Queerly Popular

Welcome to Queerly Popular! This week, we will be talking about the 2024 film  The Idea of You starring Nicholas Galitizine and Anne Hathaway. The movie is a cis-het romance about a 40-year old divorced mother who meets a 24-year old pop star and how their relationship develops. Before I talk about the film and characters, I explain why this is a queer film and included here. The episode clocks in...

Welcome to this week's episode of Queerly Popular! Today, we're talking about the 2021 book  Playing the Palace . It is about an American Associate Event Architect (Carter Ogden) who meets the Crown Prince of England (Prince Edgar), their romance, and the issues they have.  I did definitely enjoy the book, even though it suffered from 2 major issues. Most characters were stereotypes and not as fle...

Welcome to this week's episode of Queerly Popular! This week we'll be talking about the 2022 book  The Feeling of Falling In Love by Mason Deaver. It is their third book and is, in all honesty, a fairly typical romance. The main difference being that the main character is a trans guy and the love interest is a queer, non-binary individual. But other than that, it hits all the tropes you could want...

Welcome to this week's episode of Queerly Popular. Today, we are talking about the 2020 book  Date Me, Bryson Keller by Kevin van Whye. The book is about a high school boy who asks out the most popular guy in high school; who agreed to date the first person who asks him out each week; and how they come to realize that they really like each other. For the most part, I really enjoyed the book. I had...

Welcome to today's episode of Queerly Popular! Today we are going to talk about the Netflix show  Young Royals which is about a Swedish prince who meets and falls in love with a commoner at an elite boarding school. The show premiered in 2021 and the finale aired on March 18, 2024. Warning, this is one of the longer episodes at almost 80 minutes, so be prepared for that. And if you haven't seen th...

Welcome to today's episode of Queerly Popular! Today, we are going to talk about the 2021 book  The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun. The book is about a contestant and a producer on a reality dating show who meet and fall in love. There is a lot of talk in the book about mental health issues including anxiety, OCD, and depression. There is also good representation of different sexualities. There...

Due to Holy Week, our schedule has been slightly altered. Please listen to find out more.

Welcome to today's episode of Queerly Popular. Today, we're going to talk about the 2022 book  Never Been Kissed by Timothy Janovsky. It's a lovely book about Wren Roland, a young man who has never been kissed, and his feelings for his friend (and almost kiss) Derick Haverford. The book is about their relationship and how they try and save a local landmark from Derick's dad. I love this book and h...

Welcome to today's episode of Queerly Popular. Today we will be talking about the film  Hidden Kisses . Before I get into anything else, I made a mistake last episode. I thought this was a German language film, but it is a French film. Sorry about the error. Hidden Kisses is a movie about 2 boys who are caught kissing and what happens to them because of this. The film is basically evenly divided b...

On today's episode of Queerly Popular, we are talking about the 2022 book  Blaine for the Win by Robbie Couch, author of  The Sky Blues which I previously talked about. Blaine for the Win is a book about a high school junior who is dumped by his boyfriend on their anniversary because he is not a Serious Guy (TM). So he decides to run for senior class president in order to get his ex-boyfriend back...

Welcome back to season 3 of Queerly Popular! Today, we are going to talk about the 2023 book  The Borrow A Boyfriend Club by Page Powars. The book is about a trans boy in high school who joins a club which he thinks is about cars and sports in order to prove to people that he is a "real boy". It ends up being a club where people can borrow the members as boyfriends and wacky hijinks ensue as Noah...

Welcome to the final episode of the second season about the 2016 film  Shared Rooms . This is a short film (75 minutes) about a group of gay men in Los Angeles starting on Christmas and ending on New Year's Eve. There are 3 seemingly separate stories that end up coming together in the final few minutes of the film. It is a fun and cute film, but it is also very fluffy and shallow. There is not a l...

Welcome to today's episode of Queerly Popular! Today we are talking about the  Something Like..... book series. It is a series of 9 novels and 3 books of short stories about a group of gay friends (or rather people who become friends) centered in Austin, Texas. Each book is told from a different character's perspective and we often get to see the same event through multiple characters' eyes across...

Welcome to this week's episode. We're talking about  Always the Almost , a book about a trans pianist and how music and friends help him discover who he is and why music matters to him. This is a lovely book filled with queer and trans joy, heartache, self-discovery, friendship, and all the stuff that being a teenager entails. I cannot recommend the book highly enough. I do also read the author's...

Welcome to this week's episode of Queerly Popular where we will be talking about the 2013 movie  Geography Club .  Geography Club is a fun (and relatively short) movie about a 16-year old boy, Russell, and his coming out of the closet. He finds acceptance and friends in a "geography club" that becomes a GSA. This is a fun and sweet movie, but is not outstanding in any particular way. I definitely...

Today's episode is about the book  The Sky Blues by Robbie Couch. Robbie has written a couple of other books and they are all delightful books and well worth reading. This book is abourt a boy in MIchigan who is openly gay and who decides to prompose to a popular straight guy. Things go off the rails before the promposal happens (read/listen for why). After everything goes sideways, Sky learns tha...

Today's episode is about the 2019 book I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver. The book is about an 18-year old non-binary person named Ben who is kicked out of their parents' house and ends up living with the sister who abandoned them 10 years before. The book follows them through the second half of their senior year of high school as they pick up the pieces of their life and create a new one wh...

Welcome to today's episode about the movie  Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe . Couple of things. First, this is a shorter episode than normal. I loved the movie, but I realized after I started talking that most of what I wanted to say, I said last week. So rather than repeat it, I added a couple of topics to this episode. I start off with the movie and my thoughts about it....

Today's episode is about the books  Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2012) and  Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World (2021). These two books tell the story of  how Aristotle "Ari" Mendoza and Dante Quintana meet, fall in love, and navigate a relationship together in El Paso, Texas in the late 1980s. The books deal with their coming out, their Mexican-Ameri...

Welcome to my review of Red, White, & Royal Blue (movie). I talked about the book in an earlier episode which you can listen to if you want. This episode is almost as long as the last episode about  Heartstopper , but I am sure you will enjoy every minute of it. In this episode we talk about a couple things I needed to add to the  Heartstopper episode, why we should love what we love, delve a litt...

This week we are going to dive deep into Heartstopper Season 2. Two warnings: This is all spoilers. If you haven't seen the season and don't want to be spoiled, watch the season first and then come back and listen. This is a very long episode, almost 90 minutes. I try not to go over an hour if possible, but this one just had so much going on that I had to go longer. In this episode, we will dive d...

Today, we talk about Alexis Hall's books  Boyfriend Material  and  Husband Material . They are a queer romances where two very different men pretend to date each other and it turns into something real and then they decide to get married and all the wacky hijinks that ensue. I really love these books and encourage you to go read them if you like romances. A lot of it is follows romantic tropes, but...

Today's episode is about the 2020 Netflix film  The Prom which is based off of a musical, which is based off of a real life event. It's a lovely, lovely film that I really love and enjoy about the trauma a young lesbian undergoes at the hands of homophobes and "allies" who don't really care about the person they are trying to help. Except for one thing that I will go on a bit of a rant about (10-1...

Today we are doing something a little different and talking about  Dear Evan Hansen the movie and the book. I talk about the book because the book has some added material that sheds some light on some of the events of the story. I talk about why I prefer certain things from the musical or the movie and why, a problem I have with the movie, a problem I have with a lot of fans of the show unfairly v...

Hey all, I lost my voice over the weekend (sounded like someone who inhaled a ton of helium and was speaking very softly) and it is still rough. I'm gonna try and record my Dear Evan Hansen episode tonight or tomorrow, but there is no guarantee it will happen. Just depends on how my voice holds up. Thank you for your understanding.