For the second Hidden Gems post of the 2024 Sapphic Book Bingo, we’re highlighting sapphic books with steamy sex scenes in which the characters use a sex toy.
From passionate encounters with a strap-on to thrilling escapades with a pair of handcuffs or exhilarating adventures with a vibrator, this category embraces the exploration of pleasure and intimacy in sapphic romances.
15 recommended sapphic books with sex toys
Below, you’ll find a list of 15 sapphic books featuring sex toys:
Love Where You Work by Anna Pulley
For Clare Kolikov, her work is her life. A successful HR manager with a heart of gold, Clare has no time for relationships or anything else that might distract her from climbing the career ladder at a San Francisco Bay Area matchmaking startup, W;nkdIn.
When she’s force-volunteered as an LGBTQ beta date tester at W;nkdIn, the buttoned-up Clare teeters on the edge of despair, especially when the “experiences” involve pole dancing meet-n-greets, plant healing workshops, and miming.
But Clare has her real work cut out for her when she meets Julia Dawes, the hot coworker who’s organizing her dates. Julia is a free-spirited, multiracial fashionista with “roller-blade confidence” and a Kristen Stewart haiku fan blog, whose attraction to Clare is as immediate and crippling as the debt she’s drowning in, thanks to the failed essential oils business her ex left her saddled with.
Workplace rules aim to keep Clare and Julia apart––especially after Clare becomes Julia’s boss––but their attraction only grows like an out-of-control Excel spreadsheet.
When an office rival threatens to expose their budding, secret relationship, Clare is left with an impossible choice: Give up her dream job or lose out on the girl of her dreams.
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Worth the Wait by Jae
When struggling actress Jill lands her dream TV role, she rushes home to celebrate with her girlfriend, stuntwoman Crash.
A steamy shower leads to sheet-rumpling passion as they try out a new sex toy. Will their intimate celebration turn out to be worth the wait?
“Worth the Wait” won the Good Sex Awards 2021 in the Best Use of Sex Toys category. It’s a short sequel to Jae’s lesbian romance Just Physical but can be read as a steamy standalone.
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Saving Mia by Anna Stone
To break free, she auctioned off the one thing she’s been saving…
Mia Brooks needs money, fast. Deep in debt to help pay her sister’s medical bills, her loan shark is coming to collect. Her solution? Auctioning off the one thing she’s been saving—herself.
The highest bidder is Cassandra Lee, self-made businesswoman and CEO. Her heart hardened by a past she keeps buried, Cassandra doesn’t want a relationship. What she wants is a woman who takes pleasure in serving her. And Mia is the perfect prize. She’s enthralled by Cassandra and the sweet surrender she commands. For the next 30 days, Mia is hers.
As the chemistry sizzling between them intensifies, so does their connection. But a figure from Cassandra’s past has returned, determined to destroy her no matter who gets hurt in the process. As the end of the month draws near and Cassandra’s dark secrets threaten to tear them apart, will Mia and Cassandra be able to put it all on the line, including their hearts?
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A Game of Romance and Ruin by Ruby Roe
In a game of power, can love be the deadliest weapon?
Stirling Grey, legendary negotiator, is on a mission: to mend her broken heart and avenge its ruin.
Morrigan Lee, hidden princess and heir to the throne, is harbouring a dark secret.
For years, Stirling and Morrigan navigated the perilous games of power and politics, shared clandestine moments, and ultimately… fell in love…
Until a deal with fate forced them apart.
When the Queen sets a formidable challenge, Stirling and Morrigan are thrust into a treacherous labyrinth of danger.
The task?
Protect the kingdom from a terrifying threat or lose the crown forever.
But this is not a simple mission.
With the clock ticking, they’re going to have to trust each other…
And that’s not easy when their past is filled with betrayal.
It’s even harder when their hearts are entangled amidst the chaos.
Now, neither woman is sure if it’s the throne they want to rescue or a love they want to rekindle.
Two hearts, one kingdom, and a romance that could lead to their ruin… or just maybe their redemption.
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Just Like Her by Fiona Zedde
Delphine’s life is made up of secrets. About her job, her sexual identity, and even her past.
She coasts along on a tide of half-truths until a familiar “straight” woman pushes into her world, threatening her tenuous peace of mind. This woman wants to be everything Delphine has never had before – a confidant, a seductress, a lover. Delphine is terrified of taking the risk, yet she’s oh so tempted…
By giving in to this siren, is she setting herself up for heartbreak, or worse?
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The Club by A. L. Brooks
Welcome to The Club—leave your inhibitions at the door and indulge in an evening of anonymous, woman-on-woman action in a sizzling, award-winning lesbian erotica that includes characters over fifty, plus-sized women, coming-out stories, and toe-curling fun.
For many of the women who visit The Club, no-strings excitement is exactly what they are looking for and what they get. For others, however, with emotions running high, one night of sex changes their lives in ways they couldn’t have imagined.
For Lou, her weekly visits enable her to set aside her shyness and loneliness and feel intimacy, however briefly. Kath, who cares for her mother at home, finds The Club a welcome escape from her everyday toil; while Max needs distraction from her troubled relationship, even as she tries to tell herself she isn’t really cheating.
Tania and Jacky find an outlet for a tricky block in their sex life. Cassie and Nina, two bar staff at The Club, find themselves staying on after hours. And, Stephanie, struggling with her sexuality, finds her life changing in so many ways once she plucks up courage to enter.
The lives of these women intersect, merge, and mingle, and watching over them all is Mandy—the owner, whose own ghosts play a pivotal role in the existence of The Club.
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Love and Other Rare Birds by Angie Williams
Ornithologist Dr. Jamie Martin doesn’t have time for romance. She’s spent her life living up to her biologist-turned-conservative-senator father’s idea of who she should be. When she discovers that a bird thought to be extinct has been sighted in Alaska, Jaime seizes the opportunity to finally step out of her father’s shadow and make her career her own.
As a park ranger in Alaska’s largest national wilderness, all Rowan Fleming wants is to escape the stress of her failed marriage in the lower forty-eight. She needs solitude to heal her broken heart, so being ordered to act as a guide for an entitled senator’s daughter isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
Jaime and Rowan couldn’t be more different, but as the landscape grows treacherous and remote, they’re forced to work together to find the elusive bird. Three arguments, two whispered confessions, and one rogue bear later, they’re beginning to suspect love isn’t extinct, after all.
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Always Emilie by Alyson Root
Charlie Baxter has it all. A beautiful house, successful company and a set of tattoos that light women on fire at the mere sight of them. Not to mention, she’s tall and gorgeous! Life is good… Well, that is until her old music teacher calls insisting she return to her old school to take part in their annual charity ball. Charlie left Pickerton Academy behind twenty years ago. She also left behind the heartache caused by the only girl she ever loved.
Emilie Martin is an international superstar. She’s had fame and fortune for the past two decades, but what she really wants now is a break. Maybe a couple of weeks in the English countryside and a visit to her old school is just what she needs. Sounds perfect, and it would be if it weren’t for the fact it meant seeing the one person Emilie has pined over for twenty years. The girl that got away. No, the girl Emilie threw away.
With both women on a collision course with their past, can they put all the hurt behind them and start again? Can they keep their hands off each other long enough to really figure out what they want?
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Good Vibes by Cara Malone
The little details have never interested Libby. From her eclectic style to her carefree attitude about her adult toy shop, she’s all about the big picture. But when her business partner retires, Libby’s safety net disappears and it’s up to her to sink or swim.
For old-school card game nerd Theo, the details are everything. Her anxiety demands to know the rules, the players and the goal in any situation, and it can be hard to even leave her apartment unless she knows exactly what’s coming her way.
When Theo’s sister gets engaged, she’s forced out of her comfort zone and into Libby’s shop on the hunt for bachelorette party supplies.
Opposites attract and Theo is drawn into Libby’s chaotic world. She wants to help Libby save the shop and together they come up with a plan, but will they be brave enough to play the game of love?
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Beyond Any Experience by Anne E. Terpstra
Olivia Northman’s world shattered the day she lost her wife to a drunk driver. Three years later, she still struggles with grief and the demands of being a single parent to their autistic son, Ben. After her first attempt at a new relationship crumbles, Olivia retreats to the simple, the predictable. It’s what’s best for her son and her heart.
Ellie Vasquez isn’t simple or predictable. In fact, she’s charmingly impulsive, as well as gregarious, confident, and attracted to Olivia, which she reveals in an unguarded moment. Olivia doesn’t know what’s more surprising—Ellie’s interest, or her own—but a quiet conversation over drinks soon spins into something more. As Olivia’s caution gives way to hope, she sees another chance at love, both for her, and for Ben, who takes to Ellie with a tender openness. Ellie is fearless about love in a way that makes Olivia want to be brave, but the deeper their passion, the closer she gets to drowning—in grief, in fear, in guilt. To have a future with Ellie, Olivia must come to terms with her past. If she can’t, she risks losing the second love of her life.
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Round Trip by D.A. Hartman
This fun and quirky story is told by two mentally unbalanced main characters, a delusional homeless woman and a writer with abandonment issues. Virginia the sapphic author insists nothing not even love can save Tori who is of unsound mind and destined to remain on the streets forever. Tori believes it’s Virginia who needs saving.
Novelist Virginia Lopez bases her characters on real people who subsequently suffer the same fate as those in her manuscripts. Her bad karma has run amok, and so she vows never to use someone she cares about as a protagonist again. But Tori Laurengo is forlorn at best. What harm could Virginia’s words and rotten luck cause the disheveled woman who talks to herself?
Tori is homeless until a stranger offers her a place to stay at a luxurious apartment building in California. There, the socially awkward woman falls madly in love with Virginia unaware that she was chosen to be the doomed character in the author’s latest novel Round Trip.
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Mistress: Found (Home Kinky Home #1) by Emily Alter
Finding her was only the beginning.
When Iria moved to Cádiz, Spain, and she became a member of the local kink club, she hadn’t been expecting Nerea. A sub who had been deemed unsafe to play with by most Dommes. After their first scene, Iria should’ve stayed away, but she didn’t.
Nerea had been drifting, going through the motions. Iria forced her to confront her demons, her past. She made her connect with all the emotions she’d all but blocked years ago.
If only she could learn how to do that, then she could enjoy everything Iria was offering. Every experience Mistress was willing to give her, to test her limits with.
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Party Favors by Erin McLellan
Three…
Amanda Ellis knows three things: she’s tired of doing what’s expected of her, she hates her job at her family’s business, and the last thing she wants to do is attend her parents’ boring New Year’s Eve ball with a date her mother picked. A few days of fun with her online best friend is exactly what she needs to ring in the New Year on her own terms.
Two…
Wren Rebello is impulsive and always ready for fun. A last-minute girls’ getaway sounds like the perfect way to spend New Year’s. But even Wren isn’t prepared for the spark of attraction she feels when she meets Amanda in person for the first time. Good thing Wren loves popping Amanda’s cork.
One…
After days spent sharing end-of-year resolutions and the one bed in their cottage, the clock strikes midnight and the ball drops on their time together. As Amanda and Wren go their separate ways, they leave new resolutions unfulfilled. Is there enough New Year’s magic left to turn their online friendship into real-life love?
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I’m Perfectly Fine by Kelli Jae Baeli & Melissa Walker Baeli
Two women, one steeped in the past, the other, trying to outrun it.
In the heart of Plymouth, Michigan, thirty-five-year-old Monica Hayes favors living each day as it comes, keeping her past carefully behind her. Gregarious and sweet, she’s the out and proud owner of a struggling all-inclusive bookstore, and dreads the day she will have to admit defeat.
Professor Alexandra Craig is approaching fifty and firmly planted in a closet of her own making, while seeking tenure. Staid and insular, Alex prefers being surrounded by the same classic literature she teaches at the local liberal arts college, content with maintaining the status-quo. She lives a life of antiquity, fearful of anything in her present that might threaten her carefully-constructed plans.
Sparks fly when these two wildly different women meet under less than ideal circumstances. But can a prim and proper heiress find love with the daughter of a handyman?
As they struggle to find common ground, will their relationship, forged in fire, survive the searing flames?
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Biting Down by Torrance Sené
In the dim lights of The Crimson, Mollie’s world ignites when she crosses paths with werewolf beauty, Cam.
Will the danger Mollie faces overpower the inexplicable and lustful pull she feels toward Cam and her world? Or will desire overcome all obstacles and bond both women closer than they’d ever imagined?
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Join us for Sapphic Romance Week
On February 12-18, I’m hosting Sapphic Romance Week, a fun, week-long event for readers of sapphic romance. Every day, we celebrate one of the 7 most popular romance tropes, and you have the chance to win one of 10+ books that fit the trope of the day. Sign up for the reminder emails so you won’t miss any of the giveaways!
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What book will you be reading for the “sapphic books with sex toys” category? Are there other books that are a good fit for this category? Let us know in the comments!
Keepers of the Cave by Gerri Hill.
The Witches of Gloucester by Lisabet Sarai
Love Where You Work by Anna Pulley, and Just Like Her by Fiona Zedde when it comes out next month.
The first Ruby Roe book, A Game of Hearts and Heists, also fits this category!
Basically anything by Jaime Clevenger! To recommend one, I’d go with the incredible “Three Reasons to Say Yes”