Category Archives: Entries

Last Gamer Standing by Katie Zhao

Last Gamer Standing by Katie Zhao

Twelve-year-old Reyna Cheng is the up-and-coming junior amateur Dayhold gamer, competing in a VR battle royale against AI monsters and human players alike. But despite Reyna’s rising popularity and skills, no one know who she is. Gaming is still a boy’s club and to protect herself against trolls, she games as the mysterious TheRuiNar.

When Reyna qualifies for the Dayhold Junior Tournament sponsored by her favourite team, she knows she’s got what it takes to win the championship title and the $10,000 prize. But when she’s blackmailed and threatened to be doxed, having her personal identity revealed, by an anonymous troll, Reyna will have to deal with a toxic gaming community, family complications, and the increasing pressure to win as the tournament gets underway.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Threats of doxxing

The Fallen Hero by Katie Zhao

The Fallen Hero by Katie Zhao

Faryn Liu thought she was the Heaven Breaker, a warrior destined to wield the all-powerful spear Fenghuang, command dragons, and defeat demons. But a conniving goddess was manipulating her all along…and her beloved younger brother, Alex, has betrayed her and taken over as the Heaven Breaker instead. Alex never forgave the people who treated him and Faryn like outcasts, and now he wants to wipe out both the demons and most of humanity.

Determined to prevent a war and bring Alex back to her side, Faryn and her half-dragon friend Ren join the New Order, a group of warriors based out of Manhattan’s Chinatown. She learns that one weapon… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Abandonment

The Dragon Warrior by Katie Zhao

The Dragon Warrior by Katie Zhao

As a member of the Jade Society, twelve-year-old Faryn Liu dreams of honouring her family and the gods by becoming a warrior. But the Society has shunned Faryn and her brother Alex ever since their father disappeared years ago, forcing them to train in secret.

Then, during an errand into San Francisco, Faryn stumbles into a battle with a demon–and helps defeat it. She just might be the fabled Heaven Breaker, a powerful warrior meant to work for the all-mighty deity, the Jade Emperor, by commanding an army of dragons to defeat the demons. That is, if she can prove her worth and find the island of the immortals before the Lunar New Year… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Blood depiction
  • Bullying

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top-ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends–Krystal, Akil, and Alexander–are the prime suspects, thanks to “The Proctor,” someone anonymously incriminating them via the school’s social media app.

They all used to be Jamie’s closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy’s full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Parental neglect
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self harm
  • Panic attack
  • Recreational drug use
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Blackmail
  • Fire

Finding Nevo by Nevo Zisin

Finding Nevo by Nevo Zisin

Meet Nevo: girl, boy, he, she, him, her, they, them, daughter, son, teacher, student, friend, gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender, homosexual, Jew, dyke, masculine, feminine, androgynous, queer. Nevo was not born in the wrong body. Nevo just wants everyone to catch up with all that Nevo is.

Personal, political and passionate, Finding Nevo is an autobiography about gender and everything that comes with it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia
  • Bimisia
  • Sexism
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Bullying

Red Clocks by Brian Jacques

Red Clocks by Brian Jacques

Abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers.

Ro, a single high-school teacher, is trying to have a baby on her own, while also writing a biography of Eivør, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer. Susan is a frustrated mother of two, trapped in a crumbling marriage. Mattie is the adopted daughter of doting parents and one of Ro’s best students, who finds herself pregnant with nowhere to turn. And Gin is the gifted, forest-dwelling homeopath, or “mender,” who brings all their fates together when she’s arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Pregnancy & teen pregnancy
  • Abortion

Mattimeo by Brian Jacques

Mattimeo by Brian Jacques

Slagar the Fox is determined to vanquish peaceable Redwall. Gathering his mercenary band of rats, stoats, and weasels, he advances upon the abbey with a cunning scheme-rather than making courageous battle plans, he will steal the children of Redwall from under their parents’ very noses. And his prize captive will be Mattimeo, the headstrong young son of Matthias, the fearless mouse warrior!

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Child abuse
  • Blood depiction
  • Kidnapping
  • Animal death

Mossflower by Brian Jacques

Mossflower by Brian Jacques

The clever and greedy wildcat Tsarmina becomes ruler of all Mossflower Woods and is determined to govern the peaceful woodlanders with an iron paw. The brave mouse Martin and quick-talking mouse thief Gonff meet in the depths of Kotir Castle’s dungeon. The two escape and resolve to end Tsarmina’s tyrannical rule. Joined by Kinny the mole, Martin and Gonff set off on a dangerous quest for Salamandastron, where they are convinced that their only hope, Boar the Fighter, still lives

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a sibling
  • Animal death

Redwall by Brian Jacques

Redwall by Brian Jacques

A quest to recover a legendary lost weapon by bumbling young apprentice monk, mouse Matthias.

Redwall Abbey, tranquil home to a community of peace-loving mice, is threatened by Cluny the Scourge savage bilge rat warlord and his battle-hardened horde. But the Redwall mice and their loyal woodland friends combine their courage and strength.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antiziganism
  • Animal death
  • Blood depiction

After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell

After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell

A distraught young woman boards a train at King’s Cross to return to her family in Scotland. Six hours later, she catches sight of something so terrible in a mirror at Waverley Station that she gets on the next train back to London.

AFTER YOU’D GONE follows Alice’s mental journey through her own past, after a traffic accident has left her in a coma. A love story that is also a story of absence, and of how our choices can reverberate through the generations, it slowly draws us closer to a dark secret at a family’s heart.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Abusive relationship
  • Rape
  • Suicide
  • Coma