Coach by Jason Reynolds

Coach by Jason Reynolds

Before Coach was the man who gave caring yet firm-handed guidance to Ghost, Lu, Patina, and Sunny on the Defenders track team, he was little Otie Brody, who was obsessed with Mr. 9.99 (a.k.a. Carl Lewis) and Marty McFly from Back to the Future. Like Mr. 9.99—and his own dad—Otie is a sprinter. Sprint free or die is practically his motto. Then his dad, who is always away on business trips, comes home with a pair of Jordans. JORDANS. Fine as fine can be. Otie puts them on and feels like he can leap to the moon…maybe even leap like Mr. 9.99 when he won the Olympic… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Minor blood depiction & injuries (bloodied nose, cuts)
  • Drug use & alcohol consumption mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Car accident mentioned
  • Bullying, including fistfights and intimidation tactics (threatening with clippers, throwing students into lockers)

Accidentally in Love by Danielle Jackson

Accidentally in Love by Danielle Jackson

As office manager of the city’s leading luxury boudoir and pinup photography studio, lovable grump Samantha Sawyer has everything under control. With an eventful summer season on the horizon, Sam is balancing a hectic workload while preparing the Buxom Boudoir “Photobus,” a vintage coach bus converted into a mobile photobooth and meeting space, to make the rounds at Chicago’s bustling summer street festival roster. Sam’s busy schedule makes avoiding the difficult parts of her life much easier, but there’s one person who can see right through her to-do lists and icy façade, really see her. A lot has changed… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Heart attack (secondary character)
  • Protagonist with Graves’ Disease (an autoimmune thyroid condition), including mentions of medical issues, hospitalisation, scarring, and weight gain

Twin Crowns by Catherine Doyle and Katherine Webber

Wren Greenrock has always known that one day she would steal her sister’s place in the palace. Trained from birth to return to the place of her parents’ murder and usurp the only survivor, she will do anything to rise to power and protect the community of witches she loves. Or she would, if only a certain palace guard wasn’t quite so distractingly attractive, and if her reckless magic didn’t have a habit of causing trouble… Princess Rose Valhart knows that with power comes responsibility. Marriage into a brutal kingdom awaits, and she will not let a small matter like waking up in the middle of the desert in the company of an extremely… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Persecution for witchcraft (theme)
  • Child abuse recounted (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption (on-page)
  • Attempted murder by poisoning (on-page)
  • Minor blood & injury depiction
  • Murder of a father by poisoning mentioned
  • Murder of a mother & great-aunt from their throats being slit (recounted & on-page)
  • Minor battle scenes and fantasy violence, including sword, bow and arrow & knife violence (recounted & on-page) as well as discussions of past war and genocide
  • Imprisonment (on-page)
  • Torture mentioned (off-page)
  • Kidnapping (on-page)
  • Loss of autonomy (magical-induced memory loss and sleep)
  • Animal death (snow leopard, elk, birds)
  • Bullying, including being magically suffocated and thrown off a cliff into the ocean to drown (on-page)

ASAP by Axie Oh

Sori has worked her whole life to become a K-pop idol, until she realizes she doesn’t want a life forever in the spotlight. But that’s not actually up to Sori—she’s caught between her exacting mother’s entertainment company and her father’s presidential aspirations. And as the pressure to keep her flawless public image grows, the last person she should be thinking about is her ex-boyfriend. Nathaniel is off limits—she knows this. A member of one of the biggest K-pop bands in the world and forbidden from dating, he isn’t any more of an option now than he was two years ago… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Infidelity
  • Minor illness (fainting)
  • Stalking & cyberbullying

Protect by Paisley Hope

Imagine coming into the town pub with my crew, dirty and exhausted, only to walk right into my biggest regret. The twin sister of my lost best friend and the one who got away. I haven’t seen Violette Taylor in years but I haven’t forgotten her either. I used to be Rowan to her. Now, I’m just King, the guy who broke her heart, but not for the reasons she thinks. Violette is back in town for good, she’s a single mom and a nurse in the burn unit I accidentally wind up in. Can you call that fate? Maybe, if she wasn’t doing her best to stay far away from anyone who reminded her of her past, especially… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Burn injury from fire
  • Grief & loss depiction

Ne’er Duke Well by Alexandra Vasti

Peter Kent―newly inherited Duke of Stanhope and recently of New Orleans, Louisiana―must become respectable. Between his radical politics and the time he interrupted a minor royal wedding with a flock of sheep―not his fault!―he’s developed a scandalous reputation at odds with his goal of becoming guardian to his half siblings. For help, he turns to the cleverest and most managing woman of his acquaintance, Lady Selina Ravenscroft. Selina is society’s most proper debutante, save one tiny secret: she runs an erotic circulating library for women. When Peter… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical misogyny
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Child with near-fatal illness (on-page)
  • Death of a parent & sibling recounted

The Boy I Love by William Hussey

At just 19, Stephen has already survived a year at the front. Now he is returning to the trenches to lead a platoon, despite his wounds. Broken-hearted from the loss of his first love, Stephen wonders what he’s fighting for. Then he meets Private Danny McCormick, a smart, talented young recruit. From their first meeting, there’s something undeniable between them, something forbidden by both society and the army. Determined to protect Danny, Stephen must face down the prejudices and ignorance of his superiors as well as the onslaught of German shells and sniper fire. As the summer of 1916 ticks down to one big push on the Somme, can Stephen and Danny stay together?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical homophobia including incarceration for being gay
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Gun violence
  • Explosions
  • War themes

Blood and Steel by Helen Scheuerer

With her death foretold, Althea Zoltaire only has three years to become what she’s always dreamed of being: a warrior legend. Women are forbidden to wield blades, so she has trained in secret her entire life. Now racing against the clock, she fights to secure her place in the elite guild charged with the protection of the five kingdoms. The sparring and hazing of the new trainees border on deadly, but even more dangerous is her growing attraction to Wilder Hawthorne, her unwilling warrior chaperone. All around them, schemes are afoot and darkness looms. Will Althea pass the perilous initiation test and take her place as a champion of Thezmarr – or will the invading evil snatch away her dream before it starts?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic injury depiction
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Bullying & hazing

The Family Inside by Katie Garner

It takes a special family to turn a home into a nightmare. Since her husband’s unsolved murder three years ago, Iris Blodgett’s life has unraveled. Awash in grief and buried in debt, she can’t pay her mortgage—and now that she’s lost her job, she has no idea how she’ll provide for her unruly teenage daughter, Ellory. Facing eviction, Iris turns to her new beau, prominent architect Hugh Smoll, for a shoulder to cry on. But the seemingly perfect Hugh offers her something more in an invitation to move into his mother’s centuries-old mansion while he renovates the property. It seems like… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Heart disease & heart attack mentioned
  • Childbirth
  • Death of a husband

Penitence by Kristin Koval

When a shocking murder occurs in the home of Angie and David Sheehan, their lives are shattered. Desperate to defend their family, they turn to small-town lawyer Martine Dumont for help, but Martine isn’t just legal counsel—she’s also the mother of Angie’s first love, Julian, a now-successful New York City criminal defense attorney. As Julian and Angie confront their shared past and long-buried guilt from a tragic accident years ago, they must navigate their own culpability and the unresolved feelings between them.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Alcoholism
  • Huntington’s Disease