The Other Side of Tomorrow by Micalea Smeltzer

Life can change in an instant. For Willa Hansen, this statement couldn’t be truer. One minute she was a seemingly normal fourteen-year-old, and the next her life was turned upside down with only a few words. Three years later, she’s receiving a kidney transplant and can start living again, only now she’s not sure she knows how. Life can end in a moment…Jasper Werth knows this all too well, seeing as a drunk driver killed his little brother. He’s always been a carefree guy, never taking life too seriously, but losing his brother is a major blow, and he finds himself lost until Willa walks into his life, Life can mend the most broken parts… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Chronic kidney illness and mentions of kidney surgery
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother in a drunk-driving accident recounted

Nice Guys Don’t Win by Micalea Smeltzer

When I agreed to be his roommate, I had no way of knowing that Cole Anderson was one of my father’s star players. Having transferred to Aldridge University for my junior year, I wasn’t familiar with anyone on campus.If there’s one rule I’ve always been supposed to follow it’s don’t date a basketball player. Cole is different, though, and I don’t want to stay away. But when he finds out I’m the coach’s daughter I might not have any say in the matter.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a mother from cancer

Real Players Never Lose by Micalea Smeltzer

Dandelion Meadows is cursed. Horrible name. Horrible luck. At eighteen she should be headed off to college, all smiles and naivety. Instead, a victim of a school shooting, she’s starting her senior year in a new city and living with her brother. Nightmares of that terrible day haunt her, affecting her daily life and the relationships around her. Forced to meet with the school counsellor, Dani finds him chipping away at the walls she’s built around herself, and even her heart. Lachlan Taylor doesn’t know what to make at first of the broken student he’s tasked with helping. She’s survived a trauma he’s not sure he can save her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Body-shaming
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Physical assault

Sweet Dandelion by Micalea Smeltzer

Dandelion Meadows is cursed. Horrible name. Horrible luck. At eighteen she should be headed off to college, all smiles and naivety. Instead, a victim of a school shooting, she’s starting her senior year in a new city and living with her brother. Nightmares of that terrible day haunt her, affecting her daily life and the relationships around her. Forced to meet with the school counsellor, Dani finds him chipping away at the walls she’s built around herself, and even her heart. Lachlan Taylor doesn’t know what to make at first of the broken student he’s tasked with helping. She’s survived a trauma he’s not sure he can save her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Adult-minor relationship between a patient and counsellor
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from a school shooting
  • Death of a mother

Bad Boys Break Hearts by Micalea Smeltzer

Mascen Wade, star pitcher of the Aldridge University baseball team, is a lot of things. Rich. Hotter than sin. The campus’s reigning bad boy. We knew each other once upon a time, but even if I’m named after a princess, it doesn’t mean my life is a fairytale. My plan is to keep my head down, get my degree, and leave this town. But the moment Mascen Wade recognizes me all my carefully laid plans come crumbling down. He’s decided he wants to make my life a living hell. But I’m not so easy to push around and won’t put up with his bully playground antics. Too bad for me I’ve never been able to resist him.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide

The Confidence of Wildflowers by Micalea Smeltzer

My future is a big ‘what if’ at the moment and I’m fine with that. For the most part. When Thayer Holmes moves in next door, the grumpy landscaper both fascinates and amuses me. When he asks me to nanny his kid, it’s a great way to make some extra money. It’s impossible not to fall in love with Thayer and his adorable son. There’s a big problem though. I’m eighteen. He’s thirty-one. Falling for someone almost fifteen years older than me wasn’t part of my plans, but sometimes things happen when you least expect them.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault of a child mentioned
  • Cheating
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Anxiety, panic attacks & night terrors
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent from cancer recounted
  • Death of a child

The Resurrection of Wildflowers by Micalea Smeltzer

It took me a while to learn that sometimes no matter how much, or how hard you love someone, or something, you have to let them go. You can’t save a sinking ship. Sometimes, you have someone else you have to be strong for, who needs you more. You make a choice. A devastating one. And you hope, maybe one day, they’ll come back to you.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Pregnancy & childbirth
  • Death of a mother from cancer
  • Car accident

The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson

1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his par­ents… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Sexual assault of a child
  • Miscarriage & stillbirth

Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. But when her birthday finally comes around, instead of the idyllic life she was hoping for with her true love, she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day. Forced to become the mistress of the brutal man who owns the jail, Pheby faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart in this powerful, thrilling story of one slave’s fight for freedom.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & colourism
  • Slavery
  • Sexual assault
  • Starvation
  • Death of a parent
  • Physical assault
  • Drowning of a baby