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Contagion by Erin Bowman

Contagion by Erin Bowman

It got in us
After receiving an urgent SOS from a work detail on a distant planet, a skeleton crew is dispatched to perform a standard search-and-rescue mission.

Most are dead.
But when the crew arrives, they find an abandoned site, littered with rotten food, discarded weapons…and dead bodies.

Don’t set foot here again.
As they try to piece together who—or what—could have decimated an entire operation, they discover that some things are best left buried—and some monsters are only too ready to awaken.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Parental abandonment recounted
Self-harm
Suicide by gun (on-page in prologue)
Graphic blood and gore depiction
Dead bodies
Physical illness & injuries, including eyeball trauma
Plague, central theme
Needles and syringes
Medical procedures, including blood test and surgery
Medical emergency & serious (terminal) illness of a loved one
Comas
Emesis
Death of parents
Death of cousin
Death of friend
Death of colleague
Murder and attempted murder
Strangulation mentioned
Knife violence
Gun violence
Kidnapping
Drowning mentioned
Death from electrocution
Blizzards & severe storms

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman

Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.

Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.

Aching, powerful, and unflinchingly honest, Summer Bird Blue explores big truths about insurmountable grief, unconditional love, and how to forgive even when it feels impossible.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Grief depiction
Death of a brother

Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman

Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman

A half-Japanese teen grapples with social anxiety and her narcissist mother in the wake of a crushing rejection from art school in this debut novel.

Kiko Himura has always had a hard time saying exactly what she’s thinking. With a mother who makes her feel unremarkable and a half-Japanese heritage she doesn’t quite understand, Kiko prefers to keep her head down, certain that once she makes it into her dream art school, Prism, her real life will begin.

But then Kiko doesn’t get into Prism, at the same time her abusive uncle moves back in with her family. So when she receives an invitation from her childhood friend to leave her small town and tour art schools on the west coast, Kiko jumps at the opportunity in spite of the anxieties and fears that attempt to hold her back. And now that she is finally free to be her own person outside the constricting walls of her home life, Kiko learns life-changing truths about herself, her past, and how to be brave.

From debut author Akemi Dawn Bowman comes a luminous, heartbreaking story of identity, family, and the beauty that emerges when we embrace our true selves.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableist slurs
Racism
Fatmisia
Paedophilia
Child sexual abuse
Emotional child abuse
Abandonment
Anxiety and panic attacks
Suicide attempt

Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake

Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake

When a tornado rips through town, twelve-year-old Ivy Aberdeen’s house is destroyed and her family of five is displaced. Ivy feels invisible and ignored in the aftermath of the storm–and what’s worse, her notebook filled with secret drawings of girls holding hands has gone missing.

Mysteriously, Ivy’s drawings begin to reappear in her locker with notes from someone telling her to open up about her identity. Ivy thinks–and hopes–that this someone might be her classmate, another girl for whom Ivy has begun to develop a crush. Will Ivy find the strength and courage to follow her true feelings?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Coming out themes
Cancer, mentioned
Physical injury
Tornado, central theme
Blackmail
Homelessness

How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake

How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake

All seventeen year-old Grace Glasser wants is her own life. A normal life in which she sleeps in the same bed for longer than three months and doesn’t have to scrounge for spare change to make sure the electric bill is paid. Emotionally trapped by her unreliable mother, Maggie, and the tiny cape on which she lives, she focuses on her best friend, her upcoming audition for a top music school in New York, and surviving Maggie’s latest boyfriend—who happens to be Grace’s own ex-boyfriend’s father.

Her attempts to lay low until she graduates are disrupted when she meets Eva, a girl with her own share of ghosts she’s trying to outrun. Grief-stricken and lonely, Eva pulls Grace into midnight adventures and feelings Grace never planned on. When Eva tells Grace she likes girls, both of their worlds open up. But, united by loss, Eva also shares a connection with Maggie. As Grace’s mother spirals downward, both girls must figure out how to love and how to move on.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parental neglect
Alcoholism
Alcohol abuse

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

“I need Owen to explain this. Because yes, I do know that Owen would never do that, but I also know Hannah would never lie about something like that.”

Mara and Owen are about as close as twins can get. So when Mara’s friend Hannah accuses Owen of rape, Mara doesn’t know what to think. Can the brother she loves really be guilty of such a violent crime? Torn between the family she loves and her own sense of right and wrong, Mara is feeling lost, and it doesn’t help that things have been strained with her ex-girlfriend and best friend since childhood, Charlie.

As Mara, Hannah, and Charlie navigate this new terrain, Mara must face a trauma from her own past and decide where Charlie fits in her future. With sensitivity and openness, this timely novel confronts the difficult questions surrounding consent, victim blaming, and sexual assault.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Coming out themes
Bimisia
Internalised enbymisia
Slut-shaming
Victim blaming, discussed
Misogyny
Racist microaggressions
Rape, central theme
Sexual assault
Paedophillia*
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Panic attacks, multiple occurrences on-page
Alcohol consumption
Minor injury, mentioned
Hospital visit, mentioned
Medical procedure including a rape kit, recounted
Physical assault
Bullying

*Main character, who is a minor, is sexually abused by her teacher

The Wicked King by Holly Black

The Wicked King by Holly Black

After the jaw-dropping revelation that Oak is the heir to Faerie, Jude must keep her brother safe. To do so, she has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were easy to control. But he does everything in his power to humiliate and undermine her even as his fascination with her remains undiminished.

When it becomes all too clear that someone close to Jude means to betray her, threatening her own life and the lives of everyone she loves, Jude must uncover the traitor and fight her own complicated feelings for Cardan to maintain control as a mortal in a Faerie world.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child abuse, recounted
Parental abandonment
Forced and arranged marriages
Cheating
Suicide, recounted
Self-harm, recounted
Alcohol consumption
Hallucinogenic drugs, mentioned
Blood depiction
Physical injuries
Dead bodies
Death of parents, recounted
Murder and attempted murder
Physical assault
Kidnapping
Captivity
Loss of autonomy
War themes
Bullying

Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett

Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett

As a magical revolution remakes a city, an ancient evil is awakened in a brilliant new novel from the Hugo-nominated author of Foundryside and the Divine Cities trilogy

Having narrowly saved the metropolis of Tevanne from destruction, Sancia Grado and her allies have turned to their next task: sowing the seeds of a full-on magical-industrial revolution. If they succeed, the secrets behind scriving—the art of imbuing everyday objects with sentience—will be accessible to all of Tevanne’s citizens, much to the displeasure of the robber-barons who’ve hoarded this knowledge for themselves.

But one of Sancia’s enemies has embarked on a desperate gambit, an attempt to resurrect a figure straight out of legend—an immortal being known as a heirophant. Long ago, the heirophant was an ordinary man, but he’s used scriving to transform himself into something closer to a god. Once awakened, he’ll stop at nothing to remake the world in his horrifying image.

And if Sancia can’t stop this ancient power from returning? Well, the only way to fight a god…is with another god.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Blood and gore depiction
War themes

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle.

But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic–the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience–have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Fatmisia
Hate slurs
Slavery
Sexual assault
Domestic abuse
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Blood and gore depiction
Medical experimentation
Murder and attempted murder
Gun violence
Explosions
Child trafficking

S.T.A.G.S by M. A. Bennett

S.T.A.G.S by M. A. Bennett

It is the autumn term and Greer MacDonald is struggling to settle into the sixth form at the exclusive St. Aidan the Great boarding school, known to its privileged pupils as S.T.A.G.S. Just when she despairs of making friends Greer receives a mysterious invitation with three words embossed upon on it: huntin’ shootin’ fishin’. When Greer learns that the invitation is to spend the half term weekend at the country manor of Henry de Warlencourt, the most popular and wealthy boy at S.T.A.G.S., she is as surprised as she is flattered. But when Greer joins the other chosen few at.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Suicide
Attempted murder
Gun violence
Cults
Animal death & hunting