16 books like My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness

This could be a polarizing book, but if you’ve picked this recommendation list from all the others and have gotten this far, there’s a good chance you’re also into books about young women making questionable choices. The protagonist, Hera, is starting a relationship with her older colleague at her workplace, where she’s an online comment moderator.

The story is written from Hera’s point of view, who has a sense of ironic self-awareness but is also desperate to feel something, which is probably what leads her into a course of action she knows is going to bite her in the arse, eventually.

A young woman working in a pet library reads Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and decides that, moving forward, she must stop wasting her life and begin living it according to the book’s Core Values: boldness, resolution, independence, and horn-blowing.

Far from a motivational story, this is about a ridiculous protagonist who behaves in increasingly outrageous ways—very much an unlikeable character (I noticed that someone had tagged Treasure Island!!! under the category ‘unhinged women,’ which feels right). But gosh, did this book make me giggle? Humor can be hit-and-miss as it’s so subjective and sometimes tries too hard, but women behaving irrationally or badly just hits me in the right place.

This book kicked off my obsession with stories about young women who are trying to make sense of all the versions of themselves they have inside and weighing up which one to present to the world at any given time. The protagonist, Ruth, is an American living in London who works at a department store, spritzing perfume during the day, watching all the people go past, and trying to understand how the other young women who work there seem so self-assured. This is not a plot-driven book so much as a character study of a character who doesn’t know who she is yet.

Kate Zambreno’s writing is absolutely gorgeous. She creates a distance between Ruth—the ‘green girl’—and the world, like she’s looking through a window and can see people inside talking but not understand what they’re saying. At the same time, I recognized myself in Ruth,… show more.

I love Paper Girls because it’s a wild adventure with a great cast of dynamically written, queer girls. It’s a fantasy story that really grips the reader by the shirt collar and pulls them in. I definitely couldn’t put this one down because the story keeps you wanting MORE.

I have to again recommend this graphic novel for its gorgeous artwork and color palettes that really make it a feast for the eyes. 

This book was recommended to me by my mentor, so it was one of the first queer graphic novels I ever got to experience. I love this book because it goes through so many of the hardships of being openly yourself. It’s nostalgic, it’s relatable, and it’s incredibly heartfelt.

While the main focus of Kiss Number 8 is exploring queer identity in young adulthood, my favorite part of this book is the relationship the main character has with her father and how that relationship struggles, changes, and grows over the course of the book.

This one has messy right in the title! Freddy keeps getting dumped by Laura Dean over and over. She gets so blinded by her “love” for Laura Dean that she takes her friends for granted. It’s a classic story with an LGBT+ twist. Part of what makes it stand out is the beautiful visual storytelling. I actually learned a lot from this one, as it’s quite different from the superhero comics I grew up with. There are moments in here where two hands will say a thousand words. 

I love an audacious woman, even if she is a hot mess. This book follows Alex, a young woman who’s been staying at the Hamptons with an older man. She’s a calculated person, good at capitalizing on the good natures and human weaknesses of others, but a small misstep brings her free ride with the older man to an end. Instead of leaving, she decides to linger on Long Island.

Each night, she finds a new person to graft, a new scheme to help her stay. Spending time with Alex was stressful and made me want to shake her for her short-sightedness and self-sabotaging. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but admire her grit and wonder what on earth she was going to do next.

A truly singular book that details a semi-fictionalized account of a transgender sex worker surviving in Seattle. Depicted as a cute anthropomorphic dog-like creature, the story follows her as she meets with various clients and navigates her own identity struggles and in-progress transition (not to mention her own safety in her dangerous line of work). A deeply emotional and raw story that still manages to retain its own dark sense of humor throughout.

(Deals with themes of drugs, sex, and violence. 18+ only.)

A modestly-paced and personally relatable tale of the author's experience volunteering for an invasive ivy cleanup crew. The semi-fictionalized account highlights various social struggles and teen drama as well as difficulties with personal identity along the way. The energy this book captures is palpable and it's very easy as a reader to be drawn into Hazel's retelling of their memorable experience throttling ivy with their peers, confronting their own fears and biases along the way.

The award-winning author of Stargazing does it again with a beautiful new fairy tale for any age. While it isn’t a reimagining of a specific tale, it has all the feels and tropes of a Disney movie—only we’re learning more about a budding friendship between a brilliant young dressmaker and a prince who struggles to be his true queer self.

If I had this story when I was a boy, I would have read it until the book fell apart and had to buy a new one. As it is now, it has a special place on my bookshelf—and in my heart.