Animal Cruelty, Abuse & Torture – Page 13

Katie the Catsitter by Colleen Venable

Katie the Catsitter by Colleen A.F. Venable & illustrated by Stephanie Yue

Katie is dreading the boring summer ahead while her best friends are all away at camp–something that’s way out of Katie and her mom’s budget. Unless Katie can figure out a way to earn the money for camp herself. But when Katie gets a job catsitting for her mysterious upstairs neighbour, life gets interesting. First, Madeline has 217 cats (!) and they’re not exactly . . . normal cats. Also, why is Madeline always out EXACTLY when the city’s most notorious villain commits crimes?! Is it possible that Katie’s upstairs neighbour is really a supervillain?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Animal mistreatment & abuse
Animal hunting mentioned
Dogfighting mentioned

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say by Leila Sales

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say by Leila Sales

Winter, a one-time National Spelling Bee Champ, has a bright future ahead of her. That all changes after she haphazardly writes an offensive tweet that she thought was a harmless joke. What unfolds is a barrage of Internet shaming and rejection from her community and closest friends. Winter seeks to redeem herself but first must come to terms with what she wrote and understand why there was so much backlash.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism & racial profiling
Homomisia
Slut shaming
Outing
Suicide
Panic attacks
Attempted suicide
Animal death
Animal abuse & cruelty

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has laid the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world. But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Child abuse
Self-harm
Death of a child
Murder
Animal abuse

The Other Nadia Bisset by CA Wittman

The Other Nadia Bisset by C.A. Wittman

Nadia and Lydia Bisset are identical mirror twins, beautiful, ethereal little girls that make people stop and stare. Carla, their young mother, is exhausted, trudging through endless days of caring for her daughters with little help from her husband, often away on long business trips. At twenty-four, Carla feels like her life has ended before it has even begun. When a new and helpful neighbour, moves next door, the two women become fast friends, spending every day together for two weeks until Carla awakens one afternoon from a drug-induced sleep to find one of her twins, Lydia, and the new neighbour have disappeared… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Homomisia
Rape
Sexual assault
Cheating
Domestic abuse
Depression & postpartum depression
Cancer
Murder
Infanticidal ideation
Kidnapping of a child
Animal abuse
Bullying

War by Laura Thalassa

War by Laura Thalassa

The day Jerusalem falls, Miriam Elmahdy knows her life is over. Houses are burning, the streets run red with blood, and a traitorous army is massacring every last resident. There is no surviving this, especially not once Miriam catches the eye of War himself. But when the massive and terrifying horseman corners Miriam, he calls her his wife, and instead of killing her, he takes her back to his camp. Now Miriam faces a terrifying future, one where she watches her world burn town by town, and the one man responsible for it all is her seemingly indestructible “husband”. But there’s another side to him, one that’s gentle and loving and dead… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Attempted rape, on-page
Pregnancy
Decapitation
Death of a child
Murder
War themes
Animal death
Animal cruelty

What’s Mine and Yours by Naima Coster

What’s Mine and Yours by Naima Coster

A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the span of the next twenty years. On one side of the integration, debate is Jade, Gee’s steely, ambitious mother. In the aftermath of a harrowing loss, she is determined to give her son the tools he’ll need to survive in America as a sensitive, anxious… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Infidelity
Alcohol abuse
Abortion
Miscarriage
Death of a parent
Murder
Gun violence
Animal abuse

Crota by Owl Goingback

Crota by Owl Goingback

It is called Crota… and it has awakened. Sheriff Skip Harding is called out to investigate a double homicide unlike any he has seen before: the bodies are torn to pieces in the woods. Some think it’s a bear. But others whisper something different. It’s the Crota, they say. The great beast of legend that one day will reawaken. And that day has arrived.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Body horror
Animal death
Anima torture

Confessions by Kanae Minato

Confessions by Kanae Minato

After calling off her engagement in wake of a tragic revelation, Yuko Moriguchi had nothing to live for except her only child, four-year-old Manami. Now, following an accident on the grounds of the middle school where she teaches, Yuko has given up and tendered her resignation. But first she has one last lecture to deliver. She tells a story that upends everything her students ever thought they knew about two of their peers, and sets in motion a maniacal plot for revenge.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Parental neglect & abandonment
Transphobia mentioned & misgendering
Depression
HIV/AIDs (theme)*
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a father in a car accident mentioned
Death of a mother from illness mentioned
Murder of a daughter from drowning
Attempted murder of a child from electrocution
Murder of a teen girl from strangulation
Mass death of a family from poisoning discussed (mother, father & child)
Explosion, off-page
Animal death & cruelty mentioned

*Context: A teacher purposefully infects the two teenage boys who murdered her daughter with HIV/AIDs. The aftereffects of being infected are explored in depth. Mentions of HIV+ stigma and how the teacher’s ex-husband is dying of HIV/AIDs.

The Once and Future Witches by Alix Harrow

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

In 1893, there was no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box. But when the Eastwood sisters–James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna–join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Sexism
Homomisia & internalised homomisia
Threats of sexual assault
Sexual harassment
Child abandonment
Physical & psychological child abuse
Pregnancy & childbirth
Abortion mentioned
Forced hospitalisation
Death of a parent
Attempted execution
Kidnapping
Torture, off-page
Imprisonment
Loss of autonomy (mind control)
Animal death & abuse

A Dance with Fate by Juliet Marillier

A Dance with Fate by Juliet Marillier

The young warrior and bard Liobhan has lost her brother to the Otherworld. Even more determined to gain a place as an elite fighter, she returns to Swan Island to continue her training. But Liobhan is devastated when her comrade Dau is injured and loses his sight in their final display bout. Blamed by Dau’s family for the accident, she agrees to go to Dau’s home as a bondservant for the span of one year. There, she soon learns that Oakhill is a place of dark secrets. The vicious Crow Folk still threaten both worlds. And Dau, battling the demon of despair, is not an easy man to help. When Liobhan and Dau start to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Physical & verbal child abuse and neglect
Animal abuse
Bullying