The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden

Freddie Makin is a spy for hire. For a year he’s been watching Jiang Cheng, an academic whose life seems suspiciously normal. To Freddie it’s just a job: he never asks who’s paying him and why—until the day someone is sent to kill him, and suddenly the watcher becomes the watched. On the run from whoever wants him dead, Freddie knows he must have seen something incriminating. The only trouble is, he has no idea what. Is the CIA behind all this—or does it go higher than that? Have his trackers uncovered his own murky past? As he’s forced into a lethal dance across… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia and body-shaming
  • Classism
  • Attempted rape
  • Infidelity (on-page)
  • Discussions of domestic abuse and violence
  • Disordered eating & food thoughts including calorie counting and food shaming
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Infertility mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother from a stroke mentioned
  • Murder by gun & knife violence
  • Physical assault
  • Stalking
  • Incarceration for physical assault mentioned
  • Poverty & financial difficulties discussed

Context : The protagonist’s employee has her gigolo pretend to be an abusive, violent husband. This includes physical abuse, attempted strangulation, electronic monitoring, and food deprivation. Mentions of the protagonist working to free previous clients from domestic abuse situations, including murdering the abuser when necessary. Her neighbour attempts to rape her and she pushes him down the stairs. The police do not believe her and victim-blame. Her ex-boyfriend hides illegal drugs in his apartment in revenge, and her neighbour goes to jail for drug possession. The protagonist was in jail for assaulting her friend’s rapist because he died from his injuries. Wendy, the protagonist’s employer, also didn’t tell her real husband that she was could not get pregnant, even though he believed they were trying to have a child.

    The Polka Dot Shop by Laurel Remington

    When Andy’s school announces a new no-uniform policy, her classmates are over the moon – but her heart sinks. All she wants is to dress like everyone else, but her mum’s the owner of a run-down kooky vintage boutique, so she’s bound to look – well – different. But when Andy finds a gorgeous bag full of designer goodies in the shop’s storeroom, everything changes. Can she learn to love vintage, and help transform her mum’s shop into something truly special?

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Disordered & restrictive eating (implied)
    • Death of a relative in a car accident recounted

    Worry by Alexandra Tanner

    It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen. Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Depression & anxiety
    • Suicidal ideation
    • Disordered eating & a secondary character with an eating disorder (bulimia)
    • Animal cruelty

    Finally Heard by Kelly Yang

    When ten-year-old Lina Gao sees her mom’s video on social media take off, she’s captivated by the potential to be seen and heard! Maybe online she can finally find the confidence she craves. Whereas in real life she’s growing so fast, she feels like microwave popcorn, bursting out of her skin! .With the help of her two best friends, Carla and Finn, and her little sister, Millie, Lina sets off to go viral. Except there’s a lot more to social media than Lina ever imagined, 1. Seeing inside her classmates’ lives! Is she really the only person on the planet who doesn’t have a walk-in closet? 2. Group chats! Disappearing videos! Will anyone.. Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Anxiety & disordered eating
    • Minor cyberbullying

    Hex and the City by Kate Johnson

    Things you should know about Poppy: 1. She’s a witch, 2. She has magical hair like Rapunzel from Tangled, 3. She lives with Iris, the head of her coven, in a beautiful, ramshackle house next to Highgate cemetery, 4. She works at Hubble Bubble, a magic shop in Covent Garden. Though none of it is real magic as that would be highly irresponsible. Until… Poppy accidentally sells gorgeous celebrity magician Axl Storm, all six-foot-four of him, a cursed pendant. When all hell breaks loose can the guy with fake magic and the girl with real magic fix the chaos they’ve caused? Or will sparks fly both in and out of the cauldron?

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Eating disorder & disordered eating (calorie counting)
    • Alcohol consumption
    • Bullying mentioned

    Meet the Benedettos by Katie Cotugno

    Every family is complicated, and the Benedettos are no exception. A few years after a reality show skyrocketed them to pop culture fame, the five twenty-something sisters are living together in their parent’s crumbling McMansion, almost broke and teetering toward rock bottom. Their fortunes brighten when Charlie Bingley, the dashing star of Captain Fantastic, moves into the neighbourhood with Will Darcy, his best friend from Juilliard, in tow. Charlie immediately falls for warm and lovely June, the oldest Benedetto sister. While the Benedetto’s flighty matriarch, Cinta, brashly encourages the potential match, there… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Slut-shaming
    • Sexual assault
    • Revenge pornography
    • Anorexia & disordered eating
    • Night terrors
    • Suicide
    • Overdose

    Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi

    Jayne Baek is barely getting by. She shuffles through fashion school, saddled with a deadbeat boyfriend, clout-chasing friends, and a wretched eating disorder that she’s not fully ready to confront. But that’s New York City, right? At least she isn’t in Texas anymore, and is finally living in a city that feels right for her.

    On the other hand, her sister June is dazzlingly rich with a high-flying finance job and a massive apartment. Unlike Jayne, June has never struggled a day in her life. Until she’s diagnosed with uterine cancer… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Disordered weight & body thoughts
    • Eating disorder
    • Miscarriage
    • Cancer

    A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Caletti

    When everything has been taken from you, what else is there to do but run? So that’s what Annabelle does—she runs from Seattle to Washington, DC, through mountain passes and suburban landscapes, from long lonely roads to college towns. She’s not ready to think about the why yet, just the how—muscles burning, heart pumping, feet pounding the earth. But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t outrun the tragedy from the past year, or the person—The Taker—that haunts her. Followed by Grandpa Ed in his RV and backed by her brother and two friends (her self-appoint.. Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Toxic friendship
    • Anxiety & panic attacks
    • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
    • Excessive exercise (self-harm)
    • Murder of a friend by gun violence
    • Stalking

    The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

    If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes. The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Antiziganism
    • Suicide
    • HIV/AIDs
    • Disordered eating
    • Death of a parent
    • Death of a sibling
    • Gun violence

    The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

    In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Misogyny
    • Child abuse & neglect including emotional abuse and gaslighting
    • Divorce and parental divorce
    • Cheating
    • Parent with alcoholism
    • Social anxiety
    • Disordered eating
    • Postpartum depression
    • Forced institutionalisation
    • Suicidal ideation
    • Suicide of a grandmother from a gunshot
    • Alcohol consumption & abuse
    • Recreational drug use
    • Pregnancy and childbirth mentioned
    • Abortion & miscarriage
    • Hospitalisation of a sibling for a lawn mowing accident mentioned
    • Physical injuries mentioned
    • Death of a grandmother from drowning
    • Car accident