Tag Archives: Child Abuse & Neglect

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of child abuse and neglect, including emotional, verbal, psychological and physical abuse, and gaslighting.

For child sexual abuse, see Paedophilia & CSA.

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

Forget Me Not by Alyson Derrick

Stevie and Nora had a love. A secret, epic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. They also had a plan: to leave their small, ultra-conservative town and families behind after graduation and move to California, where they could finally stop hiding that love.

But then Stevie has a terrible fall. And when she comes to, she can remember nothing of the last two years—not California, not coming to terms with her sexuality, not even Nora… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Queermisia including parental disownment and forced outing
  • Religious trauma
  • Child abuse, on-page (sc)
  • Toxic friendship
  • Amnesia
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Teen pregnancy mentioned
  • Coma
  • Hospitalisation

Practice Makes Perfect by Sarah Adams

Annie Walker is on a quest to find her perfect match-someone who nicely compliments her happy, quiet life running her flower shop in Rome, Kentucky. Unfortunately, she worries her goal might be too far out of reach when she overhears her date saying she is “so unbelievably boring.” Is it too late to become flirtatious and fun like the leading ladies in her favorite romance movies? Maybe she only needs a little practice…and Annie has the perfect person in mind to become her tutor: Will Griffin… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Child abuse discussed
  • Social anxiety (SAD)
  • Grandparent with Alzheimer’s Disease mentioned
  • Death of parents recounted

Unseelie by Ivelisse Housman

Twin sisters, both on the run, but different as day and night. One, a professional rogue, searches for a fabled treasure; the other, a changeling, searches for the truth behind her origins, trying to find a place to fit in with the realm of fae who made her and the humans who shun her.  Iselia “Seelie” Graygrove looks just like her twin, Isolde… but as an autistic changeling trying to navigate her unpredictable magic, Seelie finds it more difficult to fit in with the humans around her. When Seelie and Isolde are caught up in a heist gone wrong and make some unexpected allies… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & fantastical eugenics
  • Child abuse recounted (secondary character)
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Murder
  • Knife violence
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Loss of autonomy (magical compulsion)
  • Fire
  • Bullying

Beautifully Broken by Megan Bates

There is a feral side of me always lying dormant until I have someone pretty to ruin.
I could corrupt him so easily; I could make him understand what it’s like to play with the devil. I could make him find new meanings to the words
“Beautifully Broken “
This one isn’t leaving.
I’m going to make him need me, and only me, no matter what It takes.
I haven’t laid my eyes on such a pretty boy in so long
Until him… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Consensual nonconsent/rape play
  • Dubious consent scenarios including improper BDSM practices
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Depression
  • Panic attacks
  • Substance addiction
  • Suicide discussed
  • Self-harm
  • Knife play
  • Kidnapping