Today, Skye Kilaen is visiting to talk about queer m/f romances! Please give her a warm welcome!
I’m so excited to be here today talking about one of my favorite topics, queer M/F romances!
As a queer reader, LGBTQIA+ romances have a special place in my heart. When I first started reading romance by checking out books from my local library, I could easily find books that paired two allo cis men, and somewhat less easily books that paired two allo cis women. I was delighted when I started to discover romances beyond those two categories. Trans characters! Ace and aro characters! And also books that reflected my own experience being a bi/pan woman who has often dated men: M/F romances where one or both characters are queer.
(I’ve tried hard to start mixing it up by sometimes calling this category queer F/M. After all, why should the M be first all the time? But unfortunately my brain sees “F/M” and immediately thinks “radio.”)
Without further ado, here are four of my favorite queer M/F romances, and four that are on my radar.
Something Like Love is a contemporary by Black romance powerhouse Christina C. Jones, who is one of the funniest romance writers around in my opinion. Both leads are bi and I love them so much.
“Eddie is arrogant, quite vain and slick at the mouth – or simply confident, discerning, and unafraid to speak his mind, if you ask him. Astrid is annoyingly perky, unpolished, and a little delusional about Eddie’s attraction to her – or, according to her, energetic, authentic, and absolutely spot on about the driving factor of a certain local tattoo artist’s ‘hatred’ of her.
Undeniable attraction.
They may think they’re opposite, but have more in common than they think.”
Jules Kelley’s Edge of the Woods is a contemporary paranormal with a strong romance subplot that this romance reader found extremely satisfying. Haley, the female MC, is bi.
“Haley Fern has been the alpha of her local werewolf pack for less than a year when their law enforcement liaison retires, and Leland Sommers, a man who knows nothing about werewolves or their world, is hired in his place. What could be an awkward situation turns complicated when the man shows up his first day on the job with an injured teenage boy he found on the road–a boy Haley knows has just been bitten.”
Disclosure: Kelley is an online friend, who became a friend because I loved their writing so much that I reached out to say hi.
Caroline’s Heart by Austin Chant is a historical paranormal/fantasy romance that pairs a grieving witch and a gentle cowboy. Both are trans and bi. The blurb for this book centers Cecily, but Roy’s the emotional heart (no pun intended) of the story, the one who coaxes Cecily alive and holds her up when she needs it. Love this book.
“Cecily lost her soulmate years ago, leaving her with nothing but the clockwork heart that once beat in Caroline’s chest. They say it’s impossible to bring back the dead, yet Cecily’s resurrection spell is nearly complete and grows more powerful by the day.
But when a cowboy she barely knows is fatally injured, the only way to save him is by sacrificing an essential piece of the resurrection spell—and all possibility of seeing her lover again.”
Help Wanted by J. Emery is a gender and sexuality questioning F/M romance. I love this little novella about students at a magical college.
“Em is confused about a lot of things: who she is, what she wants, how she’s going to pass Alchemy when she’s awful at it. The one thing she’s not confused about is how much she wants to buy her best friend (and college roommate) the best birthday present ever. Luckily the local magic supply shop is hiring.
Her plan to get a job there would be working perfectly if not for her coworker Phineas who is in turns aggravating and endearingly awkward. She’s not sure if she wants to date him or wants to be him. The more time they spend together the more she thinks it may be both.”
Disclosure: Emery is an online friend, who became a friend after I volunteered to beta read for them because I enjoyed their published work so much.
Erin Kinsella’s Heart and Seoul stars a demisexual, panromantic heroine paired with a bisexual hero. Tessa’s an author who flies to Seoul, South Korea where her book is being adapted to film. Eun Gi, a K-pop superstar, has been cast as the lead actor. So of course they end up in a marriage of convenience. What else could possibly happen? 🙂
I was lucky enough to beta read the second book in this series, which isn’t out yet, and I fell in love with the entire cast. So I’m excited to go back to this first book and find out more about how Tessa and Eun Gi got together.
Disclosure: Kinsella is an online friend, who became a friend because I had such a great time beta reading her work.
Penny Aimes has just released For The Love of April French, a contemporary BDSM romance. The title character is a trans woman. This is waiting for me on my e-reader once I get out from under this pile of library books, and I’m so excited!
“April French doesn’t do relationships and she never asks for more. A long-standing regular at kink club Frankie’s, she’s kind of seen it all. As a trans woman, she’s used to being the scenic rest stop for others on their way to a happily-ever-after. She knows how desire works, and she keeps hers carefully boxed up to take out on weekends only. After all, you can’t be let down if you never ask.
Then Dennis Martin walks into Frankie’s.”
May Peterson’s The Calyx Charm is the third in her series The Sacred Dark. From the sample I’ve read, I suspect it works as a standalone if you’re okay with jumping right in to the lush magical worldbuilding (which is her signature!) and hanging on for the ride.
“Violetta Benedetti knows how to hide things. She spent years concealing herself behind the persona her father expected of her. Now she hides in the dark corners of Vermagna’s underworld, lying low to keep her father from using her magic in his unending quest for power.
But her biggest secret is her love for her best friend, who only knew her as Mercurio Benedetti, not the woman she is today. Now he’s dead, and she’ll never be able to tell him the truth.”
Except that her best friend Tibario DID die… and then got better. So that creates some possibilities. 🙂
The cover for Rosalie Jardin’s Prescription for a Lonely Heart cracks me up in such a good way. His expression is “Heyyyyy!” and hers is so very “I’m not so sure about all this…” That’s because in high school, nerdy Kay and athlete Adrian made a pact that if they were both still single at thirty, they’d get married. Kay, who is demisexual, thought it was a joke.
But now they’re both twenty-eight and still single, and Adrian doesn’t see why they should wait.
Tell me Anything by Skye Kilaen
Isabel meets Derek at exactly the wrong time… or is it exactly right?
Can Isabel return this year for a refund? Because it sucks. Her editing business would be paying her bills just fine… if her ex-boyfriend wasn’t blackmailing her. Of course, if her conservative family wouldn’t disown her for being bisexual, her ex couldn’t blackmail her in the first place. Sadly, she hasn’t invented time travel to un-make the mistake that created this mess.
Derek has a good life. Mostly. He’s an out bisexual man with a successful business and a loving queer found family. But he’s almost forty, living alone is getting stale, and yet dating seems pointless since nobody’s ever found him exciting enough to build a life with. Given he’s now doing zero-creativity craft kits to pass the time, he suspects they’re right. Maybe he should get a dog.
Isabel isn’t holding auditions for a rescuer, and she wouldn’t have expected Derek, a gorgeous, gentle man with his own history of family rejection, to fill the role. But Derek’s “boring” life is the calm harbor Isabel needs, and her affection helps Derek see himself in a new light. Their tentative connection might become the happily ever after they both deserve—if they can hold onto it through the fallout from Isabel’s recent romantic disaster.
Meet Skye
Skye Kilaen writes queer romance, both contemporary and science fiction, that’s sometimes about polyamorous relationships. Even her contemporaries are usually at least a bit geeky. After all, she does some of her writing in her local comic book shop.
Skye started writing fiction in elementary school on a Smith Corona electric typewriter because that’s all people had back in the early 1980s. She didn’t realize she wanted to read and write romance until much later, when it finally dawned on her that she adored X-Men comics for the soap opera aspect as much as for the superpowers.
She’s bi/pan and she currently lives in Austin, Texas because of all the libraries and breakfast tacos.