The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be. And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband.

Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and the Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up. Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Child abuse recounted, and domestic violence (off-page)
  • Cheating
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Pregnancy & abortion recounted
  • Blood & gore depiction and physical injuries
  • Emesis
  • Murder (off-page)
  • Strangulation recounted
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Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier

Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier

Aged just 16, Geo’s best friend Angela disappeared without a trace. Years later, Angela’s body is discovered in the woods near Geo’s childhood home, revealed as yet another victim of the notorious serial killer Calvin James. Geo’s high-school boyfriend.

For fourteen years, Geo knew what had happened and told no one, carrying the secret until she was arrested and sent to prison. Why would any woman protect a man capable of committing such a heinous crime? Geo had her reasons…

To Geo, Calvin is more than a monster, a serial killer with no remorse. He is something else entirely. And while Geo did her time, Calvin escaped and went on the run. Now released, Geo is ready to start over. But then the bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Dismemberment
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Incarceration
  • Pregnancy
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The Ballad of Ami Miles by Kristy Dallas Alley

The Ballad of Ami Miles by Kristy Dallas Alley

The Ballad of Ami Miles by Kristy Dallas  Alley book cover

Raised in isolation at Heavenly Shepherd, her family’s trailer-dealership-turned-survival compound, Ami Miles knows that she was lucky to be born into a place of safety after the old world ended and the chaos began. But when her grandfather arranges a marriage to a cold-eyed stranger, she realizes that her “destiny” as one of the few females capable of still bearing children isn’t something she’s ready to face.

With the help of one of her aunts, she flees the only life she’s ever known, and sets off on a quest to find her long-lost mother (and hopefully a mate of her own choosing). But as she journeys, Ami discovers many new things about the world… and about herself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism (mentioned) and homomisia
  • Abandonment
  • Depression
  • Suicide
  • Stillbirth/s and death during childbirth
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Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo book cover

Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage–after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures–Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time–until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin’s second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant, which, finally, she does–but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Cissexism
  • Rape mentioned
  • Pregnancy
  • Death by childbirth
  • Infertility themes
  • Terminal illness
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Police brutality
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The Project by Courtney Summers

The Project by Courtney Summers

The Project by Courtney Summers book cover

Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo’s sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there’s more to the group than meets the eye. She’s spent the last six years of her life trying—and failing—to prove it. When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abandonment
  • Disfigurmisia
  • Child abuse & neglect recounted, including emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Infidelity
  • Trauma, panic attacks, nightmares & mentions of hallucinations
  • Suicide by train (on-page) & mentions of suicidal ideation
  • Pregnancy & pregnancy complications (on-page), including traumatic premature childbirth (on-page)
  • Blood & injury depiction, including graphic burns, hospitalisation, comas, broken bones, and facial scars
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother & father in a car accident (off-page)
  • Death of a mother in a fire mentioned
  • Death of a guardian mentioned
  • Death of a sister by drowning (off-page)
  • Death of a son discussed
  • Murder
  • Torture (on-page)
  • Disappearance of a sibling
  • Car accident (on- & off-page)
  • Blackmail mentioned and mentions of stalking & harassment
  • Cults (theme)
  • Homelessness mentioned

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.

After Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa’s new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa’s stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny (theme)
  • Religious persecution (theme)
  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Rape (multiple, off-page), martial rape & sexual assault
  • Adult-minor relationship and forced arranged marriage
  • Physical child abuse
  • Suicide (self-sacrifice)
  • Pregnancy & death from childbirth
  • Abortion discussed
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a wife & mother
  • Death of a father
  • Graphic animal death & hunting
  • War themes mentioned
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Catalyst by Laurie Halse Anderson

Catalyst by Laurie Halse Anderson

Meet Kate Malone – straight-A science and math geek, minister’s daughter, ace long-distance runner, new girlfriend (to Mitchell “Early Decision Harvard” Pangborn III), unwilling family caretaker, and emotional avoidance champion. Kate manages her life by organizing it as logically as the periodic table. She can handle it all – or so she thinks.

Then, things change as suddenly as a string of chemical reactions; first, the Malones’ neighbors get burned out of their own home and move in. Kate has to share her room with her nemesis, Teri Litch, and Teri’s little brother. The days are ticking down and she’s still waiting to hear from the only college she applied to: MIT. Kate feels that her life is spinning out of her control – and then, something happens that truly blows it all apart.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Incest (father-daughter)
  • Child pregnancy
  • Pregnancy from rape
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a brother
  • Fire & loss of property
  • Electrocution
  • Bullying
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In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Kohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend’s marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.

But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.

After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.

That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • False pregnancy
  • Terminal cancer
  • Death of a loved one
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Every Single Lie by Rachel Vincent

Every Single Lie by Rachel Vincent

Nobody in Beckett’s life seems to be telling the whole story. Her boyfriend Jake keeps hiding texts and might be cheating on her. Her father lied about losing his job before his shocking death. And everyone in school seems to be whispering about her and her family behind her back.

But none of that compares to the day Beckett finds the body of a newborn baby in a gym bag-Jake’s gym bag -on the floor of her high school locker room. As word leaks out, rumors that Beckett’s the mother take off like wildfire in a town all too ready to believe the worst of her. And as the police investigation unfolds, she discovers that everyone has a secret to hide and the truth could alter everything she thought she knew.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • PTSD & panic attacks
  • Substance addiction & alcoholism
  • Alcohol & drug abuse, including overdose
  • Child pregnancy, childbirth & stillbirth
  • Physical injuries
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father to suicide by a drug & alcohol overdose recounted
  • Death of an infant*
  • Bullying & cyberbullying, including death threats

*Note: the book’s plot centres around the protagonist discovering the dead body of a newborn in her school’s gym.

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The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

The daughter of a union with an outsider that cast her once-proud family into disgrace, Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol and lead a life of submission, devotion and absolute conformity, like all the women in the settlement.

But a chance mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood that surrounds Bethel – a place where the first prophet once pursued and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still walking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the diary of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood.

Fascinated by secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realises the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her . . .

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & colourism
  • Misogyny
  • Slut-shaming
  • Ableist language
  • Persecution for witchcraft
  • Physical, verbal & emotional child abuse
  • Sexual assault
  • Rape & statutory rape recounted
  • Paedophilia & child molestation recounted
  • Forced nonconsensual marriage*
  • Exile & ex-communication
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Suicide recounted
  • Self-harm & self-inflicted injuries
  • Pregnancy & child pregnancy (secondary character)
  • Death from childbirth (two on-page scenes), and mentions of miscarriage & stillbirth
  • Graphic blood depiction & menstruation discussed
  • Plague (multiple)
  • Seizures & stroke (side character)
  • Nonconsensual branding
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother & father recounted
  • Death of a son recounted
  • Death of a best friend (on-page)
  • Strangulation
  • Drowning
  • Being burned alive
  • Earthquake
  • Imprisonment & captivity
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Animal death & sacrifice

Note: This book portrays a cult which uses its beliefs to justify abuse, torture, misogyny, racism & paedophilia, including the marriage, rape (‘bedding’) & impregnation of multiple children (not graphic or on-page, but mentioned & discussed by secondary characters).

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