5 LGBTQ+ Books That Made Me Cry - The sad tears, not to be confused with the happy ones! #booktok

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hello everybody and welcome back to my channel. Welcome if it's your first time here. I realize let's call the elephant out in the room. It has been a minute since I've posted any long form content. My life has been wild lately. Um but I am realizing that I've missed posting for YouTube. actually really love this platform and I think it's a great way to play with long form content because that's still new to me. I'm still transitioning over from Instagram and Tik Tok and so thank you for coming along on this journey with me and being part of this experience. I will be posting with some more regularity uh long form content.

[00:00:46]And I still am posting some short some shorts every now and then. But uh this book this book this uh video is my first back after a somewhat long hiatus. But I'm back and I'm more excited than ever.

[00:01:02]And so what I wanted to do was highlight five LGBTQ plus books that really impacted me in a way that brought me to tears. And now let me just preface this by saying like it doesn't take much. It doesn't take much to make me cry. Um but I don't see these five books talked about very often. And it would be very easy to get in here and be like, "Oh, okay. Read A Little Life because that'll make you cry." Um but I've actually never read that book. So there's that. But I yet I haven't read it yet. My husband has read it and I just I don't know. I It's very big and it's daunting and I have too many other books to read. All the books behind me I would like to read before I die. Uh okay. So these books I don't see talked about too much in social media but yet each one of them in my opinion was wonderful. And for me, obviously because reading is subjective, for me these books brought me to tears. So without any further ado, the first book I want to talk about is The Betrayal of Thomas True by AJ West. This book is set in the early 1700s and it follows Thomas as he's moving into London, England. And it follows the Molly Houses, which if you don't know, Molly Houses were basically secret clubs that queer men could be themselves in. And it was very like underground, very secret. And so Thomas sort of navigates that world because it's very new to him.

[00:02:49]And this book itself is like equal parts romance and thriller and like a who done it. So as he comes into this community and creates this support system, he quickly realizes that there's someone who is spying on them and betraying them to the authorities and putting their secrets out there. And so he kind of has to balance like this romance that's brewing with him, but also who is betraying all the people within his friend group. So it was fascinating because I think it captures like such like an interesting part of history that I've never really read much about. And one of the things I've noticed is that there's a lot of historical fiction in this set of books. But I just really thought that AJ West did a really great job of capturing that feeling of navigating a new space, but also like keeping your cards close to your chest and trying to figure out like who you can trust. The romance was great, the thriller aspect was great, and just overall like what I thought was a really well-ritten book. So yeah, Betrayal of Thomas True definitely got me.

[00:04:04]The next book is The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Doll by Bart Yates. So, I sobbed in this book and I think it's because this book hit me in such like a pivotal moment of my life. I was going through some stuff and and there was there's something that the main character experiences that just really oh, it got me good. It got me so good.

[00:04:31]So, this book follows Isaac Doll. He's the main character and the very first chapter starts off when he is eight years old and each chapter in the book is just a single day in his life and each chapter is separated by 8 years.

[00:04:46]So, the very last chapter is when he is 96 years old. And first of all, the premise is fascinating. And I read this for a book club that I was in.

[00:04:55]Otherwise, I don't think I ever would have picked this up. But the thing about this book, and what really hit me hard with it was that there's a lot of things that impact our lives on a day-to-day basis. And some days we might wake up and something extraordinary might happen that informs the decisions that we make and how we navigate the world from that point on.

[00:05:20]And then other days are just mundane, simple, straightforward. And from an outside perspective looking in, we might not realize the impact or the importance of that day to the person who's living it. And so I think this book for me really captures like just the essence of living and existing in this world and the interactions and relationships that we have that get us from point A to point B through the years. And I just thought that Bart Yates did such an incredible job of establishing those relationships. And really it hit me so hard. I can remember like I can remember just putting the book down and I couldn't stop crying and it just really hit my heart at a time when I needed to and when I connected with the work. So I this was the very first book by Bart Yates that I had ever read.

[00:06:20]I never heard of the author before I picked this one up. Definitely definitely recommend.

[00:06:29]The third book I want to talk about is The Lilac People by Miler Todd. So, this is another historical fiction book. It takes place during uh pre and post World War II. And so, this follows Birdie, who is a trans man living in pre-war Berlin.

[00:06:45]It's just fascinating all the historical elements that went into this with Dr. for Hersshfield and the Institute of Sexual Science that existed in Berlin before the war and how these queer people are navigating like pre-war Berlin and having support systems and finding ways to like thrive and live. And what ends up happening is that this book is kind of dual timeline.

[00:07:10]So you get a glimpse of Birdie living his life before the war and before the concentration camps and then navigating after the war has ended and Birdie has been in hiding this whole time and a an escaped prisoner comes to their farm and asks them to help him hide.

[00:07:35]And one of the things that I didn't know much about is that when the concentration camps were liberated during after World War II, if you had a pink triangle, if you were queer, the allies immediately then threw you into jail. So you were freed from the concentration camps, but then you were immediately arrested. And so what ends up happening is that the enemies in this book initially are the Nazis in pre-war Berlin when they're escaping um the city. And then postwar Berlin it's the or postwar it's the allies because they have to hide the fact that they are queer people because they don't want to end up in jail. And so I thought it was an interesting balance going back and forth between and seeing how Birdie has sort of navigated this life that he's living and moving forward and how he means to survive. And so it was beautiful in the execution and the portrayal of just what it was like to be a queer person during that time. But it also like highlights a lot of real historical facts that impact the people that were trying to live and not get caught.

[00:08:56]Really great book. Uh I definitely recommend. The fourth book I want to talk about is These Letters End in Tears by Musei Taji Xavier. And so this is a sappic story. Uh it takes place in Cameroon where being gay is illegal. And so this follows two women who are at university together and then an event um breaks them up and they get separated.

[00:09:24]And so what ends up happening is that it takes place 13 years after that moment and BM is a professor and she is searching for her um love Fatima. And so she's writing these letters to Fatima as she's um grown up just kind of searching for her and trying to figure out like where they got separated and and why they haven't reconnected.

[00:09:53]This book hit me hard because I think it really captures like the beauty of your first love and what that means for you as you grow and navigate the world around you and how that informs like any relationship you have from that point on. Like you're always going back and looking at like what that first love felt like and how that kind of changed you as a person.

[00:10:20]I also thought it was really interesting because I never I I don't know much about Cameroon and I was trying to um push myself outside of like the books I normally read. One, because it's sappic.

[00:10:31]I don't typically pick up a sappic book if I have the choice. Um but two, books that take place in Africa, I also don't read a lot of, but I thought this was so well done. I also think it did a really good job of um kind of showing the difference between like Christianity over there in Cameroon and if you are Muslim, what that impact has on your relationships and just kind of how you navigate that in a country where being gay is illegal. So you have to be aware of like that on top of the impacts of your religion on just who you are. And so one thing that I really thought was interesting is that even in a country like Cameroon, there are still communities of queer people that exist and who support each other and who kind of keep that life hidden. Um really great book. I definitely recommend obviously I mean like the book is called These Letters End in Tears. So um there's some sad there's some sad moments in there. The last book I want to talk about is uh Chef's Kiss. I love this book so much and you can't convince me otherwise. It is In Memoriam by Alice Wyn. So this book, what's funny is there's historical fiction is there's something about looking in the past and seeing the lives that queer people have lived and the lengths that they went to in order to just exist and be happy and love. And I think that adds a layer to the stories.

[00:12:14]and the same story if it was set in the present day I pro it probably wouldn't hit me as hard and I think I'm realizing that as I'm talking to you about these books is that historical fiction when there's an element of I don't want to say trauma because there is some some of these books they don't all end negatively or they don't they're not all like inherently sad there are just moments where it hits me hard like an element of the story so Anyway, let back to Inmemoriam.

[00:12:45]Sorry for the tangent. InMemoriam takes place during World War I and it's set in an English boarding school and two boys, Ellery and Got um are really close friends. And the culture in this boarding school is that as the boys get older, they go off and they enlist in World War I. And there's a romanticism of war and a glorification of like what that means to fight for your country and and risk your life for the the good of England. And so it the beginning of the book takes place in this boarding school and this group of friends and then as it progresses they get older and um one of the boys enlists in the war and the other one follows him. And I think the thing about this book is that it shows the brutality of war in a world where you grow up and you have this you kind of like idolize it and you glorify it and you think it's going to be this great thing and then once you actually get there and you've lived it, you realize, oh wait, this isn't this isn't it. This isn't great. People are dying. There's a very real brutality to war and I think that this book captures it really well. I think it captures the reality of what it was like back in World War I. And I listened to an interview that the author did on the gays reading podcast and she talked about all the research that went in and how all these boarding schools across England were just sending these boys to the front and then they would die so quickly. And so the boarding schools would post these like newsletters of everybody who had died and it was just list and list and list of all these young men.

[00:14:36]And I don't know, there's just like an impact that that has when you like look at history. But it also really did a great job of like showing the relationship between the two main characters like pre and postwar and how the impacts of war put a strain on a relationship and kind of like the reality of what that looks like. So love this book. It's it's great. I might have to do a reread soon because woo the year I read this was my number one book. I love it. I I don't like this cover. I like the UK cover more.

[00:15:11]And that's it. That's my uh those are my five five LGBTQ books that um made me cry. I again there's a lot that have made me cry, but I just wanted to do a quick little video and highlight the first five. Maybe I'll do a series.

[00:15:32]Um, but yes, if you have any recommendations for queer books that made you cry cry, any LGBTQ plus content that brought a tear to your eye or that like you uh resonated with, please, please, please leave a comment. Let me know. I'm happy to chat books. Avoid Little Life because I know it's wreck been wrecked to me. My husband has read it. I just I don't know if I can do that to myself right now.

[00:15:59]The world is a crazy place and I uh I don't want to be that depressed. So, if you stuck around this long, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Uh subscribe, like and subscribe. Stick around and hear me rant about more queer books.