Happy Pride Month! We’re certainly celebrating Pride differently this year. It’s a great time to pick up a book and read about characters who aren’t living in a pandemic. Here are books from four authors that I’d highly recommend for your Pride reading list. All of these books are from authors of color as in support of the Juneteenth Book Fest, which seeks to use the day of jubilation to boost and celebrate Black American stories and the people behind them.
Dreamers series by Adriana Herrera (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MHHBQFW)
This series is one of the very best in m/m romance. Currently there are four books, three are m/m and one m/f. Each book focuses on one of four friends—Nesto, Camilo, Patrice and Juan Pablo—as they find their happily ever after. These books are firmly rooted in our contemporary times. Nesto faces racism as he works to get his food truck business off the ground. Patrice, a professor, fights hard for social justice and find that the fight gets tangled up in his personal life. Adriana writes important stories about the real struggles persons of color can face, while giving them some great romantic stories. These are characters you won’t forget.
Adriana has a new standalone book coming at the end of June called Finding Joy (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085TRV833/). It’s the story of two men who work with an aid organization in Ethiopia. I’ve had the pleasure of reading an advance copy. This book is also not to be missed.
You can learn more about Adriana from her two appearances on the Big Gay Fiction Podcast. One in which she talks about the Dreamer series (https://www.jeffandwill.com/biggayfictionpodcast/2019/05/13/episode-188-adriana-herreras-dreamers/) and a Pride Month episode where she reads from Finding Joy(https://www.jeffandwill.com/biggayfictionpodcast/2020/06/05/pride-month-bonus-3-adriana-herrera/)
How To Be Remy Cameron by Julian Winters (https://www.amazon.com/How-Remy-Cameron-Julian-Winters-ebook/dp/B07PQCGDTG/)
This young adult book is all about Remy. He’s a smart, out-and-proud guys who seems confident about everything. Except he’s not feeling that confident. He’s not even really sure who he is as he tries to tackle a class assignment where he must define who he is and who he wants to be. The assignment forces Remy to examine his family as well. He’s black and adopted by a white family. He wonders what he may have lost from his culture and embarks on finding his birth mother. As Remy deals with all this, he gets incredible advice from his friends one of whom lays this on him: “Don’t let others take pride in who you are–your race, sexuality, whatever–away from you. They didn’t give it you; they have no right to snatch it away.” Julian is an ace writing YA. His first book, Running with Lions (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NYBD5KG/), is incredible and I’m eagerly awaiting the September release of The Summer of Everything (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B083JWDZTF/)
Jeff Adams loves hockey, musicals, and watching a good dance—so much so he often incorporates those things into his stories. Speaking of stories, creating new adventures and characters is a blast. Who he loves most, though, is his husband of twenty years, Will. You can see Jeff’s complete book list at JeffAdamsWrites.com and you can listen to him weekly as the co-host of the Big Gay Fiction Podcast and the Big Gay Author Podcast.