#6degrees: #ReadProud Special! Under The Lights by Dahlia Adler to...

As ever, a huge thank you to Annabel Smith and Emma Chapman for letting me use their idea for the 6Degrees meme. If you want to join in, just start with any LGBT YA or MG novel of your choice (it's Pride Month, and I'm encouraging people to #ReadProud so I thought I'd change things up a bit!) and make your own chain of six books, linking in any way you like. (And remember to add the link in the comments!

Under The Lights by Dahlia Adler is one of my very favourites of recent years - for anyone who loves celebrity romances, this girl/girl story of a rising young actress falling for her agent's daughter is sweet, fun and completely WONDERFUL.

In addition to outstanding YA novels, Dahlia also writes incredible NA! Her Out On Good Behavior, coming later this month, features another two girls falling for each other - and as they're two of my favourite characters from possibly my favourite book of the year so far, Right of First Refusal, I am INCREDIBLY excited for it! (Bonus link here, as well as both books being written by Dahlia, they both have covers designed by the exceptionally talented Maggie Hall!)

Another one I'm incredibly excited for is a debut novel from an author I've heard only wonderful things about! Of Fire And Stars, by Audrey Coulthurst, is a fantasy telling the story of a girl sent to marry a prince, only for her to fall in love with his sister. This sounds amazing!

From everything I've seen about the lead couple in Of Fire And Stars, they sound super-shippable! Speaking of fantasies with very shippable gay couples, Leigh Bardugo's Six Of Crows has two guys I think are PERFECT for each other, Jesper and Wylan.

Six of Crows has a large cast and switches focus between different characters a lot. I find that sometimes big groups can be overwhelming to read about but with really distinctive characters and gripping writing, Leigh Bardugo pulls it off perfectly. As does Riley Redgate in her incredible debut Seven Ways We Lie, which tells of the fallout of a teacher/student relationship following seven students affected by it.

And there's a student in Seven Ways We Lie who definitely reads as asexual, even if they don't use the word (which I believe is intentional, as it fits their character not to know the term.) having been hoping for ace spectrum rep for years it's amazing to see it here! Another book with amazing ace spectrum rep is Laura Nowlin's This Song Is Not For You, which has a love triangle is which one of the three characters is asexual!! This is an incredibly well done relationship and I loved reading about it. (So much so that I talked about it - sadly quite briefly as we were running out of time - when guesting on the FABULOUS Down The Rabbit Hole radio show last Tuesday! Along with Radio Silence by Alice Oseman, my other favourite YA of the year, which also has an ace spectrum character.)

Bonus non-bookish rec! I also talked about This Song Is Not For You in Dahlia's fabulous YAs That Get It Right: LGBTQA Edition post on B & N! Check it out here.