The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

What if you aren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?

What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.

Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.

Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions… 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia
  • Anxiety
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
  • Eating disorder (anorexia)
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Suicide mentioned
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More Than This by Patrick Ness

More Than This by Patrick Ness

A boy drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments. He dies. Then he wakes, naked and bruised and thirsty, but alive. How can this be? And what is this strange deserted place?

As he struggles to understand what is happening, the boy dares to hope. Might this not be the end? Might there be more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide
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A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting – he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Nightmares
  • Parent with terminal cancer (theme)
  • Bullying
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Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness

Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness

As a world-ending war surges to life around them, Todd and Viola face monstrous decisions. The indigenous Spackle, thinking and acting as one, have mobilized to avenge their murdered people. Ruthless human leaders prepare to defend their factions at all costs, even as a convoy of new settlers approaches. And as the ceaseless Noise lays all thoughts bare, the projected will of the few threatens to overwhelm the desperate desire of the many. The consequences of each action, each word, are unspeakably vast: To follow a tyrant or a terrorist? To save the life of the one you love most or thousands of strangers? To believe in redemption or assume it is lost?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Suicide
  • Death of a friend
  • Explosion
  • Fire
  • Animal death
  • War themes
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The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

We were in the square, in the square where I’d run, holding her, carrying her, telling her to stay alive, stay alive till we got safe, till we got to Haven so I could save her – But there weren’t no safety, no safety at all, there was just him and his men…

Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss. Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor’s new order. But what secrets are hiding just outside of town? And where is Viola? Is she even still alive? And who are the mysterious Answer? And then, one day, the bombs begin to explode…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Torture
  • Explosions
  • Genocide
  • War themes
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The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him — something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn’t she killed by the germ like all the females on New World?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Stabbing
  • Animal death
  • War & genocide recounted
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The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering

Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl who harbors a simple, impossible wish. These three characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and, ultimately, into each other’s lives. What happens then? As Kate DiCamillo would say: Reader, it is your destiny to find out.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Physical child abuse
  • Physical injury resulting in hearing loss
  • Animal injury
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Naked in Death by JD Robb

Naked in Death by J.D. Robb

It is the year 2058, and technology now completely rules the world. But New York City Detective Eve Dallas knows that the irresistible impulses of the human heart are still ruled by just one thing-passion.

When a senator’s granddaughter is killed, the secret life of prostitution she’d been leading is revealed. The high-profile case takes Lieutenant Eve Dallas into the rarefied circles of Washington politics and society.

Further complicating matters is Eve’s growing attraction to Roarke, who is one of the wealthiest and most influential men on the planet, devilishly handsome… and the leading suspect in the investigation.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child sexual abuse recounted
  • Incest
  • Rape
  • Murder of sex workers
  • Gun violence
  • Blackmail
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On Dublin Street by Samantha Young

On Dublin Street by Samantha Young

Four years ago, Jocelyn left her tragic past behind in the States and started over in Scotland, burying her grief, ignoring her demons, and forging ahead without attachments. Her solitary life is working well—until she moves into a new apartment on Dublin Street where she meets a man who shakes her carefully guarded world to its core.

Braden Carmichael is used to getting what he wants, and he’s determined to get Jocelyn into his bed. Knowing how skittish she is about entering a relationship, Braden proposes an arrangement that will satisfy their intense attraction without any strings attached.

But after an intrigued Jocelyn accepts, she realizes that Braden won’t be satisfied with just mind-blowing passion. The stubborn Scotsman is intent on truly knowing her… down to the very soul. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment
  • Rape
  • Panic attack
  • Cancer
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of relatives in a car accident
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My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a grandmother
  • Death of a pet dog
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