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Anonymous asked:

Hi! I was wondering if you could recommend some books with nonbinary characters in them? Thanks!

HELLO FRIEND!

MY TIME HAS COME.

This is my favorite question in the world to answer. NON-BINARY CHARACTERS ARE SO IMPORTANT TO ME.

Note: I am making this list assuming I am speaking to a non-binary person. If that’s not the case, let me know! I can do another list specifically for a cis person. But, onwards!

I actually made a list of them on Goodreads that I totally forgot about until like an hour ago. So here’s that.

Now for actual recommendations…!

Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff is my ultimate ultimate non-binary book. I don’t have a review of it yet (and may not ever because it would literally just be me having feels and then yelling at you to go read it so you can have feels with me) BUT it is an excellent, excellent book, and is basically a love story of two nonbinary teens, wherein the genders of either character are never revealed. It is pretty obvi that they’re nb or non-conforming though. This book will make you FEEL OK ABOUT YOURSELF. If you’ve ever felt that you don’t deserve love because you’re nonbinary, seriously just read. this. book. Read it a million times. Buy three copies (and make sure one is the shiny edition). Get it signed. Make a shrine to it. Force everyone you know to read it. Join us at stevebrezenofffans in our personal crusade to make everyone read this book.

Pantomime and Shadowplay by Laura Lam

This series is just… shocking to me. It does everything so right. This is a story of an intersex and nonbinary teen who runs away from home and ends up joining the circus. It’s a fantasy/steampunk, and as the book goes on you find out there’s something else that’s different about Micah, and it may change the world. There’s adorable/smexy romance, genius world-building, general heart-wrenchiness… and the exploration of sex and gender is SO WELL DONE. UGh. It’s so rare to find a fantasy book with a lead like this one. Please, just.. read these.

Just Girls by Rachel Gold

In this book the character is genderqueer, and not the main one. But per does have a semi-large role, and I really enjoyed reading about per. Plus the main character is trans and the rest of the book is just lovely. ALSO, last I heard, the author is formulating ideas for another book with per as the main character!

Freakboy by Kirstin Elizabeth Clark

This one… I have mixed feelings with. I really should write a full review. Basically, the main character is questioning their gender identity. Near the end, they figure out they’re genderfluid. I reveal this now, even though it’s a bit of a spoiler, because anyone who’s had that experience sees what the character is going through but, most likely, like me, didn’t think the author would actually identify it as such. It was so cool to see myself represented that way. I didn’t expect it at all. But then, not five pages later probably, is the last page, on which Brendan says “people like me don’t get a tidy ending” (THIS IS NOT A DIRECT QUOTE. Just how it stuck in my head.) And that… hurt. A lot. And had a huge impact on me for the next several months, and how I was looking at my future and “realizing” there were no tidy endings… etc, etc. BUT I think if I had known from the beginning that the character was going to ID as genderfluid, I would’ve been able to brace myself for possible misrepresentation and harmful messaging. But having the unexpected and sudden representation, having the word on the page, and then having that message as the last thing? It was hard. So. Take that for what it means to you.

Every Day by David Levithan

I have mixed feelings on this one as well. I also didn’t finish it. I think partly that’s because I was reading it literally right as I was just figuring out my gender identity. Which you think would make me like it more? But the thing is, A’s agender, but they’re forced to switch bodies every day (ahaha, see what I did there?). It’s an imposition. It’s hard for their love interest to deal with. And… it was hard for me to deal with those narratives, as I was just figuring stuff out. That said, every time I say that I didn’t like it, at least one nonbinary person responds in the tags with “really?? I liked it” (yes I read all of your tags.) SO. Take that for what it’s worth. I also heard that there’s a lot of nasty fatphobia at the ending.

And then lastly, I’d recommend Guy In Real Life by Steve Brezenoff. This one…okay, so this one is more of a headcanon. The book plays with gender identity and gaming in a really interesting way. But the character I see as nonbinary, Lesh, is never identified this way. The way I see it, the book ends a couple pages before everything really *clicks* for him. And I can see him in the future really coming to understand his gender more, and identifying as nonbinary. I’m not saying that’s the only or the correct way of interpreting it— that’s part of the brilliance of Steve’s writing (he’s the same person who wrote Brooklyn, Burning) is that not a lot is confirmed, and it’s all open to interpretation. I will say though, there’s a lot of hate speech and queerphobia in this book (though there’s also a couple of minor guy queer characters), but the author actually addressed that here, and I think it really makes sense.

Wait I lied, I have one more except this one I haven’t read yet so I can’t give you my personal opinions on how the representation is. But it’s The Name of the Blade trilogy by Zoe Marriot and it looks really good. It was just published in the US, so I plan to pick them up ASAP.

So this was awesome! Thank you nonnie, for the ask! Hope this was helpful, and let me know if there’s anything else I/we can do for you!