When and how did you start reading MM romance?

Two of my friends and I would have little reading get-together where we would just go to each other’s houses and hang out and read. One time in 2015 my friend Kelly was being very cagey about what she was reading, and my other friend and I browbeat her into just telling us what it was about. She sheepishly admitted that it was about two gay FBI agents who fall in love. That book? Cut & Run. My other friend and I thought that sounded awesome and we both read it and fell in love. Ty & Zane are still my favorite.

We actually did a weekend trip to Baltimore a couple years ago and visited all the places mentioned in the book. The FBI building, Chipparelli’s Italian restaurant, the aquarium, the Admiral Fell Inn, etc. It was a blast, 10/10 recommend.

I started when I was 14, and I’m 19 now. I was always a fantasy reader, mainly stuff like Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time. Completely by accident I came across a fantasy book rec on a forum (just the title and bland cover, no description) and decided to read it without looking it up. Went in competent blind and just started reading right off the bat on the schoolbus home on my phone.

That book turned out to be Captive Prince.

Needless to say I loved it. I’d never read anything like it at the time, and I was never really a fanfic reader so I hadn’t really been exposed to steamy m/m content. My favorite story about is that after reading through the first book I was so worked up over the political and sexual tension I caught a fever and had to stay home from school, lol. At least it gave me the chance to finish reading the series!

Things went from there and I started to dabble in other books. In quarantine I read nothing but Chinese m/m webnovels. To this day, though, Captive Prince remains my favorite :)

So around 2016ish (not exactly sure), I stumbled onto Him. At that point, I only read MF romance and MM was an unfamiliar territory that I had no interest in. But the blurb for Him really made me curious so, I gave it a shot. I still thought it was weird while reading cause it was MM so, it was new and different to me. But the story had me hooked and I loved Jamie and Wes! Still do lol After that, I actually didn't read anymore MM bc again, it was just a one-off thing. Not my genre. Then in 2019, I remembered Him and wanted to do a reread. Found out there was a sequel, I fell more in love. And then my curiosity piqued and I thought "hey there must be other book couples like wesmie, right?" And that thought was the beginning of my downfall into the rabbithole known as MM romance. Since then I've only exclusively read MM books and I don't see that changing anytime soon. MF romance just does not grab my interest anymore. Plus, why read about one hot guy when you can read about two? 😏 I also ventured into reading a lot of BL too and it's such a blast!

I got a KU subscription to explore LGBTQ fiction and discovered a ton of gay romance in that category, written by women much to my surprise (I'm a gay guy). So I read a few books and fell in love with PNR/omegaverse first, then some CR, fantasy, and other sub-genres.

I have no idea why she read it, but my partner came home and was like "I know this is a BDSM novel, and gay, and a romance, but you HAVE to read it"

{For real by Alexis hall}

When I was 20, I joined a martial arts gym and every other guy was an anime nerd, so I got into anime, started watching a bunch of top rated anime and came across Junjō Romantica, got into the manga (and manga in general), got really into yaoi and started reading some MM from there. But in 2014 I went to Yaoicon, and bought a stupid amount of books (I ending up ditching stuff from my carry on to make room for the 50+ books on that little tiny suitcase). I bought a bunch from LT3 press, and a bunch from self published authors who had tables there. Since then, my reading has become 90% MM.

I read Red White and Royal Blue about a year ago based off a random recommendation I saw on TikTok (I’m not sure why I started getting romance booktok videos, maybe because I liked Bridgerton?). I loved RWRB and just devoured all the traditionally published MM contemporary romance I could find. Found my way here a few months later.

I was probably 12/13 when I got hardcore into anime and manga as a main interest — and from there came BL manga. Katekyo!, Honto Yajuu, Ten Count, those are some I remember fondly. Anyway, I also watched the classics of Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, Junjou Romantica, and stuff like FAKE. Two episode OVAs were also my jam. At the same time, I read YA by David Leviathin — I remember Boy Meets Boy fondly, and then I got onto Wattpad.

Wattpad was… a place. I read a lot of mpreg, paranormal and probably now seen as badly written boyxboy stories. Hell, I liked them though. I even tried to write some (it is not good).

Around 15, I got really into DRAMAtical Murder, a BL visual novel by NitroChiral. This might’ve been the descent into dark romance? Bad endings had eroguro, major character death, noncon, cannibalism, etcetera. Good endings were sweet but could also be fucked up, as the story in general was morally gray at best and cyberpunk fun. The true ending is the most wack of them all. I was a bit of a sponge to all this. I was really into the fandom, cosplayed, the whole bit.

I started to realize my perception of my gender and sexuality were confusing. I joke that I’ve been every letter of LGBTQIA and it’s true (yes, I’m intersex so the I counts), but to put it how 13 year old me thought “I like boys the way boys who like boys like boys” rolling eyes, I thought I was eloquent.

Western adult MM novels came later. I fell out of reading in general, besides manga and webtoons, and my brushes with romance had been MF YA (Twilight, Wicked Lovely, Vampire Academy), and bodice rippers (Johanna Lindsey, anyone?)

Then as we all know - pandemic happened. I picked up two titles as my dive into MM: Human Omega: Escape from Slave Planet by Eileen Glass, an MMM omegaverse scifi romance and Honor/Obey by DJ Heart, a 500 page very intense BDSM erotica.

I haven’t looked back and now I read everyday! Plus I’m part of a great community, and now I’m very sure of my identity (most days, anyway) as a trans and queer masculine person.

I read The Fifth Season by NK Jemison, and realized I was way more invested in the relationship between the MMCs than with the FMC. Now MM romance is all I read.

Accidentally read Him series by SB, it ws incredible, memorable

I came across m/m completely by accident about three years ago after searching for other books written by an author I had read who mainly does female/male romance. So my first ended up being Work For It by Talia Hibbert. Since then, I have devoured m/m novels, especially ones that incorporate crime or action, and that have both plot and steam.

In college (edit: over a decade ago), I was hanging out in one of my childhood friends' rooms. She'd had to go out to the store for her mom, so I was browsing her bookshelf. I found a Gravitation novel with some illustrations.

By that point, I was burned out on anything with prominent straight romance because I was just sick and tired of how the girls were always portrayed and how toxic the relationship could get. I've lost count of how many times I read that trope of the girl feeling worthless and unattractive for no reason until THE HOT GUY expresses interest in her. Ugh, puke.

Anyway, when I wasn't turned off by one of the steamier images in that novel and realized there was an entire subgenre of romance that hadn't even been on my radar, I decided to look around at other MM titles (because Gravitation can be pretty dark and kinda toxic too, so it didn't interest me much), and I've honestly found more wholesome content in MM romance than I've ever found in straight romance.

Now MM is my go-to if I'm up for reading romance. Straight romance remains mostly the same worn-out tune. Not interested anymore.

I was a voracious reader all through high school and undergrad in college, mostly fantasy and science fiction*. Somewhere around graduate school I just sort of drifted away from it and for a couple of decades didn't really read many books at all; nothing really held my interest.

In the summer of 2015 I was listening to an episode of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast (The Romance Novel Special) where they talked about popular authors, romance tropes, open vs closed bedroom doors, and how there was a thriving m/m subgenre. The latter piqued my interest! So I went searching around on Google and came up with Amy Lane's The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters (Granby Knitting #1). OK, I might have picked it up because of the possible furry connection (I'm not proud). There are indeed no furries in these books. I mean, there are bears, just not those kinds of bears :-)

Anyway, it was a short, easy read, and drew me in to the rest of the series. This led me to other books by Amy Lane, and then Kim Fielding, Eli Easton, and other authors, and I was hooked. A big part of this was finding stories where people like me got their happily ever after. Representation matters, y'all. Seven years and 660+ books later I'm still at it, and still really enjoying most every book I pick up.

* - The irony is that in all of my F&SF reading I had enjoyed two very queer romances, though they weren't billed as such: The Last Herald-Mage and Swordspoint. Though they struck a chord, I was also a kid in rural South Carolina in the early 80's so...yeah.

I blame Yuri on Ice fanfiction.

I started with Frodo/Sam slash fic back in the '90s. Yes, pre-films. It was very slim pickings. At the same time I read a ton of Xena alt fic and published Uberfic. Then I branched out to slash in other fandoms, then queer fantasy literature like Swordspoint and the Nightrunner series--books where the relationship was incidental to the plot. It's only the last couple of years that I've been reading m/m romance in earnest.

I started off by reading fanfic and free original M/M in high school, including Megan Derr’s work when it was posted to Livejournal. I’ve dipped in and out of reading pro M/M for years, a book here and there, usually when a friend recs something specific to me.

I first started when I came across Yaoi and then went to my local Barnes and Noble store found a section of LGBT+ books during Pride Month a few years ago.

I was a fairly new yet avid MF romance reader, maybe just under a year, when I saw Call Me By Your Name (film-go watch it now if you haven’t, you’re missing out!) back in 2017. I immediately watched it another 6391064 times in a row and then began reading MM- which is the best thing that’s ever happened in my life :D My first one was Him by Sarina Bowen. Boy did I luck out in that, huh?

I hated romance, I hated book with any sort of romance in them. Then, I came across sterek fanfictions. Some of them were good and I sort of enjoyed them in my teenage years. Soon, I explored wattapad and found so many m/m fictions. I figured out that I love romance but only when it's M/M. The first actual book I read on Mm romance was by K. A. Merikan Guns N boys series. It was pretty dark for me and I actually skipped some parts. Then, I found Just a bit ruthless by Alexandra Hazard and Exhale by Joel Aberbathy. Those were few of the books that got me hooked into this. Then, I explored books by Charlie Crochet and books like Boos, Angel. I started to love mafia romance and I loved werewolf or Alpha male sort of romance. I can't believe I am the one who hated romance and now I enjoy mm romances so much. It was a journey and I guess every one must try different books to figure out what you actually prefer. One of the biggest problems of reading these kinda books is that people judge but trust me they are gonna judge you anyway so do explore different genera. In Mm romance, I can go to dark but only till Love of the egoist by Nero Seal. Books darker than that are not my cup of tea. And I guess it's okay to accept how much can we take.

2020 in the middle of pandemic I read Aristotle and Dante, the book was a really good and smooth to read, after that I discovered about the >!all for the game series(even tho is not an mm focused book series)!< nowdays I'm addicted to mm books and hope not get tired.