2017 Pleasure-Positive Summer Reading List
On the Pursue Your Pleasure blog, all of May is devoted to pleasure-positive summer reads. Here are seven fiction titles that contain pleasure-positive values: non-monogamy, kink, and queer-friendly, sex-positive and inclusive-minded. Part of being pleasure-positive means allowing for diversity and what works best for the individual. Whether you're looking for hetero or queer romance, monogamy or non, vanilla fun or kink-riddled sexiness. I hope you find something you like! Also check out my nonfiction recommendations and romance novels featuring curvy characters for other pleasure-positive summer reads. Have another book you recommend? Let me know!
When Watched (Queer-friendly, Sex-Positive)
Winner of the Whiting Award and nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, Leopoldine Core’s short story collection When Watched lyrically capture sex, desire, and romance. Her characters are often in bed or contemplating their relationships. There are queer and straight relationships, age differences, hook-ups, new relationship energy, and more. Not so much pleasure-positive as pleasure-contemplative, the stories manage to be sexy even when they don’t all have happy endings.
Sex Criminals (Sex-Positive)
In the Image comic series Sex Criminals, a couple stops time through sex, robs banks, and is pursued by the sex police. Enough said.
Ascension (Queer-friendly, Non-Monogamous, Sex-Positive)
Why should you check out Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi, you ask? Let’s put it this way. This scifi space novel covers polyamory and disability using queer nonwhite characters. When a cargo ship drops by her shipyard looking for Nova, her spirit guide sister, Alana, who is a kickass space engineer, hides out in the cargo hold of their ship hoping to use her sister’s whereabouts as leverage to get a job. But when things start going mysteriously wrong on board, more becomes at stake than just a gig.
Femme (Queer-friendly, Sex-Positive)
Doug, known as Dog to his softball team, finds himself attracted to Lionel despite the fact that he’s not normally into effeminate men. Lionel takes issue with this, wanting to find love for who he is not in spite of it. Femme by Marshall Thornton looks at gender norms in the gay community in this charming novel.
Kushiel’s Dart (Queer-friendly, BDSM, Non-Monogamous, Sex-Positive)
Like it rough? For over fifteen years now, Jaqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series, starting with Kushiel’s Dart, has been a go-to for BDSM lovers. Gender doesn’t seem to matter much, just chemistry. And chemistry has a lot to do with whether you’re interested in a little (or a lot of) pain.
Skyscraper (Queer-friendly, BDSM, Sex-Positive)
In Skyscraper by Scott Alexander Hess, Atticus, a burned-out architect meets Tad, a dominant cage fighter who revives his imagination. When Atticus gets his mojo back, he scores a huge client that has some unusual requests. The characters in this literary novel are sexy fascinating subjects, and the plot keeps deliciously thickening in unexpected ways.
A Kiss of Shadows (Sex-Positive, Non-Monogamous)
In Laurell K. Hamilton’s A Kiss of Shadows, we meet Princess Meredith, a Fae princess hiding out in a paranormal detective agency whose magic is strengthened through sex. And there’s a lot of it. She’s hiding out from her aunt, the Queen of the Fae. Because of Meredith’s tainted bloodline, Aunt Andais would rather see her niece dead than risk a half-mortal claiming the throne.
BTW, who better to write about non-monogamy than an author living in a poly quad? A warning, though. This book features some consent violations (which are well-discussed). If this is an issue for you, skip to the next book in the series.
