Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

Tris’s initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable—and even more powerful. Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Explosion
  • Death from a fall
  • Loss of autonomy (mind control)
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Divergent by Veronica Roth

Divergent by Veronica Roth

In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Blood & physical injury depiction
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Gun violence
  • Strangulation
  • Death from a fall
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The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Holden Caulfield is a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Navigating his way through the challenges of growing up, Holden dissects the ‘phony’ aspects of society, and the ‘phonies’ themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Queermisia & queermisic slurs
  • Suicide recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use (smoking)
  • Emesis
  • Gun violence
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Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger.

Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman—and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Physical injuries
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Stabbing
  • Missing person
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Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, is smart, beautiful, and dangerous. Domingo is mesmerized.

Atl needs to quickly escape the city, far from the rival narco-vampire clan relentlessly pursuing her. Her plan doesn’t include Domingo, but little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his undeniable charm. As the trail of corpses stretches behind her, local cops and crime bosses both start closing in.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injuries, including amputation & eyeball trauma
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Dismemberment
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Animal abuse, including dog fighting
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Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Gods of Jade & Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own.

Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic violence
  • Graphic self harm
  • Animal death
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The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail’s most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina’s chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun, and already Nina’s debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis—neighbors call her the Witch of Oldhouse—and the haphazard manifestations of her powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.

When entertainer Hector Auvray arrives to town, Nina is dazzled. A telekinetic like her, he has traveled the world performing his talents for admiring audiences… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Gun violence
  • Bullying
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus–three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Rape
  • Substance addiction mentioned
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Animal death
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People Kill People by Ellen Hopkins

People Kil People by Ellen Hopkins

A gun is sold in the classifieds after killing a spouse, bought by a teenager for needed protection. But which was it? Each has the incentive to pick up a gun, to fire it. Was it Rand or Cami, married teenagers with a young son? Was it Silas or Ashlyn, members of a white supremacist youth organization? Daniel, who fears retaliation because of his race, who possessively clings to Grace, the love of his life? Or Noelle, who lost everything after a devastating accident, and has sunk quietly into depression?

One tense week brings all six people into close contact in a town wrought with political and personal tensions. Someone will fire. And someone will die. But who?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & white supremacy
  • Rape & attempted rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Depression
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Gun violence (theme)
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Traffick by Ellen Hopkins

Traffick by Ellen Hopkins

In Tricks, Ellen Hopkins introduced us to five characters tackling these enormous questions: Eden, the preacher’s daughter who turns tricks in Vegas and is helped into a child prostitution rescue; Seth, the gay farm boy disowned by his father who finds himself without money or resources other than his own body; Whitney, the privileged kid coaxed into the life by a pimp and whose dreams are ruined in a heroin haze; Ginger, who runs away from home with her girlfriend and is arrested for soliciting an undercover cop; and Cody, whose gambling habit forces him into the life, but who is shot and left for dead.

And now, in Traffick, these five are faced with the toughest question of all: Is there a way out?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Disownment
  • Sexual assault
  • Sex trafficking
  • Forced sex work
  • Substance addiction
  • Gambling addiction
  • Gun violence
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