Tag Archives: Depression

Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer

Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer

Juliet Young always writes letters to her mother, a world-travelling photojournalist. Even after her mother’s death, she leaves letters at her grave. It’s the only way Juliet can cope.

Declan Murphy isn’t the sort of guy you want to cross. In the midst of his court-ordered community service at the local cemetery, he’s trying to escape the demons of his past.

When Declan reads a haunting letter left beside a grave, he can’t resist writing back. Soon, he’s opening up to a perfect stranger, and their connection is immediate. But neither Declan nor Juliet knows that they’re not actually strangers. When life at school interferes with their secret life of letters, sparks will fly as Juliet and Declan discover truths that might tear them apart. 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Infidelity
  • Anxiety
  • Panic attacks
  • Depression
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a sibling
  • Car accident

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle-class peers. After a messy break-up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.

As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Child abuse
  • Domestic abuse
  • Workplace harassment
  • Depression
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Everything After by Jill Santopolo 

Everything After by Jill Santopolo

Emily has come a long way since she lost her two passions fifteen years ago: music, and Rob. She’s a psychologist at NYU who helps troubled college students like the one she once was. Together with her caring doctor husband, Ezra, she has a beautiful life. They’re happy. They hope to start a family. But when a tragic event in Emily’s present too closely echoes her past, and parts of her story that she’d hoped never to share come to light, her perfect life is suddenly upturned. Then Emily hears a song on the radio about the woman who got away. The melody and voice are hauntingly familiar. Could it be? As Emily’s past passions come roaring back into her life, she’ll find herself asking: Who is she meant to be? Who is she meant to love? 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation mentioned
  • Miscarriage
  • Parent with Multiple Sclerosis
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

Ambrose wakes up on the Coordinated Endeavor, with no memory of a launch. There’s more that doesn’t add up: Evidence indicates strangers have been on board, the ship’s operating system is voiced by his mother, and his handsome, brooding shipmate has barricaded himself away. But nothing will stop Ambrose from making his mission succeed—not when he’s rescuing his own sister.

In order to survive the ship’s secrets, Ambrose and Kodiak will need to work together and learn to trust one another… especially once they discover what they are truly up against. Love might be the only way to survive.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Depression & depressive episodes
  • Suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Seizures
  • Graphic injuries
  • Cancer
  • Murder
  • Gaslighting

Playboy Pilot by Penelope Ward and Vi Keeland

Playboy Pilot by Penelope Ward & Vi Keeland

Money or love? Which would you choose? You probably just answered the question in your head thinking it’s an easy decision. For me, it’s not. Did I mention it’s a lot of money? A hell of a lot. I needed to go far away to think it through. As I embarked on an impulsive trip, I hit a detour when I met sexy Carter in the airport lounge. We struck up a heated conversation.

Then, he left. I thought I’d never see him again. But fate had other plans. Surprise! He was the pilot of my flight. The bigger surprise was the adventure that followed after the plane landed. Carter was dangerous and always on the move but I was addicted. Nothing else mattered anymore. And I was going to get hurt. Because a part of me wanted to be the one to finally ground the playboy pilot. All good things must come to an end, right? Except our ending was one I didn’t see coming.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Depression
  • Suicide
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Pregnancy mentioned

After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang

After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang

Now, no longer hailed as gods and struggling in the overheated pollution of Beijing, only the Eastern dragons survive. As drought plagues the aquatic creatures, a mysterious disease—shaolong, or “burnt lung”—afflicts the city’s human inhabitants.

Jaded college student Xiang Kaifei scours Beijing streets for abandoned dragons, distracting himself from his diagnosis. Elijah Ahmed, a biracial American medical researcher, is drawn to Beijing by the memory of his grandmother and her death by shaolong. Interest in Beijing’s dragons leads Kai and Eli into an unlikely partnership. With the resources of Kai’s dragon rescue and Eli’s immunology research, can the pair find a cure for shaolong and safety for the dragons… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Chronic & terminal illness
  • Animal cruelty

Finding Nevo by Nevo Zisin

Finding Nevo by Nevo Zisin

Meet Nevo: girl, boy, he, she, him, her, they, them, daughter, son, teacher, student, friend, gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender, homosexual, Jew, dyke, masculine, feminine, androgynous, queer. Nevo was not born in the wrong body. Nevo just wants everyone to catch up with all that Nevo is.

Personal, political and passionate, Finding Nevo is an autobiography about gender and everything that comes with it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia
  • Bimisia
  • Sexism
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Bullying

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Depression
  • Eating disorders mentioned
  • Suicide, off-page
  • Self harm
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Cancer
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Events of 9/11 recounted

Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai

Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai

One night. No one will know. That was the deal. Every year, Livvy Kane and Nicholas Chandler would share one perfect night of illicit pleasure. The forbidden hours let them forget the tragedy that haunted their pasts—and the last names that made them enemies. Until the night she didn’t show up.

Now Nicholas has an empire to run. He doesn’t have time for distractions and Livvy’s sudden reappearance in town is a major distraction. She’s the one woman he shouldn’t want… so why can’t he forget how right she feels in his bed?

Livvy didn’t come home for Nicholas, but fate seems determined to remind her of his presence—and their past. Although the passion between them might have once run hot and deep, not even love can overcome the scandal that divided their families. Being together might be against all the rules . . . but being apart is impossible.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Emotional parental abuse
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Panic attack
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Car accident recounted
  • Japanese internment camps mentioned

The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor

The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor

Sixteen-year-old Alice is spending the summer in Paris, but she isn’t there for pastries and walks along the Seine. When her grandmother passed away two months ago, she left Alice an apartment in France that no one knew existed. An apartment that has been locked for more than seventy years.

Alice is determined to find out why the apartment was abandoned and why her grandmother never once mentioned the family she left behind when she moved to America after World War II. With the help of Paul, a charming Parisian student, she sets out to uncover the truth. However, the more time she spends digging through the mysteries of the past, the more she realizes there are secrets in the present that her family is still refusing to talk about… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parent with depression
  • Attempted suicide of a parent recounted
  • Death of a grandmother, off-page
  • World War Two