Category Archives: Entries

Golden Boys by Phil Stamper

Gabriel, Reese, Sal, and Heath are best friends, bonded in their small rural town by their queerness, their good grades, and their big dreams. They are about to embark on the summer before senior year of high school, where each is going on a new, big adventure. Reese is attending a design school in Paris. Gabriel is going to Boston to volunteer with a environmental nonprofit. Sal is interning on Capitol Hill for a U.S. Senator. And Heath is stuck going to Daytona Beach to help out at his aunt’s beachfront arcade… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Divorce
  • Anxiety
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Poverty

Anna K: A Love Story by Jenny Lee

Meet Anna K. At seventeen, she is at the top of Manhattan and Greenwich society (even if she prefers the company of her horses and Newfoundland dogs); she has the perfect (if perfectly boring) boyfriend, Alexander W.; and she has always made her Korean-American father proud (even if he can be a little controlling). Meanwhile, Anna’s brother, Steven, and his girlfriend, Lolly, are trying to weather a sexting scandal; Lolly’s little sister, Kimmie, is struggling to recalibrate to normal life after an injury derails her ice dancing career; and Steven’s best friend, Dustin, is madly (and one-sidedly) in love with Kimmie… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Fatmisia
  • Homomisia
  • Slut shaming
  • Cheating
  • Revenge porn
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self harm mentioned
  • Dieting & weight discussed
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Overdose
  • Miscarriage & abortion mentioned
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Fatal train accident
  • Car accident
  • Animal death (horse & dog)

Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body by Rebekah Taussig

Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.

Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & internalised ableism
  • Workplace discrimination
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Pregnancy & fertility discussed
  • Parent with chronic kidney disease
  • Paralysis
  • Childhood cancer

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen

Hart is a marshal, tasked with patrolling the strange and magical wilds of Tanria. It’s an unforgiving job, and Hart’s got nothing but time to ponder his loneliness.

Mercy never has a moment to herself. She’s been single-handedly keeping Birdsall & Son Undertakers afloat in defiance of sullen jerks like Hart, who seems to have a gift for showing up right when her patience is thinnest… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical injuries including gunshot wounds
  • Emesis
  • Heart attack recounted*
  • Dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Death of a mother from cancer recounted
  • Death of a grandparent from a stroke
  • Attempted murder
  • Animal death recounted & discussed (dog)

*Context: Female protagonist’s father had a heart attack within the past year.

Teen Killers Club by Lily Sparks

Seventeen-year-old Signal Deere has raised eyebrows for years as an unhappy Goth misfit from the trailer park. When she’s convicted of her best friend Rose’s brutal murder, she’s designated a Class A–the most dangerous and manipulative criminal profile. To avoid prison, Signal signs on for a secret program for 18-and-under Class As and is whisked off to an abandoned sleep-away camp, where she and seven bunkmates will train as assassins. Yet even in the Teen Killers Club, Signal doesn’t fit in. She’s squeamish around blood. She’s kind and empathetic… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia & grooming
  • Dead body
  • Decapitation
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Needles
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder
  • Death of a friend
  • Cult
  • Incarceration

The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood

What if you knew how and when you will die?

Csorwe does. She will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice. On the day of her foretold death, however, a powerful mage offers her a new fate.

Csorwe leaves her home, her destiny, and her god to become the wizard’s loyal sword-hand – stealing, spying, and killing to help him reclaim his seat of power in the homeland from which he was exiled… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Self mutilation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injuries
  • Torture
  • Animal sacrifice

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Chandler Cohen has never felt more like the ghost in “ghostwriter” until she attends a signing for a book she wrote—and the author doesn’t even recognize her. The evening turns more promising when she meets a charming man at the bar and immediately connects with him. But when all their sexual tension culminates in a spectacularly awkward hookup, she decides this is one night better off forgotten… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism mentioned
  • Emotional child abuse recounted
  • Anxiety
  • Panic attack, on-page
  • Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Abortion recounted
  • Bullying recounted

The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu

Born with a gift for music, Nannerl Mozart has just one wish: to be remembered forever. But even as she delights audiences with her masterful playing, she has little hope she’ll ever become the acclaimed composer she longs to be. She is a young woman in eighteenth-century Europe, and that means composing is forbidden to her. She will perform only until she reaches a marriageable age—her tyrannical father has made that much clear… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny (central theme)
  • Child abuse
  • Fire
  • Murder
  • Smallpox

The Electric Heir by Victoria Lee

In the sequel to The Fever King , Noam Álvaro seeks to end tyranny before he becomes a tyrant himself. Six months after Noam Álvaro helped overthrow the despotic government of Carolinia, the Atlantians have gained citizenship, and Lehrer is chancellor. But despite Lehrer’s image as a progressive humanitarian leader, Noam has finally remembered the truth that Lehrer forced him to forget—that Lehrer is responsible for the deadly magic infection that ravaged Carolinia. Now that Noam remembers the full extent of Lehrer’s crimes, he’s determined to use his influence with Lehrer to bring him down for good… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Internalised victim blaming
  • Slut shaming
  • Statutory rape
  • Sexual assault & attempted rape
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Child abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Medical experimentation
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Torture

The Fever King by Victoria Lee

In the former United States, sixteen-year-old Noam Álvaro wakes up in a hospital bed, the sole survivor of the viral magic that killed his family and made him a technopath. His ability to control technology attracts the attention of the minister of defense and thrusts him into the magical elite of the nation of Carolinia.

The son of undocumented immigrants, Noam has spent his life fighting for the rights of refugees fleeing magical outbreaks—refugees Carolinia routinely deports with vicious efficiency. Sensing a way to make change, Noam accepts the minister’s offer… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut shaming
  • Child sexual abuse
  • Statutory rape
  • Physical abuse
  • Suicide, off-page
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent