Category Archives: Romance

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists. 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Domestic violence
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

At the dawn of the new millennium, Colombia is a country devastated by half a century of violence. Elena and Mauro are teenagers when they meet, their blooming love an antidote to the mounting brutality of life in Bogotá. Once their first daughter is born, and facing grim economic prospects, they set their sights on the United States. They travel to Houston and send wages back to Elena’s mother, all the while weighing whether to risk overstaying their tourist visas or to return to Bogotá. As their family expands, and they move again and again, their decision to ignore their exit dates plunges the young family into the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Rape

All That Remains by Sue Black

All That Remains by Sue Black

Sue Black confronts death every day. As Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab, at burial sites, at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment, and when investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster. In All That Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and what her work has taught her. Do we expect a book about death to be sad? Macabre? Sue’s book is neither. There is tragedy, but there is also humour… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Graphic dead bodies
  • Murder & genocide
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Natural disasters

Heroes Are My Weakness by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Heroes Are My Weakness by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The dead of winter. An isolated island off the coast of Maine. A man. A woman. A sinister house looming over the sea. He’s a reclusive writer whose macabre imagination creates chilling horror novels. She’s a down-on-her-luck actress reduced to staging kids’ puppet shows. He knows a dozen ways to kill with his bare hands. She knows a dozen ways to kill with laughs. But she’s not laughing now. When she was a teenager, he terrified her. Now they’re trapped together on a snowy island off the coast of Maine… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Fire

Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez

Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez

In the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has immigrated to Britain with his wife and children to secure a brighter future. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his family are resilient, but are all too aware that their family will need more than just hope to survive in their new country. At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London, escaping a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and his depressed hometown in the industrial Black Country. But once he arrives he finds… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Rape
  • Sex work
  • Drug use

Blaine for the Win by Robbie Couch

Blaine for the Win by Robbie Couch

High school junior Blaine Bowers has it all—the perfect boyfriend, a pretty sweet gig as a muralist for local Windy City businesses, a loving family, and awesome, talented friends. And he is absolutely, 100% positive that aforementioned perfect boyfriend—​senior student council president and Mr. Popular of Wicker West High School, Joey—is going to invite Blaine to spend spring break with his family in beautiful, sunny Cabo San Lucas. Except Joey breaks up with him instead. In public. On their one-year anniversary…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Anxiety
  • Depressive episode
  • Death of a parent from cancer, off-page (sc)

Tempt Me by Nina West

Tempt Me by Nina West

I ran to Alaska to escape heartbreak, only to deliver myself into the jaws of a wolf. Henry Wolf, that is. Owner of the luxury hotel chain, and an undeniably beautiful but cold, hard man who is quick with demands, slow with apologies. And is my new boss. Worse? I think he’s toying with me. He enjoys watching me squirm beneath his penetrating gaze. He relishes in messing with my mind. He seems to know that my body betrays me when he’s near. And I’m beginning to think it’s only a matter of time before my job description expands to include tasks I can never talk about… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Cheating, on- & off-page

Break Me by Nina West

Break Me by Nina West

Henry Wolf is a deliciously wicked, sinfully handsome man who has done a very bad thing. Potentially. Worse, he owns me now—every inch of my body and a sizeable chunk of my stupid, naïve heart. And he’s made it clear that if I want to keep my job and stay in Alaska, I’m stuck catering to his every whim and wish—both in the hotel and in his bedroom—while I wait for the potential fiery media circus ring that will no doubt drag my reputation into the gutter along with his, should his past discretions surface I will not surrender to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Cheating

The Miraculous by Jess Redman

The Miraculous by Jess Redman

Eleven-year-old Wunder Ellis is a miracologist. In a journal he calls The Miraculous, he records stories of the inexplicable and the extraordinary. These miracles fill Wunder with the feeling that he is not alone, that the world is magical, that he is part of something brighter than he can imagine. But then his newborn sister dies, at only eight days old. If that can happen, then miracles don’t exist. So Wunder gets rid of The Miraculous. And he stops believing. Then Wunder meets Faye—a cape-wearing, outspoken girl with losses of her own. Together, they find an abandoned house… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a newborn sister

The Highlander’s Excellent Adventure by Shana Galen

The Highlander’s Excellent Adventure by Shana Galen

Ines Neves and Emmeline Wellesley have both run away. Ines hid in a carriage from a tedious suitor, only to find, too late, the carriage had travelled out of London, not just around the block. To make matters worse, the carriage is that of a stranger: a handsome Highlander. Or perhaps a big, strapping Highlander makes matters better? Emmeline Wellesley has had four Seasons and cannot tolerate another. To force her mother to listen to her, she’s run away. But things haven’t gone well. She’s been locked in a closet, had all her money stolen, and somehow adopted a dog. When an old… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Blood depiction
  • Gun violence
  • War recounted