Author Archives: Bec @ bec&books

Bec @ bec&books A late-20s student & librarian who reads, games, drinks coffee, cuddles cats and tells the world about stories.

Little Dancer by Tate Monroe and Rory Ireland

Tragedy brings us together and the ties that bind are wrapped as tight as the ribbons on her pointe shoes.

I’ll make a deal with the pretty ballerina to quench my immorality.

My tiny little dancer will learn to let go and let me lead her into sin.

When it’s over, will I watch her with fondness as she spreads her wings and flies or will I shackle the radiant swan to me?.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Age-gap romance
  • Death of parents in a plane crash

*Context: Relationship between a nineteen-year-old woman and a thirty-six-year-old man.

Things We Left Behind by Lucy Score

There was only one woman who could set me free. But I would rather set myself on fire than ask Sloane Walton for anything.

Lucian Rollins is a lean, mean vengeance-seeking mogul. On a quest to erase his father’s mark on the family name, he spends every waking minute pulling strings and building an indestructible empire. The more money and power he amasses, the safer he is from threats… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence, on-page
  • Alcoholism
  • Death of a parent from cancer
  • Fire

Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim

Channi was not born a monster. But when her own father offers her in sacrifice to the Demon Witch, she is forever changed. Cursed with a serpent’s face, Channi is the exact opposite of her beautiful sister, Vanna—the only person in the village who looks at Channi and doesn’t see a monster. The only person she loves and trusts.

Now seventeen, Vanna is to be married off in a vulgar contest that will enrich the coffers of the village leaders. Only Channi, who’s had to rely on her strength and cunning all these years… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Self-harm
  • Pregnancy
  • Decapitation
  • Cannibalism
  • Torture
  • Human sacrifice

Knockout by Sarah MacLean

With her headful of wild curls and wilder ideas and an unabashed love of experiments and explosives, society has labeled Lady Imogen Loveless peculiar…and doesn’t know she’s one of the Hell’s Belles—a group of vigilantes operating outside the notice of most of London

Thomas Peck is not most of London. The brilliant detective fought his way off the streets and into a promising career through sheer force of will and a keen ability to see things others miss, like the fact that Imogen isn’t peculiar… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abortion mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder mentioned
  • Explosions
  • Fire and resulting destruction of property
  • Police corruption

Tilly in Technicolor by Mazey Eddings

Tilly Twomley is desperate for change. White-knuckling her way through high school with flawed executive functioning has left her burnt out and ready to start fresh. Working as an intern for her perfect older sister’s start up isn’t exactly how Tilly wants to spend her summer, but the required travel around Europe promises a much-needed change of scenery as she plans for her future. The problem is, Tilly has no idea what she wants… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • COVID-19 pandemic recounted

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake–a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led–her sisters are surprised. Has Flor forseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

But Flor isn’t the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband’s infidelity, but she must now confront the true state of her marriage… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infertility
  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Miscarriage

Zhara by S. Jae-Jones

Magic is forbidden throughout the Morning Realms. Magicians are called abomination, and blamed for the plague of monsters that razed the land twenty years before.

Jin Zhara already had enough to worry about—appease her stepmother’s cruel whims, looking after her blind younger sister, and keeping her own magical gifts under control—without having to deal with rumors of monsters re-emerging in the marsh. But when a chance encounter with… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia & misgendering
  • Child abuse
  • Body horror
  • Emesis
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)

Burn the Negative by Josh Winning

Arriving in L.A. to visit the set of a new streaming horror series, journalist Laura Warren witnesses a man jumping from a bridge, landing right behind her car. Here we go, she thinks. It’s started. Because the series she’s reporting on is a remake of a ’90s horror flick. A cursed ’90s horror flick, which she starred in as a child—and has been running from her whole life.

In The Guesthouse, Laura played the little girl with the terrifying gift to tell people how the Needle Man would kill them. When eight of the cast and crew died in ways that… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical & psychological child abuse

The Prince & the Apocalypse by Kara McDowell

Wren Wheeler has flown five thousand miles across the ocean to discover she’s the worst kind of traveler: the kind who just wants to go home. Her senior-year trip to London was supposed to be life-changing, but by the last day, Wren’s perfectly-planned itinerary is in tatters. There’s only one item left to check off: breakfast at The World’s End restaurant. The one thing she can still get right.

The restaurant is closed for renovations—of course—but there’s a boy there, too. A very cute boy with a posh British accent… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Depression

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. She spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss, since she’s tall, stoic, and originally from Switzerland. They both have dark histories, but Big Swiss chooses to remain unattached to her suffering while Greta continues to be tortured by her past… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Homomisia
  • Bimisia
  • Rape
  • Cheating
  • Domestic violence
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Suicide recounted
  • Eating disorder
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Physical assault recounted
  • Animal cruelty (dog)