Category Archives: Contemporary

Finding Cassie Crazy by Jaclyn Moriarty

Cassie, Em and Lydia are best friends in Year 10 at Ashbury High. Ashbury students claim that all the kids at downtown Brookfield High are drug-dealers and psychopaths. Their English teacher, encouraging the Adventure of the Scary and the New and the Joy of the Envelope, starts a Pen-Pal Project. The hilarious letters between the girls and three unknown Brookfield boys lead to an escalation of the war between the schools, to secret romance, and to Cassie learning to face the dark fears that she hides from her friends.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny, slut-shaming, and fatphobia & body shaming
  • Death of a parent recounted

Kiss an Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Pretty, flighty Daisy Devreaux can either go to jail or marry the mystery man her father has chosen for her. Arranged marriages don’t happen in the modern world, so how did the irrepressible Daisy find herself in this fix? Alex Markov, as humourless as he is deadly handsome, has no intention of playing the loving bridegroom to a spoiled little feather-head with champagne tastes. He drags Daisy from her uptown life to a broken down traveling circus and sets out to tame her to his ways. But this man without a soul has met his match in a woman who’s nothing but heart. Before… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Arranged marriage
  • Child abuse (off-page)
  • Unplanned pregnancy (on-page)
  • Death of a parent (off-page)

The Last Love Note by Emma Grey

Kate is a bit of a mess. Two years after losing her young husband Cameron, she’s grieving, solo parenting, working like mad at her university fundraising job, always dropping the ball—and yet clinging to her sense of humor. Lurching from one comedic crisis to the next, she also navigates an overbearing mom and a Tinder-obsessed best friend who’s determined to matchmake Kate with her hot new neighbor. When an in-flight problem leaves Kate and her boss, Hugh, stranded for a weekend on the east coast of Australia, she finally has a chance, away from her son, to really… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Miscarriage
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a husband from early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Death of a partner from cancer mentioned
  • Car accident

A Love Letter to Whiskey by Kandi Steiner

This is not your typical love story. 
It’s a story of almosts and could-have-beens. Of friendship that teeters on the edge of something more. Of passion so intoxicating, it burns. Jamie and B are two hearts caught in the tangle of bad timing and unspoken words. Their connection defies labels—too deep for friendship, too tangled for love. Over a decade of moments, choices, and missed opportunities, they find themselves drawn together like a moth to a flame, even when the world—and their own mistakes—keep pulling them apart. Is it obsession? Destiny? Or just self-destruction with… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity (protagonists)
  • Rape (the protagonist is a product of assault)

The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett

At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already. But when PJ reads an obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic abuse
  • Grief-related alcoholism (protagonist)
  • Death of a daughter recounted
  • Death of parents mentioned
  • Murder-suicide

And Then There Was You by Sophie Cousens

Stuck in a Production Assistant job and living at home with her parents after a painful breakup, thirty-one-year-old Chloe Fairway isn’t where she wants to be in life. The last thing she needs is to face the people who once voted her “most likely to succeed” at her upcoming ten-year college reunion. And she definitely doesn’t want to see her former best friend, Sean Adler, who is now a hotshot film director living the life Chloe dreamed of. Desperate to make a splash—and to save face in front of the man who might be the one that got away—she turns to a mysterious dating… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abusive relationship recounted
  • Death of a parent recounted

Finding Her Edge by Jennifer Iacopelli

Adriana Russo is figure skating royalty, born to gold-medalist parents and an equally talented sister. Adriana’s dream? To conquer the Junior World Championships and uphold the family legacy. But when the family’s legendary skating rink faces financial ruin, everything she’s worked for is at risk. Training with her new partner, Brayden, sparks an let the world believe their on-ice chemistry isn’t only for show. The fake-dating gains traction, and Adriana realizes maybe she actually is falling for Brayden. But then her past crashes into her present and changes everything… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Hospitalisation for sports injury
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent discussed

Stranded by Nikki Shannon Smith

Eleven-year-old Ava Adams is looking for something different. The tall Manhattan buildings around her feel like walls closing in. And what if she doesn’t fit in with her city-loving friends or busybody family who think Black folks “don’t do nature?” But in a twist of fate, Ava is shocked to learn that her parents are actually allowing her to stay with her Aunt Raven in the Adirondacks for the summer. In her Auntie’s simple cabin, living off the land with nature’s beauty filling her senses, the woods feel more like home than Manhattan. As Summer comes to a close and Aunt… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical injuries & illness, including fever from an infected tick bite
  • Animal death & hunting with a bow & arrow mentioned (coyote, rabbit, dogs, on- & off-page)
  • Snowstorm & lightning strike, resulting in property damage

Taking Up Space by Alyson Gerber

Sarah loves basketball more than anything. Crushing it on the court makes her feel like she matters. And it’s the only thing that helps her ignore how much it hurts when her mom forgets to feed her. But lately Sarah can’t even play basketball right. She’s slower now and missing shots she should be able to make. Her body doesn’t feel like it’s her own anymore. She’s worried that changing herself back to how she used to be is the only way she can take control over what’s happening. When Sarah’s crush asks her to be partners in a cooking competition, she feels pulled in a million…. Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parent & protagonist with disordered eating, including calorie counting & restrictive eating, and discussions of weight loss (theme), including child neglect (specifically forgetting to feed her child)
  • Bullying

Phoenix by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Harper’s life just exploded. Her parents are getting a divorce. And she suspects her best friend, Cat, may have known the reason for it long before she did. Now Harper and her mom are starting over in a cramped house, in a new town, where everything feels unfamiliar, including the riding barn next door. There, Harper watches the kids she avoids at her new school take lessons. Harper’s never been around horses before. And no, she does not want to learn to ride. Then with no warning, a truck dumps a starved and neglected horse right in Harper’s yard. She has no idea… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Parental divorce discussed (theme)
  • Bullying
  • Animal death (chickens)