This week’s Sapphic Book Bingo category highlights sapphic books featuring characters with a disability or a chronic illness.
This category could almost be considered a hidden gem category. Even though about 16% of the global population live with a disability, we still don’t get a lot of disability representation in sapphic books (or books in general). But the books are out there, and I’m sharing 15 of them below.
For this square of your bingo card, read a sapphic book featuring a main character living with a disability or a chronic health condition. It can be a disability that is visible or an invisible disability or chronic illness that is not immediately apparent, e.g., diabetes, asthma, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and mental health disorders.
15 sapphic books featuring characters with a disability or chronic illness
Below, you’ll find 15 recommended sapphic books featuring characters with a disability or a chronic illness.
Just Physical by Jae
After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, twenty-five-year-old Jill Corrigan takes herself off the romantic market. Not wanting to become a burden to a potential partner, she focuses on her career as an actress instead. On the set of a disaster movie, she meets stunt woman Kristine “Crash” Patterson, whose easy smile instantly makes Jill wish things were different.
Meanwhile, Crash is trained to fall, but she didn’t count on falling in love. Despite their growing feelings for each other, Jill resolves to let Crash into her bed, but not her heart. As they start to play with fire on and off camera, will they really be able to keep things just physical?
Available at:
Beauty and the Beast of the Moon by Alana Archer
One sickly daughter for her father’s freedom, who wouldn’t take that trade?
When my father trespasses on the grounds of a cursed castle, taking his place seems like a sensible solution to our problems, even if the castle’s sole occupant is a horrifying creature who refuses to speak with me.
I know that she’s worried that if she lets me go, more will follow my father, but if I can get her to trust me, I should be able to convince her that I will be able to tell enough terrible tales of my time here to make sure no one ever dares approach the castle again.
I just need to figure out how to win the trust of a monster…
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A Heart Full of Hope by Cheyenne Blue
Smalltown handywoman Hazel Lee has learned to live her best life regardless of what the universe throws at her. But her patience is sorely tested when a bossy, big-city executive blows in and starts questioning Hazel’s motives for helping an elderly friend. High-powered businesswoman Imogen Alexander has her career all set. Then her elderly uncle takes a bad fall in his home.
Imogen figures she can surely run his life as tightly as her work, but she doesn’t count on an annoying local woman being all up in his business. Hazel has one leg, two jobs, and a whole bunch of opinions. Worse, now meddling old Uncle George seems intent on match-making the women together. But what could an icy standoffish executive in hot skirt suits possibly have in common with a cute butch with charm to burn?
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Winter’s Spell by Ursula Klein
Theater director and high school drama teacher Tessa Flowers is still carrying a torch for her old college roommate, Roxy Bright, despite not having seen her in years. When they end up in Provincetown over the winter, Tessa convinces Roxy to help her put on a Shakespeare production. What better way to fan the long-held spark of attraction into the roaring fire of passion. Cue the instant attraction they long to explore. But when Roxy unwittingly saves a stranded mermaid named Mo, things go off script.
Mo is tall, curvy, and stunning, with long green hair and absolutely no clue about life on land. Lured into Cape Cod Bay by an evil spell, she cannot return to her true form. In gratitude to Roxy for having saved her, she vows to help Roxy find her true love. This would all be great, except that Mo doesn’t actually know anything about human courtship, and her help creates more problems than it solves. Throw in Tessa’s icy ex, who has the lead role in the play, and the stage is set for a comedy of errors that even the Bard could appreciate.
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Chronically Yours by Z.B. Phillips
Selene
My life has always been about structure. My five-year plan was always a twenty-year plan, and I’ll be damned if anyone or anything will get in the way. My job as a lecturer isn’t the most fulfilling, but I must have some stability in my life. I can’t have anything rocking the boat; I certainly can’t have a twenty-five-year-old, who has the ability to tempt me into submission, doing that.
Raffaella
There’s a lot about my life that I’m not in control of, but behind closed doors, I’m a different person. It’s like nothing else matters when I’m with Selene. Not my health, not the fear of commitment, not even the complications that life throws at us.
Just me, her, and the whip.
I’m just not sure whether I can trust her with my flaws if I can’t even trust her with the most perfect version of me.
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A Dead Girl’s Guide to Living by Shay Paris
Ellis Langley defies the odds. These were the words she grew up hearing. After surviving two battles with leukemia and undergoing a heart transplant by the age of twenty, Ellis is finally on the other side of life. But now she faces a crippling new darkness: survivor’s guilt. Wrestling with the knowledge that someone had to die for her to live and grappling with the uncertainty of a life that was never promised, Ellis must answer a haunting question:
When you’ve spent your life waiting to die, how do you know when it’s time to start living?
After the death of her grandmother, Dove Marley feels adrift. Raised in a world of tarot and crystals, she once found comfort and answers in the cards. But now her path is obscured, and the family magic feels as though it left with her grandmother. Burdened by the weight of a legacy she isn’t sure she is worthy enough to carry, Dove wonders if she’s lost more than just her way.
Three worlds collide when Liv Browne makes herself known—a ghost with unfinished business and a score to settle with Ellis. Trapped between worlds, Liv enlists Ellis and Dove for a cross-country road trip, determined to find closure with her mother and finally move on.
Traveling along historic Route 66, Ellis and Dove embark on a journey of healing and self-discovery, where grief and hope intertwine and love slowly takes root—teaching them to live boldly, love fiercely, and uncover the magic hidden in the everyday.
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Fuze by Stacy Lynn Miller
After a lifetime of fighting to get what she wants, Lexi Mills has finally made it into the elite ATF Special Response Team. But when a wrong move during a bomb disposal operation takes half her leg—and her partner’s life—Lexi must shoulder the guilt alone.
Now there’s only one way to put the past behind her: she will hunt down the man who killed her partner.
When Lexi is sent to a border town to investigate a tragic explosion, something seems off, and it’s not just the mysterious local detective on the case, Noah Black. The deeper Lexi and Noah dig, the more they uncover a conspiracy reminiscent of the same bomb blast that changed her life.
And when the case gives Lexi a chance to track down her partner’s killer, she’s torn between following orders and chasing revenge…
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The Sting of Victory by SD Simper
Haunted by a history of horror and abuse, Flowridia, a witch with a tender heart, finds a second chance in the home of her kingdom’s royal family. With employment comes friendship, and perhaps she has finally found a place to belong—until she catches the eye of Lady Ayla Darkleaf, a woman with enticing grace and a predatory smile. The corrupt world of politics consumes her, and Flowridia falls into a toxic love affair surely doomed for heartbreak. Yet when Ayla’s legacy as a monster unfolds, Flowridia sees only the tender soul hiding beneath.
An ancient deity returns, hell-bent on restoring the world to its natural order, and Flowridia’s kingdom is tasked to stop him. Caught in the ensuing clash of gods, her loyalties will be tempted at every turn—by family, by fate, and by the woman whose claws grip her heart.
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Diminished by Erica Rose Eberhart
A queen haunted by ghosts. A dragon cursed in human skin. A kingdom on the brink of war.
In the aftermath of her father’s death, Queen Greer stands at the edge of grief and revelation. Magic—once forbidden—has returned to Wimleigh, but so have enemies.
When a prophetic funeral warns of rising death, it sets into motion a chain of events that will test the mettle of queens, heirs, and warriors alike.
As Greer grapples with panic attacks and the vengeful ghost of her father, her sister, Caitriona, struggles under the weight of monstrous expectations. Bearing horns, scales, and the voice of a dragon in her mind, Caitriona must lead a secret mission with Ailith MacCree–now a royal guard–north to find a lost prince who could stop a war—if he’s willing to fight.
But treachery weaves through the forests, poisons creep in, and fae assassins lurk in the shadows. With kingdoms falling to darkness, an ancient tree bleeding out its final life, and bonds shattered by betrayal, Wimleigh’s hope rests on a dragon no longer afraid to rise. When magic is reborn and monsters wear crowns, who dares to lead the charge?
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Synchronicity by J.J. Hale
While running the dance program at a summer camp for neurodivergent kids, Haley Tyne bumps into the mysterious woman who ghosted her after a life-altering date two years ago, and their connection is undeniable. Cal O’Shea took a job at the camp to watch over her sister. She never anticipated seeing the woman who left a beautiful mark on a terrible night in her past.
When Haley’s dance partner is injured and their end-of-summer show is in jeopardy, Cal steps in, reviving memories from the past better left behind. With passion igniting in stolen moments, their dance becomes more emotional than anticipated. As past and present intertwine, their dance of destiny may bind their hearts or become just another fleeting step in their separate journeys.
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Behind the Veil by Catherine Maiorisi
Once the world’s brightest star, Ariana Calandre lost her band, her voice, and her will to live—all in one devastating night. Physically and emotionally shattered, wracked by survivor’s guilt, and convinced her scars make her a monster, she retreats to an isolated farmhouse, and hides behind a veil.
Then Lee arrives. Hired to do repairs, Lee asks only for space and a patch of land to camp on. But she brings more than tools. With her books, music, intelligence, and quiet companionship, she begins to crack open Ariana’s world.
As their bond deepens, Ariana is terrified of being truly seen and clings to her pain—until the day she rediscovers her music and, with it, the spark of her own strength. When she accidentally drops her veil, Ariana must decide whether she will stay hidden forever, or step back into the light and share her heart—and her voice—once more.
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On The Edge of Uncertainty by E.V. Bancroft
Florence Cooper has spent most of her life caring for her niece, Cam Langley. Now she shares a house with her niece and Cam’s beautiful girlfriend, Gloria Edwards, but at fifty-five, arthritis is slowing Florrie’s body and solitude is settling on her soul.
On Gloria’s graduation day, a chance meeting with the woman who broke Florrie’s heart over twenty years ago throws chaos and confusion into her life, forcing her to take a trip down memory lane into 1920s literary London.
Old wounds reopen and long-buried feelings reignite, pulling Florrie into a life she thought long-drowned. Standing once more on the edge of uncertainty, Florrie must decide: dive into the ocean of possibilities or swim for the safety of the shore.
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A Different Kind Of Pride by Katherine Blakeman
Victoria Berry is known in the Cornish village of Miltree for being cold. As headteacher of the local primary school, she conducts her career with the same iron fist with which she controls the rest of her life. She’s perfectly content how she is: single, stony and intimidating. But what she doesn’t realise is that this can’t last forever.
Anastasia Savchenko is not known in the village of Miltree at all. She’s only been there for a year, having left her nursing career post-burnout in order to take over the village florist. Her head full of the business of flowers, she hasn’t even had time to make friends. And even if she had, the least likely person would be her next-door-neighbour, Scary Miss Berry.
A catastrophic car accident forces Anastasia and Victoria together, and before they know it, their relationship goes from complete strangers to carer and charge. But what they don’t realise is that as Victoria recovers, their relationship may run deeper than either of them bargained for…
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Returning Home to Her by Jutta Swietlinski
Linet, a single mother in her forties with a walking disability, is still grieving for her wife when she unexpectedly receives a letter: After long silence, her old friend Janet invites her to the opening of her art gallery. Linet flies to San Francisco with her son to visit Janet and her husband. The two women are soon able to revive their former friendship. On a walk, Linet surprisingly runs into Livia, the first woman she ever fell in love with. Their old feelings flame up anew and they begin a passionate romance again. But then a fatal accident happens. And everything will change forever …
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The Many Mistakes of Amy Love by RA Hunter
What do you get when you mix one fiery red-head with crippling anxiety and one queen of one-night-stands?
A shining knight moment, misunderstandings, pure combustion–sexy, smoldering kisses, put-me-on-the-counter fireworks along with more anxiety than Amy Love knows what to do with.
She’s also the puzzle that Laura couldn’t quit if she tried. Even their overlapping friend group sees the complexities of this budding relationship and they all have an opinion about Amy Love in love.
Can you run away from love?
Amy thinks so.
Amy Love doesn’t let people get close. When people get close they become a mistake, and Amy has made far too many mistakes in her life. But what happens when a series of chance encounters throws her to the arms of Laura, a woman who she wants to stop making mistakes for?
Will Amy finally stop running?
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Cinders of Yesterday by Jen Karner
Dani Black—smart mouthed, pie loving, monster hunter—wants revenge.
A year ago a rogue Necromancer killed her best friend. She’s been looking for a way to kill him—and keep him dead—ever since. So when rumors surface of a weapon capable of killing anything, she sets off for Dawson Maryland. The only problem? Dawson Maryland might be home to more than just the ever enchanting daughter of a prominent magical family, Emilie Lockgrove. It might also hold clues to Dani’s past.
Dani plans to kill Spectre, or die trying.
Emilie Lockgrove—book lover, powerless, nomal—wants answers.
Ten years ago, she survived the fire that killed her mother. Now Emilie has returned to Dawson expecting to confront the trauma of her past, and find peace. What she finds instead? A power she never knew she had and enough family secrets to drown in.
Emilie just wants to reclaim the life stolen from her after the fire.
To survive, each must confront her past, and maybe find hope for the future.
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What book will you be reading for the “sapphic books featuring characters with a disability” category? Let us know in the comments!
2 Responses
Rebound Play by Sasha Brennan (Part 3 of the Courting Blizzards Series)
Alice Rue Evades the Truth by Emily Zipps features a disaster bisexual and an adorable butch who has multiple sclerosis (and a gorgeous dog!). An excellent book with great banter and audio narration and a loveable chaotic family. It’s inspired by While You Were Sleeping, where the main character has a crush on a character who goes into a coma, and then falls for his sibling. (Note: The disaster bisexual has a few issues around health concerns due to her history and she needs to be better at talking to people, but overall I loved it and would absolutely recommend!)