One Would Think the Deep by Claire Zorn

One Would Think the Deep by Claire Zorn

Sam has always had things going on in his head that no one else understands, even his mum. And now she’s dead, it’s worse than ever.

With nothing but his skateboard and a few belongings in a garbage bag, Sam goes to live with the strangers his mum cut ties with seven years ago: Aunty Lorraine and his cousins Shane and Minty.

Despite the suspicion and hostility emanating from their fibro shack, Sam reverts to his childhood habit of following Minty around and is soon surfing with Minty to cut through the static fuzz in his head. But as the days slowly meld into one another, and ghosts from the past reappear, Sam has to make the ultimate decision … will he sink or will he swim.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic violence mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother (theme)
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Junk Boy by Tony Abbott

Junk Boy by Tony Abbott

Junk Boy by Tony Abbott book cover

Junk. That’s what the kids at school call Bobby Lang, mostly because his rundown house looks like a junkyard, but also because they want to put him down. Trying desperately to live under the radar at school—and at the home he shares with his angry, neglectful father—Bobby develops a sort of proud loneliness. The only buffer between him and the uncaring world is his love of the long, wooded trail between school and home.

Life grinds along quietly and hopelessly for Bobby until he meets Rachel. Rachel is an artist who sees him in a way no one ever has. Maybe it’s because she has her own kind of junk, and a parent who hates what Rachel is: gay. Together the two embark on journeys to clean up the messes that fill their lives, searching against all odds for hope and redemption.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Parental abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Suicidal ideation
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Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

It’s 200 years since Cinderella found her prince, but the fairytale is over. Sophia knows the story though, off by heart. Because every girl has to recite it daily, from when she’s tiny until the night she’s sent to the royal ball for choosing. And every girl knows that she has only one chance. For the lives of those not chosen by a man at the ball are forfeit. But Sophia doesn’t want to be chosen – she’s in love with her best friend, Erin, and hates the idea of being traded like cattle. And when Sophia’s night at the ball goes horribly wrong, she must run for her life. Alone and terrified, she finds herself hiding in Cinderella’s tomb. And there… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny (central theme)
  • Racism & queerphobia (specifically lesbophobia & homophobia)
  • Nonconsensual and coerced marriage of teenage girls to adult men (theme), including ‘corrective’ marriage & nonconsensual polygamy
  • Sexual harassment & sexual assault (on-page)
  • Physical & financial domestic abuse (on-page & off-page)
  • Child abuse
  • Implied suicide
  • Food deprivation mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence
  • Explosion & fire
  • Imprisonment
  • Animal death & animal attack

The Camelot Betrayal by Kiersten White

The Camelot Betrayal by Kiersten White

The Camelot Betrayal book cover. A girl

Everything is as it should be in Camelot: King Arthur is expanding his kingdom’s influence with Queen Guinevere at his side. Yet every night, dreams of darkness and unknowable power plague her. Guinevere might have accepted her role, but she still cannot find a place for herself in all of it. The closer she gets to Brangien, pining for her lost love Isolde, Lancelot, fighting to prove her worth as Queen’s knight, and Arthur, everything to everyone and thus never quite enough for Guinevere–the more she realizes how empty she is. She has no sense of who she truly… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Coming out & lesbomisia mentioned
  • Persecution for witchcraft
  • Rape by coercion recounted & discussed
  • Adult-minor relationships discussed
  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Aquaphobia & related anxiety attacks
  • Amnesia
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a sister & baby son mentioned
  • Exile & banishment mentioned
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping recounted
  • Fire (multiple scenes)
  • Military violence mentioned & recounted
  • Animal death & animal attack

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi book cover

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Slavery
  • Attempted rape
  • Threats of rape
  • Child abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Self-harm
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Death of a friend
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • War themes
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The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. The catch? Avery has no idea why–or even who Tobias Hawthorne is. To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man’s love of puzzles, riddles, and codes.

Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed: four Hawthorne grandsons who grew up with every expectation that they would inherit billions… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment
  • Physical child abuse recounted
  • Abusive relationship
  • Emotional & physical intimate partner violence (off-page)
  • Cheating mentioned (chp 55)
  • Revenge pornography involving a minor mentioned (chp 59)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Minor blood depiction & physical injury (chp 52-54)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death due to heart attack mentioned (chp 55 & 78)
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Death of a girlfriend recounted
  • Death of a grandfather, off-page (theme)
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Attempted murder, on-page (chp 52 & 68)
  • Gun violence (on-page in chp 52)
  • Car accident (chp 68)
  • Homelessness mentioned
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All That Entails by EM Hamill

All That Entails by E.M. Hamill

A gender-fluid prince finds an unexpected ally in an arranged marriage with a transgender man.

Prince Darian is willing to give up his penchant for gowns when he must wed for the sake of the kingdom. However, his intended bride has a secret of their own. A marriage of convenience may bring something neither expected—acceptance, and all that entails.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Transmisia
  • Misgendering & deadnaming
  • Arranged marriage
  • Domestic abuse
  • Child abuse
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The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

It’s the accident season, the same time every year. Bones break, skin tears, bruises bloom. The accident season has been part of seventeen-year-old Cara’s life for as long as she can remember. Towards the end of October, foreshadowed by the deaths of many relatives before them, Cara’s family becomes inexplicably accident-prone. They banish knives to locked drawers, cover sharp table edges with padding, switch off electrical items – but injuries follow wherever they go, and the accident season becomes an ever-growing obsession and fear. But why are they so cursed? And how can they break free? 

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Parental abandonment & neglect
  • Child abuse
  • Physical, emotional & verbal intimate partner abuse (on-page)
  • Depression (side character)
  • Trauma-related amnesia
  • Attempted suicide recounted
  • Self-harm
  • Graphic blood & injury depiction
  • Hospital
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of an infant & father recounted
  • Murder and attempted murder recounted
  • Car accident
  • Fire

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Ableism & ableist slurs (r slur)
  • Classism
  • Conversion therapy
  • Graphic domestic & parental abuse
  • Slavery and forced labour
  • Graphic rape & prison rape
  • Paedophilia & child sexual assault
  • Incest
  • Alcoholism & substance addiction
  • PTSD
  • Depression
  • Suicide & self-harm
  • Miscarriage & infertility themes
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Graphic physical injuries
  • Starvation
  • Nonconsensual psychiatric hospitalisation
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a sibling
  • Death of an infant
  • Police brutality & violence
  • Murder & executions, including the execution of a child
  • Death in police custody and in prison
  • Graphic animal abuse
  • Homelessness
  • Poverty themes
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Here Lie the Secrets by Emma Young

Here Lie the Secrets by Emma Young

Mia’s best friend Holly died when they were thirteen. But years later, Holly still hasn’t left her.

Spending the summer in New York, Mia is hoping to escape the visions of Holly that haunt her life at home. There she meets Rav, a parapsychology student, who convinces her to take part in a study into why some people see ghosts. Soon she is caught up in the investigation of Halcyon House, which is reputed to be haunted by a poltergeist. As Mia confronts her fears, what she learns about the house and herself will change her life forever.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic abuse & violence
  • Child abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Visual hallucinations
  • Grief depiction
  • Death of a friend recounted
  • Bullying mentioned
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