Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.

Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Domestic violence
  • Suicide
  • Murder
  • Animal abuse
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Under the Magnolias by T. I. Lowe

Under the Magnolias by T. I. Lowe

Under the Magnolias by T. I. Lowe

Magnolia, South Carolina, 1980
Austin Foster is barely a teenager when her mama dies giving birth to twins, leaving her to pick up the pieces while holding her six siblings together and doing her best to stop her daddy from retreating into his personal darkness.

Scratching out a living on the family’s tobacco farm is as tough as it gets. When a few random acts of kindness help to ease the Fosters’ hardships, Austin finds herself relying upon some of Magnolia’s most colorful citizens for friendship and more. But it’s next to impossible to hide the truth about the goings-on at Nolia Farms, and Austin’s desperate attempts to save face all but break her.

Just when it seems she might have something more waiting for her–with the son of a wealthy local family who she’s crushed on for years–her father makes a choice that will crack wide-open the family’s secrets and lead to a public reckoning. There are consequences for loving a boy like Vance Cumberland, but there is also freedom in the truth.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted suicde
  • Bipolar disorder
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Dark Room by Tom Becker

Dark Room by Tom Becker

When Darla and her feckless dad, Hopper, move to Saffron Hills, Darla hopes it’ll be a new start for the both of them. But she stands no chance of fitting in with the image-obsessed in-crowd at her new school. Then one of her classmates is brutally killed when taking a photo of herself. A murder Darla herself predicted in a bloody vision. When more teens die in a similar fashion it appears that a serial killer is on the loose – the ‘Selfie Slayer’. Darla alone is convinced that the murderer might not be flesh and blood…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Suicide recounted
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
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Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

In this graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father.

Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the Fun Home. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Paedophilia
  • Suicide
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The Traitor’s Kiss by Erin Beaty

The Traitor’s Kiss by Erin Beaty

With a sharp tongue and an unruly temper, Sage Fowler is not what they’d call a lady―which is perfectly fine with her. Deemed unfit for marriage, Sage is apprenticed to a matchmaker and tasked with wrangling other young ladies to be married off for political alliances. She spies on the girls―and on the soldiers escorting them.

As the girls’ military escort senses a political uprising, Sage is recruited by a handsome soldier to infiltrate the enemy ranks. The more she discovers as a spy, the less certain she becomes about whom to trust―and Sage becomes caught in a dangerous balancing act that will determine the fate of her kingdom.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual assault, including nonconsensual kiss and unwanted touching
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Suicide
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Torture mentioned
  • Poisoning
  • Knife violence

The Good Girls by Claire Eliza Bartlett

The Good Girls by Claire Eliza Bartlett

The troublemaker. The overachiever. The cheer captain. The dead girl. Like every high school in America, Jefferson-Lorne High contains all of the above.

After the shocking murder of senior Emma Baines, three of her classmates are at the top of the suspect list: Claude, the notorious partier; Avery, the head cheerleader; and Gwen, the would-be valedictorian.

Everyone has a label, whether they like it or not–and Emma was always known as a good girl. But appearances are never what they seem. And the truth behind what really happened to Emma may just be lying in plain sight. As long-buried secrets come to light, the clock is ticking to find Emma’s killer–before another good girl goes down.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted coerced marriage
  • Staged suicide
  • Emesis
  • Murder mentioned
  • Poisoning
  • Drowning
  • War themes
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The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett

The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett

When Ekata’s brother is finally named heir, there will be nothing to keep her at home in Kylma Above with her murderous family. Not her books or science experiments, not her family’s icy castle atop a frozen lake, not even the tantalizingly close Kylma Below, a mesmerizing underwater kingdom that provides her family with magic. But just as escape is within reach, her parents and twelve siblings fall under a strange sleeping sickness.

In the space of a single night, Ekata inherits the title of duke, her brother’s warrior bride, and ever-encroaching challengers from without—and within—her own ministry. Nothing has prepared Ekata for diplomacy, for war, for love…or for a crown she has never wanted.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted coerced marriage
  • Staged suicide
  • Emesis
  • Murder mentioned
  • Poisoning
  • Drowning
  • War themes
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The Quiet You Carry by Nikki Barthelmess

The Quiet You Carry by Nikki Barthelmess

Victoria Parker knew her dad’s behavior toward her was a little unusual, but she convinced herself everything was fine—until she found herself locked out of the house at 3:00 a.m., surrounded by flashing police lights.

Now, dumped into a crowded, chaotic foster home, Victoria has to tiptoe around her domineering foster mother, get through senior year at a new school, and somehow salvage her college dreams . . . all while keeping her past hidden.

But some secrets won’t stay buried—especially when unwanted memories make Victoria freeze up at random moments and nightmares disrupt her sleep. Even worse, she can’t stop worrying about her stepsister Sarah, left behind with her father. All she wants is to move forward, but how do you focus on the future when the past won’t leave you alone?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Paedophilia & child sexual assault
  • Incest (father-daughter)
  • Eating disorders
  • Attempted suicide
  • Self harm
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Waking Romeo by Kathryn Barker

Waking Romeo by Kathryn Barker 

Year: 2083. Location: London. Mission: Wake Romeo.

It’s the end of the world. Literally. Time travel is possible, but only forwards. And only a handful of families choose to remain in the ‘now’, living off the scraps that were left behind. Among these are eighteen-year-old Juliet and the love of her life, Romeo. But things are far from rosy for Jules. Romeo is in a coma and she’s estranged from her friends and family, dealing with the very real fallout of their wild romance. Then a handsome time traveller, Ellis, arrives with an important mission that makes Jules question everything she knows about life and love. Can Jules wake Romeo and rewrite her future?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Ableism
  • Suicide recounted
  • Self harm
  • Coma
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Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron

Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron 

Arrah is a young woman from a long line of the most powerful witch doctors in the land. But she fails at magic, fails to call upon the ancestors and can’t even cast the simplest curse.

Shame and disappointment dog her.

When strange premonitions befall her family and children in the kingdom begin to disappear, Arrah undergoes the dangerous and scorned process of selling years of her life for magic. This borrowed power reveals a nightmarish betrayal and a danger beyond what she could have imagined. Now Arrah must find a way to master magic, or at least buy it, in order to save herself and everything she holds dear.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abuse & neglect
  • Suicide
  • Self harm
  • Death of children
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping
  • Loss of autonomy (mind control)
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