Disability Lit – Page 18 – Trigger Warning Database

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous. One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Domestic violence
Graphic alcohol consumption & abuse (on-age, theme)
Alcoholism & recovery discussed (protagonist & secondary character)
Recreational drug use mentioned (off-page)
Self-sacrifice (on-page)
Minor injury & illness, including emesis & fainting spells
Grief & loss depiction
Murder by drowning & near-drowning incidents (on-page)
Death of a husband by accidental drowning discussed
Death of a wife from suicide by throwing herself down a set of stars discussed (disguised as an accidental death)
Poisoning
Physical assault
Kidnapping & captivity
Home invasion & stalking
Disappearance of a friend & missing person cases discussed (on-page)
Loss of autonomy (ghost possession)

Context: The protagonist is an alcoholic and her love interest is in recovery for alcoholism after losing his wife. The protagonist drugs her husband and dumps him in the lake to drown after she discovers he’s a serial killer. The protagonist’s neighbour is attempting to kill his wife by poisoning (and she almost drowns due to muscle weakness caused by the poison). The protagonist witnesses the wife punch the husband after a fight.

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal

The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters—Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirina—were never close and barely got along growing up, and now as adults, have grown even further apart. Rajni, a school principal is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a thirty-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking “good” sister married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life. On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites. After a trip to India with her mother long ago, Rajni vowed … Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Abortion discussed

Boys of Summer by Jessica Brody

Boys of Summer by Jessica Brody

Best friends since they were kids, Grayson, Mike, and Ian were hoping for another epic summer on “The Locks”, filled with clam bakes, bonfires, and late-night swims in the ocean. But that was before Ian’s dad never returned home from his last deployment. Before Mike had to take on more responsibility in order to help provide for his family. Before Grayson’s accident left him with an injured throwing arm and an uncertain future. It’s clear this summer on the island is shaping up to be very different from those Grayson, Mike, and Ian have come to rely on. And when the sacred code of dating a friend’s sister or ex is broken, it will push… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sexism
Slut-shaming
Grief & loss depiction

The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi

The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi

Séverin and his team members might have successfully thwarted the Fallen House, but victory came at a terrible cost — one that still haunts all of them. Desperate to make amends, Séverin pursues a dangerous lead to find a long-lost artifact rumoured to grant its possessor the power of God. Their hunt lures them far from Paris, and into the icy heart of Russia where crystalline ice animals stalk forgotten mansions, broken goddesses carry deadly secrets, and a string of unsolved murders makes the crew question whether an ancient myth is a myth after all. As hidden… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Period-typical ableism, classism, misogyny, racism and antisemitism
Colonialism discussed
Sex work shaming
Attempted rape by coercion
Child abuse recounted
Self harm for magic
Suicide mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Stillbirth & infertility mentioned
Blood & injury depiction
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a brother recounted
Death of a friend recounted
Murder
Poisoning
Psychological torture
Explosion
Vivisepulture (being buried alive) mentioned
Kidnapping
Animal death mentioned

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

Eve Brown is a certified hot mess. No matter how hard she strives to do right, her life always goes horribly wrong—so she’s given up trying. But when her personal brand of chaos ruins an expensive wedding (someone had to liberate those poor doves), her parents draw the line. It’s time for Eve to grow up and prove herself—even though she’s not entirely sure how… Jacob Wayne is in control. Always. The bed and breakfast owner’s on a mission to dominate the hospitality industry—and he expects nothing less than perfection. So when a purple-haired tornado of a woman turns up out of the blue to inter… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Ableism
Parental abandonment & child neglect recounted
Boss-employee relationship
Physical injury (concussion)
Car accident

Fighting for Everything by Laura Kaye

Fighting for Everything by Laura Kaye

Home from the Marines, Noah Cortez has a secret he doesn’t want his oldest friend, Kristina Moore, to know. It kills him to push her away, especially when he’s noticing just how sexy and confident she’s become in his absence. But, angry and full of fight, he’s not the same man anymore either. Which is why Warrior Fight Club sounds so good. Kristina loves teaching, but she wants more out of life. She wants Noah—the boy she’s crushed on and waited for. Except Noah is all man now—in ways both oh so good and troubling, too. Still, she wants who he’s become—every war-hard… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Depression
Suicide

Metal Fish, Falling Snow by Cath Moore

Metal Fish, Falling Snow by Cath Moore

Dylan and her adored French mother dream of one day sailing across the ocean to France. Paris, Dylan imagines, is a place where her black skin won’t stand out, a place she might feel she belongs. But when she loses her mother in a freak accident, Dylan finds herself on a very different journey: a road trip across outback Australia in the care of her mother’s grieving boyfriend, Pat. As they travel through remote towns further and further from the water Dylan longs for, she and Pat form an unlikely bond. One that will be broken when he leaves her with the family she has never… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Internalised racism & racial slurs
Domestic violence recounted
Hospitalisation
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a parent

How It Feels to Float by Helena Fox

How It Feels to Float by Helena Fox

Biz knows how to float. She has her posse, her mum and the twins. She has Grace. And she has her dad, who tells her about the little kid she was, and who shouldn’t be here – because he died when she was seven – but is. So she doesn’t tell anyone her dark thoughts. She knows how to float, right there on the surface – normal okay regular fine. But when the tethers that hold Biz steady come undone – when her dad disappears along with all comfort – might it be easier, better, sweeter to float away?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Ableism
Slut-shaming
Sexual assault
Anxiety
Depression
Dissociation
Hallucinations
Panic attack, on-page
Suicidal ideation
Alcohol consumption
Grief & loss depiction (theme)
Death of a father recounted
Car accident recounted
Drowning
Bullying

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

Once a year, the path appears in the forest and Lucy Gallows beckons. Who is brave enough to find her–and who won’t make it out of the woods? It’s been exactly one year since Sara’s sister, Becca, disappeared, and high school life has far from settled back to normal. With her sister gone, Sara doesn’t know whether her former friends no longer like her…or are scared of her, and the days of eating alone at lunch have started to blend together. When a mysterious text message invites Sara and her estranged friends to “play the game” and find local ghost legend Lucy Gallows, Sara… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Ableism
Physical child abuse, off-page
Amnesia
Suicide
Eye trauma
Starvation discussed
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a sister
Death of a friend
Murder & attempted murder
Knife violence
Disappearance of a sibling (theme)
Drowning, on-page
Animal attack

Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur

Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur

Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she’s put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she’s run from all her life. But it isn’t long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last. Years ago, Elsa’s now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Emotional & verbal child abuse
Hate crime
Death of a parent