Horror gets a bad rap sometimes, like it’s all jump scares and gore for gore’s sake, but queer horror has this extra layer where the monsters are never just monsters. They’re dysphoria, religious trauma, the slow horror of not being believed. These five had me sleeping with the lights on for very different reasons.
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White
An autistic trans man named Crane has found a strange kind of safety in a hive of parasitic creatures living in rural Appalachia, until he discovers he’s pregnant and the hive won’t let him stop it. White is one of the most fearless voices in trans horror right now and this book proves it.
I have to be upfront here: this one is intense. We’re talking body horror, pregnancy depicted as violence, self-harm, and sexual violence on the page. Please check the content warnings on the author’s website before picking this one up, this is not a casual beach read.
Yes, that Chuck Tingle. Rose has always been a good, faithful daughter in her tight-knit religious town, home to the country’s “most effective” gay conversion camp. But the demons aren’t a metaphor here, and neither is the cult running things.
This one will genuinely surprise you. It is funny and tender in places I did not expect, and the horror lands so much harder because of it.
Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
This is not your little mermaid mermaid story. Seven years after a film crew vanished trying to fake mermaid footage in the Mariana Trench, a new expedition heads out to find out what really happened, and discovers the mermaids are very real and very hungry.
If you like your horror with sharp teeth, an isolated setting, and a sapphic romance tucked into the chaos, this one delivers.
Don’t Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews
Andrew’s roommate Thomas has gone quiet, his parents have mysteriously vanished, and the monsters from Andrew’s own twisted fairy tales are clawing their way out of the forest at night. The two boys start fighting them together every night, and the more they fight, the stronger the monsters get.
This one is gorgeous and gothic and a little devastating, a YA horror about obsession and loving someone so much it scares you.
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
A retelling of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, following a sworn soldier who arrives at a crumbling estate to find their childhood friend dying and something deeply wrong growing in the lake. Kingfisher writes horror with this dry wit running underneath it that makes the creeping dread hit even harder.
Short, sharp, and one I read in basically one sitting.
Got a favorite queer horror read we missed? Drop it in the comments and tell me which one you’re starting with, or come yell about it in Discord.
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Year of Queer Lit 
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