Room by Emma Donoghue 

Room by Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough … not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child sexual abuse
  • Kidnapping & captivity

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

When this peculiar ad appears in the newspaper, dozens of children enroll to take a series of mysterious, mind-bending tests. (And you, dear reader, can test your wits right alongside them.) But in the end just four very special children will succeed. Their challenge: to go on a secret mission that only the most intelligent and resourceful children could complete. To accomplish it they will have to go undercover at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that there are no rules.

As our heroes face physical and mental trials beyond their wildest imaginations, they have no choice but to turn to each other for support. But with their newfound friendship at stake, will they be able to pass the most important test of all?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • R
  • Child abuse
  • Kidnapping & confinement
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Bake

Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker

Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker

Avery is an exceptional child. Everything he does is precise, from the way he washes his face in the morning, to the way he completes his homework – without complaint, without fuss, without prompt.

Zib is also an exceptional child, because all children are, in their own way. But where everything Avery does and is can be measured, nothing Zib does can possibly be predicted, except for the fact that she can always be relied upon to be unpredictable.

They live on the same street.
They live in different worlds.

On an unplanned detour from home to school one morning, Avery and Zib find themselves climbing over a stone wall into the Up and Under – an impossible land filled with mystery, adventure and the strangest creatures.

And they must find themselves and each other if they are to also find their way out and back to their own lives.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Body shaming
  • Self-harm
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Drowning
  • Animal cruelty
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Displacement by Kiku Hughes

Displacement by Kiku Hughes

Displacement by Kiku Hughes

Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco when suddenly she finds herself displaced to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II.

These displacements keep occurring until Kiku finds herself “”stuck”” back in time. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Colourism
  • Sexism
  • Hate crimes
  • Cancer
  • Death
  • Grief depiction
  • Confinement
  • Imprisonment
  • War themes, specifically WW2 & Japanese internment camp
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Sing Me Forgotten by Jessica S. Olson

Sing Me Forgotten by Jessica S. Olson

Sing Me Forgotten by Jessica S. Olson

Cast into a well at birth for being one of the magical few who can manipulate memories when people sing, she was saved by Cyril, the opera house’s owner. Since that day, he has given her sanctuary from the murderous world outside. All he asks in return is that she use her power to keep ticket sales high—and that she stay out of sight. For if anyone discovers she survived, Isda and Cyril would pay with their lives.

But Isda breaks Cyril’s cardinal rule when she meets Emeric Rodin, a charming boy who throws her quiet, solitary life out of balance. His voice is unlike any she’s ever heard, but the real shock comes when she finds in his memories hints of a way to finally break free of her gilded prison.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Emotional abuse
  • Toxic relationship
  • Self-harm
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a child
  • Grief and loss depiction
  • Gun violence
  • Confinement
  • Torture
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Desperation by Stephen King

Desperation by Stephen King

Desperation is a deserted mining town in the Nevada desert. It`s not a place to visit by choice, and the few unhappy travellers who are forced to stop there witness the familiar-looking town undergo a terrible transformation. In the struggle between good and evil, sacrifice may be the only answer. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Self-sacrifice
  • Death of a daughter
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Explosion
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
  • Death from animal attack (cougar)
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

The Poppy War R. F. Kuang

When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising. But… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Classism
  • Racism & colourism
  • Gang rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Forced marriage
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Sterilization
  • Medical experimentation
  • Dead bodies
  • Decapitation and dismemberment
  • Graphic murder & mass murder
  • Torture
  • Explosions
  • Knife violence
  • Physical assault
  • Captivity & confinement
  • War themes & military violence
  • Fire
  • Flooding
  • Bullying
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fantastical racism and racial slurs
  • Slavery
  • Child rape implied
  • Forced sexual relationships attempting pregnancy
  • Physical and emotional abuse of a child
  • Death of children
  • Death of a partner, on-page
  • Kidnapping
  • Captivity
  • Genocide recounted
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

What the Woods Keep by Katya de Becerra

What the Woods Keep by Katya de Becerra

Hayden tried to put the past behind her, and it worked. She’s getting ready for college, living in a Brooklyn apartment, and hanging out with her best friend and roommate Del. But now it’s all catching up with her: her mother’s mysterious disappearance a decade before, her father’s outlandish theories about a lost supernatural race, and Hayden’s own dark dreams of strange symbols and rituals in the Colorado woods where she grew up.

As soon as Hayden arrives at her hometown, her friend Del in tow, it begins: Neighbors whisper secrets about Hayden’s mother; the boy next door is now all grown-up in a very distracting way; and Hayden feels the trees calling to her. And among them, deep in the woods, Hayden will discover something incredible—something that threatens reality itself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Sleep disorders
  • Graphic self harm
  • Graphic blood test
  • Burns
  • Nonconsensual medical treatment
  • Needles
  • Physical assault
  • Hanging mentioned
  • Captivity mentioned
  • Bullying recounted
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Little White Lies by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Little White Lies by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“I’m not saying this is Sawyer’s fault,” the prim and proper one said delicately. “But.”

Eighteen-year-old auto mechanic Sawyer Taft did not expect her estranged grandmother to show up at her apartment door and offer her a six-figure contract to participate in debutante season. And she definitely never imagined she would accept. But when she realizes that immersing herself in her grandmother’s “society” might mean discovering the answer to the biggest mystery of her life-her father’s identity-she signs on the dotted line and braces herself for a year of makeovers, big dresses, bigger egos, and a whole lot of bless your heart. The one thing she doesn’t expect to find is friendship, but as she’s drawn into a group… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol abuse
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Blackmail
  • Car accident
  • Kidnapping & captivity
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com