Wild Card by Elsie Silver

Sebastian Rousseau is a grumpy, hot as hell fire pilot who is too damn good with his hands. It’s the perfect combination. But unfortunately for me, he’s also my ex-boyfriend’s dad. A chance meeting brought us together and a missed connection has kept us apart. One year later, a stroke of fate has us living under the same roof—which makes everything between us downright messy. Because even after all this time, he’s still the man I think about when I fall asleep. The one I can’t get over no matter how hard I try. He’s working on mending a fragile relationship with his son and we both… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia & body-shaming mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • Hospitalisation for surgery

Heartless by Elsie Silver

Cade Eaton is thirteen years older than I am and barely looks my way. Until I get him into the hot tub one night for a game of truth or dare. Then all bets are off—and so are our clothes. He’s gruff, a little rough around the edges. But broad-shouldered ranchers with calloused hands and filthy mouths are this city girl’s kryptonite. So who am I to resist? But it’s in our quiet moments together that he softens. It’s when he takes care of me that I realize his hardened exterior is just a façade. It’s when I watch him go all sweet with his little boy that I really fall for him. Someone convinced… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental & spousal abandonment
  • Infidelity*
  • Pregnancy (unplanned)
  • Miscarriage
  • Physical injury (broken fingers)
  • Emesis
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a mother during childbirth recounted

Context : The hero’s ex-wife abandoned him and their son.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down’s Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this story that unfolds over… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Divorce
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned
  • Hospitalisation of a child for a severe allergic reaction (bee sting)
  • Death of a sister from a heart defect at 12-years-old recounted

Context : The protagonist decides to place his daughter with Downs Syndrome in an institution but tells his wife she had passed away at birth.

All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson

Sage’s thirteenth birthday was supposed to be about movies and treats, staying up late with her best friend and watching the sunrise together. Instead, it was the day her best friend died. Without the person she had to hold her secrets and dream with, Sage is lost. In a counseling group with other girls who have lost someone close to them, she learns that not all losses are the same, and healing isn’t predictable. There is sadness, loneliness, anxiety, guilt, pain, love. And even as Sage grieves, new, good things enter her life — and she just may find a way to know that she can feel it all.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death from a heart attack mentioned
  • Hospitalisation for cancer & terminal illness discussed
  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a child & best friend in a hit-and-run drunk-driving car accident
  • Police brutality

Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson

In the spring of 1776, thirteen-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper wakes to the sound of cannons. It’s the Siege of Boston, the Patriots’ massive drive to push the Loyalists out that turns the city into a chaotic war zone. Elsbeth’s father—her only living relative—has gone missing, leaving her alone and adrift in a broken town while desperately seeking employment to avoid the orphanage. Just when things couldn’t feel worse, the smallpox epidemic sweeps across Boston. Now, Bostonians must fight for their lives against an invisible enemy in addition to the visible one… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Hospital scene with multiple injured & ill secondary characters
  • Knife violence (protagonist is threatened with a knife & cut on their throat)
  • Siege (theme) including cannon fire, building collapse & explosions

Deep Down by Mia Hopkins

Resilient and disciplined, tsunami survivor Eve Ono moves to California from Japan looking for a position as a sushi chef. When she’s suddenly fired from her restaurant job, desperation drives her to find work on a fishing boat despite her fears of the ocean. To make matters worse, she’s stuck in close quarters with her new captain—a man whose raw physicality drives her out of her mind with lust. Free-spirited and roguish, Sam Lamont is a commercial fisherman aboard his own dive boat, the Bravado. When he makes a bad deal with a deadly loan shark who threatens to… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Hospitalisation
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & trauma
  • Panic attacks (on-page)
  • Death of grandparents in a tsunami recounted
  • Shark attack (on-page)

Fire Storm by Nancy Mehl

When FBI profiler Kaely Quinn’s mother is diagnosed with cancer, Kaely takes time off work to go to Dark Water, Nebraska, to help her brother care for their mother. Upon her arrival, she learns of a series of fires in the small town, attributed by the fire chief to misuse of space heaters in the frigid winter. But Kaely is skeptical, and a search for a pattern in the locations of the fires bolsters her suspicions. After yet another blaze devastates a local family, Kaely is certain a serial arsonist is on the loose. Calling upon her partner from St. Louis, Noah Hunter, and her brother’s firefighter neighbor who backs Kaely’s suspicions… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parent with cancer, including mentions of hospitalisation
  • Suicide mentioned (brief)
  • Gun violence
  • Fire & arson (theme), including murder by arson recounted, mentions of death in a fire, and hospitalisation for smoke inhalation/burns
  • Explosion (grain elevator) mentioned

The Tenant by Freida McFadden

Blake Porter is riding high, until he’s not. Fired abruptly from his job as a VP of marketing and unable to make the mortgage payments on the new brownstone that he shares with his fiancée, he’s desperate to make ends meet. Enter Whitney. Beautiful, charming, down-to-earth, and looking for a room to rent. She’s exactly what Blake’s looking for. Or is she? Because something isn’t quite right. The neighbors start treating Blake differently. The smell of decay permeates his home, no matter how hard he scrubs. Strange noises jar him awake in the middle of the night. And soon Blake fears someone knows his darkest secrets…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Suicide
  • Blood & gore depiction including body horror, emesis and medical content
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder
  • Animal death (fish)

Halfway Normal by Barbara Dee

Norah Levy has just completed two years of treatment for leukemia and is ready to go back to the “real world” of middle school. She knows it’ll be tricky—but like the Greek mythological characters she read about while she was sick, Norah’s up for any challenge. But seventh grade turns out to be harder than she thought. Norah’s classmates don’t know what to make of her. Her best friend, Harper, tries to be there for her, but she doesn’t get it, really—and is hanging out with a new group of girls. Norah’s other good friend, Silas, is avoiding her. What’s that about, anyway? When Norah… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental divorce
  • Protagonist is in remission for leukemia
  • Discussions of past hospitalisation & medical treatment

Accidentally in Love by Danielle Jackson

Accidentally in Love by Danielle Jackson

As office manager of the city’s leading luxury boudoir and pinup photography studio, lovable grump Samantha Sawyer has everything under control. With an eventful summer season on the horizon, Sam is balancing a hectic workload while preparing the Buxom Boudoir “Photobus,” a vintage coach bus converted into a mobile photobooth and meeting space, to make the rounds at Chicago’s bustling summer street festival roster. Sam’s busy schedule makes avoiding the difficult parts of her life much easier, but there’s one person who can see right through her to-do lists and icy façade, really see her. A lot has changed… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Heart attack (secondary character)
  • Protagonist with Graves’ Disease (an autoimmune thyroid condition), including mentions of medical issues, hospitalisation, scarring, and weight gain