Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Everyone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather be. For four high-school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there.

Cara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother Conner spiraling toward suicide. For her, perfect means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. Kendra covets the perfect face and body—no matter what surgeries and drugs she needs to get there. To score his perfect home run—on the field and off—Sean will sacrifice more than he can ever win back. And Andre realizes that to follow his heart and achieve his perfect performance, he’ll be living a life his ancestors would never understand.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Outing
  • Physical child abuse
  • Cheating
  • Teacher-student relationship mentioned
  • Date rape
  • Revenge pornography
  • Suicide
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Hospitalisation
  • Knife violence & stabbing
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Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Nineteen years after Kristina Snow met the monster—crank—her children are reeling from the consequences of her decisions. Instead of one big, happy family, they are a desperate tangle of scattered lives united by anger, doubt, and fear.

A predisposition to addiction and a sense of emptiness where a mother’s love should be leads all three down the road of their mother’s notorious legacy. Sex, drugs, alcohol, abuse—there is more of Kristina in her children than they would ever like to believe. But when the thread that ties them together brings them face-to-face, they’ll discover something powerful in each other and in themselves—the trust, the hope, the courage to begin to break the cycle.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antiziganism (g slur)
    Misogyny
  • Slut shaming
  • Victim blaming
  • Physical & sexual child abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Sexual assault & attempted rape
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug abuse
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Pregnancy from rape
  • Stalking
  • Car accident
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Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching … for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don’t expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words “I love you” are said for all the wrong reasons.

Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story—a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, “Can I ever feel okay about myself?”

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Recreational drug abuse
  • Hospitalisation
  • Murder
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Identical by Ellen Hopkins

Identical by Ellen Hopkins

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family—on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that’s where their differences begin.

For Kaeleigh, she’s the misplaced focus of Daddy’s love, intended for a mother whose presence on the campaign trail means absence at home. All that Raeanne sees is Daddy playing a game of favorites—and she is losing. If she has to lose, she will do it on her own terms, so she chooses drugs, alcohol, and sex.

Secrets like the ones the twins are harboring are not meant to be kept—from each other or anyone else. Pretty soon it’s obvious that neither sister can handle it alone, and one sister must step up to save the other, but the question is—who?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Graphic paedophilia & child sexual abuse (on-page)
  • Incest
  • Rape & sexual assault (on-page)
  • Forced modelling for child pornorgraphy recounted
  • Cheating
  • Physical child abuse
  • Self-harm
  • Depression
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Recreational drug use & abuse
  • Blood depiction
  • Emesis
  • Car accident
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Burned by Ellen Hopkins

Burned by Ellen Hopkins

It all started with a dream. Nothing exceptional, just a typical fantasy about a boy, the kind of dream that most teen girls experience. But Pattyn Von Stratten is not like most teen girls. Raised in a religious—yet abusive—family, a simple dream may not be exactly a sin, but it could be the first step toward hell and eternal damnation.

This dream is a first step for Pattyn. But is it to hell or to a better life? For the first time Pattyn starts asking questions. Questions seemingly without answers—about God, a woman’s role, sex, love—mostly love. What is it? Where is it? Will she ever experience it? Is she deserving of it? … Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Disownment*
  • Physical child abuse
  • Domestic abuse & violence
  • Suicide
  • Alcoholism & alcohol abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Miscarriage
  • Car accident
  • Animal death & hunting

*Note: The protagonist’s half-brother is disowned by their father after he comes out as gay.

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Glass by Ellen Hopkins

Glass by Ellen Hopkins

Crank. Glass. Ice. Crystal. Whatever you call it, it’s all the same: a monster. And once it’s got hold of you, this monster will never let you go.

Kristina thinks she can control it. Now with a baby to care for, she’s determined to be the one deciding when and how much, the one calling the shots. But the monster is too strong, and before she knows it, Kristina is back in its grips. She needs the monster to keep going, to face the pressures of day-to-day life. She needs it to feel alive.

Once again the monster takes over Kristina’s life and she will do anything for it, including giving up the one person who gives her the unconditional love she craves — her baby.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Substance addiction (theme)
  • Teen pregnancy
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Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

Three lives, three different paths to the same destination: Aspen Springs, a psychiatric hospital for those who have attempted the ultimate act—suicide.

Vanessa is beautiful and smart, but her secrets keep her answering the call of the blade. Tony, after suffering a painful childhood, can only find peace through pills. And Conner, outwardly, has the perfect life. But dig a little deeper and find a boy who is in constant battle with his parents, his life, himself.

In one instant each of these young people decided enough was enough. Now they have a second chance, and just maybe, with each other’s help, they can find their way to a better life—but only if they’re strong and can fight the demons that brought them here in the first place.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Queermisia
  • Sexual, emotional & physical abuse
  • Teacher-student relationship mentioned
  • Depression
  • Bipolar Disorder
  • Substance addiction
  • Suicide & attempted suicide (theme)
  • Self-harm
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Psychiatric hospitalisation
  • Murder
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Crank by Ellen Hopkins

Crank by Ellen Hopkins

Crank chronicles the turbulent and often disturbing relationship between Kristina, and the “monster,” the highly addictive drug crystal meth, or “crank.” Kristina is introduced to the drug while visiting her largely absent and ne’er-do-well father. While under the influence of the monster, Kristina discovers her sexy alter-ego, Bree, Bree will do all the things good girl Kristina won’t, including attracting the attention of dangerous boys who can provide her with a steady flow of crank.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment & neglect
  • Rape & rape by coercion
  • Self-harm
  • Substance addiction (theme)
  • Recreational drug abuse
  • Blood depiction & blood-drinking
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Incarceration
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Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

There are six things very wrong with my life:
1. I have one of those under-the-skin spots that will never come to a head but lurk in a red way for the next two years. 2. It is on my nose. 3. I have a three-year-old sister who may have peed somewhere in my room.
4. In fourteen days the summer hols will be over and then it will be back to Stalag 14 and Oberfuhrer Frau Simpson and her bunch of sadistic teachers. 5. I am very ugly and need to go into an ugly home. 6. I went to a party dressed as a stuffed olive.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Slut-shaming
  • Homomisia
  • Adult-minor relationships*
  • Anxiety

*Context : Romanticised relationship between a 14-year-old girl and a thirty-year-old man.

The Searcher by Tana French

The Searcher by Tana French

Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a remote Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force, and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But then a local kid comes looking for his help. His brother has gone missing, and no one, least of all the police, seems to care. Cal wants nothing to do with any kind of investigation, but somehow he can’t make himself walk away. Soon Cal will discover that even in the most idyllic small town, secrets lie hidden, people… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic violence
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Recreational drug use
  • Gun violence
  • Animal death
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