King of Fools by Amanda Foody

King of Fools by Amanda Foody

King of Fools by Amanda Foody book cover

On the quest to find her missing mother, prim and proper Enne Salta became reluctant allies with Levi Glaisyer, the city’s most famous con man. Saving his life in the Shadow Game forced Enne to assume the identity of Seance, a mysterious underworld figure. Now, with the Chancellor of the Republic dead and bounties on both their heads, she and Levi must play a dangerous game of crime and politics…with the very fate of New Reynes at stake.

Thirsting for his freedom and the chance to build an empire, Levi enters an unlikely partnership with Vianca Augustine’s estranged son. Meanwhile, Enne remains trapped by the mafia donna’s binding oath, playing the roles of both darling lady and cunning street lord, unsure which side of herself reflects the truth.

As Enne and Levi walk a path of unimaginable wealth and opportunity, new relationships and deadly secrets could quickly lead them into ruin. And when unforeseen players enter the game, they must each make an impossible choice: To sacrifice everything they’ve earned in order to survive…

Or die as legends.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Drug abuse
  • Murder
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Daughter of the Burning City by Amanda Foody

Daughter of the Burning City by Amanda Foody

Daughter of the Burning City by Amanda Foody book cover

Sixteen-year-old Sorina has spent most of her life within the smoldering borders of the Gomorrah Festival. Yet even among the many unusual members of the traveling circus-city, Sorina stands apart as the only illusion-worker born in hundreds of years. This rare talent allows her to create illusions that others can see, feel and touch, with personalities all their own. Her creations are her family, and together they make up the cast of the Festival’s Freak Show.

But no matter how lifelike they may seem, her illusions are still just that—illusions, and not truly real. Or so she always believed…until one of them is murdered.

Desperate to protect her family, Sorina must track down the culprit and determine how they killed a person who doesn’t actually exist. Her search for answers leads her to the self-proclaimed gossip-worker Luca, and their investigation sends them through a haze of political turmoil and forbidden romance, and into the most sinister corners of the Festival. But as the killer continues murdering Sorina’s illusions one by one, she must unravel the horrifying truth before all of her loved ones disappear.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Chronic illness
  • Death of a family member
  • Murder
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The Boy Who Steals Houses by C. G. Drews

The Boy Who Steals Houses by C. G. Drews

The Boy Who Steals Houses by C. G. Drews book cover

Can two broken boys find their perfect home?

Sam is only fifteen but he and his autistic older brother, Avery, have been abandoned by every relative he’s ever known. Now Sam’s trying to build a new life for them. He survives by breaking into empty houses when their owners are away, until one day he’s caught out when a family returns home. To his amazement this large, chaotic family takes him under their wing – each teenager assuming Sam is a friend of another sibling. Sam finds himself inextricably caught up in their life, and falling for the beautiful Moxie.

But Sam has a secret, and his past is about to catch up with him.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism and ableist language
  • Child abuse
  • Physical and verbal abuse
  • Anxiety
  • Panic attacks
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Physical injuries
  • Serious injury to a loved ones
  • Physical assault
  • Bullying
  • Homelessness
  • Incarceration of a parent
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A Thousand Perfect Notes by C. G. Drews

A Thousand Perfect Notes by C. G. Drews

A Thousand Perfect Notes by C. G. Drews book cover

Beck hates his life. He hates his violent mother. He hates his home. Most of all, he hates the piano that his mother forces him to play hour after hour, day after day. He will never play as she did before illness ended her career and left her bitter and broken. But Beck is too scared to stand up to his mother, and tell her his true passion, which is composing his own music – because the least suggestion of rebellion on his part ends in violence.

When Beck meets August, a girl full of life, energy and laughter, love begins to awaken within him and he glimpses a way to escape his painful existence. But dare he reach for it?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Physical child abuse, central theme
  • Emotional and verbal child abuse, central theme
  • Neglect
  • Domestic violence
  • Self-harm ideation
  • Blood depiction
  • Physical injuries
  • Hospitalisation mentioned
  • Animal death mentioned
  • Bullying
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The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake

The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake

The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake book cover

The Larkin family isn’t just lucky—they persevere. At least that’s what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. When the Lyric sank off the coast of Maine, their great-great-great-grandmother didn’t drown like the rest of the passengers. No, Fidelia swam to shore, fell in love, and founded Lyric, Maine, the town Violet and Sam returned to every summer.

But wrecks seem to run in the family. Tall, funny, musical Violet can’t stop partying with the wrong people. And, one beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life.

Shipped back to Lyric while Sam is in treatment, Violet is haunted by her family’s missing piece – the lost shipwreck she and Sam dreamed of discovering when they were children. Desperate to make amends, Violet embarks on a wildly ambitious mission: locate the Lyric, lain hidden in a watery grave for over a century.

She finds a fellow wreck hunter in Liv Stone, an amateur local historian whose sparkling intelligence and guarded gray eyes make Violet ache in an exhilarating new way. Whether or not they find the Lyric, the journey Violet takes-and the bridges she builds along the way-may be the start of something like survival.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Disordered eating
  • Suicide attempt, side character
  • Alcohol abuse
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Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty book cover

Everyone has questions about death. In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers the most intriguing questions she’s ever received about what happens to our bodies when we die. In a brisk, informative, and morbidly funny style, Doughty explores everything from ancient Egyptian death rituals and the science of skeletons to flesh-eating insects and the proper depth at which to bury your pet if you want Fluffy to become a mummy. Now featuring an interview with a clinical expert on discussing these issues with young people—the source of some of our most revealing questions about death—Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? confronts our common fear of dying with candid, honest, and hilarious facts about what awaits the body we leave behind.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Suicide mentioned
  • Graphic dead bodies, central theme
  • Funeral-related preperation of bodies discussed in detail
  • Medical conditions discussed
  • Medical procedures discussed
  • Death, central theme
  • Murder mentioned
  • Torture mentioned
  • Death by drowning mentioned
  • Animal death
  • Graphic animal dead bodies
  • Death of a pet discussed
  • Animal testing and other animal cruelty mentioned
  • Grave desecration
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The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring

The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring

The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring book cover

At the very southern tip of South America looms an isolated finishing school. Legend has it that the land will curse those who settle there. But for Mavi—a bold Buenos Aires native fleeing the military regime that took her mother—it offers an escape to a new life as a young teacher to Argentina’s elite girls.

Mavi tries to embrace the strangeness of the imposing house—despite warnings not to roam at night, threats from an enigmatic young man, and rumors of mysterious Others. But one of Mavi’s ten students is missing, and when students and teachers alike begin to behave as if possessed, the forces haunting this unholy cliff will no longer be ignored.

One of these spirits holds a secret that could unravel Mavi’s existence. In order to survive she must solve a cosmic mystery—and then fight for her life.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Paedophilia
  • Child abuse
  • Miscarriage
  • Gore depiction
  • Cannibalism
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We Free the Stars by Hafsah Faizal

We Free the Stars by Hafsah Faizal

We Free the Stars by Hafsah Faizal book cover

The battle on Sharr is over. The dark forest has fallen. Altair may be captive, but Zafira, Nasir, and Kifah are bound for Sultan’s Keep, determined to finish the plan he set in motion: restoring the hearts of the Sisters of Old to the minarets of each caliphate, and finally returning magic to all of Arawiya. But they are low on resources and allies alike, and the kingdom teems with fear of the Lion of the Night’s return.

As the zumra plots to overthrow the kingdom’s darkest threat, Nasir fights to command the magic in his blood. He must learn to hone his power into a weapon, to wield not only against the Lion but against his father, trapped under the Lion’s control. Zafira battles a very different darkness festering in her through her bond with the Jawarat—a darkness that hums with voices, pushing her to the brink of her sanity and to the edge of a chaos she dare not unleash. In spite of the darkness enclosing ever faster, Nasir and Zafira find themselves falling into a love they can’t stand to lose…but time is running out to achieve their ends, and if order is to be restored, drastic sacrifices will have to be made.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Grooming
  • Coerced sexual assault*
  • Child abuse
  • Parental abuse
  • Starvation mentioned
  • Eye horror
  • Gore depiction
  • Murder
  • Imprisonment
  • Mind control
  • War themes
  • Chemical warfare

*Kissing under the disguise of someone else

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We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal book cover

Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the sultan. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways. Both Zafira and Nasir are legends in the kingdom of Arawiya–but neither wants to be. War is brewing, and the Arz sweeps closer with each passing day, engulfing the land in shadow. When Zafira embarks on a quest to uncover a lost artifact that can restore… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & misogyny
  • Child emotional and verbal abuse & neglect
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction including dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a cousin
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Imprisonment & captivity
  • Kidnapping & blackmail
  • War themes discussed
  • Animal death & hunting

The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw

The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw

The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw book cover

Where, two centuries ago, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery. Stones were tied to their ankles and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding the town. Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them under. Like many locals, seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot has accepted the fate of the town. But this year, on the eve of the sisters’ return, a boy named Bo Carter arrives; unaware of the danger he has just stumbled into. Mistrust and lies spread quickly through the salty, rain… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableist language
  • Misogyny & slut-shaming
  • Persecution for witchcraft
  • Dubious consent scenes & sexual assault (non-consensual kiss) (on-page)
  • Suicide & self-sacrifice (on-page, discussed)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Injury & gore depiction including dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a father & husband
  • Death of a fiancé
  • Murder & kidnapping
  • Drowning (multiple scenes, on-page & recounted)
  • Fire

Context : The protagonist lies to her love interest about her identity and they have sex (on-page).