Literary Fiction – Page 20 – Trigger Warning Database

The Education of Ivy Edwards by Hannah Tovey

The Education of Ivy Edwards by Hannah Tovey

Ivy Edwards is thirty-one years old, funny, shameless, and a bit of a romantic. She’s also currently trying not to cry in the office toilet. Partly because she’s just run out of money for fags. A bit because her mum continues to annoy her. Definitely not because she’s just been dumped by her fiancé. With her London life in shambles and her family miles away in the Welsh valleys, Ivy doesn’t actually feel like she belongs anywhere. At least, she has her friends – and a bottle of vodka. Embarking on a journey of singlehood, Ivy is about to discover that sometimes, having your life fall apart can be surprisingly fun.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Infertility & IVF

The Turnout by Megan Abbott

The Turnout by Megan Abbott

After the sudden death of their parents, the Durant sisters, Dara and Marie, inherit a ballet school and take over running it with Dara’s husband Charlie. The sisters’ connection is intense, forged by a glamorous but troubled family history. But after they hire Derek, a charismatic, possibly shady contractor to renovate the studio, Marie throws herself into an intense affair with him that threatens their tight bonds and brings forward family secrets until an act of violence overturns everything.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Rape of a child
Domestic violence
Suicide
Self-harm
Murder

Luster by Raven Leilani

Luster by Raven Leilani

Edie is just trying to survive. She’s messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting. No one seems to care that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up. And then she meets Eric, a white middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Toxic relationship
Suicide discussed

The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers

The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers

Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolour bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives…Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Homomisia
Sexism
Parental abandonment
Death of a parent on deployment in World War Two
Infertility
Miscarriage

Fan Club by Erin Mayer

Fan Club by Erin Mayer

Day after day our narrator, a gloomy millennial, searches for meaning beyond her vacuous job at a women’s lifestyle website—entering text into a computer system while she watches their beauty editor unwrap box after box of perfectly packaged bits of happiness. Then, one night at a dive bar, she hears a message in the newest single by child-actor-turned-international-pop star Adriana Argento, and she is struck. Soon she loses herself to the online fandom, a community whose members feverishly track Adriana’s every move… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sexual harassment
Recreational drug use
Abortion mentioned

Chemistry by Weike Wang

Chemistry by Weike Wang

At first glance, the quirky, overworked narrator of this novel seems to be on the cusp of a perfect life: she is studying for a prestigious PhD in chemistry that will make her Chinese parents proud (or at least satisfied), and her successful, supportive boyfriend has just proposed to her. But instead of feeling hopeful, she is wracked with ambivalence. The long demanding hours at the lab have created an exquisite pressure cooker, and she doesn’t know how to answer the marriage question. When it all becomes too much and her life plan veers off course, she finds herself on a new path of discoveries about everything she thought she knew.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Child abuse
Cheating

Flamingo by Rachel Elliott

Flamingo by Rachel Elliott

In the garden, there were three flamingos. Not real flamingos, but real emblems, real gateways to a time when life was impossibly good. They were mascots, symbols of hope. Something for a boy to confide in. First, there were the flamingos. And then there were two families. Sherry and Leslie and their daughters, Rae and Pauline – and Eve and her son Daniel. Sherry loves her husband, Leslie. She also loves Eve. It couldn’t have been a happier summer. But then Eve left and everything went grey. Now Daniel is all grown-up and broken. And when he turns up at Sherry’s… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Ableism
Suicidal ideation

Almost Home by Joan Bauer

Almost Home by Joan Bauer

When twelve-year-old Sugar’s grandfather dies and her gambling father takes off yet again, Sugar and her mother lose their home in Missouri. They head to Chicago for a fresh start, only to discover that fresh starts aren’t so easy to come by for the homeless. Nevertheless, Sugar’s mother has taught her to be grateful no matter what, so Sugar does her best. With the help of a rescue dog, Shush; a foster family; a supportive teacher; a love of poetry; and her own grace and good humor, Sugar comes to understand that while she can’t control the hand life deals her, she can control how she responds.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Parental abandonment
Parent with alcoholism
Hospitalisation
Death of a grandfather
Animal abuse mentioned

Careless by Kirsty Capes

Careless by Kirsty Capes

At 3.04pm on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out she’s pregnant. She could tell her social worker Henry, but he’s useless. She should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won’t understand. She really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn’t spoken to him in weeks. Bess knows more than anyone that love doesn’t come without conditions. But this isn’t a love story…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Forced marriage discussed
Rape
Foster care system
Postpartum depression
Teen pregnancy
Attempted home abortion
Attempted drowning

Soy Sauce for Beginners by Kirstin Chen

Soy Sauce for Beginners by Kirstin Chen

Gretchen Lin, adrift at the age of thirty, leaves her floundering marriage in San Francisco to move back to her childhood home in Singapore and immediately finds herself face-to-face with the twin headaches she’s avoided her entire adult life: her mother’s drinking problem and the machinations of her father’s artisanal soy sauce business. Surrounded by family, Gretchen struggles with the tension between personal ambition and filial duty, but still finds time to explore a new romance with the son of a client, an attractive man of few words… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Cheating*

Context : The heroine’s husband cheated on her.