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Misfit in Love by SK Ali

Misfit in Love by S.K. Ali

Janna Yusuf is so excited for the weekend: her brother Muhammad’s getting married, and she’s reuniting with her mom, whom she’s missed the whole summer. And Nuah’s arriving for the weekend too. Sweet, constant Nuah.

The last time she saw him, Janna wasn’t ready to reciprocate his feelings for her. But things are different now. She’s finished high school, ready for college…and ready for Nuah.

It’s time for Janna’s (carefully planned) summer of love to begin—starting right at the wedding… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism

25 Days ‘Til Christmas by Poppy Alexander

25 Days ‘Til Christmas by Poppy Alexander

Kate Potter used to love Christmas. A few years ago, she would have been wrapping her presents in September and baking mince pies on Halloween, counting down the days and hours to Christmas. But that was before Kate’s husband left for the army and never came home. Now she can hardly stand December at all.

Kate can’t deny she’s lonely, yet she doesn’t think she’s ready for romance. She knows that her son, Jack, needs a Christmas to remember—just like Kate needs a miracle to help her finally move forward with her life. So she’s decided if there isn’t a miracle on its way, she’ll just have to make her own… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexual harassment
Suicide

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

As the United States celebrates the nation’s “triumph over race” with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status–much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & racial slurs
Slavery discussed
Drug abuse
Incarceration (theme)

Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander and James Patterson

Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander & James Patterson and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile

Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Readers will learn about Cassius’ family and neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky, and how, after a thief stole his bike, Cassius began training as an amateur boxer at age twelve. Before long, he won his first Golden Gloves bout and began his transformation into the unrivaled Muhammad Ali.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Hate crimes
Bullying
Mentions of the lynching of Emmett Till

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

“With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . .The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I’m delivering,” announces dread-locked, 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he’s got mad beats, too, that tell his family’s story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood.

Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story’s heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Death of a parent

Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist

After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally sOn a winter trip home to the island of Domarö, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse at Gåvasten. And Maja disappears. Leaving not even a footprint in the snow.

Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to Domarö to confront his despair. He slowly realises that Maja’s disappearance is not the first inexplicable tragedy to strike the islanders. Nor is everyone telling him all they know; even his own mother, it seems, is keeping secrets. And what is it about the sea? There’s something very bad happening on Domarö. Something that involves the sea itself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexual assault
Alcohol abuse
Blood depiction
Disappearance of a child

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi

After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But the ritual was more powerful than they could’ve imagined, reigniting the powers of not only the maji, but of nobles with magic ancestry, too.

Now, Zélie struggles to unite the maji in an Orïsha where the enemy is just as powerful as they are. But when the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, Zélie must fight to secure Amari’s right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy’s wrath. With civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Depression
Blood & gore depiction
Amputation
Death of a parent recounted
Death of a friend
Torture
Riots
War themes

Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd

Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd

This book meanders gloriously, rather as the river does itself: here are Toad of Toad Hall and Julius Caesar, Henry VIII and Shelley, Turner and Three Men in a Boat. The reader learns about the fishes that swam in the river and the boats that plied on its surface; about floods and tides; hauntings and suicides; sewers, miasmas and malaria; locks, weirs and embankments; bridges, docks and palaces.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Suicide

A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached

A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached

When Zeina was born, the civil war in Lebanon had been going on for six years, so it’s just a normal part of life for her and her parents and little brother. The city of Beirut is cut in two, separated by bricks and sandbags and threatened by snipers and shelling. East Beirut is for Christians, and West Beirut is for Muslims. When Zeina’s parents don’t return one afternoon from a visit to the other half of the city and the bombing grows ever closer, the neighbors in her apartment house create a world indoors for Zeina and her brother where it’s comfy and safe, where they can share cooking lessons and games and gossip. Together they try to make it through a dramatic day in the one place they hoped they would always be safe–home.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Explosions
War themes

He Said, She Said by Kwame Alexander

He Said, She Said by Kwame Alexander

He says: Omar “T-Diddy” Smalls has got it made—a full football ride to UMiami, hero-worship status at school, and pick of any girl at West Charleston High. She says: Football, shmootball. Here’s what Claudia Clarke cares about: Harvard, the poor, the disenfranchised, the hungry, the staggering teen pregnancy rate, investigative journalism . . . the list goes on. She does not have a minute to waste on Mr. T-Diddy Smalls and his harem of bimbos.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Lesbomisia & lesbomisic slurs
Coming out themes
Revenge pornography
Teen pregnancy
Abortion discussed
Gun violence