Tag Archives: Drug Use & Abuse

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. When Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win—and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Murder of an aunt in an explosion
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking mentioned

Paper Towns by John Green

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Depiction of the dead body of a suicide victim
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps. Then. . . . After. Nothing is ever the same.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption & smoking (on-page)
  • Death of a friend in an implied suicide by car

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that. What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Fatphobia & body-shaming from relatives
  • Gang rape recounted
  • Paraplegia due to a motorcycle accident
  • Depression & suicidal ideation including discussions of a planned suicide and death by physician-assisted suicide
  • Alcohol consumption

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