Which Gothic Horror Romance Books Feature Queer Relationships?

If you're craving gothic romance with queer relationships, you're in for a deliciously creepy ride — I’ve got a soft spot for the way old castles, foggy moors, and moonlit obsession pair with love that refuses to fit tidy boxes. Start with the classics: 'Carmilla' by J. Sheridan Le Fanu is the ur-text for lesbian vampire longing, written decades before 'Dracula' and still unbearably intimate in its slow, predatory desire. Pair that with Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' for a different flavor of homoerotic gothic — it's less about explicit romance and more about dangerous aesthetic and emotional entanglement between men, which reads as romantic and corrosive in all the best ways.

For Victorian-set queer gothic that leans into both atmosphere and explicit relationships, Sarah Waters is basically a must-read. 'Affinity' is a spiritualist, prison-bound story of obsession and forbidden love; the ghostly elements amplify the claustrophobic longing. 'Fingersmith' flips between con artistry and passionate attachment — it's filthy, suspenseful, and tender in equal measures, and it manages to be both a heist book and a gothic romance. If you like schoolgirl gothic, Rachel Klein's 'The Moth Diaries' nails the fragile, obsessive territory: it’s YA-adjacent, dripping with diary-entry dread, and the relationships between girls feel intense and eerie.

If you want contemporary weirdness with queer hearts at the center, Caitlín R. Kiernan's 'The Drowning Girl' is a masterpiece of unreliable narration, grief, and lesbian longing; the horror is psychological and mythic, and I couldn't put it down late into the night. Indra Das’s 'The Devourers' is brutal and hypnotic — shapeshifters, carnal history, and male-male relationships woven into a story that feels both ancient and cutting-edge. For that modern-academic, almost cult-y gothic vibe, Elisabeth Thomas's 'Catherine House' offers a claustrophobic boarding-school energy with queer threads running through the friendships and romances, wrapped in a slow-burn supernatural unease. Angela Carter’s 'The Bloody Chamber' isn't all straightforward romance, but her retellings and gothic riffs celebrate queerness in lush, subversive ways worth savoring.

A few tips from my late-night reading habits: check trigger warnings for body horror or sexual violence — some of these lean dark — and if you love atmospheric unreliable narrators, prioritize works like 'The Drowning Girl' and 'The Moth Diaries.' For Victorian vibes plus full-throttled queer romance, Sarah Waters’s novels are my go-to tea-and-ghost combo. And if you’re building a spooky reading list for a friend or a book club, mix a classic like 'Carmilla' with a modern title like 'The Devourers' to show how queer gothic shifts over time. Happy haunting — if you pick one, tell me which mood you wanted (vampire melancholy, uncanny obsession, or shapeshifting carnality) and I’ll nerd out with more recs.