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.

Monstrilio by Gerado Sámano Córdova

Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood & gore depiction including body horror
  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Animal death

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjej-Brenyah

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own.

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Homomisia
  • Rape
  • Self-harm
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Police brutality

Translation State by Ann Leckie

The mystery of a missing translator sets three lives on a collision course that will have a ripple effect across galaxies in this powerful new novel by one of the masters of modern science fiction. Translation State is at once a sweeping space adventure and a brilliant exploration of how in order to belong, we must first become.

When Enae’s grandmaman passes away, Enae inherits something entirely unexpected: a diplomatic assignment to track down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misgendering (accidental)
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Cannibalism
  • Police brutality

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party–or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Death during childbirth mentioned
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Emesis
  • Self-amputation of finger
  • Decapitation
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Murder
  • Arrow violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Animal abuse recounted
  • Animal death (bird, rabbit, sheep)

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati

You were born to a king, but you marry a tyrant. You stand by helplessly as he sacrifices your child to placate the gods. You watch him wage war on a foreign shore, and you comfort yourself with violent thoughts of your own. Because this was not the first offence against you. This was not the life you ever deserved. And this will not be your undoing. Slowly, you plot.

But when your husband returns in triumph, you become a woman with a choice… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Sexual harassment

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes

The only mortal in a family of gods, Medusa is the youngest of the Gorgon sisters. Unlike her siblings, Medusa grows older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know.

When the sea god Poseidon assaults Medusa in Athene’s temple, the goddess is enraged. Furious by the violation of her sacred space, Athene takes revenge–on the young woman. Punished for Poseidon’s actions, Medusa is forever transformed… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Infidelity
  • Murder

Slaying the Vampire Conqueror by Carissa Broadbent

She was commanded to kill him with a single strike to the heart. She didn’t expect her own to betray her. Sylina has sacrificed everything for her goddess–her soul, her freedom, her eyes. Life in service to the Arachessen, a cult of the Goddess of Fate, has turned Sylina from orphaned street-rat to disciplined killer, determined to overthrow Glaea’s tyrannical king. But when a brutal vampire conqueror arrives on their shores, Sylina faces an even deadlier adversary. She’s tasked with a crucial mission: infiltrate his army, earn his trust… and kill him… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction
  • Death of children mentioned
  • Consensual sensory deprivation

Practice Makes Perfect by Sarah Adams

Annie Walker is on a quest to find her perfect match-someone who nicely compliments her happy, quiet life running her flower shop in Rome, Kentucky. Unfortunately, she worries her goal might be too far out of reach when she overhears her date saying she is “so unbelievably boring.” Is it too late to become flirtatious and fun like the leading ladies in her favorite romance movies? Maybe she only needs a little practice…and Annie has the perfect person in mind to become her tutor: Will Griffin… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Child abuse discussed
  • Social anxiety (SAD)
  • Grandparent with Alzheimer’s Disease mentioned
  • Death of parents recounted

Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin’-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass” scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Parental abandonment
  • Infidelity*
  • Divorce recounted
  • Miscarriage recounted
  • Emesis
  • Sibling with end-stage renal failure and autoimmune disease
  • Anxiety & panic attacks, on-page
  • Depression

*Context: The female protagonist’s ex-husband cheated on her with her friends.

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center

Sadie Montgomery never saw what was coming . . . Literally! One minute she’s celebrating the biggest achievement of her life—placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition—the next, she’s lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a “probably temporary” condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. Imagine trying to read a book upside down and in another language. This is Sadie’s new reality with every face she sees… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sibling abuse recounted*
  • Cheating recounted
  • Prosopagnosia
  • Brain surgery & recovery
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted

*Context: Discussions of the toxic relationship and harassment from a stepsibling including being bullied and being kicked out of school, and being framed for cheating, stealing, and tormenting a classmate resulting in attempted suicide.