The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones

Rachel and Noah have been friends since they met at university. While they once thought that they might be something more, now, twenty years later, they are each happily married to other people, Jack and Paige respectively. Jack’s brother Will is getting married, to the dazzling, impulsive Ali, and the group of six travel to Portugal for their destination weekend. Three couples.
As they arrive at a gorgeous villa perched on a cliff-edge, overlooking towering waves that crash on the famous surfing beaches below at Nazaré, they try to settle into a weekend of fun. While Rachel is looking forward to getting to know her future… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a friend
  • Car accident

The Half Sister by Sandie Jones

Kate and Lauren meet for Sunday lunch every week without fail, especially after the loss of their father–but a knock at the door is about to change everything. A young woman by the name of Jess holds a note with the results of a DNA test, claiming to be their half sister. As the fallout starts, it’s clear that they are all hiding secrets, and perhaps this family isn’t as perfect as it appears.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental infidelity discussed
  • Abusive relationship
  • Death of a father recounted

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Injury depiction & medical content

The Second Home by Christina Clancy

After a disastrous summer spent at her family’s home on Cape Cod when she is seventeen, Ann Gordon is very happy to never visit Wellfleet again. If only she’d stayed in Wisconsin, she might never have met Anthony Shaw, and she would have held onto the future she’d so carefully planned for herself. Instead, Ann ends up harboring a devastating secret that strains her relationship with her parents, sends her sister Poppy to every corner of the world chasing waves (and her next fling), and leaves her adopted brother Michael estranged from the family…. Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Infidelity
  • Suicide

The Snowbirds by Christina Clancy

Kim and Grant are at a turning point. A couple for thirty years, their “separate but together” partnership is running up against the realities of late middle age: Grant’s mother has died, the college where he taught philosophy was shuttered, and their twin girls are grown and gone. Escaping the bitter cold of a Midwestern winter for the hot desert sun of Palm Springs seems as good a solution as any to the more intractable problems they face. When they arrive at Le Desert, a quirky condo community where everyone knows everyone’s business, Kim immediately embraces the opportunity to make new friends and explore a more… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Suicide & self-harm mentioned
  • Alcoholism mentioned

Cruel King by Rina Kent

Levi Here, little princess. I’m your king. You have three rules. Bow. Break. Bend the knee. Fight me all you want, but soon enough, you’ll be chanting long live the king. Astrid One day I’m Royal Elite School’s small fly, the next I’m hunted and left to die. He doesn’t only shred my life to parts, but he’s also coming after my heart. He thinks he broke me, but the new princess will bring the king to his knees.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Threats of rape
  • Cheating*
  • Dubious consent scenes
  • Drugging
  • Death of a parent (off-page)
  • Car accident (hit-and-run)
  • Bullying

*Context: The heroine catches the hero about to have oral sex with her step-sister; whether or not the characters were already in a relationship is left to the reader’s discretion. In an on-page sex scene, the hero refuses to stop or ‘pull out’ when the heroine asks repeatedly.

The Christmas Wish by Lindsey Kelk

Newly single lawyer Gwen Baker is hoping that a family Christmas—countryside, a mountain of food and festive films—will salve the sting of her career hanging by a thread and her heart being trampled on. Because everyone else has their life sorted: even Dev, her boy-next-door crush, is now a tall, dark and handsome stranger with a fiancée. She can’t help wishing her future was clearer. Then Gwen wakes up to discover it’s Christmas day all over again. Like Groundhog Day but with eggnog. And family arguments. On repeat. As she figures out how to escape her own… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity recounted (secondary character)

(S)Kin by Ibi Zoboi

Fifteen-year-old Marisol is the daughter of a soucouyant. Every new moon, she sheds her skin like the many women before her, shifting into a fireball witch who must fly into the night and slowly sip from the lives of others to sustain her own. But Brooklyn is no place for fireball witches with all its bright lights, shut windows, and bolt-locked doors.… While Marisol hoped they would leave their old traditions behind when they emigrated from the islands, she knows this will never happen while she remains ensnared by the one person who keeps her chained to her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny & sexual harassment
  • Infidelity discussed
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned (secondary character)
  • Body horror (on-page, detailed)

A Girl Like Us by Anna Sophia McLoughlin

It’s 2004 and former reality TV star and party girl Maya Miller has just married the most eligible bachelor on the planet: Colin Sterling, of the globally famous Sterling family whose history of aristocratic titles and land holdings rival a British royal and whose media empire is comparable to the Murdochs. To some, Maya represents the American dream. To others, a gold digger. But when Colin’s cousin Arianna, the heiress to the family’s immense fortune, is found murdered, Maya is thrust into the spotlight: first as she is revealed to be the next heiress to the fortune, and then as the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption & drugging
  • Alcoholism mentioned
  • Institutionalisation
  • Murder
  • Arson

Count My Lies by Sophie Stava

Sloane Caraway is a liar. Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting. So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can’t help herself—she tells the girl’s (very attractive) dad she’s a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl’s foot. With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy, and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. The perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island. But maybe Sloane isn’t the only one lying, and all that’s picture-perfect harbors a much more… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Gun violence
  • Stalking