What the Woods Keep by Katya de Becerra

What the Woods Keep by Katya de Becerra

Hayden tried to put the past behind her, and it worked. She’s getting ready for college, living in a Brooklyn apartment, and hanging out with her best friend and roommate Del. But now it’s all catching up with her: her mother’s mysterious disappearance a decade before, her father’s outlandish theories about a lost supernatural race, and Hayden’s own dark dreams of strange symbols and rituals in the Colorado woods where she grew up.

As soon as Hayden arrives at her hometown, her friend Del in tow, it begins: Neighbors whisper secrets about Hayden’s mother; the boy next door is now all grown-up in a very distracting way; and Hayden feels the trees calling to her. And among them, deep in the woods, Hayden will discover something incredible—something that threatens reality itself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Sleep disorders
  • Graphic self harm
  • Graphic blood test
  • Burns
  • Nonconsensual medical treatment
  • Needles
  • Physical assault
  • Hanging mentioned
  • Captivity mentioned
  • Bullying recounted
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Machine by Elizabeth Bear

Machine by Elizabeth Bear

Meet Doctor Jens. She hasn’t had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years. Her workday begins when she jumps out of perfectly good spaceships and continues with developing treatments for sick alien species she’s never seen before. She loves her life. Even without the coffee. But Dr. Jens is about to discover an astonishing mystery: two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a deadly embrace. The crew is suffering from an unknown ailment and the shipmind is trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away. Unfortunately, Dr. Jens can’t resist a… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Misogyny
  • Homomisia
  • Chronic pain

To Stand in the Light by Kayla Bashe

To Stand in the Light by Kayla Bashe

Answering a distress call in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, teenage half-demon Shadow finds a scene of carnage where their superheroine foster parents once lived. Only one thing holds them back from seeking death: the unexpected discovery of a small, scruffy girl. Bean, an acid-green-haired high school dropout, is feral and whimsical by turns. As they travel home, she slowly grows to trust Shadow, and wriggles into their closed-off heart.

Dangerous secrets and painful memories drive Shadow away from New York again and again, but their friendship with Bean only grows. When they return home, though, it’s to a grown-up Bean who finds herself falling for her former mentor — and tumbling headlong into much bigger trouble than anyone suspects…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Parental abandonment
  • Child abuse
  • Forced starvation
  • Self harm
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Homelessness
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Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak

Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak

Aidan Lockwood lives in a sleepy farming town, day after unremarkable day. But when Jarrod, his former best friend, suddenly moves back home, Aidan begins to see clearly for the first time—not only to feelings that go beyond mere friendship, but to a world that is haunted by the stories of his past. Visions from this invisible world come to him unbidden: a great-grandfather on the field of battle; his own father, stumbling upon an unspeakable tragedy; and a mysterious young boy, whose whispered words may be at the heart of the curse that holds Aidan’s family in its grip.

Now, Aidan must find his way between the past and the present to protect those he loves, and to keep the invisible world at bay.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist slurs
  • Homomisia
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We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett

We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Seventeen-year-old Revna is a factory worker, manufacturing war machines for the Union of the North. When she’s caught using illegal magic, she fears being branded a traitor and imprisoned. Meanwhile, on the front lines, Linné defied her father, a Union general, and disguised herself as a boy to join the army. They’re both offered a reprieve from punishment if they use their magic in a special women’s military flight unit and undertake terrifying, deadly missions under cover of darkness. Revna and Linné can hardly stand to be in the same cockpit, but if they can’t fly together, and if they can’t find a way to fly well, the enemy’s superior firepower will destroy them–if they don’t destroy each other first.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Sexual harassment
  • Death of a friend
  • Airplane crash
  • Explosion
  • Blackmail
  • Incarceration of a parent
  • War themes
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Waking Romeo by Kathryn Barker

Waking Romeo by Kathryn Barker 

Year: 2083. Location: London. Mission: Wake Romeo.

It’s the end of the world. Literally. Time travel is possible, but only forwards. And only a handful of families choose to remain in the ‘now’, living off the scraps that were left behind. Among these are eighteen-year-old Juliet and the love of her life, Romeo. But things are far from rosy for Jules. Romeo is in a coma and she’s estranged from her friends and family, dealing with the very real fallout of their wild romance. Then a handsome time traveller, Ellis, arrives with an important mission that makes Jules question everything she knows about life and love. Can Jules wake Romeo and rewrite her future?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Ableism
  • Suicide recounted
  • Self harm
  • Coma
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Go Deep by Rilzy Adams

Go Deep by Rilzy Adams

Navaya Howard is an erotic writer in a rut. Her readers are fed up of her stale plots and Navaya can’t blame them. She’s been celibate for over a year and a half since finding her now ex-boyfriend’s side chick’s positive pregnancy test on her bathroom counter. How can she write steamy romances if she can barely remember which body parts go into the other?

Navaya enlists the help of her best friend, Xander, to revive the inspiration. What happens when the sex hits deeper than either of them expected and the tender emotions can no longer be denied? Navaya and Xander’s arrangement has gone far deeper than intended. Will their friendship and their hearts survive the fall? 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Slut shaming
  • Domestic violence mentioned
  • Cheating recounted
  • Pregnancy mentioned
  • Recreational drug use
  • Death of a father from kidney failure recounted
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A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard

A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard

Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life – she’s been silent for so long that she feels completely invisible. But Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her. He’s deaf, and her knowledge of basic sign language means that she’s assigned to look after him. To Rhys, it doesn’t matter that Steffi doesn’t talk, and as they find ways to communicate, Steffi finds that she does have a voice, and that she’s falling in love with the one person who makes her feel brave enough to use it.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Child abuse
  • Selective Mutism
  • Anxiety & social anxiety
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A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

Seventeen-year-old Anouk has finally caught the break she’s been looking for—she’s been selected out of hundreds of other candidates to fly to France and help with the excavation of a vast, underground palace buried a hundred feet below the suburbs of Paris. Built in the 1780’s to hide an aristocratic family and a mad duke during the French Revolution, the palace has lain hidden and forgotten ever since. Anouk, along with several other gifted teenagers, will be the first to set foot in it in over two centuries. Or so she thought.

But nothing is as it seems, and the teens soon find themselves embroiled in a game far more sinister, and dangerous, than they could possibly have imagined. An evil spanning centuries is waiting for them in the depths.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Classism
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Hallucinations & delusions mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injury
  • Dead bodies
  • Human experimentation
  • Needles
  • Hospital
  • Decapitation
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a wife
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Stabbing
  • Explosions
  • Physical assault
  • Torture & sensory deprivation
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Car accident
  • Plane crash mentioned
  • Bullying
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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)