds World Federation of Monarchies investigator Beznaria Chetchevaliere in New Jersey, looking for the lost princess of Ibarania. She thinks she’s found her in Makeda Hicks, but Makeda wants absolutely nothing to do with her alleged royal background, after a childhood disrupted by her mother’s obsession with the idea. But she is interested in the chaotic, compelling Bez. In this excerpt which kicks off a summer series of romance excerpts at Jezebel they get flirty while alone together on a Ferris wheel.