Gertie’s Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley

Gertie’s Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley

Gertie Reece Foy is 100% Not-From-Concentrate awesome. She has a daddy who works on an oil rig, a great-aunt who always finds the lowest prices at the Piggly Wiggly, and two loyal best friends. So when her absent mother decides to move away from their small town, Gertie sets out on her greatest mission yet: becoming the best fifth grader in the universe to show her mother exactly what she’ll be leaving behind. There’s just one problem: Seat-stealing new girl Mary Sue Spivey wants to be the best fifth grader, too. And there is simply not enough room at the top for the two of them. 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Physical injury (broken bone) mentioned
  • Bullying

The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister

The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister

Emmeline lives an enchanted childhood on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses. What he won’t explain are the mysterious scents stored in the drawers that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them. As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world—a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity, a quest that challenges the limits of her heart and imagination.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic violence
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Bullying
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Runt by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Elizabeth Moon grew up around dogs. Her mom runs a boarding kennel out of their home, so she’s seen how dogs behave to determine pack order. Her experience in middle school is uncomfortably similar. Maggie hates how Elizabeth acts so much better than everyone else. Besides, she’s always covered in dog hair. And she smells. So Maggie creates a fake profile on a popular social networking site to teach Elizabeth a lesson.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical assault (fistfight)
  • Animal injury, death & abuse (monkey, otter, dog, on-page)
  • Bullying

The Black Mage by Daniel Barnes and DJ Kirkland

When St. Ivory Academy, a historically white wizarding school, opens its doors to its first-ever black student, everyone believes that the wizarding community is finally taking its first crucial steps toward inclusivity. Or is it? When Tom Token, the beneficiary of the school’s “Magical Minority Initiative,” begins uncovering weird clues and receiving creepy texts on his phone, he and his friend, Lindsay, stumble into a conspiracy that dates all the way back to the American Civil War, and could cost Tom his very soul.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & white supremacy (theme), including the Ku Klux Klan (on-page)
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Cults
  • War themes recounted
  • Bullying

Follow Me by Kathleen Barber

Follow Me by Kathleen Barber

Everyone wants new followers…until they follow you home.

Audrey Miller has an enviable new job at the Smithsonian, a body by reformer Pilates, an apartment door with a broken lock, and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers to bear witness to it all. Having just moved to Washington, DC, Audrey busies herself impressing her new boss, interacting with her online fan base, and staving off a creepy upstairs neighbor with the help of the only two people she knows in town: an ex-boyfriend she can’t stay away from and a sorority sister with a high-powered job and a mysterious past… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Stalking
  • Bullying
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

What I Lost by Alexandra Ballard

What sixteen-year-old Elizabeth has lost so far: forty pounds, four jean sizes, a boyfriend, and her peace of mind. As a result, she’s finally a size zero. She’s also the newest resident at Wallingfield, a treatment center for girls like her—girls with eating disorders. Elizabeth is determined to endure the program so she can go back home, where she plans to start restricting her food intake again.She’s pretty sure her mom, who has her own size-zero obsession, needs treatment as much as she does. Maybe even more. Then Elizabeth begins receiving mysterious packages. Are they… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Protagonist admitted to an in-patient treatment program at an eating disorder clinic for recovery & related medical issues (theme)
  • Anxiety & self-harm
  • Bullying

Mammoth by Jill Baguchinsky

The summer before her junior year, paleontology geek Natalie Page lands a coveted internship at an Ice Age dig site near Austin. Natalie, who’s also a plus-size fashion blogger, depends on the retro style she developed to shield herself from her former bullies, but vintage dresses and perfect lipstick aren’t compatible with prospecting for fossils in the Texas heat. But nothing is going to dampen Natalie’s spirit — she’s exactly where she wants to be, and she gets to work with her hero, a rock-star paleontologist who hosts the most popular paleo podcast in the world. And then there’s Chase the intern, who’s serious… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia & body shaming
  • Self-harm
  • Bullying

Joshua Dread by Derf Backderf

Joshua Dread by Derf Backderf

For Joshua Dread, middle school is proving to be, well, awkward. Not only do bullies pick on him, but do you see those supervillains over there trying to flood the world? The ones that everyone, including his best friend Milton, are rooting for Captain Justice to take down? They’re the Dread Duo, and they just happen to be his parents.

As if trying to hide his identity wasn’t hard enough, Joshua has started leaving a trail of exploding pencils and scorched handprints in his wake and only Sophie, the new girl in town with a mysterious past, seems unsurprised. When a violent attack at the Vile Fair makes it clear someone is abducting supervillains and that his parents may very well be next, Joshua must enlist both Sophie and Milton’s help to save them.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Bullying
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

Seventeen-year-old Anouk has finally caught the break she’s been looking for—she’s been selected out of hundreds of other candidates to fly to France and help with the excavation of a vast, underground palace buried a hundred feet below the suburbs of Paris. Built in the 1780’s to hide an aristocratic family and a mad duke during the French Revolution, the palace has lain hidden and forgotten ever since. Anouk, along with several other gifted teenagers, will be the first to set foot in it in over two centuries. Or so she thought.

But nothing is as it seems, and the teens soon find themselves embroiled in a game far more sinister, and dangerous, than they could possibly have imagined. An evil spanning centuries is waiting for them in the depths.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Classism
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Hallucinations & delusions mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injury
  • Dead bodies
  • Human experimentation
  • Needles
  • Hospital
  • Decapitation
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a wife
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Stabbing
  • Explosions
  • Physical assault
  • Torture & sensory deprivation
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Car accident
  • Plane crash mentioned
  • Bullying
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour

Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour

There’s nothing like a Black salesman on a mission.

An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & white supremacy
  • Murder
  • Bullying
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com