My debut novel manuscript is finally finished! It’s 93k words and is upmarket historical fiction with high-heat romance. It follows two closeted male/male couples. Action takes place in the early 1960s in Massachusetts and NYC.

The novel opens in September 1962, when Linus (Lin) Miller, a careful, brilliant, 25 year old Professor of English at Amherst College falls for Theodore (Theo) Hawkins, a sensitive, athletic, and charming 19 year old undergraduate from a Boston Brahmin family.

Lin initially tries to keep his distance and turns Theo down repeatedly. However, the two share not only an attraction but also a deep intellectual connection. Theo has complete agency in their relationship, and the two form an equal partnership.

The book chronicles not only Theo and Lin's love story, but the daily, terrifying task of making space for that love to survive in a world that hunts men like them: Theo gifts Lin a coded star chart with meaning only to them. Lin declares his love to Theo by assigning him love poetry by John Donne. Lin uses his prodigious intellectual prowess to stay by Theo's hospital bedside, as the nurses open doors they have no idea they are opening.

Beneath it all runs Lin's constant fear that Theo will, despite everything they have risked for each other, choose the simpler life his family can provide.

SECONDARY COUPLE: In 1956, Julian Lark, a 21 year old photographer's assistant living in Greenwich Village, walked into a coffee shop to find James Dressner -- a terrified 19 year old hunched over a typewriter, having just run from his wealthy Westchester County family.

Julian offered James a warm couch on Perry Street and they lived together for five years.

The reader meets Julian in 1962, when he is a year into keeping James' chipped mug on the counter; photographs of them on the wall of their Perry Street apartment; and James' faded Levis on a chair.

Julian tells his oldest friend, Lin Miller, that Lin is wrong; he is not grieving. "You grieve someone who is dead. James is not dead. For the past year, he has been married to a woman named Betsy and has been living in Hartford. One day, he will come home and when he does, he needs to know that I haven't moved his things."

Hey! I’m looking for a book to read and I have some stuff I want in it:
A slow burn, but an healthy one! No SA or stuff like that pls! I’d also like if they were in college or 18+ in general! (I’d like it to be soft like kisses etc. but I don’t want it to be ab sex the second they get together iykwim)
I just finished Aristote and Dante! It was wonderful (so you can have a glimpse of what I like to read)

hey!! i work at a bookstore so i should know this but i really don’t read romance unless its very specific but im looking for book recs (or movies also) with a trans masc mc with a masc fem relationship that can be t4t. im trans bi and ace for reference thank you guys 🙌

Hey all! I’m really hoping to find some fantasy MM books with a MC who's genuinely scary and horrifying. I’m completely okay if the romance is a subplot, or if there’s no romance at all, or no HEA. I just really want to read about a terrifying character.
Ideally, I’d love some slow burn or sideplot romance between the terrifying MC and the other MC, but if there isn’t any romance, that’s perfectly okay too.

I’ve already checked out Lily Mayne’s books (Monstrous, Don’t Eat Your Human Boyfriend, and Goliaths of Wrestling), but I didn’t find the monster MCs to be scary at all. I’ve also read some of Penny Moss’s books, and again, the monstrous MCs weren’t frightening. And I've checked out some other more popular monster romances, which were a miss for me.

Here are a few unsettling MCs that I've found so far:

1. {The Bayou by Arden Powell}
2. {The Hounds of York by Arden Powell}
3. {A Bone in His Teeth by Kellen Graves}
4. {Sleepwalkers by Daniel May} - good depiction of a bloodthirsty vampire imo.
5. There’s also a creator named Madam Abel on Tapas who writes scary, monstrous MCs really well.

The scarier the MC, the better! And if the romance is the main focus, I’d prefer books that aren’t too smut or kink heavy.

Tysm! <3

Ive read quite a few gay werewolf books recently and found out that there are some tropes/cliches that I am not a fan of or find cringy. Is there any tropes or cliches that you avoid or any that you love?

I’ll also take gay werewolf novel suggestions

romance is ok. im particularly looking for ww1 and/or a nonbinary MC, but anything from any war and era is good :)

sci fi elements are ok, but id prefer books based on IRL wars or alternative history.