For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to stories about sisters. For much of my youth, this meant the Olsen twins and the television series Charmed had me in a chokehold. I think about the connection between close sisters a lot, how there’s a magic to it. My sister and I used to have the same dreams. We live many states apart, but sometimes we unknowingly cook the exact same thing for dinner.

My sister and I are close, but I’m also drawn to stories of sinister sisters, sisters at odds or in competition with each other. It’s all kinds of sister narratives I’m interested in — the loving, the tender, the dysfunction, the estranged — and I recently realized many of my favorite queer novels of the past couple years (All-Night Pharmacy, We Were the Universe, and Smothermoss, all featured below) are connected by the throughline of complicated sisters. So I thought I’d put together a little curated list for anyone else interested in reading queer novels that prominently feature sisters and stories of sisterhood. Anything I missed? Definitely shout it out, because I want to read it!

This list was originally published in January 2025 and has been updated in August 2025.

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

Originally published in 1962, here we have an early entry into the queer novels about sisters canon. (This was recommended by a commenter when this list was originally published, so I decided to add it with the update!) The novella has a delightful but also often sad (hey, it’s literary fiction after all) rom-com premise: Gay graduate student Cassandra Edwards returns to her family ranch determined to sabotage her twin sister Judith’s wedding.

Ghost Fish by Stuart Pennebaker

The most recent release on this list, Ghost Fish is about a woman named Alison grieving the tragic death by drowning of her young sister. Adrift, she uproots her life from Key West to NYC and eventually becomes convinced her sister has returned to her in the form of the titular ghost fish. Like a couple other entries on this list (We Were the Universe and Helen House), this novel deals specifically with the death of a sister.

Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke

Protagonis Akúa returns to her hometown of Kingston, Jamaica following the death of her brother and attempts to reconnect with her estranged older sister Tamika. Akúa struggles to reconcile her queerness and the strict, religious upbringing of her youth as she and Tamika take a winding trip down memory lane.

When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar

Hey! It’s right there in the title! When We Were Sisters spins the story of three orphaned Muslim American siblings — Kausar, Aisha, and Noreen — in the aftermath of their parents’ deaths. Youngest sisters and eldest sisters will feel well represented by this novel of family, grief, trauma, and survival. Sisterhood is complex and varied and its dynamics can shift, and this is a novel that understands all that very well.

All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky

I will jump at ANY excuse to write about this novel, which I adore. At its heart is a toxic dynamic between the protagonist and her older sister Debbie, a character who can never really be fully known. I’ve pitched this novel to many friends as one with mommy issues and sister issues. It’s a drug and booze-filled descent into grimy LA haunts, but it’s a fever dream you won’t want to wake up from. The complicated queer relationship the narrator ends up entangled in is a wild ride, but I’m especially endeared to the wild sister dynamics here.

We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons

I adored this novel, one of my favorites from 2024. It’s very much about sisters, but specifically sisterloss, the sudden absence of a sister. Narrator Kit grapples with the death of her sister Julie and how her life has seismically changed since leaving the small Texas town where she grew up and becoming a mother. It’s a hilarious and delightfully horny book, despite being about such heavy topics as addiction, grief, and death. Parsons balances it all impeccably. And the novel also portrays the almost magical, supernatural bond that can exist between sisters — which I’ve experienced with my own sister — unlike any other I’ve ever read.

Private Rites by Julia Armfield

Weaver of some of my favorite sentences of all time Julia Armfield is back, following up the melancholic and haunting Our Wives Under the Sea with Private Rites, which offers a speculative reimagining of King Lear and follows three sisters amid fractured family and climate horror. Like her first novel, it’s atmospheric and unsettling while remaining sharp in its exploration of interpersonal conflict.

Smothermoss by Alisa Alering

This was easily my favorite novel of 2024. Set in the 1980s, it’s about two sisters growing up poor in an Appalachian mountain town whose methods of survival diverge greatly. Their lives and home are quaked by a disturbing act of gendered violence: the murder of two young women hiking the Appalachian trail. It’s a modern day and wholly original fairy tale that’s immersive, strange, and striking. Just trust me on this one and dive right into its pages, because once you start you won’t want to stop.

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Set in 1994 Jamaica, Nicole Dennis-Benn’s debut novel is about sisters Thandi and Margot and their mother Delores. The novel tackles sex work, class stratification, tourism, and racism and colorism, Dennis-Benn’s dazzling prose bringing every page to life. Margot is also in a clandestine queer relationship with a woman, and the novel explores queerness in nuanced and complex ways that go way beyond mainstream narratives of coming out. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous novel with a pair of sisters who are hard to forget.

Stone Fruit by Lee Lai

Stone Fruit looks at chosen and given family with equal depth and care, centering gay aunties Ray and Bron who have wild playdates with Ray’s young niece Nessie. But the graphic novel also explores the relationships between Ray and Bron and their respective sisters, who they each have complicated dynamics and loads of baggage with. It’s very much a book about the ties between siblings and how to repair those ties when they fray.

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

I thought it would be fun to have some fantasy on the list, and Sarah Gailey’s Magic for Liars immediately came to mind. It features a magical school, minus the transphobic overlord. And it focuses on a pair of sisters — one who has the gift of magic and one who does not — who are estranged from one another but are thrust together to solve a murderous mystery at the magical academy where one of them works. It’s like a hardboiled mystery with touches of the supernatural, but what makes the novel truly compelling is the familial drama at its core.

A Reason To See You Again by Jami Attenberg

This novel is unique on this list in the sense that it isn’t either one of the sisters who is queer, but the Cohen sisters’ story is bolstered by queer side characters. Like many titles on this list, this is a matriarchal novel about multiple generations of women. Starting in the 1970s, it spans four decades and, amid its family drama, chronicles the creation of the mobile telephone. It’s about the ways we connect and don’t connect with one another, and it’s sharp, propulsive, and often humorous in its exploration of specific dynamics between female family members (mother/daughter, sister/sister, aunt/niece, etc).

Matrix by Lauren Groff

So, I’m being a little cheeky here as this is a novel about sisters in the ecclesiastical sense. Yes, I’m talking about nuns. If you somehow haven’t heard of this much accoladed book, it is THE lesbian nun novel. This original and intricately layered work of historical fiction is steeped in themes of sisterhood.

Spitting Gold, by Carmella Lowkis

If the historical fiction element of Matrix piques your interest, then perhaps you will enjoy this tale set in 1866 Paris about two estranged sisters who must come together for One Last Con. No one schemes sinisterly better than sisters!

Helen House by Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Yes, I am putting my own novel, which is actually a novelette — shorter than a novella! — on this list, because I am shameless. I do very much consider my book to be a sister book, even though the sisters in it are absent. It’s about two women in a relationship who both have lost sisters in very different circumstances but whose individual griefs nonetheless become entangled. It’s a sister ghost story, another story of sisterloss. The intimacy of sisterhood haunts the characters in different ways, leading to some nightmarish situations and psychosexual thrills. If you check it out, I hope you like it!!!! It’s short enough to be read in one sitting — perhaps even in the bath!

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I’ve gone on four cross-country road trips in my life so far. Once from Long Island, down the east coast to Virginia, cutting across Tennessee and doing the southbound route largely dominated by big ass Texas, ending in Los Angeles. Once from Los Angeles to Virginia, driving in a straight line across the middle of the country. Once from Florida, along that southbound route again, to Vegas and then back with a slightly altered route to avoid Albuquerque after some superstition following a cursed night there. I’m sure I’ll do it again. I love long road trips. I’m sure I get it from my mother, who would always rather drive 16+ hours between destinations than catch a flight. I’m a pro at car snacks.

I don’t necessarily see any long car rides in my immediate future, but in the meantime, I can recommend some LGBTQ+ books that prominently feature road trips in their plot. Turns out there are quite a few of them! Road trips in general are fertile with potential for great fiction, much like dinner parties. Throw two characters in the confines of a car — or someone solo — and watch tensions simmer, realizations come to the surface, and changing surroundings shaping how people see and engage with themselves and the world. Here’s a smattering of road trip reads to perhaps bring on your next road trip or just escape into from the comfort of home.

A quick note: There is a tremendous amount of road trip queer erotica out there, to the point where I felt out of my depth recommending anything without having a chance to read them first, but search “queer” (or m/m or f/f or wlw etc, depending on what you’re looking for) and “road trip” on Goodreads lists, and you’ll find a treasure trove of self-pub and pulp erotica set around road trips out there!

This list was originally published in March 2023 and has been updated in August 2025.

Tramps Like Us by Joe Westmoreland

This queer cult classic road trip novel recently got a new re-release with an introduction by Eileen Myles. It was originally published in 2001 and follows a gay man who graduates from his Kansas City high school in 1974 and then hitchhikes across the country with Ali, a fellow queer outcast from his hometown. Their adventures take them to New Orleans as well as San Francisco. Friendship, self-discovery, hedonism, and community are all destinations on this wild road trip.

Make Sure You Die Screaming by Zee Carlstrom

With dark and humorous twists on the American road trip novel, Make Sure You Die Screaming sees its nameless nonbinary protagonist on a journey from Chicago to Arkansas on a search for their conspiracy theorist MAGA father who has gone missing. I mean it has one of the best blurbs of all time from Torrey Peters (“It’s Fear and Loathing for the generation devastated by the generation that brought us Fear and Loathing“). And if you’re not instantly hooked by the title alone, I cannot relate. Read more about it in our review.

How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? by Anna Montague

While going through her late friend Sara’s old journal, Magda discovers Sara’s grand plans for a big friendship road trip for Magda’s upcoming 70th birthday. So Magda takes the urn of Sara’s ashes with her on the road to do the adventure they never got to do together and uncovers secrets about herself, Sara, and the real depths of their relationship.

Girls Girls Girls by Shoshana von Blanckensee

I love how so many road trip novels are set in the past. This one is set in the summer of 1996, when two best friends and secret girlfriends Hannah and Sam decide to drive away from Long Beach, New York all the way to San Francisco.

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

Obviously! An iconic lesbian road trip tale! I want to go on the Carol road trip and eat every place where they eat in the film. For now, I’ll just re-read the book.

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

Another iconic entry on this list, Nevada recently received a much deserved flashy re-release from FSG and continues to be a seminal work of trans fiction. You can read Niko Stratis’ interview with Imogen Binnie for Autostraddle as well as Drew Burnett Gregory’s essay about the novel.

Love Is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar

This memoir by queer Muslim author Randa Jarrar follows her journey on a road trip from Los Angeles to her parents’ place in Connecticut. She writes on single motherhood as a queer parent, domestic violence, fat bodies, American racism, and so much more.

Flaming Iguanas: An Illustrated All-Girl Road Novel Thing by Erika Lopez

Playful in story and form, Flaming Iguanas is an illustrated book that follows Tomato Rodriguez as she rides her motorcycle all over, meeting girls, good post offices, and endless adventures along the way.

Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden

This speculative graphic novel sees two young women, Bea and Lou, thrown together on a trip through West Texas, accompanied by a curious cat and haunted by dangerous men. It’s gorgeous and heartbreaking and alive in its art and language. It’s technically young adult, but I don’t read a ton of YA or a ton of graphic narratives, and I found myself completely immersed in this.

Melt With You by Jennifer Dugan

Speaking of YA, there are a lot of queer YA road trip books out there! This one follows Chloe and Fallon on a best friends to hookup to enemies to lovers journey as they drive around the country to various food truck festivals for the gourmet ice cream truck they work in together. Miscommunications! Tensions! Roadside side-adventures!

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner

When Cass’s best friend Julia is unexpectedly killed in a car crash, Cass becomes determined to still go on the road trip she and Julie had been planning — only, instead of taking a car, she only has her bike. And instead of having her best friend with her, she has her ashes. The book is about grief, friendship, and theater, Cass also keeping alive the project of the musical Julia had been writing when she died.

Kings of B’More by R. Eric Thomas

Another YA adventure, Kings of B’More is a Stonewall Honor Book about Black queer best friends Harrison and Linus, who embark on a mini road trip after Linus delivers the devastating news that he’s moving out of the state. R. Eric Thomas is also the author of the fantastic essay collection Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America.

Love, Misha by Askel Aden

While we’re on the YA train, consider this YA graphic novel mystery about Audrey, mother to nonbinary child Misha. They head on a road trip together meant to let them bond, but both are struggling to connect with each other and really see each other for who they are. Their parent/child journey gets a lot more complicated when a wrong turn leads them to the Realm of Spirits.

After the Parade by Lori Ostlund

Lori Ostlund’s debut novel is about a forty-year-old man named Aaron in a relationship with an older partner named Walter for the last twenty years. Aaron leaves Walter in New Mexico on a path of self-discovery and reckoning with his past in the Midwest, traveling to a new life in San Francisco. I am also a big fan of Lori Ostlund’s queer short fiction.

We All Loved Cowboys by Carol Bensimon, translated by Beth Fowler

This short work in translation is a novel about recently fallen out friends Cora and Julia coming back together for a road trip throughout Brazil. It’s a queer coming-of-age tale and a debut novel steeped in themes of friendship, change, and self-exploration.

The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán, translated by Sophie Hughes

A group of three friends in Chile embark on a road trip up the Andes cordillera after one of their mother’s remains goes missing in transit. The book touches on death, second-generation trauma, and friendship. Indeed, stories of intense friendship is a major recurring motif in these road trip books.

Have other queer road trip books you’d like to shout out? Drop them in the comments!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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