Category Archives: Contemporary

Cross the Line by Simone Soltani

Formula 1 driver Dev Anderson’s career is on the line. After a social media disaster leaves him with an angry team and sponsors threatening to jump ship, he needs someone to help save his image. At a party in Monaco, he bumps into the woman who can fix it all. There’s just one problem: she’s his best friend’s little sister. And, okay, maybe there’s another problem—he kissed her last year and hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Recent college grad Willow Williams needs a job. She may have a talent for seeing the bright side of any bad situation, but it’s hard to stay positive when she’s struggling to get hired. So when Dev… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Chronic joint illness & pain (protagonist)

Gay the Pray Away by Natalie Naudus

Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn’t know it yet. When she finds a queer book at the library and smuggles it home, her conservative Christian home-schooling world begins to crack. And when the cutest girl she’s ever met shows up to Bible class, she starts to question everything. Riley is so confident and kind, and she and Valerie bond quickly over existing as multiracial teens in a very white Christian community. As Valerie explores her feelings for Riley, she begins to see that the world she knows is a carefully crafted narrative. Publicly, the girls are close friends… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Religious trauma & homophobia (theme)
  • Physical child abuse mentioned
  • Self-harm (self-flagellation)
  • Emesis

Triple Sec by T.J. Alexander

As a bartender at Terror & Virtue, a swanky New York City cocktail lounge known for its romantic atmosphere and Insta-worthy drinks, Mel has witnessed plenty of disastrous dates. That, coupled with her own romantic life being in shambles, has Mel convinced love doesn’t exist. Everything changes when Bebe walks into the bar. She’s beautiful, funny, knows her whiskeys—and is happily married to her partner, Kade. Mel’s resigned to forget the whole thing, but Bebe makes her a unique since she and Kade have an open marriage, she’s interested in taking Mel on a date. What… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Transphobia
  • Divorce recounted (protagonist)
  • Alcohol consumption

Four Weekends and a Funeral by Ellie Palmer

When thirty-year-old post-double-mastectomy BRCA 1 carrier and reluctant thrill-seeker Alison Mullally arrives at her ex-boyfriend Sam’s funeral to find that no one knows he dumped her, she agrees to play the grieving girlfriend for the sake of the family and pack up Sam’s apartment with his prickly best friend, Adam Berg. After all, it’ll only take four weekends. But Adam doesn’t want Alison anywhere near him. Forced to spend long hours with the grump, and his monosyllabic demeanor, Alison decides she must put her people-pleasing abilities to the test. She will make him like her. And after awkward family affairs and packing up dilemmas… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cancer*
  • Surgery (double mastectomy)

Context : The protagonist has a mastectomy to mitigate the risk of breast cancer as she has the BRCA1 gene mutation.

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

After Zoe Baxter loses her baby, the only way she can find of coping is to try again. But her husband Max disagrees – more than that, he wants a divorce. When they separate, there is no mention of the unborn children they created together, still waiting at the clinic. The Zoe falls in love again, out of the blue, and finds herself with an unexpected second chance to have a family. But Max has found a new life too – one with no place in it for people like Zoe. And he will stand up in court to say that her new choice of partner makes her an unfit mother.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia (theme)
  • Divorce
  • Panic attack
  • Secondary character with dementia
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm mentioned
  • Stillbirth, miscarriage & abortion
  • Infertility

Himawari House by Harmony Becker

When Nao returns to Tokyo to reconnect with her Japanese heritage, she books a yearlong stay at the Himawari sharehouse. There she meets Hyejung and Tina, two other girls who came to Japan to freely forge their own paths. The trio live together, share meals, and even attend the same Japanese-language school, which results in them becoming fast friends. But will they be able to hold one another up as life tests them with new loves, old heartbreaks, and the everyday challenges of being fish out of water?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Parental abandonment & estrangement
  • Infidelity
  • Anxiety
  • Alcohol consumption

Wrong Way Home by K.A. Merikan

Colin. Rule-follower. Future doctor. Witness to murder. Captive. Taron. Survivalist. Mute. Murderer. Captor. Like every other weekend, Colin is on his way home from university, but he’s taunted by the notion that he never takes risks in life and always follows the beaten path. On impulse, he decides to take a different route. Just this one time. What he doesn’t realize is that it’s the last time he has a choice. He ends up taking a detour into the darkest pit of horror, abducted by a silent, imposing man with a blood-stained axe. But what seems like his worst nightmare might just prove to be a path to the kind of freedom Colin never… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Mutism (protagonist)
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Animal death (cat)

We Met in Death by K.A. Merikan

After years of working for a loan shark, Robert is done with blood and violence. All he has to show for it is a bag of money and a lifetime of regrets. There’s no other way out of his line of work than in a body bag. So Robert decides to die. But on the night he chooses to seal his own fate, destiny offers him a chance at redemption. When Robert saves a handsome young escort from a terrible death, he has no idea he is setting in motion much more than one last attempt at proving that inside the hardened shell, he is a decent human being. Charming, quick-witted, and full of… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Torture

Homicidal Instinct by K.A. Merikan

All Seth wants is to live free with the man he loves. But escaping death at the hands of the mafia is just the beginning of an uphill struggle. When Domenico wakes up from his impromptu surgery and doesn’t even remember Seth’s name, Seth’s world falls apart. Suddenly it’s him who has to plan an escape from New York City and navigate their way to Mexico. All that without even knowing if the man of his life will ever love him again. Domenico doesn’t know who to trust and what to believe. The man who introduces himself as his brother seems to hide dark secrets behind… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & misogyny
  • Rape mentioned
  • Child sexual abuse & grooming mentioned
  • Torture
  • Animal death (pig, chicken)

He Is Mine by K.A. Merikan

A wedding should be a joyful affair, but it is far from that for Seth Villani. Thrust into an arranged marriage, back under the same roof with serpents and wolves who are his family, Seth has to watch his back if he is to survive until the despised event. Though with his love affair with Domenico Acerbi slipping out of his grasp, and his father forcing blood on his hands, sometimes Seth wishes the dark waves of the sea nearby could swallow him whole. Coming back home to Italy is full of bitterness and regret for Domenico. He knows he will have to see Seth, the first man who’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Rape & sexual assault of a teenager
  • Torture mentioned