Category Archives: Kidlit

Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn

Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn

The shadows have risen, and the line is law. All Bree wanted was to uncover the truth behind her mother’s death. So she infiltrated the Legendborn Order, a secret society descended from King Arthur’s knights—only to discover her own ancestral power. Now, Bree has become someone new: A Medium. A Bloodcrafter. A Scion. But the ancient war between demons and the Order is rising to a deadly peak. And Nick, the Legendborn boy Bree fell in love with, has been kidnapped. Bree wants to fight, but the Regents who rule the Order won’t let her. To them… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Slavery recounted
  • Rape by enslaver recounted & mentioned, off-page
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drugging
  • Drug use mentioned (sc)
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction
  • Coma mentioned (sc)
  • Medical experimentation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder of a father mentioned
  • Death of a mother in a car accident recounted
  • Murder& attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Knife violence
  • Immolation
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus. A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down. And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw. The Mage… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Slavery
  • Rape recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Hospitalisation
  • Emesis
  • Physical injuries
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother in a car accident
  • Loss of autonomy (possession, mind control & memory manipulation)

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

Obasan is the moving story of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War, told through the eyes of a child. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, five-year-old Naomi’s life is changed forever. Separated from her mother, she watches bewildered as she and her family become enemy aliens, persecuted and despised in their own land.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse

Lucy Fights the Flames by Julie Gilbert

Lucy Fights the Flames by Julie Gilbert and illustrated by Alessia Trunfio

In 1911, fourteen-year-old Lucy Morelli lives with her parents, older brother, and several younger siblings in a crowded apartment in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of New York City. Lucy dreams of going to college, but her Italian immigrant family relies heavily on her income from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to survive. Lucy finds the factory work boring, but the working conditions are better than many other jobs. But when Lucy and her best friend, Rosie, head to work one Saturday in March, everything changes. Fire breaks out in the factory, and the doors… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a friend
  • Fire (theme)

Immortality by Dana Schwartz

Immortality: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz

Hazel Sinnett is alone and half-convinced the events of the year before—the immortality, Beecham’s vial—were a figment of her imagination. She doesn’t even know whether Jack is alive or dead. All she can really do now is treat patients and maintain Hawthornden Castle as it starts to decay around her. When saving a life leads to her arrest, Hazel seems doomed to rot in prison until a message intervenes: She has been specifically requested to be the personal physician of Princess Charlotte, the sickly daughter of King George IV. Soon Hazel is dragged into the glamour and romance of a court where everyone has something to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Abortion
  • Blood & gore depiction including body horror and dead bodies
  • Dismemberment
  • Medical procedures
  • Plague mentioned
  • Attempted murder
  • Gun violence

Sanctuary by Caryn Lix

Sanctuary by Caryn Lix

Kenzie holds one truth above all: the company is everything. As a citizen of Omnistellar Concepts, the most powerful corporation in the solar system, Kenzie has trained her entire life for one goal: to become an elite guard on Sanctuary, Omnistellar’s space prison for superpowered teens too dangerous for Earth. As a junior guard, she’s excited to prove herself to her company—and that means sacrificing anything that won’t propel her forward. But then a routine drill goes sideways and Kenzie is taken hostage by rioting prisoners… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Abandonment
  • Medical treatment
  • Blood depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Gun violence
  • Imprisonment

Poison Princess by Kresley Cole

Poison Princess by Kresley Cole

Sixteen-year-old Evangeline”Evie” Greene leads a charmed life–until she begins experiencing horrifying hallucinations. When an apocalyptic event decimates her Louisiana hometown, killing everyone she loves, Evie realizes her hallucinations were actually visions of the future–and they’re still happening. Fighting for her life and desperate for answers, she must turn to her wrong-side-of-the-bayou classmate: Jack Deveaux. With his mile-long rap sheet, wicked grin, and bad attitude, Jack is like no boy Evie has ever known. Even though he once scorned her and everything she represented, he agrees to protect Evie on… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Sex slavery mentioned
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of mother from illness mentioned

Sunkissed by Kasie West

Sunkissed by Kasie West

Avery has always used music as an escape. But after her best friend betrays her, even her perfectly curated playlists can’t help her forget what happened. To make matters worse, her parents have dragged her and her social-media-obsessed sister to a remote family camp for two months of “fun.” Just when Avery is ready to give up on the summer altogether, she meets Brooks—mysterious, frustratingly charming Brooks—who just happens to be on staff—which means he’s off-limits. What starts as a disaster turns into something else. As the outside world falls away, Avery embarks on a journey of self-discovery. And when Brook… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Terminal illness
  • Parent in care following a stroke
  • Emesis

The Sullivan Sisters by Kathryn Ormsbee

The Sullivan Sisters by Kathryn Ormsbee

That painful fact of life couldn’t be truer for the Sullivan sisters. Once, they used to be close, sharing secrets inside homemade blanket castles. Now, life in the Sullivan house means closed doors and secrets left untold. Fourteen-year-old Murphy, an aspiring magician, is shocked by the death of Siegfried, her pet turtle. Seventeen-year-old Claire is bound for better things than her Oregonian hometown—until she receives a crushing rejection from her dream college. And eighteen-year-old Eileen is nursing a growing addiction in the wake of life-altering news… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Terminal cancer (leukemia)
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Animal death & neglect

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl. But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both. Then Coley Taylor moves… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Lesbophobia & transphobia
  • Conversion therapy (theme)
  • Child abuse
  • Attempted suicide
  • Graphic self-harm
  • Drug use
  • Death of a mother & father in a car accident