Category Archives: Representation

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams 

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Depression
  • Suicide

Equilibrium by Joel Abernathy

Equilibrium by Joel Abernathy

Transforming before the harvest moon was once my biggest concern, but if the Family has their way, none of us will survive that long. Fighting back means resolving the war within, but with my memories intact, I’m no closer to choosing between the twins than I was.

Domination… Deceit… Decadence. They’re all just part of life at the Lodge. Life as the hybrid Prince.

Time is running out, and my divided soul is the only thing standing between the pack I love and the cosmic battle that’s coming to an end, once and for all.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Incest
  • Claustrophobia
  • Self-harm
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Medical treatment
  • Torture
  • Knifeplay
  • Car accident

Shift by Joel Abernathy

Shift by Joel Abernathy

An angel fell and a devil was there to catch him.

My fathers always told me the rules would keep me alive. For Mihail, I’ll break every last one of them. Never let the blood run cold. Never let the monster out in the light of day. Never let a human witness escape. He saw the secret I keep buried beneath my skin one night so long ago, and I let him get away. I should have killed him, but my soul knows him the way my fangs long to. He’s got secrets, too. Secrets of the tarnished past. Secrets sharp and rusty enough to ruin us both. Either he falls or I do.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Dismemberment
  • Torture

Bleed by Joel Abernathy

Bleed by Joel Abernathy

Vengeance. My purpose, carved deeper into my soul than their names carved in my flesh.

Dominic. The man who took everything from me, my own personal devil in shifting flesh. Ursache. My pack. The high-born family of wolves I’ve sworn my life to protect, even if my dying breath is pledged to another.

Mason… My everything. Friend, confidant, enemy, lover. Most dangerous of all, he would become the reason I lived if I let him. He is the one thing I won’t allow Dominic to take from me. Love is not a luxury I can afford, but the sweetness of revenge has nothing on the taste of him…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Misgendering
  • Sexual assault, implied
  • Depression
  • Consensual knife & blood play
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping

Exhale by Joel Abernathy

Exhale by Joel Abernathy

Falling for “the other man” in my marriage was never part of the plan. Then again, according to Nicolae Ursache, I am the other man, and human wedding vows don’t apply. Not to werewolves.

Nicolae is a smug, arrogant alpha male stereotype–and I do mean alpha in the literal sense–but when the same people who killed my wife kidnap my teenage daughter, he’s my only chance at getting her back. The fact that Nicolae was my wife’s rightful mate means that we share a mutual interest in bringing Ellie home, but I never could’ve imagined how he planned to do it.

I will do anything to protect my daughter. Even if it means becoming the plaything, or worse, of the man I loathe most.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Transmisia

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women follows Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds, as they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective. Over many decades—through the Japanese colonialism of the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, and the era of cellphones and wet suits for the women divers—Mi-ja and Young-sook develop the closest of bonds. Nevertheless, their differences are impossible to ignore: Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, forever marking her, and Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Domestic abuse
  • Breast mutilation
  • Jeju April 3 incident

Waiting by Ha Jin

Waiting by Ha Jin

This is the story of Lin Kong, a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women as he moves through the political minefields of a society designed to regulate his every move and stifle the promptings of his innermost heart.

For more than seventeen years, this devoted and ambitious doctor has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young–a humble and touchingly loyal woman, whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape, on-page

Finding Junie Kim by Ellen Oh

Finding Junie Kim by Ellen Oh

Junie Kim just wants to fit in. So she keeps her head down and tries not to draw attention to herself. But when racist graffiti appears at her middle school, Junie must decide between staying silent or speaking out.

Then Junie’s history teacher assigns a project and Junie decides to interview her grandparents, learning about their unbelievable experiences as kids during the Korean War. Junie comes to admire her grandma’s fierce determination to overcome impossible odds, and her grandpa’s unwavering compassion during wartime. And as racism becomes more pervasive at school, Junie taps into the strength of her ancestors and finds the courage to do what is right.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Depression
  • Suicide
  • War themes
  • Bullying

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi and translated by Cathy Hirano

Elin’s family has an important responsibility: caring for the fearsome water serpents that form the core of their kingdom’s army. So when some of the beasts mysteriously die, Elin’s mother is sentenced to death as punishment. With her last breath she manages to send her daughter to safety.

Alone, far from home, Elin soon discovers that she can talk to both the terrifying water serpents and the majestic flying beasts that guard her queen. This skill gives her great powers, but it also involves her in deadly plots that could cost her life. Can she save herself and prevent her beloved beasts from being used as tools of war? Or is there no way of escaping the terrible battles to come?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Death of a parent
  • Fire
  • Animal abuse

The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros

The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros

Beckett, If you’re reading this, well, you know the last-letter drill. You made it. I didn’t. Get off the guilt train, because I know if there was any chance you could have saved me, you would have. I need one thing from you: get out of the army and get to Telluride. My little sister Ella’s raising the twins alone. She’s too independent and won’t accept help easily, but she has lost our grandmother, our parents, and now me. It’s too much for anyone to endure. It’s not fair. And here’s the kicker: there’s something else you don’t know that’s tearing her family apart. She’s going to need help.

So if I’m gone, that means I can’t be there for Ella. I can’t help them through this. But you can. So I’m begging you, as my best friend, go take care of my sister, my family. Please don’t make her go through it alone. Ryan

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Pediatric cancer (theme)
  • Death of a child