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…

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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

War Games by Alan Gratz

War Games by Alan Gratz

Evie can’t believe she’s made it to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. After fleeing the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, Evie’s family is still poor and reeling from devastating losses. She could have never guessed that the sport she took up to escape her reality would lead to this. Now, she’s competing in gymnastics on Team USA, with some of the greatest athletes in the world like track and field star Jesse Owens. But all is not as it seems in Berlin, a city now ruled by the Nazis and their tyrannical leader, Adolf Hitler. And Evie has secrets of her own. With two other Olympic athletes, who each have their own reasons for despising the Nazis, Evie has… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical antisemitism, racism, homophobia, ableism & Nazism
  • Gun & knife violence
  • World War II including discussions of genocide, concentration camps and forced sterilization of disabled people (theme)
  • Homelessness & poverty (protagonist)

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.

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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

The Floating World by Axie Oh

Sunho lives in the Under World, a land of perpetual darkness. An ex-soldier, he can remember little of his life from before two years ago, when he woke up alone with only his name and his sword. Now he does odd-jobs to scrape by, until he comes across the score of a lifetime—a chest of coins for any mercenary who can hunt down a girl who wields silver light. Meanwhile, far to the east, Ren is a cheerful and spirited acrobat traveling with her adoptive family and performing at villages. But everything changes during one of their festival performances when the village is attacked by a horrific humanlike demon. In a moment… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood & gore depiction including human medical experimentation

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Injury depiction & medical content

Unnecessary Drama by Nina Kenwood

Eighteen-year-old Brooke is the kind of friend who not only remembers everyone’s birthdays, but also organizes the group present, pays for it, and politely chases others for their share. She’s the helper, the doer, the maker-of spreadsheets. She’s the responsible one who always follows the rules―and she plans to keep it that way during her first year of college. Her student housing only has one “no unnecessary drama.” Which means no fights, tension, or romance between roommates. When one of them turns out to be Jesse, her high-school nemesis, Brooke is determined she can handle it. They’ll simply silently endure… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Medical emergency for a burst ovarian cyst (protagonist)

Lucky Few by Kathryn Ormsbee

Stevie Hart is homeschooled, but don’t hold that against her. Sure, she and her best (okay, only) friend, Sanger, will never be prom queens, but that’s just because the Central Austin Homeschool Cooperative doesn’t believe in proms. Or dancing. Still, Stevie and Sanger know how to create their own brand of fun. Enter Max Garza, the new boy next door. After a near-fatal accident, Max is determined to defy mortality with a checklist: 23 Ways to Fake My Death Without Dying. Dead set on carrying out fabricated demises ranging from impalement to spontaneous… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Medical content including diabetic medical crisis & needles (protagonist)
  • Death of a parent in a car accident recounted

Out of the Woods by Hannah Bonam-Young

High school sweethearts Sarah and Caleb Linwood have always been a sure thing. For the past seventeen years, they have had each other’s backs through all of life’s ups and downs, achievements, losses, stages, and phases. But Sarah has begun to wonder… Who is she without her other half? When she decides to take on a project of her own, a fundraising gala in memoriam of her late mother, Sarah wants nothing more than to prove to herself—and to everyone else—that she doesn’t need Caleb’s help to succeed. She’s still her mother’s daughter, after all. Independent and capable. That is until the event fails and Caleb uninvitedly…. Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a parent from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
  • Medical treatments & hospitalization
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use mentioned (marijuana)

Do You Remember? by Freida McFadden

Tess Strebel can’t recognize her own face. She can’t recognize her home. Her bedroom is unfamiliar. And she can’t remember the handsome stranger lying next to her in bed. A stranger who claims he’s her husband. Tess reads a letter in her own handwriting, composed during a rare lucid day, explaining her life as it now exists: She was in a terrible car accident one year ago. Every morning, she wakes up unable to remember most of the last decade. Including her own wedding. Tess has no choice but to accept her new life and hope her memory will return. After all, why should she doubt the letter she wrote to herself? Or the kind… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Cancer & medical treatment (injections)
  • Hospitalisation recounted
  • Confinement