Category Archives: Literary Fiction

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult 

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult

Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track. She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos—days before her thirtieth birthday. Right on time.

But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news: It’s all hands on deck at the hospital. He has to stay behind. You should still go, he assures her, since it would be a shame for all of their nonrefundable trip to go to waste. And so, reluctantly, she goes… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Dementia
  • Self-harm
  • Suicidal ideation
  • COVD-19
  • Hospitalisation

Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult 

Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult

Paige has only a few vivid memories of her mother, who left when she was five. Now, having left her father behind in Chicago for dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own. But her mother’s absence, and shameful memories of her past, makes her doubt both her maternal ability and her sense of self-worth.

Out of Paige’s struggle to find wholeness by searching for her mother and facing her own insecurities, Jodi Picoult crafts an absorbing novel peopled with richly drawn characters. Any mother or child cannot help but relate to the issues and emotions explored within this powerful and moving book.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment
  • Pregnancy

Mercy by Jodi Picoult 

Mercy by Jodi Picoult

Police chief of a small Massachusetts town, Cameron McDonald makes the toughest arrest of his life when his own cousin Jamie comes to him and confesses outright that he has killed his terminally ill wife out of mercy. A heated murder trial plunges the town into upheaval and drives a wedge into a contented marriage: Cameron, aiding the prosecution in their case against Jamie, finds himself suddenly at odds with his devoted wife, Allie. She is seduced by the idea of a man so in love with his wife that he’d grant all her wishes, even her wish to end her life. And when an inexplicable attraction leads to a shocking betrayal, Allie faces the hardest questions of the heart: when does love cross the line of moral obligation?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Infidelity
  • Cancer
  • Euthanasia of a terminally ill spouse

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult 

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult

To the outside world, they seem to have it all. Cassie Barrett, a renowned anthropologist, and Alex Rivers, one of Hollywood’s hottest actors, met on the set of a motion picture in Africa. They shared childhood tales, toasted the future, and declared their love in a fairy-tale wedding. But when they return to California, something alters the picture of their perfect marriage. A frightening pattern is taking shape—a cycle of hurt, denial, and promises, thinly veiled by glamour.

Torn between fear and something that resembles love, Cassie wrestles with questions she never dreamed she would face: How can she leave? Then again, how can she stay? 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic abuse & violence

Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult 

Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult

Jack buries his past, content to become the mysterious stranger who has appeared out of the blue. Addie, desperate for answers, must look into her heart — and into Jack’s lies and shadowy secrets — for evidence that will condemn or redeem the man she has come to love.

When Jack St. Bride arrives by chance in the sleepy New England town of Salem Falls, he decides to reinvent himself. Tall, blond, and handsome, Jack was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls’ prep school — until a student’s crush sparked a powder keg of accusation and robbed him of his reputation. Now, working for minimum wage washing dishes for Addie Peabody at the Do-Or-Diner, Jack buries his past, content to become the mysterious stranger who has appeared out of the blue… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia
  • Ableism (r slur)
  • Slut-shaming
  • Rape & attempted rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Self-harm

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

While on her daily walk with her dog in the nearby woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with stones. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.

Shaky even on her best days, she is also alone, and new to this area, having moved here from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and now deeply alarmed. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession, as she explores multiple theories about who Magda was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But is there either a more innocent explanation for all this, or a much more sinister one – one that strikes closer to home?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia
  • Antiziganism
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Animal cruelty
  • Death of a dog

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighbourhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors.

Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape of a child
  • Anxiety
  • Eating disorder
  • Parent with alcoholism

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Depression
  • Eating disorders mentioned
  • Suicide, off-page
  • Self harm
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Cancer
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Events of 9/11 recounted

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind–and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa’s orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil–and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expects. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic abuse recounted
  • Self harm
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Endometriosis

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?

Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Pregnancy & childbirth
  • Death of a newborn