Queso, Just in Time by Ernesto Cisneros

Quetzalcóatl Castillo—Queso for short—has had an ache in his heart that won’t go away ever since his father’s death. More than anything, he wishes he could spend time with his dad again. After whispering that wish one night under the light of the moon, Queso wakes up the next morning in 1985. With 12-year-old Pancho—the kid who will grow up to be his dad. Even though he has no idea what to do, Queso is just happy to be by his dad’s side again. But while Pancho is confident when scoring on the foosball table or standing up to bullies, he doesn’t think he’s smart enough to reach for his dreams. If only Pancho believed in himself the… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Homophobia & transphobia
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder of a father (shot during a home invasion)
  • Bullying

Far from Home by Lorelie Brown

My name is Rachel. I’m straight . . . I think. I also have a mountain of student loans and a smart mouth. I wasn’t serious when I told Pari Sadashiv I’d marry her. It was only party banter! Except Pari needs a green card, and she’s willing to give me a breather from drowning in debt. My off-the-cuff idea might not be so terrible. We get along as friends. She’s really romantically cautious, which I find heartbreaking. She deserves someone to laugh with. She’s kind. And calm. And gorgeous. A couple of years with her actually sounds pretty good. If some of Pari’s kindness and calmness rub… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Eating disorder (anorexia)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a father from a heart attack mentioned

Santa’s Helper by Shae Sanders

A chance encounter at the mall sets off sparks between Felina and Julian. He’s Santa, and he needs a Mrs. Claus…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce due to infidelity (ex-partner)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father recounted

Some Kind of Famous by Ava Wilder

It’s been a decade since Merritt Valentine’s peak as a celebrated singer-songwriter… and her subsequent career-ending mental breakdown. Since then, she’s abandoned the glitz of Los Angeles to move in with her sister, Olivia, in the sleepy Colorado ski town of Crested Peak, hoping to heal her lingering emotional wounds of the spotlight. Life in Crested Peak would be uncomplicated if not for Merritt’s inconvenient crush on the local contractor and handyman, Nikolaos Petrakis. Niko is disarmingly handsome and too kind-hearted to ever be right for the complex and prickly… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming & mentions of homophobia (secondary characters)
  • Minor fatphobia & mention of weight gain
  • Parental abandonment & familial estrangement
  • Statutory rape recounted (protagonist was 14-years-old and her sibling’s brother was ~roughly~ 19-years-old)
  • Workplace sexual harassment of a teen mentioned
  • Divorce & infidelity recounted (the protagonist’s ex-husband cheated on her, and she cheated in previous relationships)
  • Panic attacks recounted
  • Dissociation, Borderline Personality Disorder & Complex PTSD (protqagonist)
  • Protagonist in recovery for substance and alcohol addictions after an attempted suicide by overdose in the past, including on-page & recounted drug use & abuse and alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Unplanned teen pregnancy recounted & mentions of a pregnant secondary character
  • Emesis
  • Death of a father mentioned
  • Animal death mentioned (pet cat)

Zeus: King of the Gods by George O’Connor

Here’s Where It All Starts: the beginning of everything – the world, the gods, and even humanity. Mighty Kronos, the most terrifying of all the Titans, reigns as the unchallenged tyrant of the cosmos…until his son, the god Zeus, stands up and takes on his own father in a battle intense enough to shatter the universe! Who will emerge triumphant?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infanticide & patricide
  • Imprisonment
  • War themes & battle scenes

Born to Be Badger by Shelly Laurenston

Emily “Tock” Meyerson-Jackson is on a mission to rid the world of shifters trafficking humans for hunting and cash. And now that she’s narrowed down her suspects to a brutal coalition of male lions, nothing will get between this honey badger and her prey—not even a dog-loving Tiger with absolutely no time management skills. Doesn’t matter that Shay Malone is ferociously adorable. With a war brewing between cat families, Tock doesn’t have time to lounge around with a football-playing tiger shifter. But when she realize… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Human & sex trafficking
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a father
  • Gun violence

Bite Me by Shelly Laurenston

Livy Kowalski has no time for idiots. When you shapeshift into a honey badger, getting through life’s irritants is a finely honed skill. Until she gets stuck housing her nutso cousin and dealing with her dad’s untimely and unexplained demise. That’s where Vic Barinov comes in—or his house does. Vic can’t step outside without coming back to find Livy devouring his honey stash and getting the TV remote sticky. It gets his animal instincts all riled up. But he’ll have to woo her at high all hell is breaking loose, and Livy is leading the charge…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a father

Bad Neighbor by Molly O’Keefe

I gave up everything to save my sister from a monster, and now I’m lying low in this rundown apartment so I can stay out of danger. Hiding from everyone. Except for the guy in apartment 1A. He’s rude. Silent. Muscled, mysterious, and hot as hell. I don’t know if he likes me or hates me, but the more time I spend with him, the less it matters. I want him. And for the first time in my life I’m going to go after what I want.From the second 1B moves in, I know she’s keeping secrets. She doesn’t belong here, much less with a street fighter like me.
But that doesn’t stop me from craving her… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Internalised fatphobia
  • Pregnancy mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of a father
  • Murder
  • Physical assault

Bad Mormon by Heather Gay

Drinking and Tweeting meets Unorthodox in this vulnerable memoir about The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star’s departure from the Mormon Church, and her unforeseen success in business, television, and single motherhood. Straight off the slopes and into the spotlight, Heather Gay is famous for speaking the gospel truth. Whether as a businesswoman, mother, or television personality, she is unafraid to blaze a new trail, even if it means losing family, friends, and her community. Born and bred to be devout… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Misogyny & sexism with discussions of purity culture
  • Ableist child abuse
  • Divorce
  • Suicide of business partner’s sibling
  • Alcohol consumption & recreational drug use
  • Pregnancy
  • Cosmetic surgery
  • Death of a father mentioned

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead. There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more. But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod’s family.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Drugging
  • Murder of a father, mother & sister by stabbing
  • Kidnapping
  • Gun & knife violence
  • Car accident mentioned (hit-and-run)
  • Bullying