When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole

When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole book cover

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.

But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.

When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism, including aversive racism
  • Gentrification
  • Attempted genocide
  • Racial profiling
  • Cheating
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use, mentioned
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a mother
  • Grief depiction
  • Arrest and incarceration, mentioned
  • Dead body, on page
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Between by Jessica Warman

Between by Jessica Warman

Elizabeth Valchar-pretty, popular, and perfect-wakes up the morning after her eighteenth birthday party on her family’s yacht, where she’d been celebrating with her six closest friends. A persistent thumping noise has roused her. When she goes to investigate, what she finds will change everything she thought she knew about her life, her friends, and everything in between.

As Liz begins to unravel the circumstances surrounding her birthday night, she will find that no one around her, least of all Liz herself, was perfect-or innocent.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Eating disorder (anorexia)
  • Drug use
  • Murder
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother recounted
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Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

If I could have a fiddle made of Daddy’s bones, I’d play it. I’d learn all the secrets he kept.

Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle, but she also knows the fiddle’s tunes bring nothing but trouble and darkness.

But when her brother is accused of murder, she can’t let the dead keep their secrets.

In order to clear his name, she’s going to have to make those ghosts sing.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Attempted rape recounted (chp. 23)
  • Child abuse recounted, including being locked in the attics for extended periods of tie
  • Agoraphobia
  • Panic attack (chp. 24)
  • Death of a mother to suicide recounted
  • Recreational drug use (on-page in chp. 5 & mentioned otherwise)
  • Hospital (chp. 5 & 24)
  • Grief & loss (theme)
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Death of a stepfather (off-page)
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Gun violence (chp. 28)
  • Police violence (chp. 28)
  • Hanging mentioned (chp. 9)
  • Near-drowning incident
  • Car accident (on-page, chp. 23-24)
  • Death of a child to a wasp attack recounted
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The Conductors by Nicole Glover

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

The Conductors by Nicole Glover book cover

As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Hetty Rhodes helped usher dozens of people north with her wits and magic. Now that the Civil War is over, Hetty and her husband Benjy have settled in Philadelphia, solving murders and mysteries that the white authorities won’t touch. When they find one of their friends slain in an alley, Hetty and Benjy bury the body and set off to find answers. But the secrets and intricate lies of the elites of Black Philadelphia only serve to dredge up more questions. To solve this mystery, they will have to face ugly truths all around them, including the ones about each other.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery & human trafficking
  • Racism & colourism
  • Domestic abuse & violence
  • Infertility, miscarriage & mentions of pregnancy
  • Physical injury, including burns & scars
  • Blood and gore depiction
  • Death of a mother & father, friend, husband, sister & son
  • Disappearance of a sister
  • Torture
  • Knife violence
  • Fire
  • Kidnapping
  • Incarceration & captivity mentioned
  • Hanging/lynching (implied)

What Momma Left Me by Renée Watson

What Momma Left Me by Renée Watson

How is it that unsavory raw ingredients come together to form a delicious cake? What is it about life that when you take all the hard stuff and rough stuff and add in a lot of love, you still just might have a wonderful life?

For Serenity, these questions rise up early when her father kills her mother, and leaves her and her brother Danny to live with their kind but strict grandparents. Despite the difficulties of a new school, a new church, and a new neighborhood, Serenity gains strength from the family around her, the new friends she finds, and her own careful optimism.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic violence
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Gun violence
  • Poverty themes
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On the Fence by Kasie West

On the Fence by Kasie West

For sixteen-year-old Charlotte Reynolds, aka Charlie, being raised by a single dad and three older brothers has its perks. She can outrun, outscore, and outwit every boy she knows—including her longtime neighbour and honorary fourth brother, Braden. But when it comes to being a girl, Charlie doesn’t know the first thing about anything. So when she starts working at chichi boutique to pay off a speeding ticket, she finds herself in a strange new world of makeup, lacy skirts, and BeDazzlers. Even stranger, she’s spending time with a boy who has never seen her tear it up in a pickup game. To cope with the stress of faking… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Death of a mother from suicide by car accident

Toffee by Sarah Crossan

Toffee by Sarah Crossan

Also known as Being Toffee.

One is trying to forget. The other is trying to remember.

After running away from an abusive home, Allison finds herself taking shelter in a shed behind an abandoned house. But the house isn’t empty after all; an elderly woman named Marla, who suffers from dementia, lives there. And rather than turn her away, Marla welcomes her – she mistakes Allison for an old friend from her past named Toffee.

Allison is used to hiding who she really is, and trying to be what other people want her to be, so she decides to play along. But as their bond grows, and Allison discovers how much Marla needs a real companion, Allison begins to waver. They both deserve a home, a safe place, and a family – but at what cost?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexism
  • Slut shaming
  • Sexual harassment
  • Physical, verbal & emotional child abuse (theme)
  • Domestic violence and physical & emotional abuse
  • Elder abuse
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Depersonalisation
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use (smoking)
  • Death from childbirth & traumatic childbirth mentioned
  • Dementia (theme)
  • Minor blood depiction & physical injuries, including burns
  • Emesis
  • Hospital
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother & wife recounted
  • Homelessness
  • Animal death
  • Death of a pet dog mentioned
  • Animal attack mentioned
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The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankentstein by Kiersten White

Elizabeth Lavenza hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks. Her thin arms are covered with bruises from her “caregiver,” and she is on the verge of being thrown into the streets . . . until she is brought to the home of Victor Frankenstein, an unsmiling, solitary boy who has everything–except a friend.

Victor is her escape from misery. Elizabeth does everything she can to make herself indispensable–and it works. She is taken in by the Frankenstein family and rewarded with a warm bed, delicious food, and dresses of the finest silk. Soon she and Victor are inseparable.

But her new life comes at a price. As the years pass, Elizabeth’s survival depends on managing Victor’s dangerous temper and entertaining his every whim, no matter how depraved. Behind her blue eyes and sweet smile lies the calculating heart of a girl determined to stay alive no matter the cost . . . as the world she knows is consumed by darkness.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Classism
  • Misogyny
  • Slut shaming
  • Graphic physical, verbal & emotional abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Intimate partner abuse & violence
  • Nightmares
  • Self-sacrifice (on-page) & suicidal ideation mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Graphic dead bodies & body parts
  • Graphic physical injuries & wound descriptions
  • Graphic medical procedures & experiments
  • Emesis
  • Forced hospitalisation
  • Body horror
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Death of an uncle (off-page)
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a brother
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Graphic strangulation
  • Hanging (off-page)
  • Fire (multiple scenes)
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Building collapse
  • Stalking
  • Graphic animal abuse (on-page) & animal death
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Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden book cover

After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie only finds solace in books. So when she happens upon a crazed woman at the river threatening to throw a book into the water, Ollie doesn’t think–she just acts, stealing the book and running away. As she begins to read the slender volume, Ollie discovers a chilling story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who both loved her, and a peculiar deal made with “the smiling man,” a sinister specter who grants your most tightly held wish, but only for the ultimate price. 

Ollie is captivated by the tale until her school trip the next day to Smoke Hollow, a local farm with a haunting history all its own. There she stumbles upon the graves of the very people she’s been reading about. Could it be the story about the smiling man is true? Ollie doesn’t have too long to think about the answer to that. On the way home, the school bus breaks down, sending their teacher back to the farm for help. But the strange bus driver has some advice for the kids left behind in his care: “Best get moving. At nightfall they’ll come for the rest of you.” Nightfall is, indeed, fast descending when Ollie’s previously broken digital wristwatch, a keepsake reminder of better times, begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN. 

Only Ollie and two of her classmates heed the bus driver’s warning. As the trio head out into the woods–bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them–the bus driver has just one final piece of advice for Ollie and her friends: “Avoid large places. Keep to small.” 

And with that, a deliciously creepy and hair-raising adventure begins.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Nightmares
  • Suicide, mentioned
  • Mild blood and injury
  • Grief depiction
  • Death of a mother, mentioned
  • Death of a husband, mentioned
  • Death of a father, mentioned
  • Death of a brother, mentioned
  • Death of a child, mentioned
  • Murder
  • Fire
  • Plane crash
  • Disappearance of a loved one, recounted
  • Bullying
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No Exit by Taylor Adams

No Exit by Taylor Adams

No Exit by Taylor Adams book cover

Nobody said being the daughter of an army general was easy. But when her dad sends a teenage subordinate to babysit her while he’s away… That’s taking it a step too far.

Cade, as beautiful as he is deadly, watches Kori with more than just interest. He looks at her like he knows her very soul. And when he saves her from a seemingly random attack, well, that’s when things get weird.

Turns out, Kori’s dad isn’t just an army general—he’s the head of a secret government project that has invented a way to travel between parallel dimensions. Dimensions where there are infinite Koris, infinite Cades…and apparently, on every other Earth, they’re madly in love.

Falling for a soldier is the last thing on Kori’s mind. Especially when she finds herself in a deadly crossfire, and someone from another Earth is hell-bent on revenge…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Sexist language
  • Fatmisia
  • Racist slur/s
  • Mental illness slur/s
  • Rape threats
  • Sexual assault
  • Paedophilia
  • Child sex trafficking
  • Child abuse, recounted
  • Alcoholism
  • Panic attacks, recounted
  • Nightmares
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Blood and gore depiction
  • Graphic physical injury
  • Terminal cancer
  • Emesis
  • Minor grief depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a cousin
  • Murder and attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • Captivity
  • Psychological torture
  • Animal murder and torture, recounted
  • Death of a pet
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