Happy Pride Month, one and all! As usual, June is packed to the gills with queer romance, so selecting just five titles felt a nigh impossible task. While I’ve done it, I definitely encourage you to seek out the many more excellent-looking books gracing shelves this month and support as many queer creators as possible!
For the Bride
Author: Becca Grischow
Released: June 2, 2026 by Penguin Books
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, RomanceFrom the author of I’ll Get Back To You, a sapphic enemies-to-lovers romance that follows a Type-A maid of honor setting out to do the most and a Type-B bridesmaid with her life only just put-together, who must put aside their animosity to plan the wedding of the summer
On the surface, Alice has her life together. She’s got a job in music she loves; she’s firmly sober; and she’s grateful to be back in the good graces of her ex-girlfriend-once-best-friend-now-literal-only-friend Gin. Just in time, too, because Gin’s getting married this summer! And Alice gets to be a bridesmaid.
If only the maid-of-honor wasn’t Renee Type-A, the opposite of her in every way, and a long-time Alice-hater who’s clung to her animosity like a leech. Every second Alice spends around Renee makes her feel like who she used to be, rather than the person she’s spent years trying to make herself into—and she doesn’t want to be reminded of her younger self any more than she wants to be thinking, more constantly than she wants to admit, about her hair, her lips, her wit…. No, Alice has her own stuff to figure out. She still loves music, but her career feels directionless. She’s grieving the loss of her father just a year ago, to alcohol. And then she finds out that her mother’s started to date her father’s ex-bandmate, which sends her reeling…and with the wedding just around the corner, she doesn’t want to bother Gin about any of it.
It’s pure chance that Renee runs into Alice, just when she needs someone the most—and suddenly, everything shifts. Neither of them are what they assumed the other to be. Over the days and nights they’re spending helping Gin throw a DIY summer wedding of epic proportions, Alice and Renee discover that though they have nothing in common—that might be precisely what each of them need. Heartfelt and hopeful, For the Bride is a banter-filled sapphic romance with deep emotional resonance about found family, second chances, and finding love in the unexpected.
Grischow’s sophomore romance revolves around bridal party hijinks, which is already one of my all-time favorite tropes, but this one gave me alllll the feels. Protagonist Alice is still grieving not just the loss of her father but his seeming unwillingness to even try to live for her, and while she herself has reformed from her hard-partying ways, she’s grappling with the visions and memories of her other people can’t seem to shake. It’s a really lovely coming-of-age story alongside a chemistry-filled opposites attract romance, and one of my favorite romantic reads of the year so far.
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Author: Edward Schmit
Released: June 2, 2026 by Berkley
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, RomanceLove evens the score between two tennis players in this stunning debut romance.
Recently-turned-pro tennis player Austin Hardy has been out since high school and it’s never been a big deal. That is, until he becomes the first openly gay man to compete in a Grand Slam tournament. Suddenly, being gay is a huge deal, with headlines to prove it.
Unprepared for this new spotlight, Austin’s anxiety disorder hits a breaking point, and he trips and falls at practice. Right next to the very attractive, very talented, and probably straight Diego Cruz, ranked second in the world.
The two professional rivals start a friendship off the court. But between their flirty banter, mixed signals, and looming showdown, Austin is thrown further off his game by Diego.
With the eyes of the world on Austin, the weight of history on his shoulders, and Diego across the net, he must decide whether love means nothing or if it means everything as he battles for the trophy during an electric two weeks at the US Open.
Look, I know everyone’s tired of “If you love Heated Rivalry, check out X,” but hear me out. Sports Romance. Rivals. Secretly getting to know each other and developing a physical attraction. Professional athletes of significant talent facing each other in a major competition. This is a debut that’s earned its comp to the series of the moment while also very much being its own thing, starring an already out tennis player who’s quickly rising in the ranks and being spread out over the considerably shorter time span of the US Open. I was a fan of this one from chapter one, and I’ll definitely be picking up whatever Schmit puts out next.
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Author: Samantha Allen
Released: June 2, 2026 by Zando
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, RomanceIn this A Midsummer Night’s Dream-inspired romcom, Puck is a reality show producer and agent of chaos with a talent for bringing people together . . . and tearing them apart.
Meet the nonbinary, thirty-year-old mastermind behind Homewreckers, a dating show that puts troubled couples through hell—with a little help from their exes. Used to being the one pulling the strings, it shocks Puck when their life undergoes a plot twist of its own and their college roommate Mia announces her engagement to her ex’s best friend, Damon. Having only recently broken up with longtime-boyfriend Zander, and never having had much in common with Damon (who lovesick Lena has always pined after), Mia’s news leaves her friend group reeling—and Puck’s mind whirling.
When they arrive for a week of wedding festivities at an upscale resort in the Appalachian forest, Puck immediately sees that Mia’s marriage will lead to misery, and takes it upon themself to save their friends by rearranging the couples—without anyone finding out. But as Puck comes up against a type-A maid of honor hell-bent on making this wedding happen, it becomes clear that they will have to deliver the greatest stunt of their career. If only they can take their eyes off the bridesmaid. After all, the course of true love never did run smooth…
Written with Samantha Allen’s signature charm, wit, and an irresistible dose of Shakespearian mischief, Puck is the ultimate romcom for our chaotic era, and a celebration of the friendships that carry us through it all.
I love never knowing what Allen will do next, especially because she got on my radar with a most serious-sounding nonfic called Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States, and then promptly went on to write some of the weirdest (extremely complimentary) fiction in the queer space. I am deeply ready for a nonbinary wedding-y rom-com that sounds steeped in Shakespeare-worthy chaos!
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Author: Chip Pons
Released: June 16, 2026 by G.P. Putnam's Sons
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Paranormal, RomanceFor fans of MM romances like Heated Rivalry and The Entanglement of Rival Wizards, a sexy Hades-inspired gay rom-com, in which the former god of the Underworld turned grumpy funeral director must find a loophole in the Immortal Retirement Act that banished him to Earth, until the florist next door begins to unravel all his carefully laid plans.
Hope is a dangerous thing for gods. Even former ones.
Hayden Harlow, once the mighty Hades, has spent centuries quietly resenting his fall from immortality. Stripped of his godhood by the allegedly irreversible Immortal Retirement Act, he now runs Harlow and Sons Funeral Home—a front for his eternal sentencing among mortals, and a bleak reminder of the purpose he’s lost. Still, he’s determined to claw his way back…if only the Fates at City Hall would stop toying with him.
Enter Levi a florist with an artist’s heart, an infectious smile, and a gift for finding beauty in life’s messiest moments. When Hayden storms into Levi’s shop to complain about a bouquet of sunflowers—an offensive choice for a funeral, in his opinion—their worlds collide. Hayden is all restraint and shadows; Levi is all sunshine and charm. But beneath the clash lies an undeniable spark neither can ignore.
As their connection blossoms, Hayden finds himself caught between the life he once knew and the bright future Levi dares him to imagine. But trusting Levi means risking the walls he’s kept in place all these years—and it’s not just his heart on the line. Because in the threads of fate, one choice can change everything.
Winging it With You was one of my favorite m/m romances of last year, so I’m excited to see Pons returning with something equally fun and even more spicy, bringing a Greek God down (up?) to Earth for a dalliance-turned-more with a charming florist that takes black cat-golden retriever to the extreme.
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Author: Frederick Smith
Released: June 16, 2026 by Bold Strokes Books
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, RomanceFrederick Smith is one of very few authors holding it down for Black men in m/m romance right now, and I’m obsessed with the fact that one of the protagonists in his newest is doing the very same thing. Add in a newly out grown-up having a second sort of coming of age and the potential for a second chance under very different circumstances and you have my dream novel in one tidy package.
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I’ve been reading Allie Therin’s Sugar & Vice series this month. The 3rd book Edge of Mercy is set for June 23rd. It is a futuristic MM between an empath and an empath hunter. It is a slow burn because I just started book 2 and they haven’t even touched yet (except when the hunter handcuffed the empath). I’m enjoying it immensely.