Tag Archives: Racism

The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan

Miss Jane Fairfield can’t do anything right. When she’s in company, she always says the wrong thing—and rather too much of it. No matter how costly they are, her gowns fall on the unfortunate side of fashion. Even her immense dowry can’t save her from being an object of derision. And that’s precisely what she wants. She’ll do anything, even risk humiliation, if it means she can stay unmarried and keep her sister safe. Mr. Oliver Marshall has to do everything right. He’s the bastard son of a duke, raised in humble circumst… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical ableism, misogyny & racism
  • Inifdelity recounted
  • Seizures mentioned
  • Scars
  • Medical experimentation
  • Attempted kidnapping
  • Gun violence
  • Blackmail

The Duke Who Didn’t by Courtney Milan

Miss Chloe Fong has plans for her life, lists for her days, and absolutely no time for nonsense. Three years ago, she told her childhood sweetheart that he could talk to her once he planned to be serious. He disappeared that very night. Except now he’s back. Jeremy Wentworth, the Duke of Lansing, has returned to the tiny village he once visited with the hope of wooing Chloe. In his defense, it took him years of attempting to be serious to realize that the endeavor was incompatible with his personality. All he has to do is convince… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & ableism
  • Parent with rheumatoid arthritis
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Death of a father from typhus recounted
  • Death of relatives from cholera, pneumonia, & heart attack mentioned
  • Minor horseback incident, resulting in minor injury to the horse

Learned Behaviors by Jayce Ellis

Sending his daughter off to college is the proudest day of single dad JaQuan Reynolds’ life. Everything took a back seat to raising her—including his career. He has no idea what comes next, but his newfound freedom is quickly curtailed by a crash deadline at work and the uptight, hovering presence of consultant Matthew Donaldson. He’s surly and insufferably sexy, and Jaq’s ready to check him out and write him off—right up until a work assignment forces them together. Every day. From now until Thanksgiving. Work and fatherhood have been Matt’s whole world for years now… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & homophobia

An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson

Deep in the forgotten hills of Massachusetts stands Saint Perpetua’s College. Isolated and ancient, it is not a place for timid girls. Here, secrets are currency, ambition is lifeblood, and strange ceremonies welcome students into the fold. On her first day of class, Laura Sheridan is thrust into an intense academic rivalry with the beautiful and enigmatic Carmilla. Together, they are drawn into the confidence of their demanding poetry professor, De Lafontaine, who holds her own dark obsession with Carmilla. But as their rivalry blossoms into something far more delicious, Laura must confront her own strange hungers. Tangled in a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, misogyny & homophobia
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking
  • Blood & gore depiction including emesis, blood-drinking, dead bodies & decapitation
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Murder
  • Death of a kitten mentioned (brief)

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism (r slur)
  • Slut-shaming
  • Homophobia & slurs
  • Racism & racial slur
  • Sexual assault & incest (implied)
  • Suicide & mentions of suicidal ideation
  • Drug abuse
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Poisoning
  • Animal death & cruelty

The Moon Without Stars by Chanel Miller

At the end of sixth grade, Luna knows who she a small, quiet girl who loves writing and making zines with her best friend, Scott. But when one of their zines takes off, somehow Luna is swept up into the popular group and learns just how much of herself she’s going to have to compromise to stay there. Will she give up her writing? Her best friend? What about her own beliefs about who she is and what she stands for?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Vaping mentioned (on-page, secondary character)
  • Drunk-driving car accident mentioned (a teen crashes into a store & an employee’s hand is injured by broken glass)
  • Biking accident mentioned, resulting in minor nose injury
  • Bullying & vandalism discussed

When We Meet Again by Kristin Harmel

Emily Emerson is used to being alone; her dad walked out on the family when she was a just a kid, her mom died when she was eighteen, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she’s laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely adrift…until the day she receives a beautiful painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. She recognizes the woman as her grandmother, but the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, “He never stopped loving her…” Curious, Emily begins to do some digging and uncovers… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Cancer
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a grandmother & grandfather
  • Lynching
  • World War II & internment camps (theme)

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau by Kristin Harmel

Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance. But one night in 1942, it all went wrong. Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared in the chaos of the raid, along with an… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & antisemitism
  • Hate crime
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sister/child
  • Kidnapping
  • World War II (theme)

Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie. When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave,… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & racial slurs (on-page)
  • Slavery of a child on a plantation (protagonist, on-page)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sister

The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog by Adam Gidwitz

On a dark night, travelers from across France cross paths at an inn and begin to tell stories of three children. Their adventures take them on a chase through France: they are taken captive by knights, sit alongside a king, and save the land from a farting dragon. On the run to escape prejudice and persecution and save precious and holy texts from being burned, their quest drives them forward to a final showdown at Mont Saint-Michel, where all will come to question if these children can perform the miracles of… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical antisemitism & misogyny, including the destruction & arson of a Jewish village by Christians, and a woman burned at the stake