First off, I use the term “girl” here gender-neutrally. But these books are for the weird girlie-pops.

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
This book is on track to be one of my favorites for the year already and the year has just started. This book needs the biggest trigger warning for eating disorders, but it’s also about control, love, sex and self-esteem. It’s so wild, unhinged, obsessive, hypocritical, chaotic, and insanely sexy. Some of the best sex scenes I’ve read between two women was in this book. It’s also about religion, and I learned a lot about being Jewish that I had not known before. What a strange, amazing book – I loved it so fucking much!

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
This has all the components to be a book that I didn’t like at all, and yet I absolutely loved it. The main character is an eighteen year old pregnant girl with an overprotective boyfriend and an overbearing mother, and she starts to develop a massive crush on a thirty-seven year old mom after she orders pickles on a pizza. It’s short, wacky, fun, chaotic, and the ending had me downright nervous. But wow, what an interesting and wild ride. I had a great time, basically read this in two sittings. Wouldn’t have expected this to be something I enjoyed so much!

Chlorine by Jade Song
I read this one with my sapphic book club and the sapphic yearning in this book was REAL!! There are so many themes in this story that I don’t know where to start. The toxicity of competitive high school swimming and pressure that gets put on young girls is a huge component, but the mermaid lore and eventual body horror really take the cake. This was quite the read, I had a really good time, even when it got gross. Unique, heartbreaking, and disgusting! 

The Pisces by Melissa Broder
While this is probably one of the weirder books I’ve ever read, this is such a cool book for bisexuals/pansexuals. I love the use of gender-bending in the sexual scenes and the play on androgyny that was woven into the story. It’s definitely not a book that is strictly sapphic, but I just think that the “love story” transcends gender in a way that I was not expecting – especially given the content of the first half of the book. As much as I liked this, I just couldn’t give this one 5 stars because I HATED the dog neglect plotline. But still, such a fun weird one and I had a good time.

Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress
I kinda wish that I had read this back when I was in my early 20’s, identified as bisexual, and had just quit art school… because I would have ate this shit the fuck UP. The main characters started out insufferable to me, but as we dug deeper into their stories, I realized that they weren’t all pretentious art school kids (well, some of them are) and the way their plotlines intertwined was really fun for me. I ended up enjoying this so much more than I would have expected to at this time in my life, and I totally get the type around it. Absolutely loved this.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett
Kristen’s books are always about so much more than they seem. On the surface, this is about a lesbian clown with Mommy issues who is working them out through a milf magician who is almost twice her age. Beneath that, the book is about self-worth, finding yourself, artistry, and grief. It’s heavy on character, ideas, and clowning, but low on plot, which I don’t think is a bad thing if you’re aware of that going into it. You’ll feel a lot of feels, laugh a lot of laughs, and probably learn a thing or two about clowns that you never expected to! Loved it.

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett
I went into this book thinking that it would be more whimsical, especially because of the color-pop style cover. But it was honestly super sad, and I think that the title is a play on the taxidermy store in the book and also the themes around depression that many of the characters are experiencing in different ways. There’s a lot of themes around grief and abandonment but they come with very light resolution in the end. And the lesbian yearning definitely hurt my heart! The taxidermy themes do make things often silly or strange, but overall I feel like I was looking for more plot maybe? I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it. 

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield
The premise of this book is that a marine biologist has just returned from an expedition at the bottom of the ocean, which did not go as planned and she returned much later than expected. Her wife notices many differences when they are adjusting back to normal life, and the story unfolds from both of their perspectives. It’s definitely slow on plot but beautifully written and super poetic. Spoiler: My interpretation of the ending was that Leah turned into a sort-of jelly-fish type creature who now needs to live in the ocean – but I’d love to hear other theories! I liked this one for how pretty it was, but I was glad it was short.

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
I definitely liked this book but I will admit that I do NOT understand the ending. I still really enjoyed the wild ride, but I think there’s some symbolism to the animals and the house that I haven’t figured out yet. Even still, the format of the transcripts was fun and quick to read and the sapphic storyline was unique and interesting while still being incredibly sexy. A lot of commentary calls this book funny, which I don’t know if it was that.. and I think some of the online criticism is warranted. While it’s wonderfully queer, it is a bit biphobic. It’s still something I had a great time reading, and was very differently weird. (It actually reminded me of The Pisces in some ways! The love story, the ex, the dog, the roommate who leaves, etc.)

House Of Beth by Kerry Cullen
There was a lot going on in this book, and there was things that I liked and things that I didn’t. The beginning was really interesting, where we are living in the murderous thoughts of the main characters as she lives her non-murderous life. But then she breaks up with her girlfriend and gets back together with her ex-boyfriend, playing step-mommy to his kids. This part of the book got really boring for me. But then the ex-wife starts haunting her body, and the book got both interesting and queer again. Not sure I loved the ending, but parts of this book had me hooked. Overall, feeling very mixed.

Eat The Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin
This was super unique, and I liked it all the way up until the ending. The story is mostly told from the point of view of a sentient orchid that is taking over a strip mall and has mildly possessed the flower shop owner. We watch from his point of view as a flirtationship develops between the shop owner and the new assistant, and it’s both creepy but also cute and sapphic and done in a very cool and interesting way. The book lost me a bit when it switched to emails between an ex-girlfriend of the shop owner and a shared friend, and I wasn’t a big fan of the way it ended. Still a cool story, though!

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Here’s the thing with this one – the plot itself is sorta a mess and makes absolutely no sense. HOWEVER – the reason to read and love this book is not the plot, but rather all the commentary on trans life and also the realness of the characters. There’s three main characters that find themselves in a unique love triangle after an unexpected pregnancy, and all three of them are a huge fucking mess. But like I said, the commentary around their experiences as either trans or queer is very interesting and the reason that this book is important.

The Three Lives Of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan
This book came to me super hyped up and I have to admit that I only found it to be *~okay~*. The main character is a failed actor turned author who is writing under a pseudonym and hiding from her previous life. Her relationships are all very messy, sapphic, and toxic, and ultimately lead her into different directions, which made me sad that the main character had so much lack of control over her life. I didn’t love the ending, mostly because it felt unrealistic to me, but then again, so did the entire story. Mostly, what I liked about this book is that it was sapphic.

Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch
I’m not gonna lie… this book was almost unreadable. The plot follows an SAT tutor who walks in on a murder scene at her employers house, finds a random woman tied up in the house, and the two take off together. It’s giving lesbian Bonnie and Clyde if they were dumb as fuck. Most of the story makes no sense, and the main characters’ love story is out of literally absolutely nowhere. It didn’t add much to the book, and the ending was wildly unrealistic. I only finished this out of wanting to talk about it with the book club that was also the only reason I have or read this book. But unfortunately, I would not recommend.

Perfume & Pain by Anna Dorn
If you like toxic lesbians who go stalker-level crazy after just three or four dates, then this book is for you! That’s not quite my style, so I can’t say that I had the best time reading this book. The main character is as unlikable as possible, and yet somehow manages to charm everyone around her. Each relationship is unstable in its own way, and they all just take it out through their writing or their art. Maybe I’m just not into LA lesbians, or maybe I just should have read this in my early 20’s to enjoy this more.

Work Nights by Erica Peplin
I wasn’t expecting to like this book at all, considering it was about messy situationships, but I figured I’d read it anyway since it was gay and my book club was reading it for June. I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected, and I think it’s because I had some insight going in ahead of time. It was written well and I found the dialogue really interesting and easy to read, so I wound up flying through the book really quickly. Ultimately, it made me extra grateful for my healthy relationship, but I did enjoy the messy read. (However… what a horribly designed cover…)

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
I really wanted to like this book, but it was missing all the story-building that’s necessary in the beginning of a book like this to understand what in the fuck is going on. After doing some googling and figuring out the way that this world worked, I was a lot less confused while reading the book. The two main characters are time-travelers that are a part of opposing groups. One group wants technology to rule the world and the other is motivated by nature, and the two time-travelers are agents that are working to fulfill their group’s mission. But, they fall in love and start leaving each other letters and notes all over space and time. It sounds interesting, but it’s written in a way that makes the book hard to enjoy. Great concept, poor execution.

Dykette by Jenny Fran Davis
If I could use one word to describe this book: unnecessary. I actually think I hated it, but I’m including it in this list because it is both sapphic and very, very, very weird. The character group is wildly pretentious and unlike-ably messy. While it’s very queer, it also feels like the characters are performing traditional gender stereotypes but under a lesbian lens – meaning butch vs. femme dynamics. There’s a lot of conversation about what is performative, but not in a way that felt like it was moving us forward, but instead, backwards. Also there was a lack of plot for most of the book that led up to this live-stream porn/horror performance with body modification that was, in my eyes, pointless. I wouldn’t recommend this? But fuck was it weird.

Stay weird.

Thanks for reading! (Last Updated: July 2025)