Tag Archives: Child Abuse & Neglect

I Could Never by Penelope Ward

It all started with an unexpected phone call. Two years after my fiancé passed away in an accident, his father died suddenly, leaving Brad’s adult, special-needs brother with no one to care for him. The next thing I knew, I was on a cross-country drive to New Hampshire where I’d be moving in to look after Scottie until I could get him into a group home. The last thing I ever expected? I wouldn’t be taking care of him alone. Josh Mathers, my fiancé’s best friend—who also happened to be my sworn enemy—insisted he was the better person for the job. He told me to go back to California, and I told him where he could stick that…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child neglect & abandonment
  • Parental infidelity, off-page
  • Death of a fiancé in a car accident
  • Death of a father-in-law

A Touch of Gold and Madness by K.L. DeVore

Fairytales are for the naive. Princess Assassin Gray Monroe is ordered by her father to kill the villainous prince responsible for starting a war that threw the world into a post-apocalyptic society. In a decrepit landscape where two magical species war with one another, while a human militia hunts them all, Gray has only one thing on her mind: vengeance. With a single focus on killing the man who murdered her first love, she believes nothing will stop her. That is until she hesitates when she comes face-to-face with her nemesis at long last. With a single focus… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse

Night’s Edge by Liz Kerin

Having a mom like Izzy meant Mia had to grow up fast. No extracurriculars, no inviting friends over, and definitely no dating. The most important Tell no one of Izzy’s hunger – the kind only blood can satisfy.

But Mia is in her twenties now and longs for a life of her own. One where she doesn’t have to worry about anyone discovering their terrible secret, or breathing down her neck. When Mia meets rebellious musician Jade she dares to hope she’s found a way to leave her home – and her mom – behind… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Emesis
  • Gun violence

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

Years ago, a reclusive mega-bestselling children’s author quit writing under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly he resurfaces with a brand-new book and a one-of-a-kind competition, offering a prize that will change the winner’s life in this absorbing and whimsical novel.

Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it’s like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Child abuse and neglect recounted
  • Foster care experiences
  • Emotionally abusive relationship recounted
  • Munchausen by Proxy mentioned*
  • Alcoholism and substance addiction recovery (love interest)
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Unplanned pregnancy & miscarriage mentioned
  • Sibling with terminal cancer
  • Death of a brother from complications during heart surgery recounted
  • Financial and housing insecurity

*Context: The protagonist learns her sister’s childhood chronic illness was the result of her parents’ attempts to keep her sick. Discussions of children in foster care due to abusive alcoholic parents and parents’ deaths from overdoses.

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai

When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she’s last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life—a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste—but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child & domestic abuse
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a grandmother

While You Were Out by Meg Kissinger

Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger’s family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard.

But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding—a heavily medicated mother hospitalized… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Child neglect
  • Anxiety & depression
  • Parent with Bipolar Disorder
  • Death of a child from suicide

Hatchet Girls by Diana Rodriguez Wallach

When the parents of the richest family in Fall River are found murdered by axe, the town is quick to blame newcomer Vik. It doesn’t help that he was caught standing over the bodies with blood on his hands and can’t remember anything about the night in question.

But Vik’s sister, Tessa, knows that Vik would never be capable of such a gruesome crime. Haunted by the mistakes she made that led her family to Fall River in the first place, she sets out to prove her brother’s innocence… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Car accident recounted, off-page

Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim

Channi was not born a monster. But when her own father offers her in sacrifice to the Demon Witch, she is forever changed. Cursed with a serpent’s face, Channi is the exact opposite of her beautiful sister, Vanna—the only person in the village who looks at Channi and doesn’t see a monster. The only person she loves and trusts.

Now seventeen, Vanna is to be married off in a vulgar contest that will enrich the coffers of the village leaders. Only Channi, who’s had to rely on her strength and cunning all these years… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Self-harm
  • Pregnancy
  • Decapitation
  • Cannibalism
  • Torture
  • Human sacrifice

Zhara by S. Jae-Jones

Magic is forbidden throughout the Morning Realms. Magicians are called abomination, and blamed for the plague of monsters that razed the land twenty years before.

Jin Zhara already had enough to worry about—appease her stepmother’s cruel whims, looking after her blind younger sister, and keeping her own magical gifts under control—without having to deal with rumors of monsters re-emerging in the marsh. But when a chance encounter with… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia & misgendering
  • Child abuse
  • Body horror
  • Emesis
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)

Burn the Negative by Josh Winning

Arriving in L.A. to visit the set of a new streaming horror series, journalist Laura Warren witnesses a man jumping from a bridge, landing right behind her car. Here we go, she thinks. It’s started. Because the series she’s reporting on is a remake of a ’90s horror flick. A cursed ’90s horror flick, which she starred in as a child—and has been running from her whole life.

In The Guesthouse, Laura played the little girl with the terrifying gift to tell people how the Needle Man would kill them. When eight of the cast and crew died in ways that… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical & psychological child abuse