Tag Archives: Child Abuse & Neglect

Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers

Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers

The convent has returned Sybella to a life that nearly drove her mad. Her father’s rage and brutality are terrifying, and her brother’s love is equally monstrous. When she discovers an unexpected ally imprisoned in the dungeons, will the daughter of Death find something other than vengeance to live for?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Sex work shaming
  • Incest (brother-sister & father-daughter)
  • Rape & attempted rape, on-page & recounted (multiple scenes)
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Pregnancy from rape mentioned
  • Childbirth mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Graphic physical injuries & illness,
  • Facial scars and disfigurement mentioned
  • Death of a sister, off-page
  • Death of a newborn daughter recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Attempted infanticide by drowning mentioned
  • Infanticide by snapping a newborn’s neck recounted, on-page
  • Knife, sword & arrow violence
  • Poisoning
  • Imprisonment
  • Animal death (dog) mentioned
  • Animal hunting
  • War themes & battle scenes including discussions of sieges

The Wicked and the Willing by Lianyu Tan

The Wicked and the Willing by Lianyu Tan

Love demands sacrifice. Her blood. Her body. Even her life. Singapore, 1927. Verity Edevane needs blood. And not just anyone’s blood. She craves the sweet, salty rush from a young woman’s veins, the heady swirl of desire mixed with fealty—such a rarity in this foreign colony. It’s a lot to ask. But doesn’t she deserve the best? Gean Choo needs money. Mrs. Edevane makes her an offer Gean Choo can’t refuse. But who is her strange, alluring new mistress? What is she? And what will Gean Choo sacrifice to earn her love?… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Rape
  • Child sexual abuse recounted
  • Dubious consent scenarios, including employer-employee relationship
  • Child abandonment
  • Emotional & physical child abuse recounted
  • Abusive relationship
  • Cheating
  • Attempted suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm & self-inflicted injury
  • Recreational drug use
  • Death during childbirth mentioned
  • Physical injury, including a broken nose
  • Cannibalism
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Gun & knife violence
  • Physical assault

The Boy Who Sneaks in My Bedroom Window by Kirsty Moseley

The Boy Who Sneaks in My Bedroom Window by Kirsty Moseley

Liam James, boy next door and total douchebag, is my brother’s best friend. I can’t stand him. Well, that’s not strictly true, at night I see a side of him that no one else does. Every night Liam becomes my safe haven, my protector, the one to chase the demons of my abusive childhood away and hold all the broken pieces of me together. He’s cocky, he’s arrogant, and he’s also some sort of playboy in training. With his ‘hit it and quit it’ mentality, he’s the last person you’d want to fall in love with. I only wish someone had told my heart that.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slut shaming
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse recounted
  • Physical child abuse
  • Miscarriage

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. Duchess is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Her mother, Star, grew up with Walk and Vincent. Walk is in overdrive trying to protect them, but Vincent and Star seem bent on sliding deeper into self-destruction. Star always burned bright, but recently that light has dimmed, leaving Duchess to parent not only her mother but her five-year-old… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child neglect
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Murder

Forging Silver into Stars by Brigid Kemmerer

Forging Silver into Stars by Brigid Kemmerer

Magic has been banished in the land of Syhl Shallow for as long as best friends Jax and Callyn can remember. They once loved the stories of the powerful magesmiths and mythical scravers who could conjure fire or control ice, but now they’ve learned that magic only leads to danger: magic is what killed Callyn’s parents, leaving her alone to raise her younger sister. Magic never helped Jax, whose leg was crushed in an accident that his father has been punishing him for ever since. Magic won’t save either of them when the tax collector comes calling, threatening to take their homes if…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Rape
  • Child abuse
  • Death of a parent
  • Kidnapping
  • Animal death

While I Was Away by Waka Brown

While I Was Away by Waka T. Brown

When twelve-year-old Waka’s parents suspect she can’t understand basic Japanese, they make the drastic decision to send her to Tokyo to live for several months with her strict grandmother. Forced to say goodbye to her friends and what would have been her summer vacation, Waka is plucked from her straight-A-student life in rural Kansas and flown across the globe, where she faces the culture shock of a lifetime. In Japan, Waka struggles with reading and writing in kanji, doesn’t quite mesh with her complicated and distant Obaasama, and gets made fun of by the students in her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Bullying

The Sullivan Sisters by Kathryn Ormsbee

The Sullivan Sisters by Kathryn Ormsbee

That painful fact of life couldn’t be truer for the Sullivan sisters. Once, they used to be close, sharing secrets inside homemade blanket castles. Now, life in the Sullivan house means closed doors and secrets left untold. Fourteen-year-old Murphy, an aspiring magician, is shocked by the death of Siegfried, her pet turtle. Seventeen-year-old Claire is bound for better things than her Oregonian hometown—until she receives a crushing rejection from her dream college. And eighteen-year-old Eileen is nursing a growing addiction in the wake of life-altering news… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Terminal cancer (leukemia)
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Animal death & neglect

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl. But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both. Then Coley Taylor moves… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Lesbophobia & transphobia
  • Conversion therapy (theme)
  • Child abuse
  • Attempted suicide
  • Graphic self-harm
  • Drug use
  • Death of a mother & father in a car accident

Bad Witch Burning by Jessica Lewis

Bad Witch Burning by Jessica Lewis

Katrell can talk to the dead. And she wishes it made more money. She’s been able to support her unemployed mother–and Mom’s deadbeat-boyfriend-of-the-week–so far, but it isn’t enough. Money’s still tight, and to complicate things, Katrell has started to draw attention. Not from this world–from beyond. And it comes with a warning: STOP or there will be consequences. Katrell is willing to call the ghosts on their bluff; she has no choice. What do ghosts know of having sleep for dinner? But when her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Domestic abuse
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Suicidal ideation (passive)
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Gun violence
  • Fire
  • Graphic animal cruelty
  • Animal death (dog)
  • Poverty

The Laws of the Skies by Grégoire Courtois

The Laws of the Skies by Grégoire Courtois

Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult chaperones head into the woods on a camping trip. None of them make it out alive. The Laws of the Skies follows the terrified children as they scatter into the night to escape danger, dressed only in their pyjamas. They face their darkest childhood fears and new imaginary threats, like trolls masquerading as boulders and child-eating tree trunks. A harrowing story of those days in the woods, of illness, poisoning, and accidents; of a love triangle among tots; a pint-sized hero; and a child on a murderous rampage that comes to a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Child abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Graphic death of a child
  • Murder