LGBTQIA - Young Adult Books With Gay Characters

Two El Paso, Texas teens, sensitive boys who don't feel like they fit in among the Mexican men they see around them, form a special friendship over the course of one year.

Also available for download as an e-book.
When tragedy turns his life upside down, Andrew Brawley seeks refuge in a hospital, living in an abandoned wing, befriending staff and patients, and trying to evade Death herself.

Twins Kyle and Judy always compete with one another. Their new obsession is a transfer student that claims to be a vampire. A humorous tale with multiple POVs that deal with attraction and family dynamics.

Also available for download as an e-book.
Russell thinks he’s the only gay kid at his high school. When he realizes he isn’t the only one, he discretely gathers his new LGBTQ friends for support in the Geography Club.

Jude and Noah are twins who are opposites in personality - beautiful Jude is popular and a daredevil; Noah is a quiet and sensitive artist. Yet, at the age of thirteen, the two are close, sharing even their own secret language. Three years later, the twins are no longer speaking to each other. The gap that has grown between them seems unbridgeable. Can they come to terms with the tragedy that has struck their family or will they be forever torn apart by their loss? If you love John Green and Rainbow Rowell, you’ll be sure to love this heart-wrenchingly beautiful novel by Jandy Nelson.

High school freshman Charlie writes a series of letters, to whom we don't know. In them he details his life as a wallflower, struggling to fit in, finding comfort in an odd new circle of friends.

16-year-old Simon finds himself the target of blackmail when a schoolmate finds Simon's email sent to a boy anonymously met online. and who also goes to their school. As his email correspondence with “Blue” progresses, Simon must deal with not only his blackmailer, who wants to be set up with Simon’s friend, but his own circle of friends and family as he decides how and when to come out, and on his own terms.
 

One weekend in the lives of several gay teenagers, narrated by a ghostly Greek chorus, the generation of young men lost to AIDS. Those narrators, who understand so well how far the current generation has come, and how quickly it can all be gone, make the book a celebration of life, and they demand that we live that life to the fullest while we still have the chance. Deeply profound and moving.

When Aiden's childhood best friend, Jarrod, returns to town, his reappearance triggers memories that reveal a world of magic and insight Aiden didn't know he had, pulling him into the shadow world in order to save his family. 

Three misfits become friends and form a unique bond over the course of the school year that tests their friendship as well as themselves when Sebby and Mira invite Jeremy into their intimate circle. Jeremy is starting the new school at St. Francis a year after a bullying incident that shined a glaring light on him and his two dads. Lovely, highly individualized and beautifully realized characters centering around Jeremy, a misfit whose previous school year ended with a homophobic bullying incident after he suggested there were gay themes in The Great Gatsby

Aaron is just a regular teenager in the Bronx with a girlfriend, and a growing friendship with a new kid, Thomas. He’s confused about his feelings and what he wants, and thinks that the Leteo Institute’s memory altering surgery might be just what he needs to be happy--or not.

Henry has been struggling. His boyfriend killed himself a year ago, he's constantly and viciously bullied at school both for being gay and believing he's been abducted by aliens, his brother beats him up. But the aliens he calls sluggers have told him the world will end on January 29, 2016 unless he chooses to press the button. Is life worth living enough for Henry to press the button?

Moody, audacious tale about Jude, who is eager to get out of his small Canadian town, a place he's too big for with his vivid imagination that he uses to cope with being the out gay kid. He turns painful, everyday interactions into his own personal movie, meanwhile he longs for that day in the near future when he will escape for good.

Mark and Kate have been classmates for the past year but wind up meeting for the first time at a bar in the middle of their first San Francisco Pride Week, a week in which they go from strangers to the most unique of friends.