Category Archives: Fantasy & Paranormal

Camp Sylvania by Julie Murphy

Magnolia “Maggie” Hagen is determined to be in the spotlight…if she can just get over her stage fright. This summer, though, she has big plans to finally attend Camp Rising Star, the famous performing arts camp she’s been dying to go to for three whole summers. But on the last day of school, her parents break the news: Maggie isn’t going to Camp Rising Star. She’s being shipped off to fat camp—and not just any fat camp. She’s going to Camp Sylvania, run by world-famous wellness influencer Sylvia Sylvania, who is known for her soon-to-be patented Scarlet Diet…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Dieting & weight discussed
  • Blood depiction

A Taste Of Magic by J. Elle

Twelve-year-old Kyana has just discovered she’s a witch! This means classes every Saturday at Park Row Magic Academy, a learning center hidden in the back of the local beauty shop, and Kyana can’t wait to learn spells to help out at home. The only downside is having to keep her magic a secret from her BFF, Nae. But when the magic school loses funding, the students must pay huge fees at the fancy school across town or lose their magic! Determined to help, Kyana enters a baking contest with a big cash prize. Will she be able to keep up her grades while preparing for the competition and without revealing her magic? What about… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grandparent with Alzheimer’s Disease

Ashes of Gold by J. Elle

Rue has no memory of how she ended up locked in a basement prison without her magic or her allies. But she’s a girl from the East Row. And girls from the East Row don’t give up. Girls from the East Row pick themselves back up when they fall. Girls from the East Row break themselves out. But reuniting with her friends is only half the battle. When she finds them again, Rue makes a vow: she will find a way to return the magic that the Chancellor has stolen from her father’s people. Yet even on Yiyo Peak, Rue is a misfit—with half a foot back in Houston and half a heart… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Self-harm for ritual
  • Blood depiction
  • Poisoning
  • Torture
  • Battle scenes with physical assault & stabbings

Shadows of Perl by J. Elle

Quell Marionne’s explosive final Rite of Induction to House Marionne sent shockwaves through the magical world, unearthing long buried secrets and her own deadly power. But she paid a steep price: her family and her love. Fleeing Chateau Soleil for House of Perl, for once Quell is celebrated instead of shunned. She has finally found somewhere to belong. But secrets lurk in every House, and Quell’s quest to find her mom threatens to lead her deeper into the shadows. Assassin Jordan Wexton, second-in command of the Dragun brotherhood, must protect the source of… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide for magic (stabbing oneself in the heart during a ritual)
  • Amputation mentioned (secondary character)

Wings of Ebony by J. Elle

“Make a way out of no way” is just the way of life for Rue. But when her mother is shot dead on her doorstep, life for her and her younger sister changes forever. Rue’s taken from her neighborhood by the father she never knew, forced to leave her little sister behind, and whisked away to Ghizon—a hidden island of magic wielders. Rue is the only half-god, half-human there, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother’s death, Rue breaks Ghizon’s sacred Do… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Hate crime
  • Physical child abuse
  • Blood & gore depiction and emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Police brutality

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater

January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles. Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical ableism
  • Antisemitism recounted
  • Child abandonment
  • Attempted suicide

Bad in the Blood by Matteo L. Cerilli

In the city of Puck’s Port, where motorized vehicles fill the streets and new technological marvels abound, something rotten is lurking under the surface. A violent murder at the docks seems to point to a fey killer, igniting a powder keg of distrust between the city’s humans and its fey inhabitants — folks who wield wonderful but often uncontrollable magical power. Gristle Senan Maxim Junior finds himself caught in the middle. Forced into the reluctant role of private investigator, like his late father, he’s working to solve the mystery of this fiery murder… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Psychiatric hospisalition, including unethical electroshock therapy
  • Police brutality

Hit Me with Your Best Charm by Lillie Vale

Whimsical charm at the annual Fall Festival. The legend of the wishing well hidden in a forest bristling with secrets. And Nova Marwood’s missing hiker father. Every year without him, it gets easier to pretend Nova doesn’t believe in myth and magic. Easier to pretend she’s doing okay. Easier to pretend she doesn’t have a secret crush on the girl she fake-hates. Kiara Mistry is the luckiest girl in town and the thief of every crush Nova had her heart set on first. In theory, Nova should resent Kiara. But it’s getting harder to deny her feelings. When Nova lays an unintended… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Implied death by starvation

Bound by Firelight by Dana Swift

After a magical eruption devastates the kingdom of Belwar, royal heir Adraa is falsely accused of masterminding the destruction and forced to stand trial in front of her people, who see her as a monster. Adraa’s punishment? Imprisonment in the Dome, an impenetrable, magic-infused fortress filled with Belwar’s nastiest criminals—many of whom Adraa put there herself. And they want her to pay. Jatin, the royal heir to Naupure, has been Adraa’s betrothed, nemesis, and fellow masked vigilante… but now he’s just a boy waiting to ask her the biggest question… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Torture
  • False imprisonment (on-page, protagonist)
  • War themes & mass death

Touched by Corrine Jackson

Remy O’Malley heals people with touch—but every injury she cures becomes her own. Living in a household with an abusive stepfather, she has healed untold numbers of broken bones, burns, and bruises. And then one night her stepfather goes too far. Being sent to live with her estranged father offers a clean start and she is eager to take it. Enter Asher Blackwell. Once a Protector of Healers, Asher sacrificed his senses to become immortal. Only by killing a Healer can a Protector recover their human senses. Falling in love is against the rules between these two… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic child abuse & domestic violence (on-page, theme), including physical injuries sustained during beatings
  • Stalking & kidnapping