Without Merit by Colleen Hoover

Without Merit by Colleen Hoover

The Voss family is anything but normal. They live in a repurposed church, newly baptized Dollar Voss. The once cancer-stricken mother lives in the basement, the father is married to the mother’s former nurse, the little half-brother isn’t allowed to do or eat anything fun, and the eldest siblings are irritatingly perfect. Then, there’s Merit.

Merit Voss collects trophies she hasn’t earned and secrets her family forces her to keep. While browsing the local antiques shop for her next trophy, she finds Sagan. His wit and unapologetic idealism disarm and spark renewed life into her—until she discovers that he’s completely unavailable. Merit retreats deeper into herself, watching her family from the sidelines when she learns a secret that no trophy in the world can fix… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Paedophilia
  • Incest
  • Cheating
  • Depression
  • Suicide
  • Self harm
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It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover

It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover

Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up— she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true. Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted rape
  • Parental abandonment
  • Domestic abuse (theme)
  • Intimate partner violence
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a parent
  • Homelessness
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Wait for It by Jenn McKinlay

Wait for It by Jenn McKinlay

Stuck in a dreary Boston winter, Annabelle Martin would like nothing more than to run away from her current life. She’s not even thirty years old, twice-divorced, and has just dodged a marriage proposal… from her ex-husband. When she’s offered her dream job as creative director at a cutting-edge graphic design studio in Phoenix, she jumps at the opportunity to start over.

When she arrives in the Valley of the Sun, Annabelle is instantly intrigued by her anonymous landlord. Based on the cranky, handwritten notes Nick Daire leaves her, she assumes he is an old, rich curmudgeon. Annabelle is shocked when she finally meets Nick and discovers that he’s her age and uses a wheelchair. Nick suffered from a stroke a year ago, and while there’s no physical reason for him not to recover, he is struggling to overcome the paralyzing fear that has kept him a prisoner in his own home.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Abandonment recounted
  • Anxiety & panic attack
  • Parent with alcoholism recounted
  • Stroke
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted
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Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives — a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys — she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Sexism & misogyny
  • Victim blaming
  • Sexual harassment
  • Workplace harassment
  • Abuse, neglect & abandonment
  • Abusive relationships
  • Verbal abuse
  • Intimate partner abuse & violence
  • Estrangement & disownment
  • Child abuse
  • Mental illness
  • Intrusive thoughts
  • Addiction
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Medical treatment & procedures
  • Terminal illness
  • Cancer
  • Heart disease & heart attack
  • Physical injuries & wounds
  • Amputation/Loss of limb
  • Hospital & hospitalisation
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a sibling
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Physical assault
  • Stalking
  • Car accident
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One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus

One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus

On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention. Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing. Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher. And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention, Simon’s dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Racism
  • Sexism
  • Slut shaming
  • Homomisia & homomisia slurs
  • Coming out themes
  • Dubious consent scenario*
  • Nonconsensual voyeurism mentioned
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Cheating, recounted & discussed
  • Alcoholism mentioned
  • Bipolar Disorder
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Self harm
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Recreational drug use
  • Death from anaphylaxis
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Heart attack
  • Hospital
  • Death of a classmate, on-page
  • Death of an uncle
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • School shooting & gun violence discussed
  • Strangulation
  • Physical assault
  • Car accident recounted
  • Blackmail
  • Bullying

* Note : Characters under the influence of alcohol recount having sex, and a protagonist recounts coerced ‘consent’ to sex with her boyfriend.

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Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

At the Convent of Sweet Mercy, young girls are raised to be killers. In some few children the old bloods show, gifting rare talents that can be honed to deadly or mystic effect. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don’t truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls.

A bloodstained child of nine falsely accused of murder, guilty of worse, Nona is stolen from the shadow of the noose. It takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist, but under Abbess Glass’s care there is much more to learn than the arts of death. Among her class Nona finds a new family—and new enemies.

Despite the security and isolation of the convent, Nona’s secret and violent past finds her out, drawing with it the tangled politics of a crumbling empire. Her arrival sparks old feuds to life, igniting vicious struggles within the church and even drawing the eye of the emperor himself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Death
  • Torture
  • Graphic animal abuse
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The Revenant by Michael Punke

The Revenant by Michael Punke

The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge by Michael Punke

Rocky Mountains, 1823. The trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is one of the most respected men in the company, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker.But when a scouting mission puts Glass face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two men from the company are ordered to remain with him until his inevitable death. But, fearing an imminent attack, they abandon Glass, stripping him of his prized rifle and hatchet.

As Glass watches the men flee, he is driven to survive by one all-consuming desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, he sets out on a three-thousand-mile journey across the harsh American frontier, to seek revenge on the men who betrayed him.

The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny and sexism
  • Racism and racial slurs
  • Sex worker shaming and slurs
  • Abuse, neglect and abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood and gore depiction
  • Body horror
  • Dead bodies and body parts
  • Decapitation
  • Physical injury and wounds
  • Medical treatment, including surgery
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Knife violence
  • Gun violence
  • Scars
  • Imprisonment and captivity
  • Starvation and dehydration depiction
  • Blizzard
  • Animal death
  • Hunting
  • Colonialism themes
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Second Chance with Her Billionaire by Therese Beharrie

Second Chance with Her Billionaire by Therese Beharrie

From I don’t to I do?

Summer Bishop knew her parents’ anniversary party in stunning South Africa would be hard. Spending the weekend with her gorgeous ex-husband, Wyatt Montgomery, reminds Summer of their painful divorce but also – inconveniently – why she fell in love with him…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Parent with alcoholism, including near-death by alcohol poisoning recounted
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One Day to Fall by Therese Beharrie

One Day to Fall by Therese Beharrie

She should be at her “perfect” sister’s bedside, awaiting the arrival of the newest member of her family. But the thought of spending hours at the hospital with her suffocating relatives has Sophia hailing the first taxi she sees. Only to realise too late that the man at the wheel of her getaway car is the most unpleasant one she’s ever had the misfortune to meet.

Parker Jones, the handsome yet surly driver in question, is used to dealing with baggage of the family variety. And it just so happens he’s in need of temporary escape from his own. Witty banter with a beautiful—if exasperating—woman while chauffeuring her around the city on a gorgeous spring day makes for an ideal break from reality.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Childbirth
  • Surgery
  • Parent with dementia
  • Death of a parent from a brain tumour mentioned
  • Car accident mentioned
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Flirting with Forever by Cara Bastone

Flirting with Forever by Cara Bastone

Mary Trace is bright, bubbly and back in the dating pool in her midthirties. All of her closest friends are in love, and she refuses to miss out on romance. So when a regular customer at her trendy Brooklyn boutique wants to set Mary up on a blind date with her son, she gives a hesitant yes. John Modesto-Whitford is gorgeous and well-groomed, so maybe dinner won’t be a total bust—until he drops a less-than-flattering comment about Mary’s age.

Desperate to be nothing like his snake of a politician father, public defender John Modesto-Whitford prides himself on his honesty and candor. But his social awkwardness and lack of filter just blew it with the most beautiful woman he’s ever dated… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment
  • Cheating recounted
  • Dieting
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of an aunt from cancer recounted
  • Death of a friend in a car accident recounted
  • Home invasion
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