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.

There Are No Saints by Sophie Lark

There Are No Saints by Sophie Lark

I loathe Alastor Shaw. The city of San Francisco thinks we’re rival artists. In truth, we’re predators battling for hunting ground. We never chased the same prey. Until the night we both laid eyes on Mara Eldritch. Shaw wants to use her as a pawn in his twisted game. I’m fixated on her for a different reason… She makes me feel things I never thought I could feel. Want things I never wanted. Only she can make me lose control. I don’t know if I should protect her at all cost or destroy her before she ruins me. Mara knows I’m no saint. But she has no idea she’s dancing with the devil…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Self-harm mentioned
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking

What Souls Are Made Of: A Wuthering Heights Remix by Tasha Suri

What Souls Are Made Of: A Wuthering Heights Remix by Tasha Suri

As the abandoned son of a Lascar—a sailor from India—Heathcliff has spent most of his young life maligned as an “outsider.” Now he’s been flung into an alien life in the Yorkshire moors, where he clings to his birth father’s language even though it makes the children of the house call him an animal, and the maids claim he speaks gibberish. Catherine is the younger child of the estate’s owner, a daughter with light skin and brown curls and a mother that nobody talks about. Her father is grooming her for a place in proper society, and that’s all that matters. Catherine knows she… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Slavery mentioned
  • Child abuse
  • Starvation
  • Illness-related weight loss mentioned
  • Death of a sister-in-law from childbirth mentioned
  • Death of a parent
  • Gun violence

A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev

A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev

Mili Rathod hasn’t seen her husband in twenty years–not since she was promised to him at the age of four. Yet marriage has allowed Mili a freedom rarely given to girls in her village. Her grandmother has even allowed her to leave India and study in America for eight months, all to make her the perfect modern wife. Which is exactly what Mili longs to be–if her husband would just come and claim her. Bollywood’s favourite director, Samir Rathod, has come to Michigan to secure a divorce for his older brother. Persuading a naive village girl to sign the papers should be easy for… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child marriage
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Parent with terminal cancer
  • Pregnancy & childbirth
  • Death of a parent mentioned

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Those 2300 words were life-altering for the People.com editor, turning her into an influential and outspoken public figure and a desperately needed voice for an often voiceless community. In these pages, she offers a bold and inspiring perspective on being young, multicultural, economically challenged, and transgender in America. Welcomed into the world as her parents’ firstborn son, Mock decided early on that she would be… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia
  • Racism
  • Gender dysphoria
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Sex work
  • Cheating
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Self-harm
  • Alcoholism
  • Substance addiction
  • Emesis
  • Gun violence

The Empire of Dreams by Rae Carson

The Empire of Dreams by Rae Carson

Even though Red Sparkle Stone is a foundling orphan with an odd name and a veiled past, she’s about to be adopted into the royal family—by Empress Elisa herself. Sixteen-year-old Red can hardly believe her luck. Then, in a stunning political masterstroke, the empress’s greatest rival blocks the adoption, and Red is left with no family and no future. Grieving and lost, but determined to find her place, Red hatches a daring plan: she will prove herself as a recruit for the world’s most elite fighting force, the legendary Royal Guard—something no woman has done before… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Child abuse
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

When the Lights Come On by Katia Rose

When the Lights Come On by Katia Rose

Paige Rivera doesn’t intend to end up among the twice-fooled. It’s been six years since Youssef Salah let her down, and not even the shock of his reappearance is enough to make her consider letting him do it again. She learned a lot from that first fall: how to pick herself up, brush herself off, and push away anyone with the ability to knock her off her feet. He’s no longer the teenage boy she knew, but Youssef still possess the powers of a gravitational force, so Paige employs her failsafe strategy: head down, eyes on the prize. The prize in this case is her burgeoning career…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Familial estrangement
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Drugging

The Spite House by Johnny Compton

The Spite House by Johnny Compton

Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. Having left his wife, his house, his whole life behind in Maryland, he’s desperate for money–it’s not easy to find safe work when you can’t provide references, you can’t stay in one place for long, and you’re paranoid that your past is creeping back up on you. When he comes across the strange ad for the Masson House in Degener, Texas, Eric thinks they may have finally caught a lucky break. The Masson property, notorious for being one of the most haunted places in Texas, needs a caretaker of sorts. The… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Child neglect
  • Suicide
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Death of a child
  • Lynching mentioned
  • Drowning
  • Arson

Names for the Dawn by CL Beaumont

Names for the Dawn by C.L. Beaumont

Seasoned Park Ranger Will Avery has found his home in the Denali wilderness, cherishing his solitary routines for the decade leading up to 1991. The trade-off that no one knows of his identity as a transgender man feels worth it for the comforting assurance he finds in the towering glaciers. Until Will discovers an unexpected passenger in his truck—the visiting wolf biologist everyone in the Park is ecstatic to meet—Nikhil Rajawat. Nikhil doesn’t return his new colleagues’ fervour. He’s dreamt of Denali for one reason: the pinnacle of his research, and it isn’t anyone’s business that this is the last year he’ll get to chase the wolves. He… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Homomisia discussed
  • Transmisia recounted*
  • Familial estrangement & disownment*
  • Physical child abuse recounted*
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Insomnia
  • Nightmare
  • Parent with alcoholism recounted
  • Recovery from substance addiction including an off-page relapse
  • Suicidal ideation recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned (sc)
  • Weight loss mentioned
  • Gender dysphoria & body dysmorphia
  • Scars from top surgery mentioned
  • Gun violence*
  • Bullying
  • Animal death, including a wolf cub & death of a pet dog

*Context : When the protagonist came out to his father, his father shot a gun at the barn near him. He has wondered for years if it was intentional or an accident. As a child, the protagonist’s mother physically abused him and burnt him with cigarettes.

Sweet Solitude by Sav Miller

Sweet Solitude by Sav R. Miller

In the wake of her father’s death, lonely Juliet Harrison struggles with the guilt over her loss. She deals with it the way she deals with everything: by burying her feelings beneath impulsive decisions and desecrating the local graveyard. But Juliet isn’t as invisible as she believes. Hiding out from the ghosts of his past, Kieran Ivers is known in King’s Trace as a homicidal hermit. But the rumours don’t stop him from visiting the cemetery to taunt his late brother’s remains. It’s there he first spots a woman engaging in lascivious acts on her father’s grave and becomes enraptured by… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Sexual assault, voyeurism & dubious consent scenario
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Emesis
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Torture
  • Organised crime
  • Erotic asphyxiation

Sweet Surrender by Sav Miller

Sweet Surrender by Sav R. Miller

After his father’s retirement, Elia Montalto took over organized crime in King’s Trace, Maine. His pragmatic nature makes him popular and allows alliances with government officials, which keeps prying eyes off his business. But even a town as small as theirs is not without risk or envy, and Elia has only ever really wanted one thing: Senator Harrison’s daughter. As the eldest daughter of a corrupt politician, survival was Caroline Harrison’s only hope at one day being granted freedom. But her father has other plans, and when negotiations for her hand in marriage begin, all her dreams shatter. That is, until she makes… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Arranged marriage
  • Infidelity
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Sex work mentioned
  • Physical child abuse
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Knife play
  • Organised crime