Ray Stoeve Books in Order

Ray Stoeve writes young adult fiction about queer and trans teens trying to name what they feel, figure out who they are, and hold on to friendship when life gets messy. They grew up in Seattle, and that city runs through their books. In Stoeve's work, Seattle is not just backdrop. It is school hallways, rehearsal rooms, beaches, buses, and queer gathering places.

That sense of place matters.

Stoeve has said they were writing long before publication entered the picture. The seed of Between Perfect and Real came in 2009, when they were looking back on their own high school years and questioning their gender. In 2015, after learning more about themselves, coming out, and starting to use they them pronouns, they returned to that old idea and decided to treat writing as serious work instead of a hobby.

They have described that period as a real turning point. A Made at Hugo House Fellowship helped them finish a draft of Between Perfect and Real and learn how revision works at the book level. After more rewriting, including a full tense change, the novel became the debut that introduced many readers to Stoeve's mix of tenderness, humor, and emotional precision.

Then the books started arriving.

First came Between Perfect and Real in 2021. It follows Dean Foster, a trans teen cast as Romeo who starts to wonder whether playing a male role onstage can help him live more honestly offstage too. Readers who love theater, coming-of-age stories, and books that balance nerves with warmth often start here. The novel also became a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.

In 2022, Stoeve published Arden Grey, a quieter and more bruised story about a teen photographer, an absent mother, a shifting friendship, and the slow recognition of toxic relationships. It is a good example of what Stoeve does well. They take teenage uncertainty seriously. Rather than rushing toward neat answers, they let characters sit in confusion long enough for the feelings to feel real.

With The Summer Love Strategy, published in 2024, Stoeve turned toward romance without giving up that honesty. The book follows best friends Hayley and Talia as they try to engineer a movie-style summer romance around Seattle and discover that love may be closer than they thought. It is lighter, funnier, and full of summer energy, but it still pays close attention to queer, trans, and neurodivergent experience, and to the way friendship can change shape without losing its depth.

Their 2026 novel, Worst-Case Scenario, brings in rivals-to-romance tension and a close look at anxiety as Sidney ends up sharing leadership of the school Queer Alliance with their nemesis, Forrest. Across all four novels, Stoeve keeps returning to self-definition, community, and the gap between how a person is seen and how they know themselves.

What readers tend to remember is not big plot machinery. It is the feeling of being understood. Stoeve writes characters who are often overwhelmed, sometimes funny in spite of themselves, and usually learning that being known by friends or partners can be both comforting and scary. Their books care about first love, but they care just as much about chosen family, queer community, and the language people need in order to understand their own lives.

Before the novels, Stoeve contributed to the anthology Take the Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance, and they have also written essays and journalism. They created the YA/MG Trans and Nonbinary Voices Masterlist, a resource that tracks books for younger readers by trans authors about trans characters. They still live in Seattle, and when they are not writing, they spend time gardening, hiking in the Pacific Northwest, and making art in other mediums.