The Girl the Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young

The Girl the Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young

For as long as she can remember, Tova has lived among the Svell, the people who found her washed ashore as a child and use her for her gift as a Truthtongue. Her own home and clan are long-faded memories, but the sacred symbols and staves inked over every inch of her skin mark her as one who can cast the rune stones and see into the future. She has found a fragile place among those who fear her, but when two clans to the east bury their age-old blood feud and join together as one, her world is dangerously close to collapse.

For the first time in generations, the leaders of the Svell are divided. Should they maintain peace or go to war with the allied clans to protect their newfound power?… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Decapitation
  • Death of a child by drowning mentioned
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Physical assault recounted
  • War themes & battle scenes
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Counting by Sevens by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old genius, obsessed with nature and diagnosing medical conditions, who finds it comforting to count by 7s. It has never been easy for her to connect with anyone other than her adoptive parents, but that hasn’t kept her from leading a quietly happy life…until now.

Suddenly Willow’s world is tragically changed when her parents both die in a car crash, leaving her alone in a baffling world. The triumph of this book is that it is not a tragedy. This extraordinarily odd, but extraordinarily endearing, girl manages to push through her grief.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Infertility & miscarriage mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Hospitalisation mentioned
  • Coma
  • Death of a parent in a car accident
  • Vietnam War mentioned
  • Poverty themes
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The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith

The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith

Sixteen-year-old Jack gets drunk and is in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is kidnapped. He escapes, narrowly. The only person he tells is his best friend, Conner. When they arrive in London as planned for summer break, a stranger hands Jack a pair of glasses. Through the lenses, he sees another world called Marbury.

There is war in Marbury. It is a desolate and murderous place where Jack is responsible for the survival of two younger boys. Conner is there, too. But he’s trying to kill them… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Kidnapping
  • War themes
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Like the Willow Tree by Lois Lowry

Like the Willow Tree by Lois Lowry

In 1918, as the Great War rages in Europe, the Spanish influenza tears a brutal path across the United States, leaving devastation in its wake. Suddenly, eleven-year-old Lydia Pierce and her older brother, Daniel, find themselves orphans of the flu, and are taken by their grieving uncle to be raised in the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake. Thrust into the Shaker’s unfamiliar way of life, Lydia, a fiercely independent girl, must grapple with a new world that is nothing like the one she used to know.

Lydia must work hard, and all the while she worries about her headstrong brother, who has run away. In time, and with her courageous spirit, Lydia learns to overcome the devastation– yet she cannot stop wondering, will Daniel ever return?

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Spanish Influenza pandemic
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a baby sibling
  • World War One
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On the Horizon by Lois Lowry

On the Horizon by Lois Lowry & illustrated by Kenard Pak

On the Horizon tells the story of people whose lives were lost or forever altered by the twin tragedies of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. Composed of poems about individual sailors who lost their lives on the Arizona and about the citizens of Hiroshima who experienced unfathomable horror. 

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Explosion & bombings
  • Fire
  • World War Two, including Pearl Harbour & Hiroshima
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Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think of life before the war. It’s now 1943 and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching through town. When the Jews of Denmark are “relocated,” Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be one of the family. Soon Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission to save Ellen’s life.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antisemitism
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Death of a sister in a car accident mentioned
  • World War Two
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The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Giver has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. 

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Suicide
  • Needles
  • Infanticide
  • Drowning mentioned
  • War & battle mentioned
  • Animal death
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Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl’s virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction – at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful – and completely unforgettable

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Child abuse
  • Cheating
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Paedophilia
  • Rape
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Physical injuries, including burns
  • Death of a parent
  • Explosion & bombings mentioned
  • Electrocution
  • World War Two
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The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank


In Amsterdam, in the summer of 1942, the Nazis forced teenager Anne Frank and her family into hiding. For over two years, they, another family and a German dentist lived in a ‘secret annexe’, fearing discovery. All that time, Anne kept a diary. Since its publication in 1947, Anne Frank’s diary has been giving us a deeper insight into her world. Her curiosity about her emerging sexuality, the conflicts with her mother, her passion for Peter, a boy whose family hid with hers, and her acute portraits of her fellow prisoners reveal Anne as more human, more vulnerable and more vital than ever.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antisemitism
  • Smoking
  • Home invasion
  • Bombings
  • Gun violence
  • Concentration camps
  • The Holocaust & World War Two (theme)
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The One by Kiera Cass

The One by Kiera Cass

The Selection began with thirty-five girls. Now with the group narrowed down to the six Elite, the competition to win Prince Maxon’s heart is fiercer than ever—and America is still struggling to decide where her heart truly lies. Is it with Maxon, who could make her life a fairy tale? Or with her first love, Aspen?

America is desperate for more time. But the rest of the Elite know exactly what they want—and America’s chance to choose is about to slip away.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • War & rebellion themes
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