Tag Archives: Animal Cruelty, Abuse & Torture

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of animal abuse, cruelty, and torture.

See also Animal death, Animal illness & injury, and Animal attack.

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position. What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical misogyny, antisemitism & religious bigotry
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction including body horror and emesis
  • Torture indcuding waterboarding
  • Imprisonment
  • Fire
  • Animal cruelty & death (squirrel)

The Perfect Son by Freida McFadden

Erika Cass has a perfect family and a perfect life. Until the evening when two detectives show up at her front door A high school girl has vanished from Erika’s quiet suburban neighbourhood. The police suspect the worst–murder. And Erika’s teenage son, Liam, was the last person to see the girl alive. Erika has always sensed something dark and disturbed in her seemingly perfect older child. She wants to believe he’s innocent, but as the evidence mounts, she can’t deny the truth–Liam may have done the unthinkable. Now she must ask herself: How far will she go to protect her son?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Hospitalisation
  • Starvation & dehydration
  • Death of parents
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Incarceration
  • Fire
  • Animal death & cruelty

Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce

It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist–the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind. Fun-loving Enid Pretty in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • MIscarriage
  • Suicide by gun violence
  • Stalking
  • Death of a pet & animal abuse

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical misogyny
  • Rape mentioned
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Animal cruelty mentioned

Worry by Alexandra Tanner

It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen. Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Depression & anxiety
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Disordered eating & a secondary character with an eating disorder (bulimia)
  • Animal cruelty

Final Offer by Lauren Asher

Callahan. I’m the Kane brother everyone gossips about behind closed doors. Trust fund brat. Washed-up athlete. High-functioning alcoholic. No one knows the real me but her. Lana Castillo—my childhood best friend and the only woman I ever loved. When I broke her heart six years ago, I promised to never return to Lake Wisteria. I kept my word until my grandfather’s will changed everything. To receive my inheritance, I was tasked with spending a summer at the family lake house before selling it. The request was simple in theory until my entire plan blew up on the very first day. Turns out Lana doesn’t just live at the house, but… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Emotional & verbal child abuse
  • Substance addiction & alcoholism
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Drug use (smoking)
  • Overdose recounted
  • Infertility
  • Cancer
  • Death of a grandfather
  • Animal abuse

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead. Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, sexism & colourism
  • Slavery
  • Sex-trafficking & slavery mentioned
  • Rape & sexual assault
  • Trauma, intrusive thoughts & panic attacks
  • Self-harm
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & drug abuse
  • Graphic blood, gore & injury depiction including dead bodies, amputation (off-page), mentions of medical experimentation, decapitation, cannibalism, emesis, and genital mutilation (castration)
  • Famine & starvation
  • Murder & mass death
  • Torture
  • Sword violence
  • Poisoning
  • Bombings
  • Animal abuse & death
  • Graphic war themes & battle scenes and colonialism (theme)

The ​Missing of Clairdelune by Christelle Dabos

When our heroine Ophelia is promoted to Vice-storyteller by Farouk, the ancestral Spirit of Pole, she finds herself unexpectedly thrust into the public spotlight and her special gift is revealed to all. Ophelia knows how to read the secret history of objects and there could be no greater threat to the nefarious denizens of her icy adopted home than this. Beneath the golden rafters of Pole’s capitol, Citaceleste, she discovers that the only person she may be able to trust is Thorn, her enigmatic fiancé. As one after another influential courtier disappears, Ophelia again finds herself unintentionally implicated in an… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Suicide
  • Kidnapping
  • Gun violence
  • Animal abuse, implied

Six Scorched Roses by Carissa Broadbent

Six roses. Six vials of blood. Six visits to a vampire who could be her salvation… or her damnation. Lilith has been dying since the day she was born. But while she long ago came to terms with her own imminent death, the deaths of everyone she loves is an entirely different matter. As her town slowly withers in the clutches of a mysterious god-cursed illness, she takes matters into her own hands. Desperate to find a cure, Lilith strikes a bargain with the only thing the gods hate even more than her village: a vampire, Vale. She offers him six roses in exchange for six vials of vampire blood–the one hope for her town’s salvation. But when… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Graphic blood & illness depiction
  • Needles
  • Plague
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent & child during childbirth
  • Physical assault
  • War themes & battle scenes
  • Animal cruelty mentioned (animal testing)

Paladin’s Faith by T Kingfisher

Marguerite Florian is a spy with two problems. A former employer wants her dead, and one of her new bodyguards is a far too good-looking paladin with a martyr complex. Shane is a paladin with three problems. His god is dead, his client is much too attractive for his peace of mind, and a powerful organization is trying to have them both killed. Add in a brilliant artificer with a device that may change the world, a glittering and dangerous court, and a demon-led cult, and Shane and Marguerite will be lucky to escape with their souls intact, never mind their hearts…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted suicide (thwarted)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death during childbirth mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Physical assault
  • Imprisonment
  • Kidnapping
  • Loss of autonomy (demon possession)
  • Animal harm & death including animals being possessed by demons