The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa

The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa

Violently pushed from their ancient farming village of Beit Daras, a Palestinian family tries to reconstitute itself in a refugee camp in Gaza. The men here, those who have escaped prison or the battlefields, worry over making ends meet, tend their tattered pride, join the resistance. The women are left to be breadwinners and protectors, too.

Nazmiyeh is the matriarch, the center of a household of sisters, daughters, granddaughters, whose lives threaten to spin out of control with every personal crisis, military attack, or political landmine. Her brother’s granddaughter Nur is stuck in America; her own daughter’s son, traumatized in an Israeli assault, slips into another kind of exile; her daughter has cancer and no access to medicine. Their neighbor, the Beekeeper’s wife, will extract the marijuana resin to shrink her tumor, but it is also Nazmiyeh’s large heart and zest for life that heals, that will even call Nur back from the broken promise of America and set her on a new path.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Child neglect
  • Eating disorder (bulimia)
  • Emesis
  • Torture, implied
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The Boy from the Mish by Gary Lonesborough

The Boy from the Mish by Gary Lonesborough

It’s a hot summer, and life’s going all right for Jackson and his family on the Mish. It’s almost Christmas, school’s out, and he’s hanging with his mates, teasing the visiting tourists, avoiding the racist boys in town. Just like every year, Jackson’s Aunty and annoying little cousins visit from the city – but this time a mysterious boy with a troubled past comes with them… As their friendship evolves, Jackson must confront the changing shapes of his relationships with his friends, family and community. And he must face his darkest secret – a secret he thought he’d locked away for good

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Homomisia, internalised homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Coming out themes
  • Outing
  • Parental abandonment
  • Physical child abuse recounted
  • Domestic violence recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Emesis
  • Minor physical injuries, including broken bones & snake bite
  • Police violence & racial profiling
  • Incarceration
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When It Drops by Alex Dyson

When It Drops by Alex Dyson

Caleb Clifford has earbuds, not real buds. And he prefers it that way. They always give him what he wants to hear, he can adjust the volume, and if things get tangled, it’s relatively easy to straighten them out again …

Sixteen-year-old songwriter and aspiring social outcast Caleb Clifford fills his world with music, but – like most things – keeps his songs to himself. That is until his little brother leaks Caleb’s most personal track online; a track that’s quite obviously about his secret crush. Having his innermost feelings (accompanied by a funky bassline) go viral is not Caleb’s idea of a good time. But is this the end of everything, or the start?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cancer
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Bullying recounted
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The Sky Blues by Robbie Couch

The Sky Blues by Robbie Couch

Sky Baker may be openly gay, but in his small, insular town, making sure he was invisible has always been easier than being himself. Determined not to let anything ruin his senior year, Sky decides to make a splash at his high school’s annual beach bum party by asking his crush, Ali, to prom—and he has thirty days to do it.

What better way to start living loud and proud than by pulling off the gayest promposal Rock Ledge, Michigan, has ever seen?

Then, Sky’s plans are leaked by an anonymous hacker in a deeply homophobic e-blast that quickly goes viral. He’s fully prepared to drop out and skip town altogether… Read more

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Car accident
  • Bullying
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Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales

Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales

Darcy Phillips:
• Can give you the solution to any of your relationship woes―for a fee.
• Uses her power for good. Most of the time.
• Really cannot stand Alexander Brougham.
• Has maybe not the best judgement when it comes to her best friend, Brooke…who is in love with someone else.
• Does not appreciate being blackmailed.

However, when Brougham catches her in the act of collecting letters from locker 89―out of which she’s been running her questionably legal, anonymous relationship advice service―that’s exactly what happens. In exchange for keeping her secret, Darcy begrudgingly agrees to become his personal dating coach―at a generous hourly rate, at least… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Bimisia & internalised bimisia
  • Emotional parental abuse
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Recreational drug use
  • Emesis
  • Bullying
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Foxen Bloom by Parker Foye

Foxen Bloom by Parker Foye

Season after season, hunters have attempted to capture the white-tailed stag. Local legend holds that its capture promises prosperity, and in a land that is dying—to hunger, to war; to a magical curse, some say—even a whisper of hope is a powerful lure. Yet every hunter who tries fails, never to leave the forest. Fenton, god of the forest, yet imprisoned within its borders, watches from his place in the trees as the hunters first despoil and then fall to his land, dispassionate as his deadwood heart.

Prior doesn’t hope to capture the stag or secure prosperity. He has a far bolder hunt in mind: to entreat the god of the forest to save his sister from the sickness sweeping the land… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Self harm
  • Blood depiction & physical injury
  • Body horror
  • Emesis
  • Pandemic (contagious magical illness)
  • Kidnapping
  • Animal death

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Jill MacSweeney just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she’s been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends—everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she’s somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one.

Mandy Kalinowski understands what it’s like to grow up unwanted—to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she’s sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It’s harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child sexual abuse
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Nonconsensual pregnancy*
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father

* Note : The protagonist fears she became pregnant when she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend.

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Unseen by Karin Slaughter

Unseen by Karin Slaughter

Will Trent is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent whose latest case has him posing as Bill Black, a scary ex-con who rides a motorcycle around Macon, Georgia, and trails an air of violence wherever he goes. The cover has worked and he has caught the eye of a wiry little drug dealer who thinks he might be a useful ally. But undercover and cut off from the support of the woman he loves, Sara Linton, Will finds his demons catching up with him.

Although she has no idea where Will has gone, or why, Sara herself has come to Macon because of a cop shooting: Her stepson, Jared, has been gunned down in his own home… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Forced sex work
  • Sex trafficking
  • Paedophilia
  • Rape mentioned
  • Suicide
  • Drug abuse
  • Miscarriage
  • Blood depiction
  • Emesis
  • Death of a spouse recounted
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
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Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter

Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter

Andrea Oliver’s mother, Laura, is the perfect small-town mum. Laura lives a quiet but happy life in sleepy beachside Belle Isle. She’s a pillar of the community: a speech therapist, business owner and everybody’s friend. And she’s never kept a secret from anyone. Or so Andrea thinks.

When Andrea is caught in a random violent attack at a shopping mall, Laura intervenes and acts in a way that is unrecognisable to her daughter. It’s like Laura is a completely different person – and that’s because she was. Thirty years ago. Before Andrea. Before Belle Isle… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide
  • Drug abuse
  • Loss of a pregnancy
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • AIDS
  • Emesis
  • Death of a sibling
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Explosions
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The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.

But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antisemitism
  • Physical child abuse
  • Self harm & self-injury
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Body horror
  • Eyeball trauma
  • Dismemberment
  • Emesis
  • Torture
  • Animal death
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