The Transfeminine Review

For today’s penultimate shortlist, I am incredibly excited to present the contenders for the best transfeminine debut of 2025!

This was by far the most competitive category on our shortlist slate, with four books that missed the Shortlist by just one vote, and five more books that missed the list by two. Of the books that made the final cut, there was a five-way tie that made this the longest Shortlist of the day, with eight books neck-and-neck for the award. So many authors published their first novel this year, and I want to celebrate what an amazing field this was to be so competitive, and for so many books to barely miss the cusp here.

That said, there can only be one winner. So if you want to support your favorite transfemme debut author of 2025, make sure to vote! Voting will remain open until December 26th at 11:59pm EST – the voting form can be found here, and it’ll be linked again at the end of the list.

Without further ado, here is the Shortlist for the Best Transfeminine Debut of 2025!

1. The Shortlist
   1. Herculine – Grace Byron
   2. Autumnal Conductor – Lhuzie Fénix
   3. Flower of the Underworld – Cirice Gray
   4. Keeping the Peace – Tris Husband
   5. The Zeus Constant – Callisto Khan
   6. Glitch Girl! – Rainie Oet
   7. Woodworking – Emily St. James
   8. One of the Boys – Victoria Zeller

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The Shortlist

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Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.

The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.

While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.

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Proserpina, the Flower Painter, is interrupted by the flowering of the asphodel — a drab, ugly thing that defiles her domain and which drags her down to the Underworld, a realm enemy to all that she is. 

To survive, she will have to seek allies among the dead: a warden of this prison, the grinning poison king, a woman that conned better gods than you and got away with it, the world-conquering dragon, a knight sworn to Her, and the rejected sludge of dying humanity. 

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In the depths of Elysium’s Underworld, a fragile acolyte serves the faith of Lord Hades in the temple Meténeion. 

For Madalithea, devotion is both armor and anchor—each ritual a step further into the shadows that raised her. 

But when divine attention falls upon her, she learns that some flowers bloom brightest in darkness. Flower of the Underworld is a tale of mortal metamorphosis and divine attention, set in the world of Maria Ying’s Gunmetal Olympus, where even the most delicate bloom must explore how devotion—to gods, to lovers, to oneself—can both wound and heal.

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Akakios, child of Diodotos, wasn’t the most reliable friend Isadora ever had. Xe tended to drop in unannounced, never really cared about what was going on in her life, and seemed to only ever want to drink at their favorite bar before disappearing again. So when xe showed up on her doorstep with a gun in xer hand, claiming that xer wife Pelagia had just been murdered, Isadora didn’t really know what to do.

With Akakios now dead for a crime xe may not have committed, and everyone from the Archon of Elysium to ruthless gangsters to xer dead wife’s family telling her to drop it, Isadora tried to just keep her head down, throwing herself into her work as a independent detective and entangling herself in the petty drama of one of Elysium’s most exclusive communities.

Unfortunately, if what she wanted was to avoid confronting Akakios’ dark past, the Valley was probably the last place in Elysium Isadora should have been.

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Zeus, King of Thunder has everything. 

A glittering palace, the adoration of her people, and a plan to finally break the stalemate in Elysium’s endless war with the colossi. A holy cyborg, inhuman and replicable, to pilot the Gods’ eidolons. A pilot worthy of all of the cruelty it took to make her. 

On the day her crowning achievement is set to be announced, everything goes wrong. Persephone, her promised pilot, escapes captivity and oaths herself to Zeus’s estranged and enigmatic sister, Hades, Lord of the Machine Dead.

Zeus’s perfect city cracks under the weight of this political drama. Will its King crack, too? After all, Zeus has everything — to lose.

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J—’s life is consumed by the roller coaster video game Coaster Boss, and by the power she exerts over the pixelated theme park attendees. Her life outside the game, however, is less controllable.

Me.
I’m such a big space. I break the universe, a glitch.

She’s navigating ADHD, the loneliness of middle school, and an overwhelming crush on a girl named Junie. J— is convinced that Junie sees her as who she really is, a person who isn’t “bad” just because she doesn’t stay quiet and sit still in class. As a person who is realizing that the name she’s been given doesn’t really fit her. And that maybe boy doesn’t either.

Glitch Girl! follows J— from fifth to seventh grade, from the beginning to the end of her obsession with Coaster Boss, and to the start of a new friendship. When J— meets Sam, a nonbinary classmate, she begins to realize that it’s okay to not fit into neat, pixelated boxes.

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Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she’s told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn’t exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.

Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She’s also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others’ expectations.

As their unlikely friendship evolves under the increasing scrutiny of their community, both women—and those closest to them—will come to realize that sometimes there is nothing more radical than letting the world see who you really are.

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Grace Woodhouse has left a lot behind. She used to have a great friend group, an amazing girlfriend, and a right foot set to earn her a Division I football scholarship—before she came out as trans. As senior year begins, Grace is struggling to find her place in early transition, new social circles, and a life without football. But when her skills as the best kicker in the state prove to be vital, her old teammates beg her to come out of retirement, dragging her back into a sport—into a way of life—she thought had turned its back on her forever. When a chance meeting cracks the door to college football back open, she has to decide how much of herself she’s willing to give up for the game she loves.

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And that’s the list! Allow me to take this moment to extend my most heartfelt congratulations to the entire transfemme debbie class of 2025 ❤ It has been a wonderful year for trans fiction, and the fact that so many new authors have such promising careers both now and on the horizon is a huge part of that.

Again, I want to emphasize that if the votes had shaken out slightly differently, this list could easily have had 17 books on it. So if you didn’t see your favorites on here, or if you want to make sure your favorite debut novel wins the whole competition, the best thing you can do is vote! Voting ends on December 26th at 11:59pm EST, so there’s plenty of time to make your voice heard.

If you missed them earlier today, you can check out the Shortlists for Poetry, Nonfiction, and Author here. I’ll be back to end this off with the Shortlist for Best Transfeminine Fiction – see you all then.