Category Archives: Genres

HappyHead by Josh Silver

We are in an epidemic. An epidemic of unhappiness. Friends, here is the good news: HappyHead has the answer. When Seb is offered a place on a radical retreat designed to solve the national crisis of teenage unhappiness, he is determined to change how people see him and make his parents proud. But as he finds himself drawn to the enigmatic Finn, Seb starts to question the true nature of the challenges they must undergo. The deeper into the programme the boys get, the more disturbing the assessments become, until it’s clear there may be no escape…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & outing mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use mentioned
  • Overdose mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Animal death

Swept Away by Beth O’Leary

Lexi is looking for no-strings-attached fun with a stranger. She deserves one night for herself, doesn’t she? Zeke is looking for love. But for one night with a woman like Lexi, he’ll break his rules… Sparks fly at the pub, one passionate kiss leads to another and they end up stumbling home to the marina together. The next morning, hungover and shaken by an amazing night together, Lexi is more than ready for Zeke to leave. There’s just one small problem . . . the houseboat they stayed on has been swept out to sea. As their supplies start to run dangerously low, and the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Parental infidelity recounted
  • Minor physical injuries (knife wound. head trauma)
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Lost at sea with threat of sinking and food & water scarcity (theme, on-page)

This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page

When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her fiancé waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock. Partly because she can’t remember the last time she read a book for pleasure. Mainly because Joe died five months ago… The gift is simple – twelve books from Joe, one for each month, to help her turn the page on her first year without him. Tilly sets out on a series of reading-inspired adventures that take her around the world. But as she begins to vlog her journey, her story becomes more than her own. With help… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a father from a heart attack
  • Death of a husband from cancer recounted

Stormfire by Christine Monson

Abducted on her way to boarding school, a terrified Catherine Enderly was brought from England to the coast of Ireland, the prisoner of the angry and powerful young Sean Culhane—a man sworn to vengeance against her family. Frightened but defiant, the young countess met her captor with a strength that belied her fragile loveliness. But even as Sean vowed to have his revenge on Catherine, with each encounter he became more attracted to her. Her fiery innocence was a seduction that lured the passions of long smouldering hostility into a blazing inferno of desire… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape & gang-rape
  • Forced starvation
  • Miscarriage
  • Death of a mother
  • Gun & knife violence
  • Physical assault
  • Whipping
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Napoleonic War & colonialization

The Island Home by Libby Page

Lorna’s world is small but safe. She loves her daughter, and the two of them is all that matters. But after nearly twenty years, she and Ella are suddenly leaving London for the Isle of Kip, the tiny remote Scottish island where Lorna grew up. Alice’s world is tiny but full. She loves the community on Kip, her yoga classes drawing women across the tiny island together. Now Lorna’s arrival might help their family finally mend itself – even if forgiveness means returning to the past… So with two decades, hundreds of miles and a lifetime’s worth of secrets between Lorna and the island, can coming home mean starting again?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Hypothermia
  • Cancer
  • Near-drowning incident

The Vintage Shop of Second Chances by Libby Page

Among the cobbled streets of the Somerset town of Frome, Lou is embarking on the start of something new. After the death of her beloved mother, she takes a deep breath into the unknown and is opening her own vintage clothes shop. In upstate New York, Donna has just found out some news about her family which has called into question her whole upbringing. The only clue she has to unlock her past is a picture of a yellow dress, and the fact it is currently on display in a shop in England. For Maggy, she is facing life as a 70-something divorcee and while she got the house, she… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce recounted (protagonist)

Do Not Disturb by Claire Douglas

After what happened in London, Kirsty needs a fresh start with her family. And running a guesthouse in the Welsh mountains sounds idyllic. But then their first guest arrives. Selena is the last person Kirsty wants to see. It’s 17 years since she tore everything apart. Why has she chosen now to walk back into Kirsty’s life? Is Selena running from something too? Or is there an even darker reason for her visit?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Attempted suicide & mentions of depression
  • Chronic illness
  • Blackmail mentioned

The New Neighbours by Claire Douglas

When Lena helps her teenage son gather sounds for his media studies project, she doesn’t expect her boom-microphone to pick up a conversation between her neighbours, the Morgans. And she’s certain they are planning a crime. Her family and friends tell her that she must have misheard. After all, the Morgans are a well-respected, upstanding couple in their early sixties. They’ve never been in trouble with the law. Yet Lena can’t stop thinking about it. Because what if she hasn’t misheard? What if she can prevent something awful happening? After all, stopping it could help ease her conscience about her own dark past…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce mentioned
  • Drug use & mentions of an overdose
  • Infertility
  • Knife violence
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Blackmail

The Wrong Sister by Claire Douglas

Tasha and her older sister Alice may look alike, but they couldn’t be more different. Tasha’s married with two children and still lives in their hometown near Bristol. Alice is a high-flying scientist who travels the world with her equally successful husband. Yet each sister would trust the other with her life. When Tasha and her husband Aaron need a break and Alice offers to stay in their home with the kids, Tasha knows her family is in safe hands. She couldn’t be more wrong. The call from home is devastating. Alice and her husband Kyle have been attacked, leaving Alice in intensive care and Kyle dead. Rushing to the hospital, Tasha… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Home invasion
  • Alcohol concumption
  • Murder mentioned
  • Kidnapping of a child mentioned
  • Drowning
  • Animal death mentioned

The Woman Who Lied by Claire Douglas

Emilia Ward lives quietly in suburban London with her husband and two children. Just an ordinary wife and mother. But also a bestselling crime writer. When she starts writing her tenth Detective Miranda Moody novel, however, life takes a frightening an incident straight out of one of her novels occurs in real life. Just an unsettling coincidence, she thinks. Until it happens again. Then someone she knows dies exactly like a victim in the book she’s still writing..

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Stalking & harassment