Category Archives: Representation

Finally Heard by Kelly Yang

When ten-year-old Lina Gao sees her mom’s video on social media take off, she’s captivated by the potential to be seen and heard! Maybe online she can finally find the confidence she craves. Whereas in real life she’s growing so fast, she feels like microwave popcorn, bursting out of her skin! .With the help of her two best friends, Carla and Finn, and her little sister, Millie, Lina sets off to go viral. Except there’s a lot more to social media than Lina ever imagined, 1. Seeing inside her classmates’ lives! Is she really the only person on the planet who doesn’t have a walk-in closet? 2. Group chats! Disappearing videos! Will anyone.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety & disordered eating
  • Minor cyberbullying

The Ruined by Renée Ahdieh

The Sylvan Vale and the Sylvan Wyld are at war. Now that the unsteady truce between them has been broken, lines must be drawn. In an effort to protect the weakened Winter Court, Bastien rallies powerful allies and friends in New Orleans to come to their aid. Meanwhile, under protection alongside her injured mother in the Summer Court, Celine is uncertain of whom to trust. She cannot get word to Bastien, and does not understand why he has not returned. When she realises war between the fey courts is imminent, she journeys with Ali in an effort to find the time travelling mirror and change their fate… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse & neglect mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption (secondary characters)
  • Blood-drinking
  • Attempted murder by poisoned arrow and knives
  • Murder by gun violence
  • Graphic torture
  • Accidental explosion resulting in mass death
  • Graphic battles scenes with cannonballs and gunfire

Heroes by Alan Gratz

December 6, 1941: Best friends Frank and Stanley have it good. Their dads are Navy pilots stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the boys get a front-row view of the huge battleships and the sparkling water. Yes, World War II is raging in Europe and in Asia, but the US isn’t involved in the war, and the boys are free to dream about becoming comic book creators. They’ve even invented a superhero of their own, in the style of Batman, Superman, Captain America, and other stars of the Golden Age of Comics. Maybe they’ll even get their comic published someday. December 7th, 1941: Everything explodes. That morning, Frank and Stanley are aboard the battleship the USS Utah… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racial slurs (anti-Japanese)
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Mass hospitalisation for injuries and mentions of dead bodies
  • Naval warfare including ship explosions, shipwrecks, and death from drowning or burning in flaming oil-spills
  • Gun violence
  • Plane crashes & death from explosions upon their impact
  • Attack of Pearl Harbor (theme)
  • Animal attack (dog)

I Hope This Doesn’t Find You by Ann Liang

Sadie Wen is perfect on paper: school captain, valedictorian, and a “pleasure to have in class.” It’s not easy, but she has a trick to keep her model-student smile plastered on her face at all times: she channels all her frustrations into her email drafts. She’d never send them of course — she’d rather die than hurt anyone’s feelings — but it’s a relief to let loose on her power-hungry English teacher or a freeloading classmate taking credit for Sadie’s work. All her most vehemently worded emails are directed at her infuriating cocaptain, Julius Gong, whose arrogance and comp… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Cyberbullying

What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher

After kan terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if ka just survived another war. All ka crave is rest, routine, and sunshine, but instead, as a favour to Angus and Miss Potter, they find kanself heading to kan family hunting lodge, deep in the cold, damp forests of their home country, Gallacia. In theory, one can find relaxation in even the coldest and dampest of Gallacian autumns, but when Easton arrives, ka find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence. The villagers whisper that a breath-stealing monster from folklore has taken up residence in Eastonh… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Military-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) including flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical illness and injury including chronic shoulder injury and pneumonia
  • Depiction of a dead body
  • Graphic body horror (theme)
  • Military enlistment during wartime discussed
  • Animal hunting mentioned

Figure of Speech by Audra North

Clover Bennett’s motto is Good Things Happen to Those Who Hustle. After a string of toxic relationships, Clover decides to focus her energy on the one thing she can control, her career. When she lands a high-profile job as press secretary at the White House, Clover sees her years of hard work paying off. The goal is to establish herself as a DC power player, with no room for distractions. Well, maybe just one … the handsome bachelor occupying the White House. President Theodore Elmsworth is charismatic, brilliant, and witty. Clover finds herself reluctantly drawn in by the intoxicating proximity to power his… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment

Second Chance by Audra North

Wilford town librarian Marnie Thomas has had too much loss to risk her heart ever again. She buries her hurt in books and finds her friends in stories, even though she longs for love and a family of her own. Real estate developer Collin Morgan is back in town on Halloween to help his sister, but the last person he expected to see at his niece’s story hour is Marnie Thomas. The shy, awkward girl he remembered from high school has turned into a beautiful—but still shy—woman, and Collin can’t help the desire that rises up when he sees her.
But this year, the magic of Halloween conjures a wisecracking, cigar-smoking ghost name… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental & spousal abandonment
  • Verbal child abuse
  • Smoking
  • Death from a heart attack mentioned
  • Death of a mother from cancer recounted

Not the Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher

Not the Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher CR: Jove

Jack Nolan is a gentleman, a journalist, and unlucky in love. His viral success has pigeon-holed him as the how-to guy for a buzzy, internet media company instead of covering hard-hitting politics. Fed up with his fluffy articles and the app-based dating scene as well, he strikes a deal with his boss to write a final piece de resistance: How to Lose a Girl. Easier said than done when the girl he meets is Hannah Mayfield, and he’s not sure he wants her to dump him. Hannah is an extremely successful event planner who’s focused on climbing the career ladder. Her firm is one of the most prestigious in the city, and she’s determiend to secure,,, Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual harassment
  • Emotionally abusive relationship
  • Divorce mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption

Stella by Starlight by Sharon M. Draper and illustrated by Sarah Jane Coleman

Stella lives in the segregated South; in Bumblebee, North Carolina, to be exact about it. Some stores she can go into. Some stores she can’t. Some folks are right pleasant. Others are a lot less so. To Stella, it sort of evens out, and heck, the Klan hasn’t bothered them for years. But one late night, later than she should ever be up, much less wandering around outside, Stella and her little brother see something they’re never supposed to see, something that is the first flicker of change to come, unwelcome change by any stretch of the imagination. As Stella’s community – her world – is upended, she decides to fight fire with fire. And she learns that ashes don’t necessarily signify an end.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • White supremacy & Klu Klux Klan
  • Hate crimes
  • Physical child abuse
  • Domestic abuse & violence
  • Death of a father in a lumber mill accident mentioned
  • House fire & arson

Odd Spirits by S.T. Gibson

It takes a lot of commitment to make a marriage between a modern ceremonial magician and a chaos witch work, but when a malevolent entity takes up residence in Rhys and Moira’s home, their love will be pushed to the limits. Brewing up a solution is easier said than done when your magical styles are polar opposites; throw a psychic ex and a secret society in the mix, and things are bound to get messy

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Biphobia