After She Wrote Him by Sulari Gentill

Madeleine d’Leon doesn’t know where Edward came from. He is simply a character in her next book. But as she writes, he becomes all she can think about. His charm, his dark hair, his pen scratching out his latest literary novel.. Edward McGinnity can’t get Madeleine out of his mind–softly smiling, infectiously enthusiastic, and perfectly damaged. She will be the ideal heroine for his next book. But who is the author and who is the creation? And as the lines start to blur, who is affected when a killer finally takes flesh?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Miscarriage
  • Involuntary hospitalisation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder
  • Physical assault
  • Home invasion

Words We Cannot Say by Sita Romero

Labor and delivery nurse Penelope is an expert at her job but a complete mess when it comes to her personal life. After her boyfriend dumps her in favor of saving his marriage, Penelope discovers she’s pregnant. Now Penelope must face motherhood, her greatest fear, or consider the alternatives. Jesenia, a first-generation American, made her mark as a model then quit the business in favor of a nine-to-five and wedded bliss. After three years of fertility treatments and pressure from her family, trying to become a mother is her full-time job. But when her past mistakes… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infertility
  • Miscarriage & abortion

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Alice is twenty-nine. She adores sleep, chocolate, and her ramshackle new house. She’s newly engaged to the wonderful Nick and is pregnant with her first baby. There’s just one problem. All that was ten years ago. Alice has slipped in a step aerobics class, hit her head and lost a decade. Now she’s a grown-up, bossy mother of three in the middle of a nasty divorce and her beloved sister Elisabeth isn’t speaking to her. This is her life but not as she knows it. Clearly Alice has made some terrible mistakes. Just how much can happen in a decade? Can she ever get back to the woman she used to be?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce
  • Amnesia
  • Miscarriage & infertility
  • Car accident

The Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams

It’s 1995, and fourteen-year-old Tati is determined to uncover the identity of her father. But her mother, Nadia, keeps her secrets close, while her grandmother Gladys remains silent about the family’s past, including why she left Land’s End, Alabama, in 1953. As Tati digs deeper, she uncovers a legacy of family secrets, where every generation of Dupree women has posed more questions than answers. From Jubi in 1917, whose attempt to pass for white ends when she gives birth to Ruby; to Ruby’s fiery lust for Sampson in 1934 that leads to a baby of her own; to the night… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Infidelity
  • Miscarriage & unexpected pregnancy
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & intergenerational trauma (theme)

A Righteous Man by Tochi Onyebuchi

Nathaniel is a well-intentioned, if naive, British cleric feeling blessed to educate a West African village about the benevolent power of God. But as slavers encroach, Nathaniel’s endeavor is daunted by the realities unfolding on the beautiful homeland of his congregation. It seems the Devil has power too. What follows for Nathaniel is a profound spiritual upheaval as he questions his purpose and even his humanity.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Racism & classism
  • Hate crime
  • Rape
  • Miscarriage
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Mass shooting
  • Kidnapping
  • Colonisation
  • Animal death & cruelty

Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins

Laila desperately wants to become a mother, but each of her previous pregnancies has ended in heartbreak. This time has to be different, so she turns to the Melancons, an old and powerful Harlem family known for their caul, a precious layer of skin that is the secret source of their healing power. When a deal for Laila to acquire a piece of caul falls through, she is heartbroken, but when the child is stillborn, she is overcome with grief and rage. What she doesn’t know is that a baby will soon be delivered in her family–by her niece, Amara, an ambitious college student–and delivered.. Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & police brutality
  • Graphic miscarriage & teen pregnancy
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Animal attack

Runaway Road by Devney Perry

Londyn McCormack didn’t have a typical childhood. She ran away from home at sixteen, escaping parents more interested in drugs than their daughter. She doesn’t have loving siblings or an adorable pet. Her only family is the five other runaway kids who shared her junkyard home. Life pulled them all in separate directions, taking her to Boston. For a short time, she thought she’d found something permanent. But after a devastating divorce, she’s running away again, this time to find a lost friend. She’s driving across the country in her convertible. As a teenager, the rusty car was her shelter… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Miscarriage mentioned

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

On a hot day in 1960s Maine, six-year-old Joe watches his little sister Ruthie, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of the blueberry fields, while their family, Mi’kmaq people from Nova Scotia, pick fruit. That afternoon, Ruthie vanishes without a trace. As the last person to see her, Joe will be forever haunted by grief, guilt, and the agony of imagining how his life could have been. In an affluent suburb nearby, Norma is growing up as the only child of unhappy parents. She is smart, precocious, and bursting with questions she isn’t allowed to ask – questions about her… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Miscarriage (late term)
  • Cancer

Heartless by Elsie Silver

Cade Eaton is thirteen years older than I am and barely looks my way. Until I get him into the hot tub one night for a game of truth or dare. Then all bets are off—and so are our clothes. He’s gruff, a little rough around the edges. But broad-shouldered ranchers with calloused hands and filthy mouths are this city girl’s kryptonite. So who am I to resist? But it’s in our quiet moments together that he softens. It’s when he takes care of me that I realize his hardened exterior is just a façade. It’s when I watch him go all sweet with his little boy that I really fall for him. Someone convinced… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental & spousal abandonment
  • Infidelity*
  • Pregnancy (unplanned)
  • Miscarriage
  • Physical injury (broken fingers)
  • Emesis
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a mother during childbirth recounted

Context : The hero’s ex-wife abandoned him and their son.

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years–or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century. When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Health-related anxiety discussed
  • Body image & weight discussed
  • Pregnancy & miscarriage
  • Serious childhood illness discussed
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent in a car accident mentioned
  • Blackmail
  • Bullying recounted