Stitches by David Small

Stitches by David Small

One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had throat cancer and was expected to die.

Readers will be riveted by his journey from speechless victim, subjected to X-rays by his radiologist father and scolded by his withholding and tormented mother, to his decision to flee his home at sixteen with nothing more than dreams of becoming an artist.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Emotional & verbal child abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking
  • Cancer
  • Surgery
  • Fire
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racist language
  • Domestic abuse
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Miscarriage
  • Blood depiction
  • Cancer
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a son
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Symptoms of a Heartbreak by Sona Charaipotra

Symptoms of a Heartbreak by Sona Charaipotra

Fresh from med school, sixteen-year-old medical prodigy Saira arrives for her first day at her new job: treating children with cancer. She’s always had to balance family and friendships with her celebrity as the Girl Genius―but she’s never had to prove herself to skeptical adult co-workers while adjusting to real life-and-death stakes. And working in the same hospital as her mother certainly isn’t making things any easier.

But life gets complicated when Saira finds herself falling in love with a patient: a cute teen boy who’s been diagnosed with cancer. And when she risks her brand new career to try to improve his chances, it could cost her everything… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Cancer
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba’s high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country’s growing political unrest–until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary…

Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother. Elisa’s last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she’ll need the lessons of her grandmother’s past to help her understand the true meaning of courage

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment
  • Death of a grandmother
  • Murder
  • Imprisonment
  • Kidnapping
  • War themes
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Adult-minor relationship discussed
  • Physical child abuse recounted
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Nightmares & night terrors
  • Murder-suicide mentioned
  • Suicide by asphyxia mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Prescription pill use
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father
  • Death of a husband
  • Death of a sister
  • Death of a child
  • Murder mentioned
  • Home invasion
  • Strangulation
  • Disappearance of a child recounted
  • Bullying recounted
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.

As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Classism
  • Cheating recounted
  • Nightmares
  • Suicide (on-page & recounted)
  • Self harm by burning (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Blood & physical injuries depiction
  • Nonconsensual medical procedures & experimentation
  • Emesis
  • Hospital
  • Surgery
  • Needles & syringes
  • Cancer & terminal illness mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother & father mentioned
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence
  • Gun violence
  • Graphic fire (on-page)
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Car accident
  • Disappearance of a friend (theme)
  • Death from a fall (on-page)
  • Poverty theme
  • Homelessness
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager

Fifteen years ago, summer camper Emma Davis watched sleepily as her three cabin mates snuck out of their cabin in the dead of night. The last she–and anyone–saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.

Now a rising star in the NYC art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings.. They catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of the very same Camp Nightingale–and when Francesca implores Emma to return to the camp as a painting counselor, Emma sees an opportunity to find closure and move on… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Slut shaming
  • Statutory rape
  • Nonconsensual voyeurism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Substance addiction
  • Anxiety attacks
  • Schizophreniform Disorder
  • Blood & physical depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Hospital & forced institutionalization
  • Terminal cancer
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Drowning
  • Car accident recounted
  • Disappearance of a loved one
  • Graphic animal death recounted
  • Bullying
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Final Girls by Riley Sager

Final Girls by Riley Sager

Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout’s knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media’s attempts, they never meet… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Slut shaming
  • Sexual assault (on-page)
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Cheating
  • Eating disorder recounted
  • Post traumatic disorder implied
  • Memory loss
  • Suicide
  • Self harm*
  • Recreational drug use
  • Prescription drug abuse
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Overdose
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical injuries
  • Emesis
  • Coma
  • Hospital
  • Cancer
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a boyfriend
  • Mass murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Poverty themes
  • Homelessness & displacement

*Note: Faked self harm wounds.

Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of human hosts while leaving their bodies intact. Wanderer, the invading “soul” who has been given Melanie’s body, didn’t expect to find its former tenant refusing to relinquish possession of her mind. As Melanie fills Wanderer’s thoughts with visions of Jared, a human who still lives in hiding, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she’s never met. Reluctant allies, Wanderer and Melanie set off to search for the man they both love.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Overdose
  • Blood & physical injury depiction
  • Cancer
  • Gun violence
  • Near-drowning incident

If you choose to support this author, please consider educating yourself about the Quileute tribe’s plight and support their mission.

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan

Jason has a problem. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up in a bus full of kids on a field trip. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper, and his best friend is a guy named Leo. They’re all students at the Wilderness School, a boarding school for “bad kids,” as Leo puts it. What did Jason do to end up here? And where is here, exactly? Jason doesn’t know anything—except that everything seems very wrong.

Piper has a secret. Her father has been missing for three days, ever since she had that terrifying nightmare about his being in trouble. Piper doesn’t understand her dream, or why her boyfriend suddenly doesn’t recognize her. When a freak storm hits during the school trip, unleashing strange creatures and whisking her, Jason, and Leo away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood, she has a feeling she’s going to find out, whether she wants to or not… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment
  • Amnesia
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Physical injuries
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Death of a grandfather mentioned
  • Kidnapping
  • Fire
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
  • War themes & battle scenes
  • Bullying
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com