Heat Stroke by Tessa Bailey

Heat Stroke by Tessa Bailey

They can’t be together. They won’t stay apart. Marcus “Diesel” O’Shaughnessy is a brash, oversized CrossFit enthusiast with a naked lady tattooed on his rippling forearm. Jamie Prince is a private school teacher with an extremely low tolerance for bull. The two men have zero in common. Well, except for three things. They’re both moonlighting as lifeguards for the summer. No matter how hard they try, they cannot stay away from each other. And both of them have secrets they’re determined to keep. But what happens in the shadows of the Long Beach boardwalk can only… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Hate crime*
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Parent with alcoholism recounted
  • Physical assault
  • Attempted drowning recounted

* Context : An ex-lover beat the protagonist up and attempted to drown Jamie.

Real Dirty by Meghan March

Real Dirty by Meghan March

I have everything a guy could want—a new single burning up the charts, more money than a man could spend, and a woman I’m planning to marry. Until she doesn’t show up for my proposal. The life I thought was so perfect, isn’t. The guy who thought he had everything, doesn’t. I’ve got my heart on lockdown, but life sends me straight into the path of a mouthy bartender who puts me in my place. I thought I was done with love, but maybe I’m just getting started.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Parent with alcoholism recounted
  • Murder of a parent

The Flipside of Perfect by Liz Reinhardt

The Flipside of Perfect by Liz Reinhardt

What happens when her two worlds collide? AJ is a buttoned-up, responsible student attending a high-achieving high school in Michigan. She lives with her mother, stepfather, and two younger half sisters. Della spends every summer with her father in Florida. A free-spirited wild child, she spends as much time as possible on the beach with her friends and older siblings. But there’s a catch: AJ and Della are the same person. Adelaide Beloise Jepsen to be exact, and she does everything she can to keep her school and summer lives separate. When her middle sister… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual harassment
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Unplanned pregnancy

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain

Anna Hart is a missing persons detective in San Francisco. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna’s childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Physical child abuse
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Animal abuse

From Scratch by Katrina Jackson

From Scratch by Katrina Jackson

Sea Port is a tiny southern town on the verge of collapse looking to entice people to move to the middle of nowhere and start life anew. Mary Woods, stinging from her life as a failed academic, takes the opportunity by the reins and resettles in Sea Port to try her hand as a small-town baker. A few days before the opening of her shop, Confections by Mary, she runs into small-town cop, Miguel Santos, and small-town fire chief, Billy Knox and there’s a whole lot of chemistry to go around. Welcome to Sea Port, where the town baker, cop and fire chief fall heavily in lust.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Queermisia
  • Child sexual abuse recounted
  • Physical child abuse mentioned
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Parent with alcoholism & alcohol abuse mentioned
  • Physical assault mentioned

Blame It on the Billionaire by Naima Simone

Blame It on the Billionaire by Naima Simone

It was a night filled with secrets, lies…and soul-stealing passion. And now the blackout that turned lowly executive assistant Nadia Jordan and start-up billionaire Grayson Chandler into insatiable lovers leads to a proposal Nadia can’t refuse. As she steps into Grayson’s privileged Chicago world, will his matchmaking mother and vengeful ex destroy her dreams? Or will her fake fiancé make those dreams a reality?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Classism
  • Sexual harassment mentioned
  • Cheating recounted
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Pregnancy
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother from an aneurysm recounted

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill. In the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Incest
  • Alcoholism
  • Cancer
  • Death of a parent
  • Car accident
  • Bullying

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

Kyuri is a beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a “room salon,” an exclusive bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client may come to threaten her livelihood. Her roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea’s biggest companies. Down the hall in their apartment building… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Cheating*
  • Parental abandonment
  • Body dysmorphia
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Alcoholism
  • Mutism
  • Pregnancy
  • Miscarriage
  • Cancer
  • Emesis
  • Surgery recounted & discussed
  • Murder of sex workers discussed
  • Physical assault, on- & off-page

*Context : Miho’s boyfriend is engaged to another woman and cheats on her with a sex worker.

Daddy’s Secret by MC Roth

Daddy’s Secret by M.C. Roth

This Christmas promises to be the loneliest of Sullivan’s life and he’s set to brave the season alone until he receives an amazing, yet heartbreaking, Secret Santa gift that was inspired by his best friend’s pen pal, Lincoln. What starts as a thank-you letter to Lincoln soon becomes more as Sullivan finds himself drawn to a man he’s never met—a man who somehow seems to know him. The problem is, Sullivan needs a friend more than he needs a hookup, so he pretends to be married, taking an intimate relationship out of the equation. Soon pen and paper aren’t enough, and he writes his phone number in his next letter, hoping… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism discussed

Burden Falls by Kat Ellis

Burden Falls by Kat Ellis

Also known as Wicked Little Deeds.

The town of Burden Falls drips with superstition, from rumours of its cursed waterfall to Dead-Eyed Sadie, the disturbing spectre who haunts it. Ava Thorn grew up right beside the falls, and since a horrific accident killed her parents a year ago, she’s been plagued by nightmares in which Sadie comes calling—nightmares so chilling, Ava feels as if she’ll never wake up. But when someone close to Ava is brutally murdered and she’s the primary suspect, she begins to wonder if the stories might be more than legends—and if the ghost haunting her dreams might be terrifyingly real. Whatever secrets Burden Falls is hiding, there’s a killer on the loose . . .

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism
  • Body mutilation
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Fire
  • Car accident