Fierce Fragile Hearts by Sara Barnard

Two years after a downward spiral took her as low as you can possibly go, Suzanne is starting again. Again. She’s back in Brighton, the only place she felt she belonged, back with her best friends Caddy and Rosie. But they’re about to leave for university. When your friends have been your light in the darkness, what happens when you’re the one left behind?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Physical & emotional child abuse
  • Hospitalisation for attempted suicide mentioned
  • Depression

What I Lost by Alexandra Ballard

What sixteen-year-old Elizabeth has lost so far: forty pounds, four jean sizes, a boyfriend, and her peace of mind. As a result, she’s finally a size zero. She’s also the newest resident at Wallingfield, a treatment center for girls like her—girls with eating disorders. Elizabeth is determined to endure the program so she can go back home, where she plans to start restricting her food intake again.She’s pretty sure her mom, who has her own size-zero obsession, needs treatment as much as she does. Maybe even more. Then Elizabeth begins receiving mysterious packages. Are they… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Protagonist admitted to an in-patient treatment program at an eating disorder clinic for recovery & related medical issues (theme)
  • Anxiety & self-harm
  • Bullying

Borderline by Mishell Baker

A year ago Millie lost her legs and her filmmaking career in a failed suicide attempt. Just when she’s sure the credits have rolled on her life story, she gets a second chance with the Arcadia Project: a secret organization that polices the traffic to and from a parallel reality filled with creatures straight out of myth and fairy tales. For her first assignment, Millie is tasked with tracking down a missing movie star, who also happens to be a nobleman of the Seelie Court. To find him, she’ll have to smooth talk Hollywood power players and uncover the surreal and… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted suicied & self-harm

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R Austin

Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace. In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Homophobia & slurs
  • Anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares & intrusive thoughts
  • Depression & dissociation (protagonist)
  • Disordered eating including binging and purging
  • Suicidal ideation & attempted suicide
  • Sibling with alcoholism
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis (multiple, on-page)
  • Death of a husband from cancer mentioned (secondary character)
  • Death of an estranged uncle by overdose mentioned
  • Housefire
  • Car accident resulting in injury (broken arm)
  • Animal death (rabbit, recounted & discussed)

Almost Flying by Jake Maia Arlow

Would-be amusement park aficionado Dalia only has two items on her summer bucket list: (1) finally ride a roller coaster and (2) figure out how to make a new best friend. But when her dad suddenly announces that he’s engaged, Dalia’s schemes come to a screeching halt. With Dalia’s future stepsister Alexa heading back to college soon, the grown-ups want the girls to spend the last weeks of summer bonding–meaning Alexa has to cancel the amusement park road trip she’s been planning for months. Luckily Dalia comes up with a new plan: If she joins Alexa on her trip and… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Forced outing

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone’s surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York’s Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can’t deny their chemistry-or the fact that they’ve been secretly writing to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce recounted
  • Sexual harassment of a minor mentioned
  • Child neglect recounted
  • Chronic migraines (protagonist)
  • Alcoholism recovery (protagonist)
  • Self-harm recounted
  • Alcohol consumption (secondary characters)
  • Incarceration recounted (off-page)

Context : The protagonist has chronic migraines and her ex-husband divorced her because he didn’t want to be her caregiver. The protagonist was also harassed by her mother’s partner when she was a teenager.

The Boy from the Mish by Gary Lonesborough

It’s a hot summer, and life’s going all right for Jackson and his family on the Mish. It’s almost Christmas, school’s out, and he’s hanging with his mates, teasing the visiting tourists, avoiding the racist boys in town. Just like every year, Jackson’s Aunty and annoying little cousins visit from the city – but this time a mysterious boy with a troubled past comes with them… As their friendship evolves, Jackson must confront the changing shapes of his relationships with his friends, family and community. And he must face his darkest secret – a secret he thought he’d locked away for good

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Homophobia, internalised homophobia & slurs
  • Coming out themes & outing
  • Parental abandonment & physical child abuse recounted
  • Domestic violence recounted
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • Emesis
  • Minor physical injuries, including broken bones & snake bite
  • Police violence & racial profiling
  • Incarceration

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Transphobia & misgendering
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Rape & rape of a child
  • Physical & emotional child abuse
  • Child neglect & abandonment
  • Intimate partner violence & abuse
  • Eating disorder
  • Graphic attempted suicide, suicidal ideation & self-harm
  • Drug abuse
  • Graphic death of a child

City of Secrets by Victoria Ying

City of Secrets by Victoria Ying

Ever Barnes is a shy orphan guarding a secret in an amazing puzzle box of a building. Most of the young women who work at the building’s Switchboard Operating Facility, which connects the whole city of Oskar, look the other way as Ever roams around in the shadows. But one of them, Lisa, keeps an eye on the boy. So does the head of the Switchboard, Madame Alexander . . . a rather sharp eye. Enter Hannah, the spunky daughter of the building’s owner. She thinks Ever needs a friend, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Lisa and Madame Alexander are each clearly… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Hospitalisation for injury & blood depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Death from a fall
  • War themes, including a missile strike
  • Child homelessness & poverty

Wires and Nerve, Vol 2 by Marissa Meyer

Wires & Nerve, Vol. 2 by Marissa Meyer and illustrated by Stephen Gilpin

Iko. an audacious android and best friend to the Lunar Queen Cinder. has been tasked with hunting down Alpha Lysander Steele, the leader of a rogue band of bioengineered wolf-soldiers who threaten to undo the tenuous peace agreement between Earth and Luna. Unless Cinder can reverse the mutations that were forced on them years before, Steele and his soldiers plan to satisfy their monstrous appetites with a massacre of the innocent people of Earth. And to show he’s serious, Steele is taking hostages.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Psychosis & hallucinations mentioned
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend & sister
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Murder
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping & hostage situation
  • War themes