Charmed & Bound's Monthly Queer Romance Book Pick

Queer Romance (MMC): We Are Just Us by Jude Bradley

“I saw you naked."
"That was an accident."
"Still counts. I figure the Universe likes symmetry."

Kieran Doyle is a liar. Small ones, mostly. "I'm fine. No one special. Everything's great." The kind of lies you tell the people you love when the truth feels like a weight only one of you should carry.

He drove nine hours south with two dogs, a box of his mother's ashes, and thirty-two years of silence finally behind him. Encinitas wasn't the plan. Neither was accidentally saluting the shirtless man next door like a soldier reporting for duty.  

Rory Kline surfs at dawn, keeps aloe in the fridge like a functioning adult, and looks at Kieran like he might actually mean it. He's also built his life around something Kieran doesn't yet understand-and wanting him might be a mistake.

But the walls of a duplex are thin. Conversations happen over fences. A jellyfish sting, a Taco Tuesday, and one catastrophic perineum sunning incident turn accidental glances into staying the night-and then wanting more.

And when the truth finally surfaces, Kieran has to choose between doing what he's always done, or staying long enough to be known, disappointed, and loved anyway.

We Are Just Us is a contemporary queer romance about grief, late-life coming out, and what it costs to stay.

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Queer Romance (FMC): The Case of Elmwood Ranch by Deanna Grey

Elmwood Ranch is Octavia Daniel's dream. A safe place to land after years on the road. But once she signs the paperwork and receives the keys, the nightmare begins.

Shadows move on their own, strange accidents become the norm, and injured ranch hands refuse to work a second longer. Octavia doesn't believe in ghosts, but she can't deny something's wrong with the land she's sunk her entire savings into.

Rae Jones is in the business of ending nightmares. She comes from a family of successful paranormal investigators. But she's set herself apart from the Jones sisters by making their legacy into a commercial success.

After years of enjoying said success, she's hit a wall. Whether it's burnout or a full-blown existential crisis, she doesn't know. One way to try to avoid a downward spiral? Take every interesting job she can get. And that includes one from a very stand-offish, nonbelieving horse rancher who thinks she's a scam artist and the things she hunts don't exist.

Octavia and Rae must figure out how to work together if they have any hope of solving what's truly going on at Elmwood. As they build trust, they begin to build something more. Something that could either help or harm their chances of making it out of this haunting alive.