Category Archives: Representation

Kirby’s Lessons for Falling [in Love] by Laura Gao

Once dubbed the Queen of Balance as her school’s top rock climber, Kirby Tan suffers an injury that sidelines her for the rest of the season. Now she’s forced to join the newspaper club for some desperately needed extra credit. Worse, she’s recruited by crystal-wearing, tarot-reading Bex Santos for her astrology-based love advice column. As Kirby reluctantly agrees to orchestrate “matches made in heaven” with Bex, she begins to wonder if their own stars could be aligned. But loving who she wants isn’t so easy when her family and church community are on the line. Can Kirby pull off her greatest balancing act yet?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual harassment
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent

Ash’s Cabin by Jen Wang

Ash has always felt alone. Adults ignore the climate crisis. Other kids Ash’s age are more interested in pop stars and popularity contests than in fighting for change. Even Ash’s family seems to be sleepwalking through life. The only person who ever seemed to get Ash was their Grandpa Edwin. Before he died, he used to talk about building a secret cabin, deep in the California wilderness. Did he ever build it? What if it’s still there, waiting for him to come back…or for Ash to find it? To Ash, that maybe-mythical cabin is starting to feel like the perfect place for a fresh start… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Coming out themes & deadnaming
  • Death of a grandparent recounted
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Emesis
  • Animal injury (dog) from a bear attack (on-page)

Age 16 by Samuel Teer & Mar Julia

Sixteen-year-old Roz is preoccupied with normal teenage navigating high school friendships, worrying about college, and figuring out what to wear to prom. When her estranged Por Por abruptly arrives for a seemingly indefinite visit, the already delicate relationship between Roz and her mother is upended. With three generations under one roof, conflicts inevitably arise and long suppressed family secrets rise to the surface. Told in alternating perspectives, Age 16 shifts seamlessly between time and place, exploring how this pivotal year in adolescence… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism & racism
  • Domestic abuse recounted
  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Eating disorder (anorexia) & disordered eating. including starvation & binge-eating
  • Teen pregnancy

Brownstone by Samuel Teer & Mar Julia

Almudena has always wondered about the dad she never met. Now, with her white mother headed on a once-in-a-lifetime trip without her, she’s left alone with her Guatemalan father for an entire summer. Xavier seems happy to see her, but he expects her to live in (and help fix up) his old, broken-down brownstone. And all along, she must navigate the language barrier of his rapid-fire Spanish—which she doesn’t speak. As Almudena tries to adjust to this new reality, she gets to know the residents of Xavier’s Latin American neighborhood. Each member of the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & lesbophobia
  • Parental abandonment
  • Minor physical injury
  • Gentrification

Tall Water by S.J. Sindu and Dion MBD

Ever since she turned sixteen, Nimmi has wanted to see her mother. Though she has a loving but overprotective father and a budding relationship, she yearns to travel to Sri Lanka to confront the mother who refused to leave the island during a war, not even for Nimmi’s sake. Her father is going back for the first time as a reporter on assignment, but he refuses to take her, deeming Sri Lanka too dangerous. But then Nimmi’s mother appears to her in a dream, asking her to come find her, and Nimmi knows she must go. Her father is livid when he sees her at baggage claim, but by then… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Tsunami (on-page)

This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki & Nicole Goux

At Wilberton Academy, few students are more revered than the members of the elite Wilberton Theatrical Society—a.k.a. the WTS—and no one represents that exclusive club better than Elizabeth Woodward. Breathtakingly beautiful, beloved by all, and a talented thespian, it’s no surprise she’s starring as Juliet in the WTS’s performance of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy. But when she’s found dead the morning after opening night, the whole school is thrown into chaos. Transfer student Abby Kita was one of the last people to see Elizabeth alive, and when local authorities… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Sexual assault of a minor & grooming
  • Suicide
  • Bullying

The Flip Side by Jason Walz

Theo’s best friend has died, and he can’t pull himself out of his sadness—a sadness that those around him don’t seem to respect or even notice. And then something even more disconcerting His town literally flips upside down and everyone disappears, except for a threatening, shape-shifting monster and a snarky teenage girl who knows her way around this flipped world. Is Theo doomed to spend the rest of his life in this scary state?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicidal ideation & self-harm
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend from cancer

Leap by Simina Popescu

Ana has been studying contemporary dance since she was little, but her heart isn’t in it anymore. Instead her focus is on Carina―a beautiful, ambitious ballerina whose fear of being outed keeps Ana in the closet and their fragile relationship from seeing the light of day. Risking her own career, Ana gives up more and more in order to fit into the shadows of Carina’s life. Sara, on the other hand, is fielding whispers she may be the best dancer their school has produced in years. Much of that is thanks to her mentor and instructor, Marlena, who plucked Sara from the classical track… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Body-shaming & weight loss discussed (in the context of ballet), including mentions of starving oneself for weight loss & calorie counting

Halfway There by Christine Mari

Christine has always felt she is just Half American, half Japanese. As a biracial Japanese American who was born in Tokyo but raised in the US, she knows all too well what it’s like to be a part of two different worlds but never feeling as though you belong to either. Now on the brink of adulthood, Christine decides it’s time to return to the place she once called home. So she sets forth on a year abroad in Tokyo, believing that this is where she truly belongs. After years of feeling like an outsider, now she will finally be complete. Except…Tokyo isn’t the answer she thought it… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Depression (protagonist) & panic attacks
  • Suicidal ideation &attempted suicide
  • Self-harm

Vantage Point by Sara Sligar

The old-money Wieland family has it all—wealth, status, power. They’re also famously cursed. Clara and her brother Teddy grew up on a small island in Maine in the shadow of their parents’ tragic deaths, haunted by rumors and paparazzi. Fourteen years later they’ve mostly put their turbulent past to rest. Teddy has married Clara’s best friend, Jess, and the three of them have moved back home to take over the sprawling, remote family mansion known as Vantage Point. Then Teddy decides to run for the Senate—an unnerving prospect made much worse when… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Domestic abuse
  • Sexual assault
  • Eating disorder (protagonist)