Child Abuse & Neglect – Page 107 – Trigger Warning Database

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Everyone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather be. For four high-school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there.

Cara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother Conner spiraling toward suicide. For her, perfect means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. Kendra covets the perfect face and body—no matter what surgeries and drugs she needs to get there. To score his perfect home run—on the field and off—Sean will sacrifice more than he can ever win back. And Andre realizes that to follow his heart and achieve his perfect performance, he’ll be living a life his ancestors would never understand.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Outing
Physical child abuse
Cheating
Teacher-student relationship mentioned
Date rape
Revenge pornography
Suicide
Parent with alcoholism
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Hospitalisation
Knife violence & stabbing

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Nineteen years after Kristina Snow met the monster—crank—her children are reeling from the consequences of her decisions. Instead of one big, happy family, they are a desperate tangle of scattered lives united by anger, doubt, and fear.

A predisposition to addiction and a sense of emptiness where a mother’s love should be leads all three down the road of their mother’s notorious legacy. Sex, drugs, alcohol, abuse—there is more of Kristina in her children than they would ever like to believe. But when the thread that ties them together brings them face-to-face, they’ll discover something powerful in each other and in themselves—the trust, the hope, the courage to begin to break the cycle.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Antiziganism (g slur)
Misogyny
Slut shaming
Victim blaming
Physical & sexual child abuse
Domestic violence
Sexual assault & attempted rape
Substance addiction
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug abuse
Teen pregnancy
Pregnancy from rape
Stalking
Car accident

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching … for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don’t expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words “I love you” are said for all the wrong reasons.

Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story—a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, “Can I ever feel okay about myself?”

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia
Child abuse & neglect
Rape
Sexual assault
Substance addiction
Alcohol consumption & abuse
Recreational drug abuse
Hospitalisation
Murder

Identical by Ellen Hopkins

Identical by Ellen Hopkins

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family—on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that’s where their differences begin.

For Kaeleigh, she’s the misplaced focus of Daddy’s love, intended for a mother whose presence on the campaign trail means absence at home. All that Raeanne sees is Daddy playing a game of favorites—and she is losing. If she has to lose, she will do it on her own terms, so she chooses drugs, alcohol, and sex.

Secrets like the ones the twins are harboring are not meant to be kept—from each other or anyone else. Pretty soon it’s obvious that neither sister can handle it alone, and one sister must step up to save the other, but the question is—who?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Graphic paedophilia & child sexual abuse (on-page)
Incest
Rape & sexual assault (on-page)
Forced modelling for child pornorgraphy recounted
Cheating
Physical child abuse
Self-harm
Depression
Alcoholism
Alcohol consumption & abuse
Recreational drug use & abuse
Blood depiction
Emesis
Car accident

Burned by Ellen Hopkins

Burned by Ellen Hopkins

It all started with a dream. Nothing exceptional, just a typical fantasy about a boy, the kind of dream that most teen girls experience. But Pattyn Von Stratten is not like most teen girls. Raised in a religious—yet abusive—family, a simple dream may not be exactly a sin, but it could be the first step toward hell and eternal damnation.

This dream is a first step for Pattyn. But is it to hell or to a better life? For the first time Pattyn starts asking questions. Questions seemingly without answers—about God, a woman’s role, sex, love—mostly love. What is it? Where is it? Will she ever experience it? Is she deserving of it? … Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Disownment*
Physical child abuse
Domestic abuse & violence
Suicide
Alcoholism & alcohol abuse
Alcohol consumption
Miscarriage
Car accident
Animal death & hunting

*Note: The protagonist’s half-brother is disowned by their father after he comes out as gay.

The Searcher by Tana French

The Searcher by Tana French

Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a remote Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force, and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But then a local kid comes looking for his help. His brother has gone missing, and no one, least of all the police, seems to care. Cal wants nothing to do with any kind of investigation, but somehow he can’t make himself walk away. Soon Cal will discover that even in the most idyllic small town, secrets lie hidden, people… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Domestic violence
Child abuse
Suicide mentioned
Recreational drug use
Gun violence
Animal death

The Likeness by Tana French

The Likeness by Tana French

Still traumatised by her brush with a psychopath, Detective Cassie Maddox transfers out of the Murder squad and starts a relationship with fellow detective Sam O’Neill. When he calls her to the scene of his new case, she is shocked to find that the murdered girl is her double. What’s more, her ID shows she is Lexie Madison – the identity Cassie used, years ago, as an undercover detective. With no leads, no suspects and no clues to Lexie’s real identity, Cassie’s old boss spots the opportunity of a lifetime: send Cassie undercover in her place, to tempt the killer out of hiding to finish the job.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape
Child abuse
Abortion mentioned
Death of a child
Murder

In the Woods by Tana French

In the Woods by Tana French

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children. He is gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox (his partner and closest friend) find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape
Child abuse
Death of a child

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson

Near an isolated mansion lies a beautiful garden.

In this garden grow luscious flowers, shady trees…and a collection of precious “butterflies”—young women who have been kidnapped and intricately tattooed to resemble their namesakes. Overseeing it all is the Gardener, a brutal, twisted man obsessed with capturing and preserving his lovely specimens.

When the garden is discovered, a survivor is brought in for questioning. FBI agents Victor Hanoverian and Brandon Eddison are tasked with piecing together one of the most stomach-churning cases of their careers.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Paedophilia
Rape
Child abuse & neglect
Murder
Fire
Kidnapping & captivity

Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler

Ship of Smoke & Steel by Django Wexler

In the lower wards of Kahnzoka, the great port city of the Blessed Empire, eighteen-year-old ward boss Isoka comes to collect when there’s money owing. When her ability to access the Well of Combat is discovered by the Empire—an ability she should have declared and placed at His Imperial Majesty’s service—she’s sent on an impossible mission: steal Soliton, a legendary ghost ship—a ship from which no one has ever returned. If she fails, her sister’s life is forfeit.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism & ableist slurs
Homomisia
Child abuse
Sex trafficking
Blood & gore depiction