Heartbreak for Hire by Lauren Layne

Heartbreak for Hire by Lauren Layne

Brinkley Saunders has a secret. To everyone in the academic world she left behind, she lost it all when she dropped out of grad school. Once a rising star following in her mother’s footsteps, she’s now an administrative assistant at an insurance agency—or so they think.

In reality, Brinkley works at Heartbreak for Hire, a secret service that specializes in revenge for jilted lovers, frenemies, and long-suffering coworkers with a little cash to spare and a man who needs to be taken down a notch. It might not be as prestigious as academia, but it helps Brinkley save for her dream of opening an art gallery and lets her exorcise a few demons, all while helping to empower women… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
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To Sir, with Love by Lauren Layne

To Sir, with Love by Lauren Layne

Perpetually cheerful and eager to please, Gracie Cooper strives to make the best out of every situation. So when her father dies just months after a lung cancer diagnosis, she sets aside her dreams of pursuing her passion for art to take over his Midtown Manhattan champagne shop. She soon finds out that the store’s profit margins are being squeezed perilously tight, and complicating matters further, a giant corporation headed by the impossibly handsome, but irritatingly arrogant Sebastian Andrews is proposing a buyout. But Gracie can’t bear the thought of throwing away her father’s dream like she did her own… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father from lung cancer
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A New Kind of Everything by Richard Yaxley

A New Kind of Everything by Richard Yaxley

After their father’s reckless death, the Gallagher family must find new directions. Dinny’s mum finds a new form of freedom, but the paths the boys are choosing are pointing them in dangerous directions.

Fourteen-year-old Dinny is in danger of repeating his father’s behaviour, and his older brother Carl sees an opportunity for independence. But when Carl becomes involved in the aggressive agenda of an anti-immigration group, a different crisis develops—leading the family to tragedy, insight, and rebirth.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Domestic abuse recounted
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Suicide
  • Recreational drug use
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father
  • Car accident
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27 Hours by Tristina Wright

27 Hours by Tristina Wright

Rumor Mora fears two things: hellhounds too strong for him to kill, and failure. Jude Welton has two dreams: for humans to stop killing monsters, and for his strange abilities to vanish.

But in no reality should a boy raised to love monsters fall for a boy raised to kill them.

Nyx Llorca keeps two secrets: the moon speaks to her, and she’s in love with Dahlia, her best friend. Braeden Tennant wants two things: to get out from his mother’s shadow, and to unlearn Epsilon’s darkest secret… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Panic attacks
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injury
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a mother & father mentioned
  • Death of a parent by a cave collapse
  • Death from drowning
  • Explosion
  • Fire
  • Colonialism & war themes
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City of Secrets by Victoria Ying

City of Secrets by Victoria Ying

Ever Barnes is a shy orphan guarding a secret in an amazing puzzle box of a building. Most of the young women who work at the building’s Switchboard Operating Facility, which connects the whole city of Oskar, look the other way as Ever roams around in the shadows. But one of them, Lisa, keeps an eye on the boy. So does the head of the Switchboard, Madame Alexander . . . a rather sharp eye. Enter Hannah, the spunky daughter of the building’s owner. She thinks Ever needs a friend, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Lisa and Madame Alexander are each clearly… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Hospitalisation for injury & blood depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Death from a fall
  • War themes, including a missile strike
  • Child homelessness & poverty

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Jill MacSweeney just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she’s been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends—everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she’s somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one.

Mandy Kalinowski understands what it’s like to grow up unwanted—to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she’s sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It’s harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child sexual abuse
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Nonconsensual pregnancy*
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father

* Note : The protagonist fears she became pregnant when she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend.

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The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

Macy has little to look forward to while her boyfriend is away at Brain Camp. Days will be spent at a boring job in the library, practicing vocabulary drills for the SATs, and spare time with her mother, sharing a silent grief at the traumatic loss of Macy’s father.

But sometimes, unexpected things can happen—things such as the catering job at Wish. Or her sister’s project of renovating the neglected beach house. Things such as meeting Wes, a boy with a taste for Truth-telling and an amazing artistic talent, the kind of boy who could turn any girl’s world upside down.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father & husband recounted
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The Dry by Jane Harper

The Dry by Jane Harper

In the grip of the worst drought in a century, the farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily when three members of a local family are found brutally slain.

Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk reluctantly returns to his hometown for the funeral of his childhood friend, loath to face the townsfolk who turned their backs on him twenty years earlier.
But as questions mount, Falk is forced to probe deeper into the deaths of the Hadler family because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret. A secret Luke’s death now threatens to bring to the surface.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child physical & sexual abuse
  • Rape & sexual assault of a child
  • Incest (father-daughter)
  • Domestic violence
  • Gambling addiction
  • Depression mentioned
  • Suicide & murder-suicide (theme)
  • Attempted suicide by immolation, on-page
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking
  • Graphic dead bodies
  • Blood & gore depiction, including burns
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a son, daughter-in-law & grandson
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a father from bowel cancer mentioned
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Fire
  • Drought (theme)
  • Mugging & home invasion recounted
  • Animal death & hunting
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The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge

The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge

Martha can tell things about a person just by touching their clothes, as if their emotions and memories have been absorbed into the material. It started the day she fell from the tree at her grandma’s cabin and became blind in one eye.

Determined to understand her strange ability, Martha sets off to visit her grandmother, Mormor – only to discover Mormor is dead, a peculiar boy is in her cabin and a terrifying creature is on the loose. Then the spinning wheel starts creaking, books move around and terror creeps in . . .

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Disfigurmisia & internalised disfigurmisia
  • Cheating
  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Parent with alcoholism mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Dead bodies
  • Hospitalisation recounted
  • Eyeball trauma & loss of vision (theme)
  • Scars
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father in a car accident recounted
  • Death of a grandmother
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Hanging mentioned
  • Homelessness
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The Last to Let Go by Amber Smith

The Last to Let Go by Amber Smith

Junior year for Brooke Winters is supposed to be about change. She’s transferring schools, starting fresh, and making plans for college. But all of her dreams are shattered one hot summer afternoon when her mother is arrested for killing Brooke’s abusive father. No one really knows what happened that day, if it was premeditated or self-defense, whether it was right or wrong. And now Brooke and her siblings are on their own.

In a year of firsts—the first year without parents, first love, first heartbreak, and her first taste of freedom—Brooke must confront the shadow of her family’s violence and dysfunction, as she struggles to finds her true place in the world, and learns how to let go.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Queermisia
  • Domestic abuse & violence
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Overdose discussed
  • Death of a father
  • Murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Incarceration (parent)
  • Bullying
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