Tag Archives: Drug Use & Abuse

You’ll Be the Death of Me by Karen McManus

You’ll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus

Ivy, Mateo, and Cal used to be close. Now all they have in common is Carlton High and the beginning of a very bad day.

Type A Ivy lost a student council election to the class clown, and now she has to face the school, humiliated. Heartthrob Mateo is burned out–he’s been working two jobs since his family’s business failed. And outsider Cal just got stood up…. again.

So when Cal pulls into campus late for class and runs into Ivy and Mateo, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn a bad day around. They’ll ditch and go into the city. Just the three of them, like old times. Except they’ve barely left the parking lot before they run out of things to say. … Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Murder

Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen McManus

Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus

Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery’s never been there, but she’s heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.

The town is picture-perfect, but it’s hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone’s declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.

Ellery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. … Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual assault
  • Drug abuse
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Murder
  • Suffocation
  • Hit-and-run car accident
  • Disappearance of a loved one

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Oct. 11th, 1943-A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it’s barely begun.

When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she’s sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution. As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antisemitism & Nazism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Plane crash
  • World War Two

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India’s independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other ‘midnight’s children’ all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem’s story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Child abuse
  • Incest
  • Cheating
  • Alcohol & drug abuse
  • Torture

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith, and Donna Tartt. But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Homomisia
  • Rape
  • Cheating
  • Alcoholism
  • Substance addiction
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Overdose
  • Death from a heart attack
  • Murder
  • Poisoning
  • Physical assault
  • Drowning
  • Gun violence
  • Car accident
  • Blackmail

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be.

Charles Talent Manx has a gift of his own. He likes to take children for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the vanity plate NOS4A2. In the Wraith, he and his innocent guests can slip out of the everyday world and onto hidden roads that lead to an astonishing playground of amusements he calls Christmasland. The journey across the highway of Charlie’s twisted imagination transforms his precious passengers, leaving them as terrifying and unstoppable as their benefactor… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Child abuse
  • Self-harm
  • Drug abuse
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Death of a dog

Corrupt by Penelope Douglas

Corrupt by Penelope Douglas

I was told that dreams were our heart’s desires. My nightmares, however, became my obsession. His name is Michael Crist.My boyfriend’s older brother is like that scary movie that you peek through your hand to watch. He’s handsome, strong, and completely terrifying. The star of his college’s basketball team and now gone pro, he’s more concerned with the dirt on his shoe than me. But I noticed him.

I saw him. I heard him. The things that he did, and the deeds that he hid… For years, I bit my nails, unable to look away. Now, I’ve graduated high school and moved on to college, but I haven’t stopped watching Michael. He’s bad, and the dirt I’ve seen isn’t content to stay in my head anymore. Because he’s finally noticed me… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexism
  • Slut-shaming
  • Child abuse
  • Rape & attempted rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Drugging
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Animal cruelty
  • Bullying

The Perfect Girlfriend by Karen Hamilton

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

The Perfect Girlfriend by Karen Hamilton

Juliette loves Nate. She will follow him anywhere. She’s even become a flight attendant for his airline so she can keep a closer eye on him. They are meant to be.

The fact that Nate broke up with her six months ago means nothing. Because Juliette has a plan to win him back. She is the perfect girlfriend. And she’ll make sure no one stops her from getting exactly what she wants.

True love hurts, but Juliette knows it’s worth all the pain…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slut-shaming
  • Dubious consent
  • Toxic relationship
  • Emotional abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Murder
  • Stabbing
  • Stalking
  • Kidnapping
  • Blackmail

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab

Magneto and Professor X. Superman and Lex Luthor. Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Sydney and Serena Clarke. Great partnerships, now soured on the vine. But Marcella Riggins needs no one. Flush from her brush with death, she’s finally gained the control she’s always sought—and will use her newfound power to bring the city of Merit to its knees. She’ll do whatever it takes, collecting her own sidekicks, and leveraging the two most infamous EOs, Victor Vale and Eli Ever, against each other. With Marcella’s rise, new enmities create opportunity–and the stage of Merit City will once again be set for a final, terrible reckoning.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide
  • Alcoholism, alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Vivisection
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Graphic torture
  • Fire
  • Drowning

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Problem: You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes–it would all be too awkward–and you can’t say no–it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.

Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all. If you are Arthur Less.

Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Terminal illness
  • Stroke