Queer Books With Neurodiverse Characters
- Proud Geek
- Mar 18
- 9 min read
I've had a few people lately ask for queer book recommendations with neurodiverse rep, and with it being #NeurodiversityCelebrationWeek this week, what better time to post a quick list? There are plenty out there, but it's often tricky to find them, especially if you're not sure where to start. So here's a short list of LGBTQ+ books with great neurodivergent protagonists and themes - all of them with links to where you can find them on our website, as well as the suggested reading age.
MC with Autism
YA Contemporary Fiction
Queer Rep: Queer Women, Queer Men, LGBTQ+ Cast
Reading Age: 14+
Imogen Quinn is a chaotic bisexual with dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian, crushing stereotypes about autistic people. When she decides to put on a pride festival that’s accessible for everyone, she enlists the help of the openly gay captain of the football team, Ollie Armstrong.
Dealing with the fallout from his parents’ divorce, Ollie is initially hesitant. But it doesn’t take long for him to be swept up by Imogen’s passion, and he’s not the only one. Joined by the (infuriatingly perfect) head girl, musicians, an artist and a star baker – a dream team soon assembles to help plan pride and tackle injustices in their school and beyond. You’d better listen out – they’re getting ready to make some noise.
MC with Autism
Si-Fi/Romance
Queer Rep: Non-Binary & Pansexual
Reading Age: 17+
An alien invasion hits the town of Muddy Gap, but a disgruntled pie aficionado is the only one who seems to remember it…
Denver Bryant’s passion for pie has sent him across Wyoming in search of the best slices. Though he dutifully posts reviews on his blog, he’s never been able to recreate his brief moment of viral popularity, and its trickling income isn’t enough to pay his rent next month.
Driving home from a roadside diner, Denver witnesses a UFO explode directly over his tiny town of Muddy Gap. When he questions his neighbors, it appears that Denver is the only person to have seen anything – or to care that the residents’ strange behavior, as well as a shower of hail-that-isn’t-hail, might be evidence of something extraterrestrial. Being both non-binary and autistic, he’s convinced his reputation as the town eccentric is impeding his quest for answers. Frustrated, he documents the bizarre incidents on his failing pie blog, and his online popularity skyrockets. His readers want the truth, spurring him to get to the bottom of things.
MC with ADHD
Adult Sports Romance
Queer Rep: Trans Men, Queer Men
Reading Age: 18+
The pressure cooker of minor league baseball leads to major chemistry in this exhilarating, sexy, and triumphant rivals to lovers debut romance.
Hope is familiar territory for Gene Ionescu. He has always loved baseball, a sport made for underdogs and optimists like him. He also loves his team, the minor league Beaverton Beavers, and, for the most part, he loves the career he’s built. As the first openly trans player in professional baseball, Gene has nearly everything he’s ever let himself dream of—that is, until Luis Estrada, Gene’s former teammate and current rival, gets traded to the Beavers, destroying the careful equilibrium of Gene’s life.
Gene and Luis can’t manage a civil conversation off the field or a competent play on it, but in the close confines of dugout benches and roadie buses, they begrudgingly rediscover a comfortable rhythm. As the two grow closer, the tension between them turns electric, and their chemistry spills past the confines of the stadium.
MC with OCD
Contemporary Adult Fiction
Queer Rep: Queer Men, Queer Women
Reading Age: 18+
Valdin is in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who left the country because he thought he was making Valdin sad. Greta is in love with fellow English tutor Holly, who appears to be using her for admin support.
But perhaps all is not lost. Valdin is coming to realize that he might not be so unlovable, and Greta, that she might be worth more than the papers she can mark.
Helping the siblings navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the tendency of their love interests to flee, is the Vladisavljevic family: Maori-Russian-Catalonian, and as passionate as they are eccentric. Rebecca K. Reilly's exploration of love, family, karaoke, and the generational reverberations of colonialism will make you laugh, cry, and fall for the whole Vladisavljevic bunch.
MC with Autism
Memoir
Queer Rep: Bisexual Women
Reading Age: 18+
Strong Female Character is an inspiring and empowering read that celebrates the strength of neurodiversity and the power of female voices.
Fern Brady's memoir is an important and timely account of neurodivergence, sexism and survival which makes it the perfect addition to any queer book lover. Brady takes a sledgehammer to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope which is often mistakenly applied to neurodiverse women and looks at how her lack of regard for social expectations ultimately meant she surpassed any limitations of what a Scottish working-class woman can do.
A raw and powerful story that will leave readers feeling inspired and ready to challenge the status quo
MC with Autism & ADHD
Paranormal Fantasy/Mystery
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Reading Age: 18+
Winning the lottery has ruined Opal Devlin's’s life. After quitting her dead-end job where she’d earned minimum wage and even less respect, she’s bombarded by people knocking at her door for a handout the second they found out her bank account was overflowing with cash. And Opal can’t seem to stop saying yes.
With her tender heart thoroughly abused, Opal decides to protect herself by any means necessary, which to her translates to putting almost all her new money to buying a failing flower farm in Asheville, North Carolina to let the flowers live out their plant destiny while she uses the cabin on the property to start her painting business.
But her plans for isolation and self-preservation go hopelessly awry when an angry (albeit gorgeous) Pepper Smith is waiting for her at her new farm.
MC with ADHD
Adult Rom-Com/Road Trip
Queer Rep: Queer Women, Demisexuality
Reading Age: 18+
A long time ago, Logan Maletis and Rosemary Hale used to be friends. They spent their childhood summers running through the woods, rebelling against their conservative small town, and dreaming of escaping. But then an incident the summer before high school turned them into bitter rivals. After graduation, they went ten years without speaking.
Now in their thirties, Logan and Rosemary find they aren’t quite living the lives of adventure they imagined for themselves. Still in their small town and working as teachers at their alma mater, they’re both stuck in old patterns. Uptight Rosemary chooses security and stability over all else, working constantly, and her most stable relationship is with her label maker. Chaotic and impulsive Logan has a long list of misguided ex-lovers and an apathetic shrug she uses to protect herself from anything real. And as hard as they try to avoid each other—and their complicated past—they keep crashing into each other. Including with their cars.
MC with Autism
Memoir - Non-Fiction
Queer Rep: Trans Women, Queer Women
Reading Age: 18+
A candid, first-of-its-kind memoir, in which author Laura Kate Dale recounts what life is like growing up as a gay trans woman on the autism spectrum.
From struggling with sensory processing, managing socially demanding situations and learning social cues and feminine presentation, through to coming out as trans during an autistic meltdown, Laura draws on her personal experiences from life prior to transition and diagnosis, and moving on to the years of self-discovery, to give a unique insight into the nuances of sexuality, gender and autism, and how they intersect.
Charting the ups and downs of being autistic and on the LGBT spectrum with searing honesty and humour, this is an empowering, life-affirming read for anyone who's felt they don't fit in.
MC with OCD
Erotic Fiction - Fiction
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Reading Age: 18+
A scathingly funny, wildly erotic, and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex, and god from the acclaimed author of The Pisces and So Sad Today.
Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting—until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.
MC with Autism
YA Fantasy Horror
Queer Rep: Trans Men, Trans Women, LGBTQ+ Cast
Reading Age: 15+
London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.
According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing.
After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness - a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness - and shipped away to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its rotten guts to the world - as long as the school doesn’t break him first.
MC with ADHD & Autism
YA Rom-Com
Queer Rep: Queer Women, Trans Women
Reading Age: 14+
A sweet and swoony YA rom-com about two friends making a pact to find summer romance like they’ve seen in the movies—and finding love where they least expect it along the way!
Hayley always has a crush. The problem is, her crushes never like her back. After her latest unrequited love—a girl from her basketball team—gets a boyfriend, she decides she’s done falling for girls who are unavailable. Her best friend, Talia, wants romance too, but rarely gets crushes on anyone, and she’s tired of watching Hayley get her heart stomped on over and over. So the two girls make a they’ll help each other find summer love by putting themselves in situations that always lead to romance in movies.
To help carry out their summer love strategy, they make a list of all the places they could find their real-life the beach, the Pride parade, the pool, a MUNA concert, and a party. But as they go to each place and try to find the one , it seems like they just can’t catch a break.
MC with ADHD
YA Romance
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Reading Age: 14+
A sapphic Pride & Prejudice retelling set in Liverpool with an irresistible enemies-to-lovers romance, and perfect for fans of Alice Oseman and Becky Albertalli.
When Isabel Williams moves to Liverpool, she criticises seemingly everything in Eloise Byrne’s life – her city, her accent, her trademark boldness – so if, when she catches Isabel staring, Eloise feels her pulse race, it must be because they hate each other. It surely couldn’t be for any other reason, could it? Eloise needs to get her ADHD under control in time for A-Levels, but when she meets Isabel, school becomes the least of her concerns. What begins as outright contempt turns into an oddly satisfactory rivalry, but for their rivalry to shift further into romance, their relationship must withstand Isabel's classism, Eloise’s distrust, and whatever secrets their friends are hiding from them.
MC with OCD
Erotic Romance
Queer Rep: Queer Men
Reading Age: 18+
A grumpy sommelier and a flirty mixologist might just be the perfect pairing…
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania may be charming, but Julien Boire can’t wait to get out of there. Soon he’ll be leaving to take an advanced wine course that will put him on track to become a master sommelier. In the meantime, his OCD demands he keep clear of distractions, especially the hot new hire at his aunt and uncle’s restaurant, Martin’s Place.
Which should be easy, because Greg Harlow is as ill-suited to Julien as a bold cabernet is to a delicate salmon entrée. As charismatic and confident as Julien is tightly wound, Greg is a TikTok mixologist who could charm a paper bag. One thing they do have in common: neither wants a relationship.
MC with Autism
Contemporary Fiction
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Reading Age: 18+
Enid is many things: lesbian, serial dater, deaf in one ear, space obsessive, true crime fanatic. When she's not listening to grizzly murder podcasts, she's managing her crippling phobia of bald people and trying hard not to think about her mortifying teenage years - which is hard, when she's lost the password to her old YouTube account and the (many) vlogs that her teen self once uploaded.
Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps. When she’s not listening to her favorite true crime podcasts on a loop, she’s serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, she’s trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her.
As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there’s only one person she can’t outrun—herself.
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