The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they’ve begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie.

What Cassie doesn’t realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides—especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Sarcastic, privileged Michael has a knack for reading emotions, which he uses to get inside Cassie’s head—and under her skin… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Stalking
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The Making of Dr. Truelove by Derrick Barnes

The Making of Dr. Truelove by Derrick Barnes

When St. Ivory Academy, a historically white wizarding Diego is a 16-year-old boy with a problem. When he breaks up with the girl he loves due to his insecurities, he is crushed. Will he ever win Roxy back? On the trusty advice of his best friend, Diego invents an alter ego known as Dr. Truelove, a sex and relationship e-columnist who knows how to treat the ladies.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Queermisia
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Physical assault
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The Black Mage by Daniel Barnes

The Black Mage by Daniel Barnes and illustrated by DJ Kirkland

When St. Ivory Academy, a historically white wizarding school, opens its doors to its first-ever black student, everyone believes that the wizarding community is finally taking its first crucial steps toward inclusivity. Or is it? When Tom Token, the beneficiary of the school’s “Magical Minority Initiative,” begins uncovering weird clues and receiving creepy texts on his phone, he and his friend, Lindsay, stumble into a conspiracy that dates all the way back to the American Civil War, and could cost Tom his very soul.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism (theme)
  • Klu Klux Klan, on-page
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Cults
  • War themes recounted
  • Bullying
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Goodbye, Perfect by Sara Barnard

Goodbye, Perfect by Sara Barnard

When I was wild, you were stead… Now you are wild – what am I?

Eden McKinley knows she can’t count on much in this world, but she can depend on Bonnie, her solid, steady, straight-A best friend. So it’s a complete shock when, five days before the start of their GCSEs, Bonnie runs away with a guy Eden knows nothing about. And it’s the last person she would ever have expected.

As the days pass, and her world begins to unravel, Eden is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her best friend and herself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Paedophilia & grooming
  • Child pornography mentioned
  • Kidnapping
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A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard

A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard

Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life – she’s been silent for so long that she feels completely invisible. But Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her. He’s deaf, and her knowledge of basic sign language means that she’s assigned to look after him. To Rhys, it doesn’t matter that Steffi doesn’t talk, and as they find ways to communicate, Steffi finds that she does have a voice, and that she’s falling in love with the one person who makes her feel brave enough to use it.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Child abuse
  • Selective Mutism
  • Anxiety & social anxiety
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Fierce Fragile Hearts by Sara Barnard

Two years after a downward spiral took her as low as you can possibly go, Suzanne is starting again. Again. She’s back in Brighton, the only place she felt she belonged, back with her best friends Caddy and Rosie. But they’re about to leave for university. When your friends have been your light in the darkness, what happens when you’re the one left behind?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Physical & emotional child abuse
  • Hospitalisation for attempted suicide mentioned
  • Depression

Beautiful Broken Things by Sara Barnard

Best friends Caddy and Rosie are inseparable. Their differences have brought them closer, but as she turns sixteen Caddy begins to wish she could be a bit more like Rosie – confident, funny and interesting. Then Suzanne comes into their lives: beautiful, damaged, exciting and mysterious, and things get a whole lot more complicated. As Suzanne’s past is revealed and her present begins to unravel, Caddy begins to see how much fun a little trouble can be. But the course of both friendship and recovery is rougher than either girl realises, and Caddy is about to learn that downward spirals have a momentum of their own. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Bipolar Disorder
  • Attempted suicide & self-harm
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of an infant

Babayaga by Toby Barlow

Babayaga by Toby Barlow

Will is a young American ad executive in Paris. Except his agency is a front for the CIA. It’s 1959 and the cold war is going strong. But Will doesn’t think he’s a warrior—he’s just a good-hearted Detroit ad guy who can’t seem to figure out Parisian girls.

Zoya is a beautiful young woman wandering “les boulevards, “sad-eyed, coming off a bad breakup. In fact, she impaled her ex on a spike. Zoya, it turns out, has been a beautiful young woman for hundreds of years; she and her far more traditionally witchy-looking companion, Elga, have been thriving unnoticed in the bloody froth of Europe’s wars… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Antiziganism (g slur)
  • Slut shaming
  • Rape
  • Cheating
  • Recreational drug use
  • Overdose
  • Murder
  • Infantcide
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Against the Rules by AR Barley

Against the Rules by A.R. Barley

Kelly O’Connor’s out of control. An RA at Halton University, he spends his off nights at a club, hoping to find what he’s looking for in rough sex with strangers. Until one night the play gets a little too rough. An isolated room, a dangerous situation… and an unexpected rescue.

Ian Rankin knows what Kelly wants—a true Dom, someone who will protect him instead of using him, someone who can take him to the edge without pushing him into unsafe territory. Ian knows just what Kelly needs, and he’s the only man who can give it to him.

There’s only one problem: Kelly is a student, and Ian is a teacher.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Teacher-student relationship
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Out of Bounds by AR Barley

Out of Bounds by A.R. Barley

Beaten and heartbroken, Jesse Cole is placed in a new dorm room after his last roommate attacked him. Just wanting to be left alone to heal in peace, he’s shocked when tall, dark and dangerous-looking Nick Moretti walks in.

Nick doesn’t have time to tiptoe around his new roommate—he’s too busy working in order to pay for school. But something about Jesse brings out his protective instincts. As their cautious friendship grows and becomes loaded with sexual tension, he wants to make Jesse comfortable… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child homelessness recounted
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