Tag Archives: Cheating

This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell

Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex–film star given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Claudette was once the most glamorous and infamous woman in cinema before she staged her own disappearance and retreated to blissful seclusion in an Irish farmhouse. But the life Daniel and Claudette have so carefully constructed is about to be disrupted by an unexpected discovery about a woman Daniel lost touch with twenty years ago… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical child abuse recounted
  • Infidelity
  • Divorce
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • Alcoholism
  • Infertility & miscarriage mentioned
  • Abortion (discussed, on-page)
  • Death of an ex-partner from anorexia
  • Death of a grandfather from a brain haemorrhage mentioned
  • Murder of a daughter by gun violence during a robbery (off-page)

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan—the Burgess sibling who stayed behind—urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a father recounted

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are. So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret—one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity recounted
  • Death of a husband

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we’re apart–the pain of a beloved daughter’s suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Infertility & loss of pregnancy
  • COVID-19 pandemic including death from COVID (theme)

The Long Way Home by Jessa Hastings

Daisy Haites thought she’d left everything about her old life in the past: the crime, her family and the man she loves. But when her safety is threatened once again, she finds herself back under the watchful eye of her gang-lord brother Julian and her ex-boyfriend Christian, both desperate to keep her safe. Everything gets more complicated when beautiful, broken-hearted socialite Magnolia Parks enters the scene and Julian finds himself entangled with her. Because for Julian, falling in love isn’t just unwelcome – it could be deadly for everyone involved…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol & drug use
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Car accident
  • Kidnapping

The Great Undoing by Jessa Hastings

Daisy Haites thought she’d left everything about her old life in the past: the crime, her family and the man she loves. But when her safety is threatened once again, she finds herself back under the watchful eye of her gang-lord brother Julian and her ex-boyfriend Christian, both desperate to keep her safe. Everything gets more complicated when beautiful, broken-hearted socialite Magnolia Parks enters the scene and Julian finds himself entangled with her. Because for Julian, falling in love isn’t just unwelcome – it could be deadly for everyone involved…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol & drug use
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Car accident
  • Kidnapping

Daisy Haites by Jessa Hastings

All 20 year old Daisy Haites has ever wanted is a normal life, but it’s just not on the cards for her. Raised by her older brother Julian since their parents were murdered in front of them 12 years ago, Daisy hasn’t ever lived beyond the watchful gaze of her gang lord brother. But Julian’s line of work means that Daisy’s life is… complicated. And things don’t become any less complex when she falls hard for Christian Hemmes, the beautiful and emotionally unavailable boy she’s been involved with for the last few months, who also happens to be one of the few men in London who doesn’t answer to Julian. Christian’s life is no walk in the park either, being in love with his best friend’s girlfriend and… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Infidelity
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Death of parents recounted (on-page)
  • Murder
  • Gun violence

Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings

She is a beautiful, affluent, self-involved and mildly neurotic London socialite. He is Britain’s most photographed bad-boy lothario who broke her heart. But Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine are meant to be, and everyone knows it. They’re in the stars… just suspended in a strange kind of love that looks like hurting each other a lot of the time: She dates other people to keep him at bay; he sleeps with other girls to get back at her for it. But at the end of their every sad endeavour to get over one another, it’s still each other they crawl back to. But their dysfunction is catching up with them, pulling at their seams and fray… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Infidelity
  • Drug & alcohol abuse
  • Overdose

The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories. Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too. Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating
  • Memory loss
  • Body horror
  • Medical experimentation
  • Death of a friend, spouse, sibling & parent
  • Animal death

A Marriage of Lies by Amanda McKinney

Beneath the surface of every marriage there are secrets. This one is deadly. My husband is lying. The minute he came home with alcohol on his breath and unable to look me in the eyes I knew it. We used to be in love – the intense ‘I can’t be without you for a second’ kind. Where it hurts deep to be apart. But now, we’re the couple that keep secrets from each other. We hide the truth. He thought I wouldn’t find out. I’m a detective – it’s literally my job to uncover clues and solve mysteries. I know what he did. And now I’m sitting here, in a police interview, being asked the question ‘did you kill her?’ to which I utter one life-shattering ‘yes.’

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Infidelity
  • Attempted suicide mentioned
  • Murder