Tag Archives: Racism

Can I Steal You for a Second? by Jodi McAlister

Mandie Mitchell will do anything to get over her toxic ex. Even sign up to the polarising reality dating show, Marry Me, Juliet. But with her self-esteem in tatters, she’s not sure she’s brave enough to actually go on the show – until she forms a friendship with fellow contestant Dylan Gilchrist, who gives her the push she needs. Dylan is everything Mandie is not – tough, strong, and totally unafraid to speak her mind. Unfortunately, she also looks set to win, as she soon becomes the clear favourite of the Romeo, who also happens to share the same name. It’s annoying, really, just how perfect the Dylans seem for… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Workplace sexism & sexual harassment
  • Biphobia & panphobia recounted including forced outing (secondary character)
  • Infidelity recounted
  • Anxiety & panic attacks (secondary character)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Dieting discussed
  • COVID-19 pandemic
  • Death of a father from cancer mentioned
  • Bullying

Context : One protagonist’s ex-husband cheated and the other left her ex-boyfriend for another woman.

Let It Glow by Marissa Meyer and Joanne Levy

When Aviva Davis and Holly Martin meet at the holiday pageant try-outs for their local senior’s centre, they think they must be seeing double. While they both knew they were adopted, they had no idea they had a biological sibling, let alone an identical twin! The similarities are only skin deep, though, because while Aviva has a big personality and even bigger Broadway plans, Holly is more the quiet dreamer type who longs to become a famous author like her grandfather. One thing the girls do have in common is their curiosity about how the other celebrates the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism & racism
  • Hospitalisation of an elderly character for a fall mentioned (secondary character)

Pretty Dead Queens by Alexa Donne

After the death of her mom, 17-year-old Cecelia Ellis goes to live with her estranged grandmother, a celebrated author whose Victorian mansion is as creepy as the murder mysteries she writes. On the surface, life is utterly ordinary until the homecoming queen is murdered. And she’s not Seaview’s first pretty dead queen. With a copycat killer on the loose, Cecelia throws herself into the investigation, determined to crack the case like the heroines in her grandmother’s books. But the more Cecelia digs into the town’s secrets, the more she worries that her own mystery might not have a storybook ending….

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism, racism & homophobia
  • Adult-minor relationship mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use mentioned
  • Minor blood & gore depiction including mentions of dead bodies & emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother from cancer recounted & discussed
  • Murder & knife violence
  • Drowning
  • Animal death (rabbit, dog)

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin

In the late 90s, five queer kids, whose parents want them “fixed,” find themselves thrown together at a secretive “tough love” camp deep in the scorching Utah desert. Tormented and worked to the point of collapse by hardline religious zealots intent on straightening them out, they slowly become aware that something in the mountains north of the camp is speaking to them in their dreams, and that the children who return home to their families have… changed.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & racism
  • Child abuse
  • Sexual assault
  • Deadnaming
  • Suicide & self-harm mentioned

The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean

Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she gets the call Ellie Black, a girl who disappeared years earlier, has resurfaced in the woods of Washington state—but Ellie’s reappearance leaves Chelsey with more questions than answers. It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work. Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny, racism & classism
  • Alcohol consumption & alcoholism
  • Murder & torture
  • Kidnapping, rape & abuse of multiple women discussed
  • Cults

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & homophobia
  • Domestic violence and abuse
  • Postpartum depression
  • Murder

Rough Pages by Lev A.C. Rosen

Private Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has been drawn back to the Lavender House estate for a missing person case. Pat, the family butler, has been volunteering for a book service, one that specializes in mailing queer books to a carefully guarded list of subscribers. With bookseller Howard Salzberger gone suspiciously missing along with his address book, everyone on that list, including some of Andy’s closest friends, is now in danger. A search of Howard’s bookstore reveals that someone wanted to stop him and his co-owner, Dorothea Lamb, from sending out their next book. The evidence points not just to the Feds, but… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical homophobia & racism discussed
  • Murder

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree. Mark Bailey is not sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical homophobia, racism & antisemitism including mentions of the gay protagonist being disowned and kicked out of home as a teenager
  • Infidelity mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Alcohol consumption & mentions of smoking, tobacco and drug use
  • Hospitalisation (secondary character)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of an abusive parent with alcoholism in a drunk-driving accident recounted
  • Death of a partner from a heart attack discussed
  • Death of a grandparent from a heart attack recounted

All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore

Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives. Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & slavery

The Mayor of Maxwell Street by Avery Cunningham

Twenty-year-old Nelly Sawyer is the daughter of the alleged “wealthiest Negro in America,” a Kentucky horse breeder whose wealth and prestige catapults his family to the heights of the exclusive, elite Black society. After the unexpected death of her brother—the family’s presumed heir—Nelly goes from being virtually unknown to a premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society influence and marriage. For the past year, she has worked undercover as an investigative journalist for the Chicago Defender , sharing the achievements and tribulations of everyday Black people living in the shadow of Jim… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism
  • Racism & racial slurs (g slur)
  • Sexual assault
  • Blood & serious physical injury
  • Death of a sibling in a car accident recounted
  • Murder of parents in a fire
  • Gun violence
  • Threats of lynching & police violence