Tag Archives: Animal Death & Death of a Pet

Undercover by Tamsyn Muir

A fresh-faced newcomer arrives in an isolated, gang-run town and soon finds herself taking a job nobody else wants: bodyguard to a ghoul. Not just your average mindless, half-rotted shuffler, though. Lucille is a dancer who can still put on her own lipstick and whose shows are half burlesque, half gladiator match. But the stranger is no stranger to this particular ghoul. Both women are undercover in their own way. And both have something to lose if their connection comes to light

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood & gore depiction including body horror and cannibalism
  • Murder
  • Animal death

Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi

When Zelie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland. Then everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilizations to find her. Baldyr’s quest to harness Zélie’s strength sends Zélie, Amari, and Tzain searching for allies in unknown lands… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Self-harm (blood magic) & self-sacrifice
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction including broken bones, seizures (secondary character) and needles for piercing/tattooing
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture & physical assault
  • Imprisonment
  • Volcanic eruption
  • Explosion
  • Animal death, abuse & injury

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

BOY Novak turns twenty and decides to try for a brand-new life. Flax Hill, Massachusetts, isn’t exactly a welcoming town, but it does have the virtue of being the last stop on the bus route she took from New York. Flax Hill is also the hometown of Arturo Whitman—craftsman, widower, and father of Snow. SNOW is mild-mannered, radiant and deeply cherished—exactly the sort of little girl Boy never was, and Boy is utterly beguiled by her. If Snow displays a certain inscrutability at times, that’s simply a characteristic she shares with her father, harmless until Boy gives… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Transphobia
  • Animal death

Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith

In 1986, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed by the experience. In 2009, pressed into a dangerous scheme by a former lover, a woman captures a rare two-headed cobra. And in 2011, a young, unhappy American living in Saigon with her sort-of boyfriend disappears without a trace. Over the course of the novel, the fates of these three women will lock together in an exhilarating series of nested narratives. Along the way, we meet a young boy sent to a boarding school in the mountains for the métis children of French expatriates just… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape & sexual assault
  • Incest
  • Attempted necrophilia
  • Eating disorder
  • Suicide
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Body horror
  • Murder
  • Animal death & cruelty

Right Where We Left Us by Jen Devon

Temperance Jean Madigan and Duncan Brady have never gotten it right. After one radiant, secret summer together when they were eighteen, they’ve been on-again off-again ever since. Now, despite red-hot chemistry and TJ’s closeness with Duncan’s family, they’re virtually strangers, only capable of adversarial banter, awkward small talk―and the occasional messy hookup. .When a wedding at the Brady’s vineyard lands TJ there for the summer, their mutual avoidance strategies prove impossible. The last thing TJ wants is to be under those angsty, heated glances Duncan thinks he hides. And for Duncan.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Nightmares
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Minor injury depiction (mild concussion, sprained wrist)
  • Chronic illness (vertigo & a blood platelet disorder)
  • Death of a pet dog mentioned

The Lotus Empire by Tasha Suri

Malini has claimed her rightful throne as the empress of Parijatdvipa, just as the nameless gods prophesied. Now, in order to gain the support of the priesthood who remain loyal to the fallen emperor, she must consider a terrible Claim her throne and burn in order to seal her legacy—or find another willing to take her place on the pyre. Priya has survived the deathless waters and now their magic runs in her veins. But a mysterious yaksa with flowering eyes and a mouth of thorns lies beneath the waters. The yaksa promises protection for Ahiranya. But in exchange, she needs a sacrifice. And she’s chosen Priya as the one to offer it… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny & sexism
  • Intimate partner violence
  • Forced parent-child separation mentioned
  • Alcoholism
  • Suicidal ideation & self-sacrifice
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use (pipe & hookah smoking)
  • Blood & injury depiction including burns, broken bones, chronic pain, illness (which causes plants to grow through skin) and emesis
  • Death of a brother recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Fire
  • Drowning
  • Imprisonment
  • War themes & battle scenes
  • Animal death

Under the Mistletoe with You by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

Ready to spend a quiet Christmas with his nearest and dearest, Christopher has closed up shop in his bakery, he’s wrapped up and packed up his presents, and he’s found someone to stay in his flat over the festive period. Everything is under control. That is until the mysterious person he’s rented his flat to turns out to be none other than… Nash Nadeau, an actor – and the star of all Christopher’s favourite Christmas movies. In fact, he’s the guy Christopher’s been crushing on for the whole past year. Since last Christmas… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety
  • Divorce mentioned (secondary character)
  • Diet culture mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & mentions of past drug use (marijuana)
  • Seizure (on-page, protagonist)
  • Death of a spouse mentioned (secondary character)
  • Blizzard
  • Death of a pet cat mentioned (secondary character)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the colour yellow. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighbourhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental infidelity
  • Presumed death of a mother discussed
  • Murder of a pet dog by stabbing with a garden fork
  • Physical assault & police violence*

Context : The autistic protagonist is grabbed on the arm by a police officer and hits him back in a panic. He is arrested for assaulting police but released. The protagonist believes his mother is dead but his father lied.

Pretty Dead Queens by Alexa Donne

After the death of her mom, 17-year-old Cecelia Ellis goes to live with her estranged grandmother, a celebrated author whose Victorian mansion is as creepy as the murder mysteries she writes. On the surface, life is utterly ordinary until the homecoming queen is murdered. And she’s not Seaview’s first pretty dead queen. With a copycat killer on the loose, Cecelia throws herself into the investigation, determined to crack the case like the heroines in her grandmother’s books. But the more Cecelia digs into the town’s secrets, the more she worries that her own mystery might not have a storybook ending….

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism, racism & homophobia
  • Adult-minor relationship mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use mentioned
  • Minor blood & gore depiction including mentions of dead bodies & emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother from cancer recounted & discussed
  • Murder & knife violence
  • Drowning
  • Animal death (rabbit, dog)

Thrall by Avon Gale and Roan Parrish

Happy couple Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra have begun to garner national attention for their quirky New Orleans true-crime podcast, Shadowcast. When Lucy’s brother Harker disappears while researching the popular new dating app Thrall, they’re thrown into a real-life mystery. Aided by their social media expert, Arthur, and Harker’s professor, Van Helsing, they follow the trail, hoping to find Harker before it’s too late. When their investigation crosses the path of a possible serial killer, the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur. And as they race against the app’s countdown clock, so does the line between friendship… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Animal death mentioned