Tag Archives: Mental Illness

The Long Game by Elena Armas

Adalyn Reyes has spent years perfecting her daily routine: wake up at dawn, drive to the Miami Flames FC offices, try her hardest to leave a mark, go home, and repeat. But her routine is disrupted when a video of her in an altercation with the team’s mascot goes viral. Rather than fire her, the team’s owner—who happens to be her father—sends Adalyn to middle-of-nowhere North Carolina, where she’s tasked with turning around the struggling local soccer team, the Green Warriors, as a way to redeem herself. Her plans crumble upon discovering that the players wear tutus to practice (impractical), keep pet goats (messy), and are terrified of Adalyn (counterproductive), and are…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Panic attacks, on-page
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from a home invasion
  • Death of a mother & grandmother mentioned
  • Cyberbullying mentioned

Those Pink Mountain Nights by Jen Ferguson

On July 28 at 6:30 p.m., Kiri Dunsmore walks out of the desert wearing her boyfriend’s sweatshirt, covered in his blood. Dazed and on the verge of unconsciousness, she tells a cashier that he’s still out there and most likely dead. The disappearance of Callum Massey, a “survival guru” with hundreds of thousands of YouTube followers, rocks the nation. And Kiri is a prime suspect. Back in Kiri’s hometown, true-crime fanatic Sam   is completely hooked on the case—especially now that she recognizes the suspect as shy Katie from high school. Although they didn’t know each other well… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Depression
  • Medical treatment for cancer recounted
  • Murder of a mother recounted
  • Animal death

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life. Josie’s life appears to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia & adult-minor relationships
  • Child abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking mentioned

Together We Rot by Skyla Arndt

Wil Greene’s mom has been missing for over a year, and the police are ready to call the case closed–they claim she skipped town and you can’t find a woman who wants to disappear. But she knows her mom wouldn’t just leave…and she knows the family of her former best friend, Elwood Clarke, has something to do with it. Elwood has been counting down the days until his 18th birthday–in dread. It marks leaving school and joining his pastor father in dedicating his life to their congregation, the Garden of Adam. But when he comes home after one night of after a final good… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical child abuse
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Emesis
  • Cult
  • Animal death

Nestlings by Nat Cassidy

Ana and Reid needed a lucky break. The horrifically complicated birth of their first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and struggling: with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with resentment for her baby. That’s about to change with the words any New Yorker would love to hear―affordable housing lottery. They’ve won an apartment in the Deptford, one of Manhattan’s most revered buildings with beautiful vistas of Central Park and stunning architecture. Reid dismisses disturbing events and Ana’s deep unease and paranoia as the price of living in New York―people are odd―but he can’t explain the needle-like bite marks on the baby.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Racism
  • Sexism
  • Antisemitism
  • Homomisic slurs
  • Gaslighting
  • Post-partum depression
  • Claustrophobia
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Death of a parent
  • Infanticide mentioned
  • COVID-19 pandemic

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism
  • Homomisia
  • Racism
  • Slavery mentioned
  • Attempted incest mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Depressive episode
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Drugging
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Car accident

Moonflower by Kacen Callender

Moon has been plunged into a swill of uncertainty and confusion. They travel to the spirit realms every night, hoping never to return to the world of the living.
But when the realm is threatened, it’s up to Moon to save the spirit world, which sparks their own healing journey through the powerful, baffling, landscape that depression can cause.
From this novel’s very first utterance, author Kacen Callender puts us behind Moon’s eyes so that we, too, are engulfed by Moon’s troubling exploration through mental illness… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation

The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

Nix has spent her entire life aboard her father’s ship, sailing across the centuries, across the world, across myth and imagination.
As long as her father has a map for it, he can sail to any time, any place, real or imagined: nineteenth-century China, the land from One Thousand and One Nights, a mythic version of Africa. Along the way they have found crewmates and friends, and even a disarming thief who could come to mean much more to Nix.
But the end to it all looms closer every day… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Colonialism
  • Bipolar disorder
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Parent with substance addiction
  • Gun violence
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Attempted murder

Soul of a Witch by Harley Laroux

Everly: I am the servant of a merciless God. I am the daughter of Its preacher. All my life, my power has been controlled by others. They raised me to be meek and stifled my magic. But no more. A brutal murder led me to discover a mysterious house full of magic – and the ancient, powerful demon within. He says my power can change the world, that I can kill the evil creature I once worshipped. But at what cost? Callum: For two thousand years, I’ve been alone. Slaughtering fallen Gods as I searched for the witch that haunted my dreams, begging for my help. Now that I’ve found.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abuse
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Pregnancy & miscarriage discussed
  • Death of a parent from suicide mentioned
  • Blood & knife play
  • Body horror
  • Murder
  • Imprisonment
  • Torture

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But 18-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette. To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Panic attack
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Cigarette & cigar smoking mentioned
  • Medical treatment including needles
  • Blood, gore and physical injury
  • Emesis
  • Death of a sister from drowning recounted
  • Death of a mother from being hit by a train
  • Military service discussed
  • Graphic war themes & battle scenes including bombings and chemical gassing, on-page
  • Poverty