Don’t Look Back by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Don’t Look Back by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Don't Look Back by Jennifer L. Armentrout book cover

Samantha is a stranger in her own life. Until the night she disappeared with her best friend, Cassie, everyone said Sam had it all – popularity, wealth, and a dream boyfriend.

Sam has resurfaced, but she has no recollection of who she was or what happened to her that night. As she tries to piece together her life from before, she realizes it’s one she no longer wants any part of. The old Sam took “mean girl” to a whole new level, and it’s clear she and Cassie were more like best enemies. Sam is pretty sure that losing her memories is like winning the lottery. She’s getting a second chance at being a better daughter, sister, and friend, and she’s falling hard for Carson Ortiz, a boy who has always looked out for her-even if the old Sam treated him like trash.

But Cassie is still missing, and the truth about what happened to her that night isn’t just buried deep inside of Sam’s memory – someone else knows, someone who wants to make sure Sam stays quiet. All Sam wants is the truth, and if she can unlock her clouded memories of that fateful night, she can finally move on. But what if not remembering is the only thing keeping Sam alive?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia and body shaming, ableism, racism and homomisia
  • Amnesia and hallucinations
  • Death and loss
  • Disappearance of a loved one
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What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah

What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah

What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah book cover

A dazzlingly accomplished debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home.

In “Who Will Greet You at Home,” a National Magazine Award finalist for The New Yorker, A woman desperate for a child weaves one out of hair, with unsettling results. In “Wild,” a disastrous night out shifts a teenager and her Nigerian cousin onto uneasy common ground. In “The Future Looks Good,” three generations of women are haunted by the ghosts of war, while in “Light,” a father struggles to protect and empower the daughter he loves. And in the title story, in a world ravaged by flood and riven by class, experts have discovered how to “fix the equation of a person” – with rippling, unforeseen repercussions.

Evocative, playful, subversive, and incredibly human, What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky heralds the arrival of a prodigious talent with a remarkable career ahead of her.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic abuse and child abuse
  • Trauma
  • Violence
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The Traveling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa

The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa

The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa book cover

Nana the cat is on a road trip. He is not sure where he’s going or why, but it means that he gets to sit in the front seat of a silver van with his beloved owner, Satoru. Side by side, they cruise around Japan through the changing seasons, visiting Satoru’s old friends. He meets Yoshimine, the brusque and unsentimental farmer for whom cats are just ratters; Sugi and Chikako, the warm-hearted couple who run a pet-friendly B&B; and Kosuke, the mournful husband whose cat-loving wife has just left him. There’s even a very special dog who forces Nana to reassess his disdain for the canine species.

But what is the purpose of this road trip? And why is everyone so interested in Nana? Nana does not know and Satoru won’t say. But when Nana finally works it out, his small heart will break…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Miscarriage
  • Death of a parent
  • Car accident
  • Animal injury
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Stranger by Zoe Archer

Stranger by Zoe Archer

Stranger by Zoe Archer book cover

Looking For Trouble
Gemma Murphy has a nose for a story—even if the boys in Chicago’s newsrooms would rather focus on her chest. So when she runs into a handsome man of mystery discussing how to save the world from fancy-pants Brit conspirators, she’s sensing a scoop. Especially when he mentions there’s magic involved. Of course, getting him on the record would be easier if he hadn’t caught her eavesdropping.

Lighting His Fuse
Catullus Graves knows what it’s like to be shut out: his ancestors were slaves. And he’s a genius inventor with appropriately eccentric habits, so even people who love him find him a little odd. But after meeting a certain redheaded scribbler, he’s thinking of other types of science. Inconvenient, given that he needs to focus on preventing the end of the world as we know it. But with Gemma’s insatiable curiosity sparking Catullus’ inventive impulses, they might set off something explosive anyway.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism and misogyny
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Swipe Right by Mia Archer

Swipe Right by Mia Archer

Swipe Right by Mia Archer book cover

Eve played it safe. Keep quiet. Keep your head down. Graduate top of the class. That was the plan. Now if only she’d stuck with that plan.

Because the plan didn’t involve signing up for a hot new app for LGBT teens. It didn’t involve discovering her former best friend on that app. It certainly didn’t involve falling in love before she got to college where it was safer to come out!

Lily was popular. Lily was high school royalty. Lily had it all, and she hated her life.

More specifically she hated Lisa and the crowd of mean girls she called friends. Sure she was with the popular crowd, but it came at a price. Like being forced to play along when Lisa forced her to join some new gay dating app so they could find and out anyone using it.

Only what started as a prank becomes a whole lot more as Lily realizes there are more important things than being popular. Even if she is risking the only life she knows for feelings that are strange, new, and more than a little scary!

Two girls from different worlds. Two girls afraid of what they’re feeling. Two girls who will have to risk it all for a chance at love!

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist slurs, homomisia and forced outing
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Mallee Boys by Charlie Archbold

Mallee Boys by Charlie Archbold

Mallee Boys by Charlie Archbold book cover

‘Sometimes I feel like I’m neither one thing nor another. I live in the Mallee but I don’t like the desert. I live on a farm but I get hay fever and I’m scared of goats. I like school but my best mates don’t.’

Sandy Douglas knows that life at fifteen is hard, but it’s even harder when your mother died a year ago and nothing’s gone right since. Sandy’s brother Red, on the other hand, is eighteen now and working the farm. He’s amped up on rage and always looking for a fight. And then there’s their dad Tom. He does his best, but – really – he doesn’t have a clue.

As Sandy and Red deal with girls, dirt biking, footy and friendship, both boys have to work out who they want to be, without their mum around. The Mallee, where they live, may seem like the middle of nowhere, but it turns out this is going to be one hell of a year.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a parent (recounted)
  • Car accident
  • Animal injury
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Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (Beatrice Sparks)

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous book cover

It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth — and ultimately her life.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Suicidal ideation
  • Drug abuse
  • Drugging
  • Overdose
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Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews

Magic Burn by Ilona Andrews

Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews book cover

As a mercenary who cleans up after magic gone wrong, Kate Daniels has seen her share of occupational hazards. Normally, waves of paranormal energy ebb and flow across Atlanta like a tide. But once every seven years, a flare comes, a time when magic runs rampant. Now Kate’s going to have to deal with problems on a much bigger scale: a divine one.

When Kate sets out to retrieve a set of stolen maps for the Pack, Atlanta’s paramilitary clan of shapeshifters, she quickly realizes much more at stake. During a flare, gods and goddesses can manifest – and battle for power. The stolen maps are only the opening gambit in an epic tug-of-war between two gods hoping for rebirth. And if Kate can’t stop the cataclysmic showdown, the city may not survive… 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Blood and gore depiction and physical injury
  • Death and loss
  • Violence
  • War themes
  • Animal death
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Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews book cover

The world has suffered a magic apocalypse. We pushed the technological progress too far, and now magic returned with a vengeance. It comes in waves, without warning, and vanishes as suddenly as it appears. When magic is up, planes drop out of the sky, cars stall, electricity dies. When magic is down, guns work and spells fail.

Atlanta would be a nice place to live, if it weren’t for magic… One moment magic dominates, and cars stall and guns fail. The next, technology takes over and the defensive spells no longer protect your house from monsters. Here skyscrapers topple under onslaught of magic; werebears and werehyenas prowl through the ruined streets; and the Masters of the Dead, necromancers driven by their thirst of knowledge and wealth, pilot blood-crazed vampires with their minds. In this world lives Kate Daniels. Kate likes her sword a little too much and has a hard time controlling her mouth. The magic in her blood makes her a target, and she spent most of her life hiding in plain sight. But when Kate’s guardian is murdered, she must choose to do nothing and remain safe or to pursue his preternatural killer. Hiding is easy, but the right choice is rarely easy…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racist language
  • Rape, sexual assault and bestiality (mentioned)
  • Abuse
  • Blood and gore depiction
  • Murder
  • Stalking
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Half Moon Lake by Kirsten Alexander

Half Moon Lake by Kirsten Alexander

Half Moon Lake by Kirsten Alexander book cover

In 1913, on a summer’s day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns.

The boy’s mysterious disappearance from the family’s lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair. Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape, implied
  • Grief depiction
  • Kidnapping
  • Disappearance of a child
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