Tag Archives: Chronic Illness & Chronic Pain

Conditions of a Heart by Bethany Mangle

Brynn Kwan is desperate for her high school persona to be real. That Brynn is head of the yearbook committee, the favourite for prom queen, and definitely not crumbling from a secret disability that’s rapidly wearing her down. If no one knows the truth about her condition, Brynn doesn’t have to worry about the pitying looks or accusations of being a faker that already destroyed her childhood friendships. She’s even willing to let go of her four-year relationship with her first love, Oliver, rather than reveal that a necessary surgery was the reason she ignored his existence for the entire summer. But after Brynn… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism discussed
  • Chronic illness (Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome, and POTS)
  • COVID-19 pandemic mentioned

Cross the Line by Simone Soltani

Formula 1 driver Dev Anderson’s career is on the line. After a social media disaster leaves him with an angry team and sponsors threatening to jump ship, he needs someone to help save his image. At a party in Monaco, he bumps into the woman who can fix it all. There’s just one problem: she’s his best friend’s little sister. And, okay, maybe there’s another problem—he kissed her last year and hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Recent college grad Willow Williams needs a job. She may have a talent for seeing the bright side of any bad situation, but it’s hard to stay positive when she’s struggling to get hired. So when Dev… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Chronic joint illness & pain (protagonist)

You, with a View by Jessica Joyce

Noelle Shepard is grieving the loss of her beloved grandmother when she discovers decades-old photos and letters that hint to a forbidden love in her gram’s past. Needing to know the full story, she creates a TikTok video appealing for information – and it goes viral. Through her video, she manages to track down her grandmother’s secret love, Paul, who offers to take her on the honeymoon road-trip he and Gram planned but never got to go on. Noelle jumps at the chance to make this one last connection with her grandmother. There’s just one problem – Paul’s grandson is… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotional parental abuse (off-page)
  • Chronic back pain & minor sports injury
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a grandmother recounted
  • Discussions of employment and financial concerns

So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix by Bethany C. Morrow

North Carolina, 1863. As the American Civil War rages on, the Freedmen’s Colony of Roanoke Island is blossoming, a haven for the recently emancipated. Black people have begun building a community of their own, a refuge from the shadow of the old life. It is where the March family has finally been able to safely put down roots with four young daughters: Meg, a teacher who longs to find love and start a family of her own. Jo, a writer whose words are too powerful to be contained. Beth, a talented seamstress searching for a higher purpose. Amy, a dancer eager to explore… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery (theme)
  • Racism
  • Chronic illness
  • Gun violence
  • American Civil War

Ferris by Kate DiCamillo

It’s the summer before fifth grade, and for Ferris Wilkey, it is a summer of sheer pandemonium: Her little sister, Pinky, has vowed to become an outlaw. Uncle Ted has left Aunt Shirley and, to Ferris’s mother’s chagrin, is holed up in the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world. And Charisse, Ferris’s grandmother, has started seeing a ghost at the threshold of her room, which seems like an alarming omen given that she is also feeling unwell. But the ghost is not there to usher Charisse to the Great Beyond. Rather, she has other plans—wild, impractical, illuminating… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grandparent with a heart condition
  • Death of a grandmother

The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang

San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace. His patronage offers… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Drug use
  • Forced institutionalisation
  • Chronic migraines
  • Death of parents mentioned
  • Murder
  • Fire
  • Earthquake (1906 San Francisco)

What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher

After kan terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if ka just survived another war. All ka crave is rest, routine, and sunshine, but instead, as a favour to Angus and Miss Potter, they find kanself heading to kan family hunting lodge, deep in the cold, damp forests of their home country, Gallacia. In theory, one can find relaxation in even the coldest and dampest of Gallacian autumns, but when Easton arrives, ka find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence. The villagers whisper that a breath-stealing monster from folklore has taken up residence in Eastonh… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Military-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) including flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical illness and injury including chronic shoulder injury and pneumonia
  • Depiction of a dead body
  • Graphic body horror (theme)
  • Military enlistment during wartime discussed
  • Animal hunting mentioned

The Fall of Whit Rivera by Crystal Maldonado

Could you plan the Fall Formal with your (hot) nemesis? Whit Rivera is about to find out. Frenemies Whit and Zay have been at odds for years (ever since he broke up with her in, like, the most embarrassing way imaginable), so when they’re forced to organize the fall formal together, it’s a literal disaster. Sparks fly as Whitney—type-A, passionate, a perfectionist, and a certified sweater-weather fanatic—butts heads with Zay, a dry, relaxed skater boy who takes everything in stride. But not all of those sparks are bad. Has their feud been a big misunderstanding all along?. Read

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Protagonist with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)

Undone by the Ex-Con by Talia Hibbert

To protect her brother, Lizzie must seduce the man she despises… Isaac Montgomery is a killer. A savage. He doesn’t belong in the glittering world of high-society, but somehow, that’s where he’s ended up. After all he’s been through, it should take more than a prima ballerina with a cut-glass accent to get under his skin. But when Isaac meets Lizzie Olusegun-Keynes, he doesn’t just lose his cool. He f$*king melts. Lizzie is losing control of her body, her life—and her desires. She shouldn’t want a man like Isaac, a man who’s rough and coarse and forceful, but the lust that sparks between them is impossible to ignore. When a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & parental disownment
  • Internalised ableism
  • Sexual harassment
  • Diabetes
  • Blackmail

*Context : The protagonist’s employer blackmails her and threatens to out her brother.

XOXO by Axie Oh

Cello prodigy Jenny has one goal: to get into a prestigious music conservatory. When she meets mysterious, handsome Jaewoo in her uncle’s Los Angeles karaoke bar, it’s clear he’s the kind of boy who would uproot her careful plans. But in a moment of spontaneity, she allows him to pull her out of her comfort zone for one unforgettable night of adventure…before he disappears without a word. Three months later, when Jenny and her mother arrive in South Korea to take care of her ailing grandmother, she’s shocked to discover that Jaewoo is a student at the same elite arts academy where she’s.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cancer
  • Chronic illness
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Bullying