Category Archives: Genres

Miss Quinces by Kat Fajardo

Sue just wants to spend the summer reading and making comics at sleepaway camp with her friends, but instead she gets stuck going to Honduras to visit relatives with her parents and two sisters. They live way out in the country, which means no texting, no cable, and no Internet! The trip takes a turn for the worse when Sue’s mother announces that they’ll be having a surprise quinceañera for Sue, which is the last thing she wants. She can’t imagine wearing a big, floofy, colorful dress! What is Sue going to do? And how will she survive all this “quality” time with her rambunctious family?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Panic attack (on-page)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a grandmother
  • Mentions of an uncle becoming paralysed after a horse-riding accident

Meet Me in the Middle by Alex Light

Eden had her best friend Katie—she didn’t need anyone else. But then there was Truman. Katie’s older brother, the artist. The recluse. The boy with the innocent smile and the dangerous eyes. Eden had never really known Truman—not until the night of Katie’s accident. That was the night they’d finally let each other into their orbits—only to have the sky come crashing down on them. With Katie in the hospital and Truman fleeing from his grief without a word, Eden is left alone to grapple with her own pain. But when Truman returns to the city, can Eden let him back into her life knowing that their first kiss is what tore their world apart?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Secondary character in a coma after a hit-and-run, drunk-driving car accident

Sparrow by Sarah Moon

Sparrow has always had a difficult time making friends. She would always rather have stayed home on the weekends with her mother, an affluent IT Executive at a Brooklyn bank, reading, or watching the birds, than playing with other kids. And that’s made school a lonely experience for her. It’s made LIFE a lonely experience. But when the one teacher who really understood her — Mrs. Wexler, the school librarian, a woman who let her eat her lunch in the library office rather than hide in a bathroom stall, a woman who shared her passion for novels and knew just the ones she’d love… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Protagonist with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD)
  • Psychiatric hospitalisation for attempted suicide by fall discussed
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a teacher in a car accident discussed

One for Sorrow by Helen Sarah Fields

Edinburgh is gripped by the greatest terror it has ever known: a lone bomber is targeting victims across the city, and no one is safe. In their jobs, DCI Ava Turner and DI Luc Callanach deal with death every day. But when it becomes clear that every bomb is a trap designed to kill them too, the possibility of facing it themselves starts to feel all too real. Five for silver, six for gold
With the body count rising daily and the bomber’s methods becoming ever more horrifying, Ava and Luc must race to find out who is behind the attacks – or pay the ultimate price…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape mentioned
  • Abusive relationship
  • Suicide
  • Murder
  • Explosion (bomb)
  • Stalking

The Couple Upstairs by Holly Wainwright

Five months after Mel told her husband to leave, a ghost moved in upstairs. A young man who reminds her, with eerie intensity, of a past lover, someone who changed Mel’s life and then vanished. When the man’s travelling girlfriend joins him, Mel’s obsession with the couple upstairs builds and the boundaries between the two homes begin to blur, with devastating consequences.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • COVID-19 pandemic (era)

The Fake Wife by Sharon J. Bolton

Olive Anderson is dining alone at a hotel when a glamourous stranger joins her table, pretending to be her wife. What starts as a thrilling game quickly turns into something dangerous. But as much as the fake wife has her secrets, Olive just might have more . . .

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a wife from cancer recounted
  • Disappearance of a wife
  • Severe snow storm (on-page)

Last One Out by Jane Harper

Carralon Ridge, a once vibrant village in rural New South Wales, has become a shell of itself, its houses and buildings bought up and left to rot by the mining company operating at its borders. A decade into its slow death, surrounded by industrial noise and swathed in thick layers of dust, the skeletal town is all but abandoned, with just a handful of residents clinging onto what remains. After years of scorning those who left the Ridge behind as it fell into ruin, Ro never imagined she’d become one of them. But everything changed when she lost her son. Five… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Disappearance/missing person (theme)
  • Kidnapping

The Doll Funeral by Kate Hamer

On Ruby’s thirteenth birthday, a wish she didn’t even know she had suddenly comes true: the couple who raised her aren’t her parents at all. Her real mother and father are out there somewhere, and Ruby becomes determined to find them. Venturing into the forest with nothing but a suitcase and the company of her only true friend–the imaginary Shadow Boy–Ruby discovers a group of siblings who live alone in the woods. The children take her in, and while they offer the closest Ruby’s ever had to a family, Ruby begins to suspect that they might need her even more than she… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Physical child abuse & neglect

You’ll Never Know by Caleb Stephens

Grant Wilson has never been happier. He has a wife he loves, a home in the country, and a brand-new baby on the way. But all of that shatters when two masked men abduct his wife, Avery, in broad daylight. The instructions Grant receives are bizarre: If he wants Avery back, he must solve a series of riddles that arrive one after another—and the clock is ticking. With every piece of the puzzle more outrageous and complex than the last, Grant knows he’s playing a dangerous game. But he’s determined to do whatever it takes to save Avery’s life … even if it kills him.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Suicide
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Heart attack mentioned
  • Death of a child & partner
  • Gun violence
  • Fatal car accident
  • Kidnapping of a pregnant wife (theme)

The Girls in the Cabin by Caleb Stephens

This camping trip is Chris’s last chance to repair his relationship with his daughters, Kayla and Emma. Nothing’s been the same since they lost their mom. But things go wrong as soon as they get to the mountains. When they make camp, nine-year-old Emma runs off into the woods. By the time they find her, there’s a snowstorm rolling in. And Emma’s leg is badly broken. They need to find shelter, fast. They think they’re safe when they come across an old farmstead. The woman inside welcomes them in from the howling blizzard and straps up Emma’s leg. They settle down for.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Miscarriage recounted
  • Injury sustained in a fall (broken leg)
  • Secondary character with a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
  • Death of a mother from cancer
  • Blizzard