Pride Month: Bi+
Jen’s 2024 Diversify Your Romance Challenge
LGBTQ+ Pride Month
June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month.
Each week this month, I’ll focus on a letter of the alphabet soup.
Lesbian romance novels
Gay romance novels
Bi romance novels
Trans romance novels
Up next: bi+ romance novels. Let’s for sure start with my own queer novel (by a bisexual author🩷💜💙).
When Ivy Met Adam by Jennifer J. Coldwater, narrated by CJ Bloom
Ivy Gardiner wants to find true love like she had with her college girlfriend—devastating, rare, complete—but without risking her heart again.
Adam Lopez watched Ivy go through all of that, but was in no place to be the man she needed back then—or any time in the decade since.
When the two match on a dating app, Adam knows it’s fate and Ivy thinks it’s...um, possible? Just when she begins to open her heart to someone new, Ivy learns of their shared history. Adam’s devotion to her—and deception of her—break her heart all over again. She has to learn to forgive him. He has to learn that her forgiveness must be earned.
Loosely based on the biblical story of Eve, When Ivy Met Adam is a heartwarming contemporary romance that explores love, heartbreak, and second chances. Narrated by the incomparable C.J. Bloom and produced by Blue Nose Audio, this queer love story features a compelling love triangle, forced proximity, and plenty of steamy scenes.
Sizzle Reel by Carlyn Greenwald, narrated by Mia Hutchinson-Shaw
For aspiring cinematographer Luna Roth, coming out as bisexual at twenty-four is proving more difficult than she anticipated. Sure, her best friend and fellow queer Romy is thrilled for her—but she has no interest in coming out to her backwards parents, she wouldn't know how to flirt with a girl if one fell at her feet, and she has no sexual history to build off. Not to mention she really needs to focus her energy on escaping her emotionally-abusive-but-that’s-Hollywood talent manager boss and actually get working under a real director of photography anyway.
When she meets twenty-eight-year-old A-list actress Valeria Sullivan around the office, Luna thinks she’s found her solution. She'll use Valeria's interest in her cinematography to get a PA job on the set of Valeria's directorial debut—and if Valeria is as gay as Luna suspects, and she happens to be Luna's route to losing her virginity, too . . . well, that's just an added bonus. Enlisting Romy’s help, Luna starts the juggling act of her life—impress Valeria’s DP to get another job after this one, get as close to Valeria as possible, and help Romy with her own career moves.
But when Valeria begins to reciprocate romantic interest in Luna, the act begins to crumble—straining her relationship with Romy and leaving her job prospects precarious. Now Luna has to figure out if she can she fulfill her dreams as a filmmaker, keep her best friend, and get the girl. . . or if she’s destined to end up on the cutting room floor.
Take a Hint, Dani Brown (The Brown Sisters, Book 2) by Talia Hibbert, narrated by Ione Butler
Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits - someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom.
When big, brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it's an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and former rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact to him, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Suddenly, half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae - and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out, his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse? Dani's plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf is secretly a hopeless romantic - and he's determined to corrupt Dani's stone-cold realism. Before long, he's tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as thick as his...um, thighs.
The easy lay Dani dreamed of is now more complex than her thesis. Has her wish backfired? Is her focus being tested? Or is the universe just waiting for her to take a hint?
