Sweetest in the Gale by Olivia Dade 

Sweetest in the Gale by Olivia Dade

Candy Albright has always stomped confidently through the halls of Marysburg High, passionate and loud and entirely devoted to her students and her various English department initiatives. From his first day as her colleague, Griff Conover couldn’t look away, despite his best efforts.

After a summer apart, though, Candy returns to school a changed woman. Muted. Dimmed. Bowed by a grief Griff recognizes all too well but doesn’t yet under… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Breast cancer
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40-Love by Olivia Dade 

40-Love by Olivia Dade

When a rogue wave strips Tess Dunn of her bikini top, desperate, half-naked times call for desperate, please-cover-me-kids-are-coming-closer measures. Enter Lucas Karlsson, AKA that flirty Swede in the water nearby. When he prevents her bare buoys from being exposed to fellow vacationers, even an ocean can’t drown the sparks that fly.

Lucas, a former top-level tennis pro now giving lessons at the resort, fled there after the abrupt, painful end to his injury-plagued career. But he’s finally ready… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia & body-shaming
  • Cheating recounted
  • Arthritis (neck)
  • Chronic knee & back pain
  • Wrist & knee surgery mentioned
  • Car accident recounted
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Permanent Record by Mary HK Choi

Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi

After a year of college, Pablo is working at his local twenty-four-hour deli, selling overpriced snacks to brownstone yuppies. He’s dodging calls from the student loan office and he has no idea what his next move is.

Leanna Smart’s life so far has been nothing but success. Age eight: Disney Mouseketeer; Age fifteen: first #1 single on the US pop chart; Age seventeen, *tenth* #1 single; and now, at Age nineteen…life is a queasy blur of private planes, weird hotel rooms, and strangers ask… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Financial difficulties
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If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So

If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So

Elsie has a crush on Ada, the only person in the world who truly understands her. Unfortunately, they’ve never met in real life and Ada lives an ocean away. But Elsie has decided it’s now or never to tell Ada how she feels. That is until her long-lost best friend Joan walks back into her life.

In a summer of repairing broken connections and building surprising new ones, Elsie realises that she isn’t nearly as alone as she thought. But now she has a choice to make… 

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Queermisia
  • Toxic relationship recounted
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Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith

When Louise Wolfe’s first real boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. It’s her senior year, anyway, and she’d rather spend her time with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, the ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper’s staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director’s inclusive approach to casting The Wizard of Oz has been provoking backlash in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Slut-shaming discussed
  • Bullying discussed
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Saucy by  Cynthia Kadohata

Saucy by Cynthia Kadohat and illustrated by Marianna Raskin

Being a quadruplet can make it hard to stand out from the crowd. Becca’s three brothers all have something that makes them…them. Jake has his music and dancing, Jammer plays hockey, and K.C. thinks they’re all living in a simulation and doesn’t see the point of doing much of anything. Becca is the only one with nothing to make her special. But when she finds a tiny, sick piglet on the side of the road, Becca knows this is it. This is her thing. She names the piglet Saucy and between her… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Animal cruelty
  • Animal illness & injury
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Don’t Let Go by Cynthia Dane and Hildred Billings 

Don’t Let Go by Cynthia Dane & Hildred Billings

Rose Wu’s ordinary life as a concierge clerk was only meant to be a means to a financial end. Yet there is one resident in her high-rise luxury building who makes coming to work worth it.

Cindy Ling, the enigmatic businesswoman who always has a lady on her arm, also has a wink to spare the mild-mannered clerk looking her way…. Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Homomisia
  • Classism
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Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, teenaged Laura leads a solitary life with only her father, attendant and tutor for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest — the beautiful Carmilla.

So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her entrancing new companion, one defined by mysterious happenings and infused with an implicit but undeniable eroticism. As Carmilla becomes increasingly…  Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction
  • Decapitation
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The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak 

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams’s search for Rumi and the dervish’s role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams’s lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Infidelity
  • Murder
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The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead 

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide ‘physical, intellectual and moral training’ which will equip its inmates to become ‘honourable and… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Physical assault
  • Whipping
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