The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee

The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee

As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of the millions trapped by a secretive and brutal totalitarian regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told “the best on the planet”?… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Forced sex work
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Famine & starvation
  • Executions
  • Imprisonment
  • Fire
  • Refugee experience
  • Death of a pet
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The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige 

The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige

To make Oz a free land again, Amy Gumm was given a mission: remove the Tin Woodman’s heart, steal the Scarecrow’s brain, take the Lion’s courage, and then Dorothy must die… But Dorothy still lives. Now the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked has vanished, and mysterious Princess Ozma might be Amy’s only ally. As Amy learns the truth about her mission, she realizes that she’s only just scratched the surface of Oz’s past—and that Kansas, the home she couldn’t wait to leave behind, may also be in danger. In a place where the line between good and evil shifts with just a strong gust of wind, who can Amy trust—and who is really Wicked? 

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Knife & sword violence
  • Physical assault
  • Imprisonment
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We’ll Fly Away by Bryan Bliss

We’ll Fly Away by Bryan Bliss

Uniquely told through letters from death row and third-person narrative, Bryan Bliss’s hard-hitting third novel expertly unravels the string of events that landed a teenager in jail. Luke feels like he’s been looking after Toby his entire life. He patches Toby up when Toby’s father, a drunk and a petty criminal, beats on him, he gives him a place to stay, and he diffuses the situation at school when wise-cracking Toby inevitably gets into fights. Someday, Luke and Toby will leave this small town, riding the tails of Luke’s wrestling scholarship, and never look back… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Physical child abuse
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Smoking
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Physical assault
  • Imprisonment
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King’s Man by Sally Malcolm

King’s Man by Sally Malcolm

Had there been no war, Sam Hutchinson and Nate Tanner would have lived their lives together as intimate friends, and secret lovers. But when the revolution convulsed America, it threw them down on opposite sides of history.

Five years later, Sam is a Loyalist refugee in London, penniless, bitter, and scrambling to survive amid the city’s shadowy underworld. It’s a far cry from his respectable life as a Rhode Island lawyer, and the last person he wants to witness his ruin is Nate Tanner— the man he… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Anxiety
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Scars
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Police violence & brutality
  • Imprisonment
  • Flogging recounted
  • Colonialism
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The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon 

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magi… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Incest mentioned
  • Depression
  • Alcoholism & alcohol abuse
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Infertility
  • Pregnancy
  • Miscarriage
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Amputation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder
  • Beheading
  • Imprisonment
  • Torture
  • Fire
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Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera

Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera

Khalid, a fifteen-year-old Muslim boy from Rochdale, is abducted from Pakistan while on holiday with his family. He is taken to Guantanamo Bay and held without charge, where his hopes and dreams are crushed under the cruellest of circumstances. An innocent denied his freedom at a time when Western boys are finding theirs, Khalid tries and fails to understand what’s happening to him and cannot fail to be a changed young man.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Incarceration (theme)
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Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

Days after winning Oasis founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything.

Hidden within Halliday’s vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the Oasis a thousand times more wondrous—and addictive—than even Wade dreamed possible… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Imprisonment
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Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric—a masterpiece of suspense San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man’s guilt. For on San Pedro, memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo’s wife; memories of land desired, paid for and lost….. Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Gun violence
  • Wrongful imprisonment
  • War themes
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Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi

Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi

Born as blank as canvas in a world brimming with colour and magic, Alice’s pale skin and milk-white hair mark her as an outcast. Because, for the people of Ferenwood, colour and magic are one and the same. And since the disappearance of her beloved father, Alice is more determined than ever to prove herself and her own magical abilities.

To do so she’ll have to travel into the myth … Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Parental abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Death from childbirth mentioned
  • Minor blood & gore depiction
  • Amputation
  • Cannibalism
  • Loss of autonomy (mind control & powers of manipulation)
  • Imprisonment
  • Disappearance of a parent
  • War themes mentioned
  • Bullying
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Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Imprisonment
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