You Let Me In by Lucy Clarke

Nothing has felt right since Elle rented out her house . . . There’s a new coldness. A shift in the atmosphere. The prickling feeling that someone is watching her every move from the shadows. Maybe it’s all in Elle’s mind? She’s a writer – her imagination, after all, is her strength. And yet every threat seems personal. As if someone has discovered the secrets that keep her awake at night. As fear and paranoia close in, Elle’s own home becomes a prison. Someone is unlocking her past – and she’s given them the key…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape recounted
  • Abortion recounted
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Stalking
  • Fire

Morgan Is My Name by Sophie Keetch

When King Uther Pendragon murders her father and tricks her mother into marriage, Morgan refuses to be crushed. Trapped amid the machinations of men in a world of isolated castles and gossiping courts, she discovers secret powers. Vengeful and brilliant, it’s not long before Morgan becomes a worthy adversary to Merlin, influential sorcerer to the king. But fighting for her freedom, she risks losing everything – her reputation, her loved ones and her life.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism & slut-shaming
  • Rape by coercion and involuntary pregnancy*
  • Infidelity
  • Intimate partner violence & physical assault
  • Forced marriage
  • Self-injury (for magic)
  • Emesis
  • Childbirth (secondary character)
  • Infertility & stillbirth
  • Death of a step-father in battle
  • Near-drowning incident (secondary character)
  • Animal death & dead bodies

Context : The protagonist’s mother was raped by coercion as Merlin magically disguised Uther to look like someone else and he impregnated her. The protagonist sets her husband’s face on fire after he attacks her (and has been physically abusive). The protagonist’s father told her mother that her son was stillborn but he lied and gave the child away.

Hideaway by Penelope Douglas

Buried in the shadows of the city, there’s a hotel called The Pope. Ailing, empty, and dark, it sits abandoned and surrounded by a forgotten mystery. But you think it’s true, don’t you, Kai Mori? The story about the hidden twelfth floor. The mystery of the dark guest who never checked in and never checks out. You think I can help you find that secret hideaway and get to him, don’t you? You and your friends can try to scare me. You can try to push me. Because even though I struggle to hide everything I feel when you look at me–and have ever since I was a girl–I think maybe what you seek is so much closer than you’ll ever realize… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism & slut-shaming
  • Attempted rape, sexual assault & sexual harassment (protagonist)
  • Physical & emotional child and sibling abuse (protagonist)
  • Incestuous child sexual abuse recounted
  • Parental infidelity mentioned
  • Forced marriage
  • Familial estrangement & disownment
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking (cigars, cigerattes)
  • Emesis
  • Alcoholism & substance addiction (secondary character)
  • Murder recounted
  • Arson & burn scars from child abuse
  • Physical assault recounted
  • Animal abuse (dog)

Context : The protagonist’s father orders her bodyguard to assault her but she is able to get away; her cousin also hired someone to grope her at a party. A secondary character also kissed and assault her while she was asleep. The protagonist was hidden in a closet with headphones while her half-brother’s mother abused him; later, he beats her. The protagonist’s father burned her with cigarettes.

The Villain by LJ Shen

Cruel. Coldblooded. Hades in a Brioni suit. Cillian Fitzpatrick has been dubbed every wicked thing on planet earth. To the media, he is The Villain. To me, he is the man who (reluctantly) saved my life. Now I need him to do me another, small solid. Bail me out of the mess my husband got me into. What’s a hundred grand to one of the wealthiest men in America, anyway? Only Cillian doesn’t hand out free favours. The price for the money, it turns out, is my freedom. Now I’m the eldest Fitzpatrick brother’s little toy. To play, to mould, to break. Too bad Cillian forgot one, tiny detail. Persephone wasn’t only the goddess of… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape (on-page)
  • Emotional & physical domestic violence and child abuse (on- & off-page, secondary character)
  • Cancer
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder & Tourette’s Syndrome (protagonist)
  • Emesis (prologue)
  • Torture
  • Blackmail

Thief by Tarryn Fisher

Caleb Drake never got over his first love. Not when he got married. Not when she got married. When life suddenly comes full circle Caleb must decide how far he is willing to go to get the aloof and alluring Olivia Kaspen back. But for every action in life there is a consequence, and soon Caleb finds out that sometimes love comes at an unbearably high price.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape mentioned
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Cancer
  • Infertility
  • Death of a partner
  • Fatal car accident

Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith

In 1986, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed by the experience. In 2009, pressed into a dangerous scheme by a former lover, a woman captures a rare two-headed cobra. And in 2011, a young, unhappy American living in Saigon with her sort-of boyfriend disappears without a trace. Over the course of the novel, the fates of these three women will lock together in an exhilarating series of nested narratives. Along the way, we meet a young boy sent to a boarding school in the mountains for the métis children of French expatriates just… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape & sexual assault
  • Incest
  • Attempted necrophilia
  • Eating disorder
  • Suicide
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Body horror
  • Murder
  • Animal death & cruelty

Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola

Sharp-tongued (and secretly soft-hearted) Kiki Banjo has just made a huge mistake. As an expert in relationship-evasion and the host of the popular student radio show Brown Sugar, she’s made it her mission to make sure the women of the African-Caribbean Society at Whitewell University do not fall into the mess of “situationships”, players, and heartbreak. But when the Queen of the Unbothered kisses Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced as “The Wastemen of Whitewell,” in front of every Blackwellian on campus, she finds her show on the brink. They’re soon embroiled in… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs including mentions of racial profiling and police harassment
  • Revenge pornography & blackmail
  • Dubious consent scene recounted*
  • Parental abandonment mentioned
  • Parental infidelity & infidelity mentioned
  • Depression (recovery)
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use (marijuana)
  • Emesis
  • Death of a grandfather mentioned
  • Physical assault

Context : The female protagonist’s ex-partner posts a intimate photo of her on social media without consent, and similarly blackmails other women. The protagonist’s best friend’s boyfriend coerced her to have sex while she was drunk.

Homestead by Claire Kent

After losing the last remaining member of my family, I’m left all alone in a dangerous, uncivilized world. A twenty-year-old woman with no skills, no resources, and no protection can’t make it on her own after Impact, so I’m forced to rely on the charity of strangers to survive. My one chance of safety and security comes from an unexpected offer. Jimmy Morgan needs a partner. He wants help in his house and a woman in his bed, and he’d like that partner to be me. In return I get a place to live, plenty of food, and the protection of a competent man and his larger community. It’s a good deal, so of course I accept. It means I have to live… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape
  • Minor physical injury & illness and emesis
  • Unplanned pregnancy mentioned (epilogue)
  • Accidental death of child from gun violence
  • Death of a wife & newborn in childbirth recounted (protagonist)
  • Murder of a grandfather & parents recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping

Context : The female protagonist is saved from her assaulter by the male protagonist.

The Conspiracy of Us by Maggie Hall

Avery West’s newfound family can shut down Prada when they want to shop in peace, and can just as easily order a bombing when they want to start a war. Part of a powerful and dangerous secret society called the Circle, they believe Avery is the key to an ancient prophecy. Some want to use her as a pawn. Some want her dead. To unravel the mystery putting her life in danger, Avery must follow a trail of clues from the monuments of Paris to the back alleys of Istanbul with two boys who work for the Circle — beautiful, volatile Stellan and mysterious, magnetic Jack. But as the clues expose a stunning… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism & homophobia mentioned
  • Attempted rape recounted
  • Forced breeding (implied)
  • Child abuse & parental abandonment
  • Panic attack (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking
  • Pregnancy mentioned
  • Miscarriage
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife & gun violence
  • Explosions mentioned
  • Kidnapping, captivity & being held hostage situation at knifepoint
  • Stalking & blackmail
  • Car accident (off-page)
  • Bullying recounted

Like Mother, Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight

When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom’s bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened. But what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose “out of control” emotions and “unsafe” behaviour have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks. Kat has been lying. She’s not just a lawyer; she’s… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape & child sexual abuse mentioned
  • Infidelity
  • Blackmail mentioned