Books about coming out later in life (Sapphic Reading Challenge #18)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge post is all about characters who come out later in life. For the purpuse of this reading challenge, let’s define “later in life” as a character who’s in her 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond.

Pick a book in which the protagonist comes out as LGBTQIA, either because it took them longer to figure out they aren’t straight or because they were struggling to come out to friends and family.

Character is a teacher or professor (Sapphic Reading Challenge #17)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge post features books in which the main character is a teacher or a professor.

I know some readers stay away from teacher romances because they assume these books always include a teacher/student romance, but that’s not the case with the books I picked for this category. In almost all of the books recommended, the romance is between the teacher and a colleague or someone who’s not involved with her professional life at all. If the romance is between the teacher or professor and one of her students, the author handled it in a way that avoids crossing ethical boundaries as much as possible. 

Grumpy & sunshine romance (Sapphic Reading Challenge #16)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge post features f/f romances in which a grumpy character falls for a character with a sunny, upbeat personality.

There’s a bit of an overlap with ice-queen romances at times, so you might want to check out the ice-queen romance recommendations to see if any of these would fit the grumpy & sunshine category too.

Sapphic books with ice queen characters (Sapphic Reading Challenge #11)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge post features a very popular kind of protagonist: the famous (or maybe infamous) ice queen character.

Ice queens are characters who come across as cold, aloof, and prickly. Often, they melt a bit after falling in love, and we get to see their well-hidden vulnerable side, but they typically remain their ice queenish, frosty selves with other people. Ice queens are usually in positions of power–they own their own business, are famous celebrities, or made it to the top of the food chain in whatever profession they chose. Think Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, and you have the quintessential ice queen.

Only One Bed (Sapphic Reading Challenge #6)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge category features a trope that seems to be quite popular in women-loving women romance. I call it the “only one bed” trope. It includes two characters who are not (yet) a couple having to share the only available bed.

Usually, that leads to hilarious situations: one character clinging to the edge of the bed so she won’t give away her attraction, or they wake up in the middle of the night, cuddled up to each other. And sometimes, a whole lot more than cuddling happens.

Books with a “Return to Hometown” Theme (Sapphic Reading Challenge #3)

The third category of the Sapphic Reading Challenge is a theme that I see a lot, especially in WLW & lesbian romance: books in which the protagonist returns to her hometown after years away.

Maybe it’s the fact that many queer people have to leave their hometown to be able to be their authentic selves and then have to face their past sooner or later—families that might not have reacted too well to their coming out or a first crush they left behind.