My Heart Goes Bang by Keris Stainton

My Heart Goes Bang by Keris Stainton

Ella, Lou, Issey, Liane and Paige are determined to make the most of this second year at uni. They want to have fun, but they want to focus on work. There’s no time for relationships. Except with each other. And even that’s not guaranteed. Gemma and Lou have always been close, but there’s tension between Issey and Liane, and none of them even knows Paige all that well.

But when Ella finds a magazine article with a list of men they should date before they’re 21 (someone who’s been on telly? Check; someone who’s got tattoos? Check;) they vow to complete the list before finishing university and set about it with a lot more enthusiasm than they do their studies … but will any of them end up with a full house? And when a secret from their first year comes out, it looks as if some of them might not be completing university, never mind the list …

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Fatphobia & body shaming
  • Misogyny
  • Slut-shaming
  • Lesbomisia
  • Sexual harassment
  • Revenge porn
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Cancer
  • Asthma attack
  • Stalking
  • Blackmail
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As Far As You’ll Take Me by Phil Stamper

As Far As You’ll Take Me by Phil Stamper

Marty arrives in London with nothing but his oboe and some savings from his summer job, but he’s excited to start his new life–where he’s no longer the closeted, shy kid who slips under the radar and is free to explore his sexuality without his parents’ disapproval.

From the outside, Marty’s life looks like a perfect fantasy: in the span of a few weeks, he’s made new friends, he’s getting closer with his first ever boyfriend, and he’s even traveling around Europe. But Marty knows he can’t keep up the facade. He hasn’t spoken to his parents since he arrived, he’s tearing through his meager savings, his homesickness and anxiety are getting worse and worse, and he hasn’t even come close to landing the job of his dreams. Will Marty be able to find a place that feels like home?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Coming out themes
  • Nonconsensual outing
  • Homomisia
  • Religious bigotry
  • Anxiety & anxiety attacks
  • Body dysmorphia
  • Disordered food & weight thoughts (including on-page crash dieting, food-shaming, calorie counting & self-imposed starvation)
  • Alcohol consumption
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The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper

The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper

As a successful social media journalist with half a million followers, seventeen-year-old Cal is used to sharing his life online. But when his pilot father is selected for a highly publicized NASA mission to Mars, Cal and his family relocate from Brooklyn to Houston and are thrust into a media circus.

Amidst the chaos, Cal meets sensitive and mysterious Leon, another “Astrokid,” and finds himself falling head over heels—fast. As the frenzy around the mission grows, so does their connection. But when secrets about the program are uncovered, Cal must find a way to reveal the truth without hurting the people who have become most important to him.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Coming out themes recounted
  • Cheating recounted
  • Anxiety & anxiety attacks
  • Depression
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Hospitalisation mentioned
  • Terminal cancer recounted
  • Grief & loss deception
  • Death of aunt & sister mentioned
  • Plane crash
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When My Heart Joins the Thousand by AJ Steiger

When My Heart Joins the Thousand by A.J. Steiger

Alvie Fitz doesn’t fit in, and she doesn’t care. She’s spent years swallowing meds and bad advice from doctors and social workers. Adjust, adapt. Pretend to be normal. It sounds so easy. If she can make it to her eighteenth birthday without any major mishaps, she’ll be legally emancipated. Free. But if she fails, she’ll become a ward of the state and be sent back to the group home.

All she wants is to be left alone to spend time with her friend, Chance, the one-winged hawk at the zoo where she works. She can bide her time with him until her emancipation. Humans are overrated anyway… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist slurs
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Parental abuse
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Depression
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Suicide mentioned & recounted
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood depiction & physical injuries
  • Surgery
  • Emesis
  • Hospitalisation
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Police brutality
  • Drowning recounted
  • Bullying
  • Attempted murder of an autistic child by a parent
  • Poverty themes & homelessness
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Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck

Clinging to each other in their loneliness and alienation, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie dream, as drifters will, of a place to call their own—a couple of acres and a few pigs, chickens, and rabbits back in Hill Country where land is cheap. But after they come to work on a ranch in the fertile Salinas Valley of California, their hopes, like “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,” begin to go awry.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Misogyny
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use (smoking)
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Animal death
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The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. Some riders live. Others die.

At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.

Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a chance. So she enters the competition — the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexism (theme)
  • Forced servitude
  • Parental abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Physical injuries
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Death of a friend
  • Animal death & dead bodies
  • Animal injury
  • Animal attack
  • Hunting
  • Poverty themes, including threat of eviction
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Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the Academy would touch…

A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm
A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates
A smart-ass techwiz with the galaxy’s biggest chip on his shoulder
An alien warrior with anger management issues
A tomboy pilot who’s totally not into him, in case you were wondering

And Ty’s squad isn’t even his biggest problem—that’d be Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the girl he’s just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler’s squad of losers, discipline-cases and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism and ableist language
  • Racial discrimination
  • Sexual assault, specifically nonconsensual kissing and unwanted touching
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Body horror
  • Blood and gore depiction
  • Physical injuries
  • Coma-like state
  • Grief depiction
  • Death of a father
  • Death of a stepmother
  • Death of parents
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a partner
  • Murder and attempted murder
  • Mass murder
  • Physical assault
  • Explosions
  • Gun violence
  • Imprisonment
  • War themes
  • Bullying
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Hidden Pieces by Paula Stokes

Hidden Pieces by Paula Stokes

Sixteen-year-old Maguire knows the universe is against her. No matter how many charms she buys off the internet or good luck rituals she performs each morning, horrible things happen when she’s around. Like that time the roller coaster jumped off its tracks. Or the time the house next door caught on fire. Or the time her brother, father, and uncle were all killed in a car crash–and Maguire walked away with barely a scratch.

Despite what her therapist tells her, Maguire thinks it’s best to hide out in her room, far away from anyone she might accidentally hurt. But then she meets Jordy, an aspiring tennis star who wants to help her break her unlucky streak. Maguire knows that the best thing she can do for him is to stay away, but it turns out staying away might be harder than she thought.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment
  • Cheating
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Parent with cancer
  • Blackmail
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The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

When the 5,000-year-old djinni Bartimaeus is summoned by Nathaniel, a young magician’s apprentice, he expects to have to do nothing more taxing than a little levitation or a few simple illusions. But Nathaniel is a precocious talent and has something rather more dangerous in mind: revenge. Against his will, Bartimaeus is packed off to steal the powerful Amulet of Samarkand from Simon Lovelace, a master magician of unrivalled ruthlessness and ambition. Before long, both djinni and apprentice are caught up in a terrifying flood of magical intrigue, murder and rebellion.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Explosion
  • Fire & immolation
  • Death from a fall
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It’s Not Like It’s a Secret by Misa Sugiura

It’s Not Like It’s a Secret by Misa Sugiura

Sixteen-year-old Sana Kiyohara has too many secrets. Some are small, like how it bothers her when her friends don’t invite her to parties. Some are big, like that fact that her father may be having an affair. And then there’s the one that she can barely even admit to herself—the one about how she might have a crush on her best friend.

When Sana and her family move to California she begins to wonder if it’s finally time for some honesty, especially after she meets Jamie Ramirez. Jamie is beautiful and smart and unlike anyone Sana’s ever known. There are just a few problems: Sana’s new friends don’t trust Jamie’s crowd; Jamie’s friends clearly don’t want her around anyway; and a sweet guy named Caleb seems to have more-than-friendly feelings for her. Meanwhile, her dad’s affair is becoming too obvious to ignore anymore.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs, including racial profiling
  • Slut-shaming
  • Coming out themes
  • Cheating
  • Alcohol consumption
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