Tag Archives: Mental Illness

96 Words for Love by Rachel Roy and Ava Dash

Ever since her acceptance to UCLA, 17-year-old Raya Liston has been quietly freaking out. She feels simultaneously lost and trapped by a future already mapped out for her. Then her beloved grandmother dies, and Raya jumps at the chance to spend her last free summer at the ashram in India where her grandmother met and fell in love with her grandfather. Raya hopes to find her centre and her true path. But she didn’t expect to fall in love… with a country of beautiful contradictions, her fiercely loyal cousin, a local girl with a passion for reading, and a boy who teaches her that in Sanskrit, there are 96 different… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Forced public outing
  • Sex trafficking
  • Arranged marriage mentioned
  • Addiction recovery
  • Suicide
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Disappearance & kidnapping of a child

738 Days by Stacey Kade

At fifteen, Amanda Grace was abducted on her way home from school. 738 days later, she escaped. Her 20/20 interview is what everyone remembers—Amanda describing the room where she was kept, the torn poster of TV heartthrob Chase Henry on the wall. It reminded her of home and gave her the strength to keep fighting. Now, years later, Amanda is struggling to live normally. Her friends have gone on to college, while she battles PTSD. She’s not getting any better, and she fears that if something doesn’t change soon she never will. Six years ago, Chase Henry defied astronomical odds, won a coveted role on a new TV… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism
  • PTSD & trauma
  • Kidnapping & captivity of a child recounted

6 Times We Almost Kissed [and One Time We Did] by Tess Sharpe

Penny and Tate have always clashed. Unfortunately, their mothers are lifelong best friends, so the girls’ bickering has carried them through playdates, tragedy, and more than one rom-com marathon with the Moms. When Penny’s mother decides to become a living donor to Tate’s mom, ending her wait for a liver transplant, things go from clashing to cataclysmic. Because in order to help their families recover physically, emotionally, and financially, the Moms combine their households the summer before senior year. So Penny and Tate make a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety
  • Emotional child abuse & neglect
  • Cheating recounted*
  • Sexual assault mentioned*
  • Suicidal ideation mentioned
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical illness & injury*
  • Ovarian cancer mentioned including discussions of the original diagnosis, remission, and death
  • Surgery recounted, including organ donation and an oophorectomy
  • Death of a father, on-page

*Context : The protagonist’s ex cheated on her in the past. Mentions of an interrupted assault that happened twenty-five years earlier. Mentions of dealing with Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency and surgery required for a tug o’ war injury that nearly severed fingers.

23:27 by HL Roberts

Fame. Money. Glory. These were all the things that you would expect from being famous. The bait that the producers of the industry would tempt you with to get you on their side. These were all the things that you would expect from being famous. The bait that the producers of the industry would tempt you with to get you on their side. They don’t tell you about the pressure that’s always on the verge of crushing you when you’re forced to do everything that the public demands for and not what you truly desire. They don’t tell you about the self-hatred that would soon take over your entire being at the thought that you will never be good enough. No – they don’t tell you these things at all… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Depression
  • Suicide
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption

Heartless Heathens by Santana Knox

Hey, Over here. No, look up. Yeah, I’m the one they talk about. The headmaster’s prized possession, locked away in the bell tower of NotreDame Parochial College. To most of the students I was just a myth. An urban legend. The girl who rings the bells up in the tower, the one who talks to gargoyles. Frollo’s secret. Then they showed up, those heartless heathens. Outcasts, just like me. But these men aren’t just dangerous, they’re heartless. They won’t abide or bend to the rules of this deranged school and the secrets it keeps from the world. But now that they’ve found me, they may never let me go. And maybe I wouldn’t want.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical, psychological & emotional child abuse
  • Nightmares & flashbacks
  • Epilepsy
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Starvation
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother in childbirth recounted
  • Execution of a mother for being an abortion provider
  • Disappearance of a parent recounted
  • Captivity

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

In a lonely cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood summer companions and the killer that stalked the small New England town. Of the body they found, and the horror of that discovery echoing down the decades. And of Sky, Wilder’s one-time best friend, who stole his unfinished memoir and turned it into a lurid bestselling novel, Looking Glass Sound. But as Wilder writes, the lines between memory and fiction blur. He fears he’s losing his grip on reality when he finds notes hidden around the cottage written in Sky’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Conversion therapy mentioned
  • Depression
  • Panic attack
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use mentioned
  • Abortion
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Poisoning
  • Kindapping of a child
  • Drowning mentioned
  • Stalking

Lore Olympus, Volume 5 by Rachel Smythe

An ingenious take on the Greek Pantheon, Lore Olympus is a modern update on the story of Hades and Persephone. Follow the propulsive love story of two Greek gods, told with lavish artwork and contemporary sensibilities.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking
  • Anxiety & depression
  • Murder
  • Blackmail

Maybe Once, Maybe Twice by Alison Rose Greenberg

You know that old saying, “if we are still single when we’re 35, we should get married?” Well, Maggie Vine made that vow with two different people, at two very different stages of her life. And they both showed up. Maggie Vine’s life is going extra-medium. At 35 she’s pursuing her dreams of being a singer and being a mother—though neither is successfully panning out. So when Garrett Scholl—stifled hedge fund manager by day but electrifying aspiring rock singer by night—comes to her 35th birthday party with the intention to kiss Maggie senseless, it feels like one piece might click into place. Except he’s engaged to someone… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault, off-page
  • Depression
  • Infertility due to Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Child abuse & neglect including emotional abuse and gaslighting
  • Divorce and parental divorce
  • Cheating
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Social anxiety
  • Disordered eating
  • Postpartum depression
  • Forced institutionalisation
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Suicide of a grandmother from a gunshot
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Recreational drug use
  • Pregnancy and childbirth mentioned
  • Abortion & miscarriage
  • Hospitalisation of a sibling for a lawn mowing accident mentioned
  • Physical injuries mentioned
  • Death of a grandmother from drowning
  • Car accident

Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle

Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess. Powers that would ruin her life if the wrong person were to discover them. To gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school’s most reclusive student, Baz—a boy already well-versed in the deadly nature of darker magic, whose sister happened to be one of the drowned… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Depression
  • Self-harm & bloodletting
  • Institutionalisation
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Drowning