Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire book cover

Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story. Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math.

Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realise it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet.

Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own.

Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Suicide attempt, on-page
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Blood and gore depiction
  • Physical injuries, specifically gunshot wounds
  • Nonconsensual hospitalisation
  • Medical experiementation
  • Death of a mentor
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
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Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Wilder Girls by Rory Power book cover

It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her. It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Suicide, suicidal ideation & self-harm (on-page)
  • Blood, gore& injury depiction, including graphic body horror, emesis, loss of limb, eye trauma, needles, and involuntary medical experimentation & medical treatment
  • Starvation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend, child & father
  • Murder & attempted mass murder
  • Gun violence
  • Knife violence &stabbing
  • Hanging
  • Bombing mentioned
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Disappearance of a loved one
  • Chemical gassing
  • Animal death & hunting, including graphic animal dead bodies, and death by an animal attack

Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno

Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno

Summer of Salt by Kartina Leno book cover

A magic passed down through generations . . . Georgina Fernweh waits with growing impatience for the tingle of magic in her fingers—magic that has been passed down through every woman in her family. Her twin sister, Mary, already shows an ability to defy gravity. But with their eighteenth birthday looming at the end of this summer, Georgina fears her gift will never come.

An island where strange things happen . . . No one on the island of By-the-Sea would ever call the Fernwehs what they really are, but if you need the odd bit of help—say, a sleeping aid concocted by moonlight—they are the ones to ask. No one questions the weather, as moody and erratic as a summer storm… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Slut-shaming
  • Victim-blaming
  • Rape, off-page
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Childbirth & pregnancy mentioned
  • Physical illness
  • Emesis
  • Hospitals
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father
  • Attempted murder
  • Physical assault
  • Gun violence
  • Animal cruelty & death, off-page
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The Wicker King by K Ancrum

The Wicker King by K. Ancrum

When August learns that his best friend, Jack, shows signs of degenerative hallucinatory disorder, he is determined to help Jack cope. Jack’s vivid and long-term visions take the form of an elaborate fantasy world layered over our own—a world ruled by the Wicker King. As Jack leads them on a quest to fulfill a dark prophecy in this alternate world, even August begins to question what is real or not.

August and Jack struggle to keep afloat as they teeter between fantasy and their own emotions. In the end, each must choose his own truth.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Child abuse & neglect (theme)
  • Panic attacks & anxiety attacks
  • Depression & depressive episodes
  • Degenerative hallucinatory disorder, hallucinations & delusions
  • Trauma, codependency & separation anxiety
  • Suicidal ideation and self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Needles
  • Surgery
  • Forced psychiatric hospitalisation
  • Fire & pyromania
  • Drowning
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The Weight of the Stars by K Ancrum

The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum

Ryann Bird dreams of travelling across the stars. But a career in space isn’t an option for a girl who lives in a trailer park on the wrong side of town. So Ryann becomes her circumstances and settles for acting out and skipping school to hang out with her delinquent friends. One day she meets Alexandria: a furious loner who spurns Ryann’s offer of friendship. After a horrific accident leaves Alexandria with a broken arm, the two misfits are brought together despite themselves—and Ryann learns her secret: Alexandria’s mother is an astronaut who volunteered for a one-way… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism mentioned
  • Sexual assault
  • Parental abandonment discussed
  • Alcohol consumption & recreational drug use
  • Hospitalisation for physical injuries (off-page)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Bullying

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

Liz Lighty has always believed she’s too black, too poor, too awkward to shine in her small, rich, prom-obsessed midwestern town. But it’s okay — Liz has a plan that will get her out of Campbell, Indiana, forever: attend the uber-elite Pennington College, play in their world-famous orchestra, and become a doctor.

But when the financial aid she was counting on unexpectedly falls through, Liz’s plans come crashing down . . . until she’s reminded of her school’s scholarship for prom king and queen. There’s nothing Liz wants to do less than endure a gauntlet of social media trolls, catty competitors, and humiliating public events,.. Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Classism
  • Racism
  • Queermisia, specifically lesbomisia & transmisia
  • Public outing
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Emesis
  • Hospital visits due to medical emergency
  • Chronic illness (sickle cell anemia)
  • Death of a mother recounted
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All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren’t Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson’s emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism, racial slurs & anti-Blackness
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Transmisia
  • Incestuous child molestation &and sexual assault, on-page
  • Trauma
  • Physical assault
  • Blood depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Hospital
  • Cancer

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Misogyny
  • Child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Self-injury
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Torture
  • Forced institutionalization & abuse by medical professionals
  • Animal cruelty & abuse (off-page)
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Hurricane Child by Kacen Callender

Hurricane Child by Kacen Callender

Being born during a hurricane is unlucky, and 12-year-old Caroline has had her share of bad luck lately. She’s hated and bullied by everyone in her small school on St. Thomas, a spirit only she can see won’t stop following her, and, worst of all, Caroline’s mother left home one day & never came back.

But when a new student named Kalinda arrives, Caroline’s luck begins to turn around. Kalinda, a solemn girl from Barbados with a special smile for everyone, becomes Caroline’s first and only friend — and maybe her first crush. Together, Caroline and Kalinda must set out in a hurricane to find Caroline’s missing mother — before Caroline loses her forever.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Lesbomisia
  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Parental abandonment (theme)
  • Physical child abuse
  • Cheating recounted
  • Suicide attempt recounted (chp. 10)
  • Depression
  • Hospitalisation (on-page & recounted)
  • Bullying (on-page)
  • Near-drowning incident (chps. 1 & 11)
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The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Terminal cancer (theme)
  • Loss of vision (secondary character)
  • Medical treatments & procedures including hospitalisation
  • Death of a boyfriend