Category Archives: Representation

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo book cover

Kaz Brekker and his crew of deadly outcasts have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn’t think they’d survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they’re right back to fighting for their lives. Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz’s cunning and test the team’s fragile loyalties.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism, classism & persecution for witchcraft
  • Indentured servitude discussed
  • Forced underaged sex work & rape of a child recounted
  • Parental abandonment & disownment and child abuse
  • Gambling addiction & gambling (protagonist)
  • Drug dependency & withdrawal discussed (on-page)
  • Recreational drug use recounted & alcohol consumption
  • Pregnancy mentioned (secondary character)
  • Graphic blood & injury depiction, consensual body modification, mentions of plague, and protagonist with chronic illness & pain
  • Death of a boyfriend & friend (on-page)
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture (on-page)
  • Gun violence, explosions & knife violence & stabbing
  • Kidnapping & captivity (on-page)
  • Imprisonment
  • Home invasion
  • Blackmail & death threats
  • Poverty themes & debt collection mentioned

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A Brown

For Malik, the Solstasia festival is a chance to escape his war-stricken home and start a new life with his sisters in the prosperous desert city of Ziran. But when a vengeful spirit abducts Malik’s younger sister, Nadia, as payment into the city, Malik strikes a fatal deal—kill Karina, Crown Princess of Ziran, for Nadia’s freedom. But Karina has deadly aspirations of her own. Her mother, the Sultana, has been assassinated; her court threatens mutiny; and Solstasia looms like a knife over her neck. Grief-stricken, Karina decides to resurrect her mother through ancient magic . . . requiring the beating heart of a king. And she knows just how… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Emotional & physical child abuse
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Anxiety & panic attack (on-page, protagonist)
  • Depersonalisation & derealization
  • Hallucinations
  • Self-harm & self-harm ideation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Blood depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a father & sister recounted
  • Death of a mother (on-page)
  • Murder & attempted murder and regicide
  • Police brutality
  • Whipping mentioned
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Kidnapping & hostage situation
  • Fire recounted
  • Colonialism themes, including refugee experiences, riots & stampede
  • Animal cruelty & death, including animal sacrifice

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical misogyny & racism
  • Eugenics
  • Sexual assault & attempted rape (on-page)
  • Incest
  • Forced breeding mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking
  • Drugging
  • Hallucinations
  • Infertility & miscarriages mentioned
  • Medical treatment for tuberculosis discussed
  • Blood & gore depiction including body horror & cannibalism
  • Death of an infant mentioned
  • Death of a father discussed
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence

The Adventure Zone, Vol. 1: Here There Be Gerblins by Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy & Carey Pietsch

EJoin Taako the elf wizard, Merle the dwarf cleric, and Magnus the human warrior for an adventure they are poorly equipped to handle AT BEST, guided (“guided”) by their snarky DM, in a graphic novel that, like the smash-hit podcast it’s based on, will tickle your funny bone, tug your heartstrings, and probably pants you if you give it half a chance.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Self-sacrifice & self-injury
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of a cousin & uncle
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Fire & explosion
  • Kidnapping & hostage situation
  • Graphic animal dead bodies

Abroad by Liz Jacobs

Nick Melnikov doesn’t know where he belongs. He was just a kid when his Russian-Jewish family immigrated to Michigan. Now he’s in London for university, overwhelmed by unexpected memories. Socially anxious, intensely private, and closeted, Nick doesn’t expect to fall in so quickly with a tight-knit group of students from his college, and it’s both exhilarating and scary. Hanging out with them is a roller coaster of serious awkward and incredible longing, especially when the most intimidating of the group, Dex, looks his way. Dex Cartwell knows exactly who he… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Coming out themes
  • Transphobia & internalised homophobia
  • Anxiety & agoraphobia
  • Alcohol consumption

All of Us With Wings by Michelle Ruiz Keil

Seventeen-year-old Xochi is alone in San Francisco, running from her painful past: the mother who abandoned her, the man who betrayed her. Then one day, she meets Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old who lives with her rock-star family in one of the city’s storybook Victorians. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas’s live-in governess and quickly finds her place in their household, which is relaxed and happy despite the band’s larger-than-life fame. But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas accidentally… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & sexism
  • Rape recounted & sexual assault
  • Adult-minor relationship*
  • Child sex trafficking, implied
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Alcohol consumption & recreational drug use

*Context: The protagonist is a seventeen-year-old girl whose love interest is her twenty-eight-year-old male employer.

Love, Hate and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

American-born seventeen-year-old Maya Aziz is torn between worlds. There’s the proper one her parents expect for their good Indian daughter: attending a college close to their suburban Chicago home, and being paired off with an older Muslim boy her mom deems “suitable.” And then there is the world of her dreams: going to film school and living in New York City—and maybe (just maybe) pursuing a boy she’s known from afar since grade school, a boy who’s finally falling into her orbit at school. There’s also the real world, beyond Maya’s control. In the aftermath of a horrific crime perpetrated hundreds of miles… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & Islamophobia
  • Hate crime (physical assault)
  • Disownment
  • Suicide bombing mentioned
  • Hospitalisation for physical injuries due to physical assault
  • Bullying

Out on Good Behaviour

Out on Good Behaviour by Dahlia Adler

Frankie Bellisario knows she can get anyone she sets her sights on, but just because she can doesn’t mean she should—not when the person she’s eyeing is Samara Kazarian, the daughter of a southern Republican mayor. No matter how badly Frankie wants to test her powers of persuasion, even she recognizes some lines aren’t meant to be crossed. But when Frankie learns she’s been on Samara’s mind too, the idea of hooking up with her grows too strong to resist. Only Sam’s not looking for a hookup; she wants—needs—the real thing, and she’s afraid she’ll never find it as long… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Coming out themes
  • Slut-shaming

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Antiziganism (g slur)
  • Colourism
  • Coming out themes recounted
  • Dubious consent scene discussed
  • Teen pregnancy & motherhood (theme) with mentions of childbirth mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a mother, husband & grandfather recounted
  • Hurricanes & severe storms recounted
  • Bullying recounted

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighbourhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Misogyny & slut-shaming
  • Fatphobia & body shaming
  • Sexual harassment
  • Child abuse & abandonment mentioned
  • Cheating
  • Panic attacks
  • Recreational drug use
  • Alcohol abuse recounted
  • Minor physical injuries
  • Infertility & difficult childbirth mentioned
  • Bullying