Camp Sylvania by Julie Murphy

Magnolia “Maggie” Hagen is determined to be in the spotlight…if she can just get over her stage fright. This summer, though, she has big plans to finally attend Camp Rising Star, the famous performing arts camp she’s been dying to go to for three whole summers. But on the last day of school, her parents break the news: Maggie isn’t going to Camp Rising Star. She’s being shipped off to fat camp—and not just any fat camp. She’s going to Camp Sylvania, run by world-famous wellness influencer Sylvia Sylvania, who is known for her soon-to-be patented Scarlet Diet…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Dieting & weight discussed
  • Blood depiction

Ashes of Gold by J. Elle

Rue has no memory of how she ended up locked in a basement prison without her magic or her allies. But she’s a girl from the East Row. And girls from the East Row don’t give up. Girls from the East Row pick themselves back up when they fall. Girls from the East Row break themselves out. But reuniting with her friends is only half the battle. When she finds them again, Rue makes a vow: she will find a way to return the magic that the Chancellor has stolen from her father’s people. Yet even on Yiyo Peak, Rue is a misfit—with half a foot back in Houston and half a heart… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Self-harm for ritual
  • Blood depiction
  • Poisoning
  • Torture
  • Battle scenes with physical assault & stabbings

Wings of Ebony by J. Elle

“Make a way out of no way” is just the way of life for Rue. But when her mother is shot dead on her doorstep, life for her and her younger sister changes forever. Rue’s taken from her neighborhood by the father she never knew, forced to leave her little sister behind, and whisked away to Ghizon—a hidden island of magic wielders. Rue is the only half-god, half-human there, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother’s death, Rue breaks Ghizon’s sacred Do… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Hate crime
  • Physical child abuse
  • Blood & gore depiction and emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Police brutality

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske

Maud Blyth has always longed for adventure. She expected plenty of it when she volunteered to serve as an old lady’s companion on an ocean liner, in order to help her beloved older brother unravel a magical conspiracy that began generations ago. What she didn’t expect was for the old lady in question to turn up dead on the first day of the voyage. Now she has to deal with a dead body, a disrespectful parrot, and the lovely, dangerously outrageous Violet Debenham, who’s also returning home to England. Violet is everything that Maud has been trained to distrust yet… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity & spousal abandonment*
  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Emotional parental abuse recounted
  • Suicide mentioned (secondary character)
  • Alcohol consumption & drugging
  • Blood & gore depiction, including minor self-injury for blood, dead bodies & emesis
  • Death of parents in a car accident recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Knife violence
  • Loss of autonomy (ghost possession)

Context : Violet is technically married to a man who abandoned her & stole her possessions; due to his disappearance, she is unable to dissolve their marriage and never reveals this to her love interest.

Redemption Point by Candice Fox

When former police detective Ted Conkaffey was wrongly accused of abducting Claire Bingley, he hoped the Queensland rainforest town of Crimson Lake would be a good place to disappear. But nowhere is safe from Claire’s devastated father. Dale Bingley has a brutal revenge plan all worked out – and if Ted doesn’t help find the real abductor, he’ll be its first casualty. Meanwhile, in a dark roadside hovel called the Barking Frog Inn, the bodies of two young bartenders lie on the beer-sodden floor. It’s Detective Inspector Pip Sweeney’s first homicide investigation – c… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia, grooming & child sexual abuse recounted
  • Rape recounted
  • Cheating
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Police corruption mentioned
  • Wrongful incarceration
  • Animal cruelty

How to Kill Men and Get Away With It by Katy Brent

Meet Kitty Collins. FRIEND. LOVER. KILLER. He was following me. That guy from the nightclub who wouldn’t leave me alone. I hadn’t intended to kill him of course. But I wasn’t displeased when I did and, despite the mess I made, I appeared to get away with it. That’s where my addiction started… I’ve got a taste for revenge and quite frankly, I’m killing it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Date rape, gang rape, paedophilia, incest, sexual assault & rape culture discussed
  • Alcohol & drug abuse
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Dismemberment
  • Graphic murder & torture
  • Animal cruelty

The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

It’s 1942. German Nazis occupy much of France. And twelve-year-old Miriam, who is Jewish, is not safe. With help and quick thinking, Miri is saved from the roundup that takes her entire Jewish neighborhood. She escapes Paris, landing in a small French village, where the spires of the famous Chateau de Chenonceau rise high into the sky, its bridge across the River Cher like a promise, a fairy tale. But Miri’s life is no fairy tale. Her parents are gone – maybe alive, maybe not. Taken in at the boarding school near the chateau, pretending to be Catholic to escape Nazi capture, Miri is called upon… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical antisemitism & Nazism (theme), including physical beatings and setting houses on fire as a hate crime
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a husband discussed
  • Police brutality & violence (on-page)
  • World War II (theme) with mentions of concentration camps
  • St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre discussed

Charlotte Spies for Justice by Nikki Shannon Smith

Twelve-year-old Charlotte lives on a plantation in Richmond, Virginia, where the American Civil War is raging. All around her, citizens and the Confederate army are fighting to protect slavery: the very thing Charlotte wishes would end. When she overhears the plantation owner conspiring against the Confederates, Charlotte knows she must join forces with her. Maybe together they can help the Union win the war and end slavery. Helping a spy is dangerous work, but Charlotte is willing to risk everything to fight for what is right!

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & slavery (on-page)
  • Mentions of a dead body
  • American Civil War & prison camps

Hail Mariam by Huda Al-Marashi

Iraqi American Mariam Hassan transfers to a local Catholic school and before her first day her parents remind her that she might be the first Muslim her classmates have ever met. No big deal, right? Just represent an entire religion while making new friends, keeping up with schoolwork, and figuring out who she is. When Mariam’s younger sister, Salma, is diagnosed with a serious lung condition, her family faces endless doctor visits and sleepless nights. Mariam tries to lighten their burden and keep her own problems to herself—including the fact that she’s just… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sibling hospitalised for cancer treatment
  • Minor blood depiction

False Hearts by Laura Lam

Raised in the closed cult of Mana’s Hearth and denied access to modern technology, conjoined sisters Taema and Tila dream of a life beyond the walls of the compound. When the heart they share begins to fail, the twins escape to San Francisco, where they are surgically separated and given new artificial hearts. From then on they pursue lives beyond anything they could have previously imagined. Ten years later, Tila returns one night to the  twins’ home in the city, terrified and covered in blood, just before the police arrive and arrest her for murder–the first… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Surgery to separate conjoined twins due to heart failure recounted (protagonist)
  • Psychedelic, mind-altering drug use discussed
  • Blood depiction
  • Organised crime
  • Cult recounted