Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

This is a story about Peter Duke who went on to be a famous actor. This is a story about falling in love with Peter Duke who wasn’t famous at all. It’s about falling so wildly in love with him – the way one will at twenty-four – that it felt like jumping off a roof at midnight. There was no way to foresee the mess it would come to in the end.

It’s spring and Lara’s three grown daughters have returned to the family orchard… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug abuse
  • Abortion
  • COVID-19 pandemic mentioned
  • Death of a grandmother from breast cancer
  • Drowning

You’re Invited by Amanda Jayatissa

When Amaya is invited to Kaavi’s over-the-top wedding in Sri Lanka, she is surprised and a little hurt to hear from her former best friend after so many years of radio silence. But when Amaya learns that the groom is her very own ex-boyfriend, she is consumed by a single thought: She must stop the wedding from happening, no matter the cost.

But as the weeklong wedding celebrations begin and rumors about Amaya’s past begin to swirl… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia
  • Domestic abuse
  • Self-harm
  • Drug use
  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Murder
  • Incarceration
  • Blackmail

Deep in Providence by Riss M. Neilson

For best friends Miliani, Inez, Natalie and Jasmine, Providence, Rhode Island has a magic of its own. From the bodegas and late-night food trucks on Broad Street to The Hill that watches over the city, every corner of Providence glows with memories of them practicing spells, mixing up potions and doing séances with the help of the magic Miliani’s Filipino grandfather taught her.

But when Jasmine is killed by a drunk driver, the world they have always known is left haunted… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Religious bigotry & trauma
  • Sexual harassment
  • Child abandonment
  • Anxiety
  • Parent with substance addiction
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Overdose
  • Pregnancy
  • Abortion
  • Forced institutionalisation mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Car accident, off-page
  • Deportation mentioned

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Immigrant. Socialite. Magician. Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer, Asian, adopted, and treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & white supremacy
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Pregnancy
  • Abortion
  • Emesis
  • Car accident, off-page
  • Murder

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. In addition to the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men set themselves on fire in the streets… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abortion

The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

One June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her? Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Abortion including death from an attempted abortion
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a guardian from cancer
  • Stalking
  • Cult

Master Class by Christina Dalcher

Every child’s potential is regularly determined by a standardized measurement: their quotient (Q). Score high enough, and attend a top tier school with a golden future. Score too low, and it’s off to a federal boarding school with limited prospects afterwards. The purpose? An improved society where education costs drop, teachers focus on the more promising students, and parents are happy. Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state’s elite schools. When her nine-year-old daughter bombs a monthly test and her Q score drops to a disastrously low level, she is immedia… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Homomisia
  • Ableism
  • Child abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Abortion
  • Eugenices
  • The Holocaust mentioned
  • Bullying

Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

Clay: Marymount girls are good girls. We’re chaste, we’re untouched, and even if we weren’t, no one would know, because we keep our mouths shut. Not that I have anything to share anyway. I never let guys go too far. I’m behaved. Beautiful, smart, talented, popular, my skirt’s always pressed, and I never have a hair out of place. I own the hallways, walking tall on Monday and dropping to my knees like the good Catholic girl I am on Sunday. That’s me. Always in control. Or so they think. The truth is that it’s easy for me to resist them, because what I truly want, they can never be. Something soft and smooth. Someone dangerous and wild…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia & internalized homomisia
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Intimate partner violence mentioned
  • Revenge porn*
  • Staff-student relationship*
  • Parental infidelity mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother from suicide recounted
  • Death of a father from a heart attack recounted
  • Death of a brother from leukaemia
  • Bullying

*Context : The protagonist filmed a secondary character during a sexual experience and uploaded the video to the internet. A school employee has a ‘consensual ‘ sexual relationship with an underage student.

9 Days and 9 Nights by Katie Cotugno

Molly Barlow finds herself in Europe on her summer vacation, desperately trying to forget everything that happened a year ago. But over the course of nine days and nine nights, her whole life will be turned upside down once more… Molly Barlow isn’t that girl anymore. A business major at her college in Boston, she’s reinvented herself after everything that went down a year ago… After all the people she hurt and the family she tore apart. Slowly, life is getting back to normal. Molly has just said I love you to her new boyfriend, Ian, and they are off on a romantic European vacation together, starting with scenic… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abortion

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Ableism
  • Queermisia
  • Hate crime
  • Rape mentioned
  • Alcoholism
  • Self-harm
  • Abortion
  • Cancer
  • Dead bodies
  • Murder & mass murder
  • War themes