Tag Archives: Body Horror

The Tenant by Freida McFadden

Blake Porter is riding high, until he’s not. Fired abruptly from his job as a VP of marketing and unable to make the mortgage payments on the new brownstone that he shares with his fiancée, he’s desperate to make ends meet. Enter Whitney. Beautiful, charming, down-to-earth, and looking for a room to rent. She’s exactly what Blake’s looking for. Or is she? Because something isn’t quite right. The neighbors start treating Blake differently. The smell of decay permeates his home, no matter how hard he scrubs. Strange noises jar him awake in the middle of the night. And soon Blake fears someone knows his darkest secrets…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Suicide
  • Blood & gore depiction including body horror, emesis and medical content
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder
  • Animal death (fish)

Anathema by Keri Lake

Accidentally in Love by Keri Lake

Only the banished know what lies beyond the woods… There are whispers about what lurks in Witch Knell—the forest where sinners go to die. The villagers call it The Eating Woods because what’s taken is never given back. Only those who’ve lost their senses would dare to go near it. Or the banished… Maevyth Bronwick knows better than to breach the misty labyrinth of trees, but a tragic turn of events compels her beyond the archway of bones, to a boundary no mortal has crossed before. One that cloaks a dark and fantastical world that’s as dangerous as it is alluring. It’s there that… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Sexual assault & threats of rape
  • Body horror

The Chatelaine by Kate Heartfield

The Chatelaine by Kate Heartfield

Hell is empty and all the devils are here. The Chatelaine has come. The year is 1328 and Hell has overrun Bruges. Demons stalk the streets and revenants swarm the walls. The city’s men have fallen and only widows remain. But Hell should fear them. Margriet de Vos killed her first soldier when she was eleven. She has buried six children and will fight for the daughter left to her. Their only wealth is gone, taken into the inferno. And she will not be stolen from. The Devil be damned. Together with a man-at-arms with unfinished business, a widow and her forgehammer and a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical ableism, antisemitism, misogyny & misgendering
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Body horror
  • Famine & plague
  • War themes
  • Poverty

Our Last Echoes by Kate Alice Marshall

Sophia’s first memory is of drowning. She remembers the darkness of the water and the briny taste as it fills her throat. She remembers the cold shock of going under. She remembers her mother pulling her to safety before disappearing forever. But Sophia has never been in the ocean. And her mother died years ago in a hospital. Or so she has been told her whole life. A series of clues have led Sophia to the island of Bitter Rock, Alaska, where she talked her way into a summer internship at the Landon Avian Research Center, the same center her mother worked at right before she died. There, she meets the disarmingly… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Memory loss
  • Panic attack
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Body horror
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Drowning
  • Animal death

(S)Kin by Ibi Zoboi

Fifteen-year-old Marisol is the daughter of a soucouyant. Every new moon, she sheds her skin like the many women before her, shifting into a fireball witch who must fly into the night and slowly sip from the lives of others to sustain her own. But Brooklyn is no place for fireball witches with all its bright lights, shut windows, and bolt-locked doors.… While Marisol hoped they would leave their old traditions behind when they emigrated from the islands, she knows this will never happen while she remains ensnared by the one person who keeps her chained to her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny & sexual harassment
  • Infidelity discussed
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned (secondary character)
  • Body horror (on-page, detailed)

Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew

Wyatt Westlock has one plan for the farmhouse she’s just inherited — to burn it to the ground. But during her final walkthrough of her childhood home, she makes a shocking discovery in the basement — Peter, the boy she once considered her best friend, strung up in chains and left for dead. Unbeknownst to Wyatt, Peter has suffered hundreds of ritualistic deaths on her family’s property. Semi-immortal, Peter never remains dead for long, but he can’t really live, either. Not while he’s bound to the farm, locked in a cycle of grisly deaths and painful rebirths. There’s only one way for him to break free. He needs to end the Westlock line… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Self-injury
  • Suicide by cutting throat
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Minor body horror
  • Torture recounted
  • Physical assault (fistfights) & stabbing
  • Drowning mentioned
  • Choking
  • Cult
  • Fire & arson
  • Animal death (chicken)

I Am Made of Death by Kelly Andrew

Following the death of his father, Thomas Walsh had to grow up quickly, taking on odd-jobs to keep food on the table and help pay his gravely ill mother’s medical bills. When he’s offered a highly paid position as an interpreter for an heiress who exclusively signs, Thomas — the hearing child of a Deaf adult — jumps at the opportunity. But the job is not without its challenges. Thomas is expected to accompany Vivienne wherever she goes, but from the start, she seems determined to shake him. To make matters worse, her parents keep her on an extremely short leash. She is not to go anywhere without express permission… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Body horror
  • Nonconsensual surgery
  • Murder & ritual human sacrifice
  • Kidnapping
  • Gun violence
  • Choking
  • Fistfights resulting in hospitalisation

Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven

Evelyn remembers all her past lives. She also remembers that in every single one, she’s been murdered before her 18th birthday by Arden, a supernatural being whose soul―and survival―is tethered to hers. The problem is that she’s quite fond of the life she’s in now, and her little sister needs her for bone marrow transplants in order to stay alive. If Evelyn wants to save her sister, she’ll have to: Find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life―before they find her first. Figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse. Try not to fall in love.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism, racism, sexism & classism
  • Sexual assault
  • Domestic abuse
  • Attempted suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Blood & injury depiction including body horror
  • Forced institutionalization
  • Death of a child
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • Fire

We Can Never Leave This Place by Eric LaRocca

A precocious young girl with an unusual imagination is sent on an odyssey into the depths of depravity. After her father dies violently, young Mara is surprised to find her mother welcoming a new guest into their home, claiming that he will protect them from the world of devastation and destruction outside their door.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape mentioned (brief)
  • Incest
  • Emotional & verbal child abuse
  • Miscarriage & stillbirth
  • Body horror
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a child mentioned
  • Murder
  • Animal death

You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca

Each precious thing I show you in this book is a holy relic from the night we both perished-the night when I combed you from my hair and watered the moon with your blood. You’ve lost a lot of blood . . .

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abandonment
  • Paedophilia mentioned
  • Body horror (theme)
  • Desecration of a corpse
  • Cancer
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child & parent
  • Murder & torture