Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher book cover

You can’t stop the future.
You can’t rewind the past.
The only way to learn the secret . . . is to press play.

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker–his classmate and crush–who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah’s voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out why.

Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a firsthand witness to Hannah’s pain, and as he follows Hannah’s recorded words throughout his town, what he discovers changes his life forever.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Suicide and self-harm
  • Death of a classmate
  • Bullying
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Everything Beautiful is Not Ruined by Danielle Younge-Ullman

Everything Beautiful is Not Ruined by Danielle Younge-Ullman

Then. Ingrid traveled all over Europe with her opera star mother, Margot-Sophia. Life was beautiful and bright, and every day soared with music.

Now. Ingrid is on a summertime wilderness survival trek for at-risk teens: addicts, runaways, and her. She’s fighting to survive crushing humiliations, physical challenges that push her to her limits, and mind games that threaten to break her.

Then. When the curtain fell on Margot-Sophia’s singing career, they buried the past and settled into a small, painfully normal life. But Ingrid longed to let the music soar again. She wanted it so much that, for a while, nothing else mattered.

Now. Ingrid is never going to make it through this summer if she can’t figure out why she’s here . . . and why the music really stopped.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Sexual assault
  • Depression
  • Suicide
  • Bullying
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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Graphic rape of a child and child sexual abuse
  • Child sex trafficking & sexual slavery mentioned
  • Suicide by gun & knife, on-page
  • Public executions by stoning
  • Hanging mentioned
  • Gun violence
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A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Bullying
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House of Dragons by Jessica Cluess

House of Dragons by Jessica Cluess

When the Emperor dies, the five royal houses of Etrusia attend the Call, where one of their own will be selected to compete for the throne. It is always the oldest child, the one who has been preparing for years to compete in the Trial. But this year is different. This year, these five outcasts will answer the call….

The Liar: Emilia must hide her dark magic or be put to death.

The Soldier: Lucian is a warrior who has sworn to never lift a sword again.

The Servant: Vespir is a dragon trainer whose skills alone will keep her in the game.

The Thief: Ajax knows that nothing is free–he must take what he wants.

The Murderer: Hyperia was born to rule and will stop at nothing to take her throne.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Rape & sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Self-harm
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Four Weeks, Five People by Jennifer Yu

Four Weeks, Five People by Jennifer Yu

Obsessive-compulsive teen Clarissa wants to get better, if only so her mother will stop asking her if she’s okay. Andrew wants to overcome his eating disorder so he can get back to his band and their dreams of becoming famous. Film aficionado Ben would rather live in the movies than in reality. Gorgeous and overly confident Mason thinks everyone is an idiot. And Stella just doesn’t want to be back for her second summer of wilderness therapy.

As the five teens get to know one another and work to overcome the various disorders that have affected their lives, they find themselves forming bonds they never thought they would, discovering new truths about themselves and actually looking forward to the future.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Suicide
  • Depersonalisation Disorder & dissociative episodes
  • Depression
  • Eating disorders
  • Narcissistic Personality Disorder
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Alcohol consumption
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Now Entering Addamsville by Francesca Zappia

Now Entering Addamsville by Francesca Zappia

Zora Novak has been framed.

When someone burns down the home of the school janitor and he dies in the blaze, everyone in Addamsville, Indiana, points a finger at Zora. Never mind that Zora has been on the straight and narrow since her father was thrown in jail. With everyone looking for evidence against her, her only choice is to uncover the identity of the real killer. There’s one big problem—Zora has no leads. No one does. Addamsville has a history of tragedy, and thirty years ago a similar string of fires left several townspeople dead. The arsonist was never caught.

Now, Zora must team up with her cousin Artemis—an annoying self-proclaimed Addamsville historian—to clear her name. But with a popular ghost-hunting television show riling up the townspeople, almost no support from her family and friends, and rumors spinning out of control, things aren’t looking good. Zora will have to read between the lines of Addamsville’s ghost stories before she becomes one herself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Classism
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Decapitation
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture mentioned
  • Incarceration of a parent mentioned
  • Disappearance of a parent
  • Fire & arson
  • Animal death
  • Poverty themes
  • Bullying
  • Homelessness
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The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

Dill has had to wrestle with vipers his whole life—at home, as the only son of a Pentecostal minister who urges him to handle poisonous rattlesnakes, and at school, where he faces down bullies who target him for his father’s extreme faith and very public fall from grace.

The only antidote to all this venom is his friendship with fellow outcasts Travis and Lydia. But as they are starting their senior year, Dill feels the coils of his future tightening around him. The end of high school will lead to new beginnings for Lydia, whose edgy fashion blog is her ticket out of their rural Tennessee town. And Travis is happy wherever he is thanks to his obsession with the epic book series Bloodfall and the fangirl who may be turning his harsh reality into real-life fantasy. Dill’s only escapes are his music and his secret feelings for Lydia—neither of which he is brave enough to share. Graduation feels more like an ending to Dill than a beginning. But even before then, he must cope with another ending—one that will rock his life to the core.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Parental abuse
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation and attempted suicide
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Attempted kidnapping recounted
  • Bullying
  • Poverty themes

Note: A parent incarcerated for possession of chil pornography.

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Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappai

Eliza & Her Monsters by Franncesca Zappai

In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless. Online, she’s LadyConstellation, the anonymous creator of the wildly popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves the online one, and she has no desire to try.

Then Wallace Warland, Monstrous Sea’s biggest fanfiction writer, transfers to her school. Wallace thinks Eliza is just another fan, and as he draws her out of her shell, she begins to wonder if a life offline might be worthwhile.

But when Eliza’s secret is accidentally shared with the world, everything she’s built—her story, her relationship with Wallace, and even her sanity—begins to fall apart.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Panic attacks & anxiety
  • Depression
  • Suicide of a parent recounted and suicidal ideation
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Bullying & cyberbullying
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The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears – imperfection, failure, loneliness – she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere eighty-eight pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Eating disorder (anorexia nervosa)
  • Suicide
  • Self-harm
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