Tag Archives: Mental Illness

Mixed Signals by B.K. Borison

Layla Dupree has given up on love. She’s waded through all of the fish in the sea, each one more disappointing than the last. Apparently owning the bakery at Inglewild’s most romantic destination does not help one’s love life-despite her best efforts. All she wants is a partner who gives her butterflies, not someone who ghosts her at dinner and leaves her with the check. Good thing Caleb Alvarez has the perfect solution. After saving Layla from another date gone bad, he has a simple One month of no-strings dating. He’ll do his best to renew her faith in men while she rates his dating game. It’s a win-win… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Familial estrangement
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Alcohol consumption

Done and Dusted by Lyla Sage

For the first time in her life, Clementine “Emmy” Ryder has no idea what she’s doing. She’s accomplished everything on her to-do list. She left her small hometown of Meadowlark, Wyoming; went to college; and made a career for herself by doing her favoourite thing: riding horses. But after an accident makes it impossible for her to get back into the saddle, she has no choice but to return to the hometown she always wanted to escape. Luke Brooks is Meadowlark’s most notorious bad boy, bar owner, and bachelor. He’s also the unofficial fifth member of the Ryder family. As Emmy’s older brother’s best friend, Luke… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment & child neglect mentioned
  • Anxiety & panic attacks (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a parent recounted (off-page)

Swift and Saddled by Lyla Sage

She’s the city girl that refuses to give him the time of day. He’s the cowboy that wants her anyway. The last thing Ada Hart needs is a man to take care of her. Not anymore. After failing out of her interior design program and the disaster that was her short-lived marriage, Ada clawed her way up from her rock bottom. Now, the only person she trusts is herself, and that has gotten her further than other people ever did. She has her own business, and one of the largest ranches in Wyoming just hired her for the most important project of her career. When Ada arrives in Meadowlark, she finds herself in a dive bar where she can’t.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotionally abusive relationship recounted
  • Depression & panic attacks
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a parent recounted (off-page)

Perfect by Rachel Joyce

In 1972, two seconds were added to time. It was in order to balance clock time with the movement of the earth. Byron Hemming knew this because James Lowe had told him and James was the cleverest boy at school. But how could time change? The steady movement of hands around a clock was as certain as their golden futures. Then Byron’s mother, late for the school run, makes a devastating mistake. Byron’s perfect world is shattered. Were those two extra seconds to blame? Can what follows ever be set right?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce

It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist–the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind. Fun-loving Enid Pretty in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • MIscarriage
  • Suicide by gun violence
  • Stalking
  • Death of a pet & animal abuse

Away With Words by Sophie Cameron

Gala and her dad, Jordi, have just moved to a town in Scotland, to live with Jordi’s boyfriend Ryan. Gala doesn’t speak much English, and feels lost, lonely and unable to be her usual funny self. Until she befriends Natalie, a girl with selective mutism. The two girls find their own ways to communicate, which includes collecting other people’s discarded words. They use the words to write anonymous supportive poems for their classmates, but then someone begins leaving nasty messages using the same method – and the girls are blamed. Gala has finally started adapting to her new life in Scotland and is determined to find the culprit. Can she and Natalie show the school who they really are?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Selective mutism (secondary character)

The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson

London, 1944: Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While war ravages the city above her, Clara has risked everything she holds dear to turn the Bethnal Green tube station into the country’s only underground library. Down here, a secret community thrives with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a café, and a theatre—offering shelter, solace, and escape from the bombs that fall upon their city. Along with her glamorous best friend and assistant Ruby Munroe, Clara ensures the library is the beating heart of life underground. But as the war drags on, the women’s determination to remain strong in the face of adversity is tested to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical sexism
  • Domestic violence
  • Panic attacks & Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Miscarriage
  • World War II

This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell

Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex–film star given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Claudette was once the most glamorous and infamous woman in cinema before she staged her own disappearance and retreated to blissful seclusion in an Irish farmhouse. But the life Daniel and Claudette have so carefully constructed is about to be disrupted by an unexpected discovery about a woman Daniel lost touch with twenty years ago… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical child abuse recounted
  • Infidelity
  • Divorce
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • Alcoholism
  • Infertility & miscarriage mentioned
  • Abortion (discussed, on-page)
  • Death of an ex-partner from anorexia
  • Death of a grandfather from a brain haemorrhage mentioned
  • Murder of a daughter by gun violence during a robbery (off-page)

Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander

Meredith Maggs has everything a person needs. A best friend in Sadie. A beloved cat in Fred. Jigsaws to fill the time. Recipes to perfect. Even a weekly visit from the Tesco delivery guy. So what if she hasn’t left the house in 1,214 days? That her memories are treacherous, and it’s getting harder to ignore the estranged sister knocking at her door. How long can one woman keep the world out? How long before she invites in what’s out there? And how long does it take to discover the person you were meant to be?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Child abuse & domestic violence
  • Familial estrangement discussed
  • Attempted suicide recounted
  • Self-harm
  • Agoraphobia & depression (protagonist)
  • Miscarriage & stillbirth

She Started It by Sian Gilbert

Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe are best friends—or were, as children. Despite drifting apart in adulthood, shared secrets have kept them bonded for better or worse, even as their childhood dreams haven’t quite turned out as they’d hoped. Then one day they receive a wholly unexpected—but not entirely unwelcome—invitation from another old friend. Poppy Greer has invited them all to her extravagant bachelorette party: a first-class plane ticket to three days of white sand, cocktails, and relaxation on a luxe private island in the Bahamas. None of them has spoken to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Substance addiction
  • Eating disorder
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Bullying