Category Archives: Representation

Poisoning Ivy by Carly Claire

The mountain was always my safe place… until it wasn’t. It was my refuge from the cold loneliness of the city, from my parent’s loveless marriage, from their anger and chaos. Even when they left me with my creepy uncle, I looked forward to summers at the cabin, especially after I met them. The reapers. Killian, Monty, and Theo. They were my friends, the secret I kept to make my life tolerable. And then one summer, their friendship turned into something sinister. Their hatred kept me alive, fed a part of me that needed it. I thought it turned into something more, but then… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Sex trafficking mentioned (off-page)
  • Child physical & sexual abuse and neglect (implied)
  • Rape & dubious consent (‘dubcon’), including forced voyeurism and gun play
  • Depression & suicidal ideation
  • Domestic abuse
  • Pregnancy discussed
  • Mutilation
  • Murder
  • Home invasion

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood – not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt’s mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him into the horrors of trenches. Though Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, their friends are dying in front of them, and at any moment they could be next….

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism & minor bullying
  • Homophobia & internalised homophobia, including slurs
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (‘shell shock’) & psychological trauma from war, including survivor’s guilt, nightmares, depression, and panic attacks
  • Suicidal ideation & self-sacrifice (in battle)
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Minor drug use (i.e. morphine in a medical context)
  • Starvation
  • Blood, gore, and injury descriptions, including hospitalisation in military facilities, amputations, graphic descriptions of bodies, and general medical treatment and illness from battlefield wounds & injuries
  • Graphic depictions of World War Two, including trench warfare, combat violence, gas attacks (mustard gas), and battle scenes
  • Animal death (horses)

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales. In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grooming & incest (uncle-niece)
  • Dubious consent (‘dubcon’)
  • Murder
  • Animal death

Life, and Death, and Giants by Ron Rindo

Gabriel Fisher was born an orphan, weighing eighteen pounds and measuring twenty-seven inches long. No one in Lakota, Wisconsin, knows what to make of him. He walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and seems to possess extraordinary athletic talent. But when the older brother who has been caring for him dies, Gabriel is taken in by his devout Amish grandparents who disapprove of all the attention and hide him away from the English world. But it’s hard to hide forever when you’re nearly eight feet tall. At seventeen, Gabriel is spotted working in a hay field by the local football coach. What happens… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Incest & child sexual abuse
  • Suicide
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother in childbirth recounted
  • Bullying
  • Animal death

Beasts of War by Ayana Gray

Once a prisoner to Fedu, the vengeful god of death, Koffi has regained her freedom, but she is far from safe. Fedu will stop at nothing to hunt her down and use her power to decimate the mortal world. Koffi knows when Fedu will during the next Bonding, a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event. To survive, Koffi will have to find powerful new allies quickly, and convince them to help her in the terrible battle to come. Once a warrior-turned-runaway, Ekon has carved out a new life for himself outside Lkossa, but the shadows of his past still haunt him. Now, alongside unexpected friends, Ekon tries to focus on getting Koffi to the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Battle scenes with bow & arrow and sword violence

Beasts of Ruin by Ayana Gray

Koffi has saved her city and the boy she loves, but at a terrible price. Now a servant to the cunning god of death, she must use her newfound power to further his continental conquest, or risk the safety of her home and loved ones. As she reluctantly learns to survive amidst unexpected friends and foes, she will also have to choose between the life—and love—she once had, or the one she could have, if she truly embraces her dangerous gifts. Cast out from the only home he’s ever known, Ekon is forced to strike new and unconventional alliances to find and rescue Koffi before it… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Indentured servitude mentioned
  • Caning mentioned
  • Fire
  • Animal attacks (fantastical)

I, Medusa by Ayana Gray

Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote in someone else’s story. Out of place next to her beautiful, immortal sisters and her parents—both gods, albeit minor ones—she dreams of leaving her family’s island for a life of adventure. So when she catches the eye of the goddess Athena, who invites her to train as an esteemed priestess in her temple, Meddy leaps at the chance to see the world beyond her home. In the colorful market streets of Athens and the clandestine chambers of the temple, Meddy flourishes in her role as Athena’s favored acolyte, getting her first… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & misogyny
  • Colonisation
  • Rape, grooming & child sexual assault (on-page)
  • Domestic abuse

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino

Eighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband Ian — and in turn, get their marriage, plan to have a baby, and whole life back on track — Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it’s publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand). A little stalking? Harmless. A bit of… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Infertility & mentions of miscarriage
  • Murder
  • Stalking
  • Blackmail mentioned
  • COVID-19 pandemic recounted

Her One Regret by Donna Freitas

When successful Rhode Island real estate agent Lucy Mendoza vanishes, leaving her baby behind in a grocery store parking lot, the news quickly makes national headlines. Lucy’s best friend, Michelle, is devastated, and terrified that Lucy’s life is at stake. But she knows something that could complicate the police investigation. Lucy had confessed something unspeakable: She regretted becoming a mother so much that she’d fantasized about faking her own kidnapping. If the police and media were to find out, Lucy would become a monster in public opinion. Michelle is sure Lucy would never aband… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment (theme)
  • Disappearance of a friend & discussions of a staged kidnapping (theme)

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end. There is also the matter of the family curse: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace…” which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Dementia
  • Late-term miscarriage