Poison Ivy: Thorns by Kody Keplinger

Poison Ivy: Thorns written by Kody Keplinger and illustrated by Sara Kipin

There’s something unusual about Pamela Isley—the girl who hides behind her bright red hair. The girl who won’t let anyone inside to see what’s lurking behind the curtains. The girl who goes to extreme lengths to care for a few plants. Pamela Isley doesn’t trust other people, especially men. They always want something from her. Something she’s not willing to give.

When cute goth girl Alice Oh comes into Pamela’s life after an accident at the local park, she makes her feel like pulling back the curtains and letting the sunshine in. But there are dark secrets deep within the Isley house. Secrets Pamela’s father has warned must remain hidden. Secrets that could turn deadly and destroy the one person who ever cared about Pamela, or as her mom preferred to call her … Ivy.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Bullying
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The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

In less than twenty-four hours, I’ll be sixteen. Countless stories, songs and poems have been written about this wonderful age, when a girl finds true love and the stars shine for her and the handsome prince carries her off into the sunset.

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan Chase’s life, ever since her father disappeared when she was six. Ten years later, when her little brother also goes missing, Meghan learns the truth—she is the secret daughter of a mythical faery king and a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she’ll go to save someone she loves, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Misogyny
  • Attempted gang rape, on-page
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Self-sacrifice
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drugging
  • Blood depiction
  • Serious injury of a loved one
  • Death of a friend, implied
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Drowning mentioned
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
  • Animal attack
  • Death of a pet
  • Bullying
  • Cyberbullying, including faked revenge pornography
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Go With the Flow by Lily Williams & Karen Schneemann

Go With the Flow by Lily Williams & Karen Schneemann

Go With the Flow by Lily Williams & Karen Schneemann

Sophomores Abby, Brit, Christine, and Sasha are fed up. Hazelton High never has enough tampons. Or pads. Or adults who will listen.

Sick of an administration that puts football before female health, the girls confront a world that shrugs―or worse, squirms―at the thought of a menstruation revolution. They band together to make a change. It’s no easy task, especially while grappling with everything from crushes to trig to JV track but they have each other’s backs. That is, until one of the girls goes rogue, testing the limits of their friendship and pushing the friends to question the power of their own voices.

Now they must learn to work together to raise each other up. But how to you stand your ground while raising bloody hell?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Body shaming
  • Misogyny
  • Sexism
  • Bullying
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Sisters by Daisy Johnson

Sisters by Daisy Johnson

Sisters by Daisy Johnson

Now she returns with Sisters, a haunting story about two sisters caught in a powerful emotional web and wrestling to understand where one ends and the other begins.

Born just ten months apart, July and September are thick as thieves, never needing anyone but each other. Now, following a case of school bullying, the teens have moved away with their single mother to a long-abandoned family home near the shore. In their new, isolated life, July finds that the deep bond she has always shared with September is shifting in ways she cannot entirely understand. A creeping sense of dread and unease descends inside the house. Meanwhile, outside, the sisters push boundaries of behavior—until a series of shocking encounters tests the limits of their shared experience, and forces shocking revelations about the girls’ past and future.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual assault
  • Toxic relationships
  • Mental illness
  • Self-harm
  • Blood
  • Child death
  • Grief
  • Bullying
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The Golden Sheep, Vol. 1 by Kaori Ozaki

The Golden Sheep, Vol. 1 by Kaori Ozaki

The Golden Sheep Vol. 1 by Kaori Ozaki

Tsugu Miikura, a high schooler who loves to play guitar, due to family circumstances, moved away from the rural town where she had spent her childhood. After several years, she’s back in her old hometown. She reunites with her childhood friends—Sora, Yuushin, and Asari—the friends she’d buried a time capsule with back in elementary school. Tsugu is overjoyed to be with her friends once more, but the bonds that she thought would never change have in fact started to grow major cracks…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Paedophilia mentioned
  • Attempted suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Bullying
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The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

This epic work of the imagination has captured the hearts of millions of readers worldwide since it was first published. Its special story within a story is an irresistible invitation for readers to become part of the book itself.

The story begins with a lonely boy named Bastian and the strange book that draws him into the beautiful but doomed world of Fantastica. Only a human can save this enchanted place by giving its ruler, the Childlike Empress, a new name. But the journey to her tower leads through lands of dragons, giants, monsters, and magic, and once Bastian begins his quest, he may never return. As he is drawn deeper into Fantastica, he must find the courage to face unspeakable foes and the mysteries of his own heart.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fat shaming
  • Child neglect
  • Death of a parent
  • Animal death
  • Bullying
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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Homomisia, including internalised homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Rape recounted
  • Parental abuse
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Substance addiction
  • Recreational drug use & abuse
  • Cancer
  • Death of a grandparent
  • Vietnam War discussed
  • Animal abuse
  • Bullying
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Dreamcatcher by Stephen King

Dreamcatcher by Stephen King

In Derry, Maine, four young boys once stood together and did a brave thing. Something that changed them in ways they hardly understood.

A quarter of a century later, the boys are men who have gone their separate ways. Though they still get together once a year, to go hunting in the north woods of Maine. But this time is different. This time a man comes stumbling into their camp, lost, disoriented and muttering about lights in the sky.

Before long, these old friends will be plunged into the most remarkable events of their lives as they struggle with a terrible creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past – and in the Dreamcatcher.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Terminal cancer (leukemia)
  • Contagion (theme)
  • Gun violence
  • Car accident
  • Fire
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
  • Prison riot
  • Hunting
  • Bullying
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The Fallen Children by Stephen King

The Fallen Children by Stephen King

Young people on the Midwich Estate don’t have much hope for their futures. Keisha has lived there her whole life, and has been working hard to escape it; others have just accepted their lot. But change is coming…

One night everyone inside Midwich Tower falls mysteriously unconscious in one inexplicable ‘Nightout’. No one can explain what happened during those lost hours, but soon afterwards Keisha and three other girls find they’re pregnant – and the babies are growing at an alarming rate.

As the news spreads around the tower its residents turn against them and the situation spirals toward violence. Keisha’s life unravels as she realises that the pregnancy may not have just ruined her hopes for the future: she might be mother to the end of the world.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Paedophilia
  • Drugging
  • Abortion
  • Anti-abortion discrimination
  • Bullying
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Christine by Stephen King

Christine by Stephen King

Christine, blood-red, faIt’s love at first sight for high school student Arnie Cunningham when he and his best friend Dennis Guilder spot the dilapidated 1958 red-and-white Plymouth Fury for sale—dubbed “Christine” by its original cantankerous owner—rusting away on a front lawn of their suburban Pennsylvania neighborhood. Dennis knows that Arnie’s never had much luck in the looks or popularity department, or really taken an interest in owning a car . . . but Christine quickly changes all that. Arnie suddenly has the newfound confidence to stick up for himself, going as far as dating the most beautiful girl at Libertyville High—transfer student Leigh Cabot—even as a mysteriously restored Christine systematically and terrifyingly consumes every aspect of Arnie’s life.

Dennis and Leigh soon realize that they must uncover the awful truth behind a car with a horrifying and murderous history. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and heaven help anyone who gets in Christine’s way…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Death of a child from choking recounted
  • Death of a wife from suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning recounted
  • Murder
  • Car accidents (theme)
  • Bullying
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