An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi

An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi

It’s 2003, the US officially declared war on Iraq and the American political world evolved. Hate crimes are on the rise, and the Muslim community is harassed and targeted more than ever. Shadi, who wears hijab, keeps her head down. She’s too busy drowning in her own troubles to find the time to deal with bigots.

Shadi is named for joy, but she’s haunted by sorrow. Her brother is dead, her father is dying, her mother is falling apart, and her best friend has mysteriously dropped out of her life. And then, of course, there’s the small matter of her heart—it’s broken. Shadi tries soldiering through, each day retreating farther and farther inside herself until finally, one day, everything changes. She explodes.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Islamophobia
  • Domestic violence & abuse
  • Attempted suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Panic Disorder & panic attacks
  • Drug use
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Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall

Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall

Rosaline Palmer has always lived by the rules—well, except for when she dropped out of college to raise her daughter, Amelie. Now, she’s teetering on the edge of financial disaster. But where there’s a whisk there’s a way . . . and Rosaline has just landed a spot on the nation’s most beloved baking show.

Winning the prize money would give her daughter the life she deserves. However, more than collapsing trifles stand between Rosaline and sweet, sweet victory.  Suave Alain Pope knows all the right moves to sweep her off her feet, but it’s shy electrician Harry Dobson who makes Rosaline question her long-held beliefs—about herself, her family, and her desires. Rosaline fears falling for Harry is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Bimisia
  • Classism
  • Anxiety
  • Attempted sexual assault
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Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny & femicide
  • Rape mentioned
  • Physical & emotional abuse
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcoholism
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder
  • Torture
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Just Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane

Just Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane

Also know as Last Night.

Eve, Justin, Susie, and Ed have been friends since they were teenagers. Now in their thirties, the four are as close as ever, Thursday night bar trivia is sacred, and Eve is still secretly in love with Ed. Maybe she should have moved on by now, but she can’t stop thinking about what could have been. And she knows Ed still thinks about it, too.

But then, in an instant, their lives are changed forever.

In the aftermath, Eve’s world is upended. As stunning secrets are revealed, she begins to wonder if she really knew her friends as well as she thought. And when someone from the past comes back into her life, Eve’s future veers in a surprising new direction…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Physical parental abuse recounted
  • Cheating
  • Panic attack
  • Dementia & Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Death of a friend
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We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson book cover

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise, I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic abuse
  • Agoraphobia
  • Poisoning
  • Fire
  • Death of a parent
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Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

The story is supposed to be over. Simon Snow did everything he was supposed to do. He beat the villain. He won the war. He even fell in love. Now comes the good part, right? Now comes the happily ever after…

What he needs, according to his best friend, is a change of scenery. He just needs to see himself in a new light…

That’s how Simon and Penny and Baz end up in a vintage convertible, tearing across the American West. They find trouble, of course. (Dragons, vampires, skunk-headed things with shotguns.) And they get lost. They get so lost, they start to wonder whether they ever knew where they were headed in the first place…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Depression
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Fire
  • Animal death
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10 Things I Can See from Here by Carrie Mac

10 Things I Can See from Here by Carrie Mac

10 Things I Can See from Here by Carrie Mac book cover

Think positive. Don’t worry; be happy. Keep calm and carry on.

Maeve has heard it all before. She’s been struggling with severe anxiety for a long time, and as much as she wishes it was something she could just talk herself out of, it’s not. She constantly imagines the worst, composes obituaries in her head, and is always ready for things to fall apart. To add to her troubles, her mom—the only one who really gets what Maeve goes through—is leaving for six months, so Maeve will be sent to live with her dad in Vancouver.

Vancouver brings a slew of new worries, but Maeve finds brief moments of calm (as well as even more worries) with Salix, a local girl who doesn’t seem to worry about anything. Between her dad’s wavering sobriety, her very pregnant stepmom insisting on a home birth, and her bumbling courtship with Salix, this summer brings more catastrophes than even Maeve could have foreseen. Will she be able to navigate through all the chaos to be there for the people she loves?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Bimisia
  • Lesbomisia
  • Sexual assault, specifically nonconsensual kiss
  • Anxiety and anxiety attacks
  • Alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Drug abuse
  • Drug addiction, including relapse/s
  • Childbirth
  • Death of a friend
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Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

Together with her parabatai Julian Blackthorn, Emma Carstairs must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches across Los Angeles, from the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica. If only her heart didn’t lead her in treacherous directions…

Making things even more complicated, Julian’s brother Mark—who was captured by the faeries five years ago—has been returned as a bargaining chip. The faeries are desperate to find out who is murdering their kind—and they need the Shadowhunters’ help to do it. But time works differently in faerie, so Mark has barely aged and doesn’t recognize his family. Can he ever truly return to them? Will the faeries really allow it?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Racism
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Rape by coercion mentioned
  • Psychological, emotional & physical child abuse recounted
  • Trauma (theme)
  • Nightmares
  • Schizophrenia
  • Hallucinations
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Emesis
  • Physical injuries
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • Home invasion
  • Exile
  • Drowning
  • Fire
  • Whipping
  • Cults
  • War themes including graphic battle scenes
  • Bullying
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Smoke Bitten by Patricia Briggs

Smoke Bitten by Patricia Briggs

I am Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman. My only “superpowers” are that I turn into a thirty-five pound coyote and fix Volkswagens. But I have friends in odd places and a pack of werewolves at my back. It looks like I’m going to need them.

Centuries ago, the fae dwelt in Underhill–until she locked her doors against them. They left behind their great castles and troves of magical artifacts. They abandoned their prisoners and their pets. Without the fae to mind them, those creatures who remained behind roamed freely through Underhill wreaking havoc. Only the deadliest survived.

Now one of those prisoners has escaped. It can look like anyone, any creature it chooses. But if it bites you, it controls you. It lives for chaos and destruction. It can make you do anything–even kill the person you love the most. Now it is here, in the Tri-Cities. In my territory.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted suicide
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
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Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Based-on-true-events story of Harry and Craig, two 17-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record—all of which is narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS.

While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teen boys dealing with languishing long-term relationships, coming out, navigating gender identity, and falling deeper into the digital rabbit hole of gay hookup sites—all while the kissing former couple tries to figure out their own feelings for each other.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Coming out themes
  • Hate crimes
  • Physical parental abuse
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm mentioned
  • Eating disorders mentioned
  • AIDS
  • Bullying
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