Sapphic book set in a country or state you haven’t visited (Sapphic Book Bingo 2023 #9)

This week’s Sapphic Book Bingo post is a big one, with a long list of book recommendations. It features sapphic books that are set in a country or a US state you haven’t visited yet. 

One of the greatest things about reading is that it transports us to new, faraway places. It enables us to travel the world without leaving the comfort of our homes. For this category, I invite you to travel to a place you haven’t experienced before. 

Both main characters have brown eyes (Book Unicorn #4)

For this week’s Sapphic Book Bingo category, read a sapphic book in which both main character have brown eyes.

In real life, brown is the most common eye color. 70-80% of the world’s population have brown eyes. It’s not rare to find characters with brown eyes, but usually, only one of the main characters has brown eyes, while authors will often give the other protagonist a different eye color to set the two characters apart and not make them look too similar. That’s why a sapphic book with two main characters who have brown eyes is pretty rare—at least if both main characters are white. 

In books in which both main characters are people of color, this isn’t a Unicorn category at all. But then again, women of color are still very underrepresented in sapphic fiction.

Sapphic Book with an inheritance (Sapphic Book Bingo 2023 #7)

For this week’s Sapphic Book Bingo, read a sapphic book in which one of the main characters inherits something within the first three chapters of the book and the inheritance plays an important role in the book.

The inheritance could be money, a house or property, a company, or any other material possession. If you want to get creative, you could also read a book in which the character inherits a title. 

Butch character who is shorter (Book Unicorn #3)

Have you ever noticed how butch characters are portrayed in sapphic books? I’m not talking about their personalities or how they interact with other characters; I’m talking about their physical descriptions. Most of the time, especially in butch/femme romances, the butch character will be tall and athletic and have smaller breasts compared to her love interest.

If you haven’t noticed before, pay attention to the physical descriptions the next time you read a book with a butch character.

For this category of the Sapphic Book Bingo, read a sapphic book with a butch main character who is shorter than her love interest. If you struggle to find a book with a butch character who’s shorter, I’m fine with a butch character who’s the same height as her love interest, as long as she isn’t taller.

Co-authored sapphic book (Sapphic Book Bingo 2023 #5)

This week’s category of the Sapphic Book Bingo features co-authored sapphic books, meaning books that have been written as a collaboration of at least two writers. 

It can’t be an anthology in which each author worked on their story independently or a book that uses two different pen names of the same author on the cover. 

Most of the time, both authors names will be on the cover, but sometimes, the authors also create a pen name that they use for their co-authored books, so you might have to do a bit of research to find out which books have really been created by two (or more) different authors. 

Sapphic book with “heart” in the title (Sapphic Book Bingo 2023 #4)

For this category of the Sapphic Book Bingo, you shouldn’t have any problem finding enough books to choose from. Romance novels are the most popular genre of sapphic fiction, so there are plenty of books with the word “heart” in the title. Of course, you can also read a sapphic book in another genre, as long as the title includes the word “heart.”

The word heart can be part of an open compound, e.g., Heart Trouble, or a closed compound, e.g., heartfelt. It can be single (heart) or plural (hearts).