Force of Nature by Jane Harper 

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

The hike through the rugged Giralang Ranges is meant to take the office colleagues out of their air-conditioned comfort zone and encourage teamwork and resilience. At least, that’s what the corporate retreat website advertises.

Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker, Alice Russell. Because Alice knew secrets, about the company she worked for and the people she worked with.

The four returning women tell Falk a tale of fear, violence and fractured trust during their days in the remote Australian bushland. And as Falk delves into the disappearance of Alice, he begins to suspect some dangers ran far deeper than anyone knew.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Cheating, on-page
  • Revenge pornography of a minor discussed
  • Alcohol consumption, on-page
  • Alcoholism & substance addiction discussed
  • Drug use & abuse recounted
  • Graphic smoking, on-page
  • Eating disorder and disordered food & weight thoughts, on-page
  • Abortion & miscarriage mentioned
  • Blood & injury depiction, including a fractured wrist, head wounds, burn scars, and hospitalisation for an infected snakebite
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Murder
  • Animal attack (snake)
  • Bullying

Beautiful Oblivion by Jamie McGuire

Beautiful Oblivion by Jamie McGuire

Fiercely independent Camille “Cami” Camlin gladly moved on from her childhood before it was over. She has held down a job since before she could drive, and moved into her own apartment after her freshman year of college. Now tending bar at The Red Door, Cami doesn’t have time for much else besides work and classes, until a trip to see her boyfriend is cancelled, leaving her with a first weekend off in almost a year.

Trenton Maddox was the king of Eastern State University, dating co-eds before he even graduated high school. His friends wanted to be him, and women wanted to tame him, but after a tragic accident turned his world upside down, Trenton leaves campus to come to grips with the crushing guilt… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Cheating
  • Domestic violence discussed
  • Death of a girlfriend in a car accident recounted

Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Evie Thomas doesn’t believe in love anymore. Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. After all, even the greatest love stories end with a broken heart, eventually.

As Evie tries to understand why this is happening, she finds herself at La Brea Dance Studio, learning to waltz, fox-trot, and tango with a boy named X. X is everything that Evie is not: adventurous, passionate, daring. His philosophy is to say yes to everything–including entering a ballroom dance competition with a girl he’s only just met… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Cheating
  • Depression
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a father mentioned

Kulti by Mariana Zapata

Kulti by Mariana Zapata

When the man you worshipped as a kid becomes your coach, it’s supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. Keywords: supposed to. It didn’t take a week for 27-year-old Sal Casillas to wonder what she’d seen in the international soccer icon – why she’d ever had his posters on her wall or ever envisioned marrying him and having super-playing soccer babies. Sal had long ago gotten over the worst non-break-up in the history of imaginary relationships with a man who hadn’t known she’d existed. So she isn’t prepared for this version of Reiner Kulti who shows up to her team’s season: a quiet, reclusive shadow of the explosive, passionate man he’d once been.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism & slut-shaming
  • Infidelity mentioned

Writers and Lovers by Lily King 

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, mouldy room at the side of a garage, where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching on to something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Workplace sexual harassment
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Anxiety
  • Panic attack
  • Cancer (squamous cell carcinoma)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a wife from cancer mentioned
  • Death of a mother from heart disease
  • Death of a sister mentioned

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George 

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George 

Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can’t seem to heal through literature is himself; he’s still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.

After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Cheating
  • Cancer
  • Animal death

Escaping from Houdini by Kerri Maniscalco 

Escaping from Houdini by Kerri Maniscalco

Audrey Rose Wadsworth and her partner-in-crime-investigation, Thomas Cresswell, are en route to New York to help solve another blood-soaked mystery. Embarking on a week-long voyage across the Atlantic on the opulent RMS Etruria, they’re delighted to discover a travelling troupe of circus performers, fortune tellers, and a certain charismatic young escape artist entertaining the first-class passengers nightly.

But then, privileged young women begin to go missing without explanation, and a series of brutal slayings shocks the entire ship. The disturbing influence of the Moonlight Carnival pervades the decks as the murders grow ever more freakish, with nowhere to escape except the unforgiving sea… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Cheating
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies & autopsies
  • Murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Hanging
  • Poisoning
  • Blackmail
  • Animal attack

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing 

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.

We look like a normal couple. We’re your neighbors, the parents of your kid’s friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.

We all have secrets to keeping a marriage alive.

Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Cheating
  • Suicide
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Stalking

How to Walk Away by Katherine Center 

How to Walk Away by Katherine Center

Margaret Jacobsen has a bright future ahead of her: a fiancé she adores, her dream job, and the promise of a picture-perfect life just around the corner. Then, suddenly, on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life, everything she worked for is taken away in one tumultuous moment.

In the hospital and forced to face the possibility that nothing will ever be the same again, Margaret must figure out how to move forward on her own terms while facing long-held family secrets, devastating heartbreak, and the idea that love might find her in the last place she would ever expect.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Cheating
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Gun violence mentioned
  • Plane crash, on-page

Dirty Headlines by LJ Shen

Dirty Headlines by L.J. Shen

I could have impressed him, if not for last month’s unforgettable one-night stand. I left it with more than orgasms and a pleasant memory–namely, his wallet. Now he’s staring me down like I’m the dirt under his Italian loafers, and I’m supposed to take it. But the thing about being Judith “Jude” Humphry is I have nothing to lose. Brooklyn girl. Infamously quirky. Heir to a stack of medical bills and a tattered couch. When he looks at me from across the room, I see the glint in his eyes, and that makes us rivals. He knows it. So do I. Every day in the newsroom is a battle. Every night in his bed, war. But it’s my heart at stake, and I fear I’ll be raising the white flag. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Boss-employee relationship
  • Parent with cancer (on-page)