Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

Climbing to the top of the social ladder is hard—falling from it is even harder.  Regina Afton used to be a member of the Fearsome Fivesome, an all-girl clique both feared and revered by the students at Hallowell High… until vicious rumors about her—and her best friend’s boyfriend—start going around. Now Regina’s been frozen out, and her ex-best friends are out for revenge. If Regina were guilty, it would be one thing, but the rumors are far from the terrifying truth, and the bullying is getting more intense by the day. She takes solace in the company of Michael Hayden, a misfit with a tragic past whom she herself used to bully. Friendship doesn’t come easily for these onetime enemies, and as Regina works hard to make amends for her past, she realizes Michael could be more than just a friend… if threats from the Fearsome Foursome don’t break them both first.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Sexual assault (on-page)
  • Eating disorder
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Bullying
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Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers

Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers

Perfect Parker Fadley isn’t so perfect anymore. She’s quit the cheerleading squad, she’s dumped her perfect boyfriend, and she’s failing school. Her parents are on a constant suicide watch and her counselors think she’s playing games, but they don’t know that the real reason for this whole mess isn’t something she can say out loud. It isn’t even something she can say to herself. A horrible thing has happened and it just might be her fault. If she can just remove herself from everybody–be totally alone–then everything will be okay…

The problem is, nobody will let her.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape (on-page)
  • Alcoholism & alcohol abuse
  • Depression
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Self-harm
  • Overdose
  • Abortion
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Death of a pet
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Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Incest (theme)
  • Suicide
  • Alcoholism & alcohol abuse
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The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly by Jamie Pacton

The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly by Jamie Pacton

Working as a wench ― i.e. waitress ― at a cheesy medieval-themed restaurant in the Chicago suburbs, Kit Sweetly dreams of being a knight like her brother. She has the moves, is capable on a horse, and desperately needs the raise that comes with knighthood, so she can help her mom pay the mortgage and hold a spot at her dream college.

Company policy allows only guys to be knights. So when Kit takes her brother’s place and reveals her identity at the end of the show, she rockets into internet fame and a whole lot of trouble with the management. But the Girl Knight won’t go down without a fight. As other wenches join her quest, a protest forms. In a joust before Castle executives, they’ll prove that gender restrictions should stay medieval―if they don’t get fired first.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Emotional abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug abuse
  • Poverty themes
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Everything I Thought I Knew by Shannon Takaoka

Everything I Thought I Knew by Shannon Takaoka

Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste.

Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves—which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.)

And that’s not all that’s strange. There’s also the vivid recurring nightmare about crashing a motorcycle in a tunnel and memories of people and places she doesn’t recognize.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Nightmares
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Surgery (organ transplant)
  • Motorcycle accident
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Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

The day they got together was the best one of Freddy’s life, but nothing’s made sense since. Laura Dean is popular, funny, and SO CUTE … but she can be really thoughtless, even mean. Their on-again, off-again relationship has Freddy’s head spinning — and Freddy’s friends can’t understand why she keeps going back.

When Freddy consults the services of a local mystic, the mysterious Seek-Her, she isn’t thrilled with the advice she receives. But something’s got to give: Freddy’s heart is breaking in slow motion, and she may be about to lose her very best friend as well as her last shred of self-respect. Fortunately for Freddy, there are new friends, and the insight of advice columnist Anna Vice, to help her through being a teenager in love.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Statutory rape mentioned
  • Toxic relationship (theme)
  • Cheating (on- & off-page)
  • Adult-minor relationship discussed*
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Unwanted teen pregnancy
  • Abortion (off-page)
  • Hospital
  • Emesis
  • Bullying mentioned

*Note: Sexual relationship between a seventeen-year-old girl and a older married man.

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Calling My Name by Liara Tamani

Calling My Name by Liara Tamani

This unforgettable novel tells a universal coming-of-age story about Taja Brown, a young African American girl growing up in Houston, Texas, and deftly and beautifully explores the universal struggles of growing up, battling family expectations, discovering a sense of self, and finding a unique voice and purpose.

Told in fifty-three short, episodic, moving, and iridescent chapters, Calling My Name follows Taja on her journey from middle school to high school.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Recreational drug use (smoking) mentioned
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Into the Dim by Janet B Taylor

Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor

When fragile, sixteen-year-old Hope Walton loses her mom to an earthquake overseas, her secluded world crumbles. Agreeing to spend the summer in Scotland, Hope discovers that her mother was more than a brilliant academic, but also a member of a secret society of time travelers. Trapped in the twelfth century in the age of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hope has seventy-two hours to rescue her mother and get back to their own time. Along the way, her path collides with that of a mysterious boy who could be vital to her mission . . . or the key to Hope’s undoing. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slut-shaming
  • Sexual assault
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Kidnapping
  • Flogging
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Lips Touch Three Times by Laini Taylor

Lips Touch Three Times by Laini Taylor and illustrated by Jim Di Bartolo

Three tales of supernatural love, each pivoting on a kiss that is no mere kiss, but an action with profound consequences for the kissers’ souls.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Rape & pregnancy from rape*
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)

*Note: Two humans are forced to have sex and conceive a child while possessed by demons.

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Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

Two worlds are poised on the brink of a vicious war. By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera’s rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her.

When the brutal angel emperor brings his army to the human world, Karou and Akiva are finally reunited – not in love, but in a tentative alliance against their common enemy. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people. And, perhaps, for themselves.

But with even bigger threats on the horizon, are Karou and Akiva strong enough to stand among the gods and monsters?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Graphic sexual assault
  • Rape mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies & body parts
  • Physical injuries
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Imprisonment
  • War themes
  • Cult
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