On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel

Arcade and Daffodil are twins born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for escape, they form an unbreakable bond nurtured by their grandmother’s stories. Together, they disappear into their imaginations and forge a world all their own. But what the two sisters can’t escape are the generational ghosts that haunt their family. Growing up in the shadow of their rural Ohio town, the sisters cling tightly to one another. Years later, Arcade wrestles with the memories of her early life, just as a local woman is discovered drowned in the river. Soon, more bodies are found. As her… Read More.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sex work
  • Graphic drug use
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Murder & torture
  • Animal cruelty

The Girls by Emma Cline

Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As… Read more.,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism (r slur)
  • Fatphobia & weight-shaming
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Child abuse & neglect and parental abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use

The Guest by Emma Cline

A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she’s been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to the end of the holidays moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Statutory rape
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use

Context : The 20-year-old female protagonist has sex with a 17-year-old boy.

King of Pride by Ana Huang

Reserved, controlled, and proper to a fault, Kai Young has neither the time nor inclination for chaos—and Isabella, with her purple hair and inappropriate jokes, is chaos personified. With a crucial CEO vote looming and a media empire at stake, the billionaire heir can’t afford the distraction she brings. Isabella is everything he shouldn’t want, but with every look and every touch, he’s tempted to break all his rules…and claim her as his own. Bold, impulsive, and full of life, Isabella Valencia has never met a party she doesn’t like or a man she couldn’t charm…except for Kai Young… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety & intrusive thoughts
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use & overdose
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Gun violence
  • Blackmail & stalking

One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

Everyone knows everyone in the tiny town of Bourne, but the Mitchell triplets are especially beloved. Mirabel is the smartest person anyone knows, and no one doubts it just because she can’t speak. Monday is the town’s purveyor of books now that the library’s closed―tell her the book you think you want, and she’ll pull the one you actually do from the microwave or her sock drawer. Mab’s job is hardest of all: get good grades, get into college, get out of Bourne. For a few weeks seventeen years ago, Bourne was national news when its water turned green. The girls have come of age watching their mother’s endless fight for.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism discussed
  • Disability from factory pollution (theme)

Family Family by Laurie Frankel

India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero. Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie. Soon she’s at the centre of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, sexism & body-shaming mentioned
  • Divorce mentioned
  • Anxiety & mentions of eating disorders
  • Substance addiction & drug abuse mentioned
  • Abortion & miscarriages mentioned
  • Death of a mother mentioned

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

Raymie Clarke has come to realize that everything, absolutely everything, depends on her. And she has a plan. If Raymie can win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition, then her father, who left town two days ago with a dental hygienist, will see Raymie’s picture in the paper and (maybe) come home. To win, not only does Raymie have to do good deeds and learn how to twirl a baton; she also has to contend with the wispy, frequently fainting Louisiana Elefante, who has a show-business background, and the fiery, stubborn Beverly Tapinski, who’s determined to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical child abuse & parental abandonment
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Death of parents in a boating accident mentioned
  • Animal death (implications of death of a kitten, off-page)

The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo

Walking through the misty Florida woods one morning, twelve-year-old Rob Horton is stunned to encounter a tiger—a real-life, very large tiger—pacing back and forth in a cage. What’s more, on the same extraordinary day, he meets Sistine Bailey, a girl who shows her feelings as readily as Rob hides his. As they learn to trust each other, and ultimately, to be friends, Rob and Sistine prove that some things—like memories, and heartaches, and tigers—can’t be locked up forever.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abandonment & physical child abuse
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Gun violence
  • Animal death & hunting
  • Bullying

Context : The protagonist’s father shoots a bird. Mentions of a child being beaten by their father for freeing a pet bird.

Beverly, Right Here by Kate DiCamillo

Beverly Tapinski has run away from home plenty of times, but that was when she was just a kid. By now, she figures, it’s not running away. It’s leaving. Determined to make it on her own, Beverly finds a job and a place to live and tries to forget about her dog, Buddy, now buried underneath the orange trees back home; her friend Raymie, whom she left without a word; and her mom, Rhonda, who has never cared about anyone but herself. Beverly doesn’t want to depend on anyone, and she definitely doesn’t want anyone to depend on her. But despite her best efforts, she can’t… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abandonment
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Bullying
  • Animal death (pet dog)

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them. When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & drug abuse
  • Abortion, infertility & miscarriage