Category Archives: Contemporary

Heart the Lover by Lily King

Our narrator understands good love stories—their secrets and subtext, their highs and their free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules. In the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off-campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Unplanned pregnancy & adoption
  • Cancer (brain tumour)

The Survival Kit by Donna Freitas

When Rose’s mom dies, she leaves behind a brown paper bag labeled Rose’s Survival Kit. Inside the bag, Rose finds an iPod, with a to-be-determined playlist; a picture of peonies, for growing; a crystal heart, for loving; a paper star, for making a wish; and a paper kite, for letting go. As Rose ponders the meaning of each item, she finds herself returning again and again to an unexpected source of comfort. Will is her family’s gardener, the school hockey star, and the only person who really understands what she’s going through. Can loss lead to love?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a mother from cancer

The Irish Goodbye by Heather Aimee O’Neill

It’s been years since the three Ryan sisters were all home together at their family’s beloved house on the eastern shore of Long Island. Two decades ago, their lives were upended by an accident on their brother Topher’s boat, a friend’s brother was killed, the lawsuit nearly bankrupted their parents, and Topher spiraled into a depression, eventually taking his life. Now the Ryan women are back for Thanksgiving, eager to reconnect, but each carrying a heavy secret. The eldest, Cait, still holding guilt for the role no one knows she played in the boat accident, rekindles a flame with her high school crush, Topher’s best friend… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother from suicide recounted

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end. There is also the matter of the family curse: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace…” which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Dementia
  • Late-term miscarriage

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent–which has more than doubled–and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed. One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Child abuse & neglect and mentions of the foster care system
  • Statutory rape & sexual assault
  • Suicide & self-harm
  • Death of a child from drowning recounted
  • Police brutality
  • Incarceration of a parent

The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck. The town thinks the Girls have lost their way… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Adult-minor relationships discussed
  • Familial estrangement due to teen pregnancy
  • Racism
  • Pregnancy & childbirth (theme, on-page), including discussion of the stigma around teen pregnancy & parenthood
  • Abortion discussed

Context: One protagonist became pregnant and gave birth to her first daughter at age 16 when her boyfriend was 22. The other protagonists were sixteen & seventeen when they gave birth.

The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan

Cate Kay knows how to craft a story. As the creator of a bestselling book trilogy that struck box office gold as a film series, she’s one of the most successful authors of her generation. The thing is, Cate Kay doesn’t really exist. She’s never attended author events or granted any interviews. Her real identity had been a closely guarded secret, until now. As a young adult, she and her best friend Amanda dreamed of escaping their difficult homes and moving to California to become movie stars. But the day before their grand adventure, a tragedy shattered their dreams and Cate has been on the run ever since, taking on different names and.… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical & verbal child abuse
  • Child abandonment & neglect
  • Infidelity
  • Alcoholism
  • Grief & loss depiction

We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall, and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a mother mentioned
  • Bullying mentioned

A Duke Worth Falling For by Sarah MacLean

Her career in tatters, celebrity photographer Lilah Rose needs somewhere to regroup and start fresh, outside of the spotlight. There’s nowhere better to hide than the English countryside, complete with fluffy sheep, rolling hills… and Max, the stern, sexy farmer who tends to them. But the lazy days and lush nights with Max aren’t as far from the spotlight as Lilah thinks. He isn’t simply a farmer—he’s also a duke: young, handsome and powerful… and too aware of how a title can dazzle, making the man inside invisible. What’s the harm in playing the farmer for a while? After all, Lilah isn’t staying… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce recounted

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean

Alice isn’t like the other Storm siblings. While the rest stayed to battle for their parents’ approval, attention, and untold billions, she left, building her own life beyond the family’s name and influence. Nothing could induce her to come back, except the shocking death of her larger-than-life father. Now back on the family’s private island off the Rhode Island coast, she plans to keep her head down, pay the last of her respects, and leave the minute the funeral is over. Unfortunately, her father had other plans. The eccentric, manipulative patriarch left his widow and their grown children a final challenge–an inheritance game desi… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a father