Tag Archives: Chronic Illness & Chronic Pain

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of chronic illness and pain.

Accidental Demons by Clare Edge

For the youngest in a long line of witches, demons used to be no big deal. A spell and a quick prick of the finger, and a witch like Ber could summon a demon to do anything she needed—clean a mess, send a message, you name it. But that was before Ber was diagnosed with diabetes. Now each time she tests her blood sugar, accidental demons are slipping into the human dimension…and causing absolute chaos. Good thing Ber and her older sister, Maeve, know that every magical problem has a magical solution. They’ll just conjur a low-order demon to monitor… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Diabetes (protagonist)
  • Needles & self-injury for blood (on-page, theme)
  • Animal death (sacrifices)

Would You Rather by Allison Ashley

Noah and Mia have always been best friends, and their friendship is the most important thing to them. Life is going great for Noah and he’s up for a promotion in a job he loves. But Mia’s life is on hold as she awaits a kidney transplant. She’s stuck in a dead-end job and, never wanting to be a burden, has sworn off all romance. So when the chance of a lifetime comes to go back to school and pursue her dream, it’s especially painful to pass up. She can’t quit her job or she’ll lose the medical insurance she so desperate… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment & familial estrangement
  • Chronic kidney disease
  • Hospitalisation and medical treatment & procedures including needles and organ transplant surgery (kidney)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother in a car accident recounted
  • Blackmail

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

Irby is turning forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and is courted by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife and two step-children in a small white, Republican town in Michigan where she now hosts book clubs. This is the bourgeois life of dreams. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with “skinny, luminous peoples” while being a “cheese fry-eating… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism discussed
  • Fatphobia
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Chronic illness & pain (endometriosis)
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent

The Love Haters by Katherine Center

Katie Vaughn has been burned by love in the past—now she may be lighting her career on fire. She has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job as a video producer or, at her co-worker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West. The catch? Katie’s not exactly qualified. She can’t swim—but fakes it that she can. Plus: Cole is Hutch’s brother. And they don’t get along. Next stop paradise! But paradise is messier than it seems. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch (the most scientifically good… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Infidelity (ex-partner)
  • Disordered eating & body dysmorphia, including mentions of past dieting & calorie counting
  • Panic attack
  • Emesis
  • Death of parents in a car accident (off-page)
  • Loved one with terminal heart condition
  • Hurricane mentioned
  • Cyberbullying & harassment

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, misogyny & ableism
  • Emesis
  • Self-injury (for blood) & mentions of self-starvation
  • Chronic illness (IBS & Crohn’s)
  • Needles discussed
  • Animal death & experimentation (including death of a cat)

We Won’t All Survive by Kate Alice Marshall

Two years ago Mercy Gray was hailed as a hero for saving lives during a mall shooting. She still carries souvenirs from that incident: the fragment of a bullet lodged in her back, a mountain of medical debt, and guilt for ignoring her sister’s warnings that the sweet boy next door was anything but. When billionaire-turned-TV-host Damien Dare recruits Mercy to compete on his new survivalist reality show, she can’t turn down a chance at the whopping cash prize that could send her sister to college—but when she and the other contestants arrive at the off-grid location… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • On-going medical condition from gunshot wound sustained in a mass shooting discussed (protagonist)
  • Murder & mass shooting discussed & recounted
  • Kidnapping & stalking

Song of a Blackbird by Maria van Lieshout

In the present day, teenage Annick is desperate to find a bone marrow donor that could save the life of her grandmother, Johanna. She turns to her family history and discovers a photograph taken by Emma Bergsma. Decades earlier, Emma is a young art student about to be drawn into what will become the biggest bank heist in European history: swapping 50 Million Guilders’ worth of forged bank notes for real ones―right under the noses of the Nazis! Emma’s life―and the lives of thousands, including a young woman named Johanna―hangs in the balance. In this… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical antisemitism
  • Chronic illness
  • Death of a grandparent from cancer
  • Gun violence & explosions
  • World War Two & genocide

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down’s Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this story that unfolds over… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Divorce
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned
  • Hospitalisation of a child for a severe allergic reaction (bee sting)
  • Death of a sister from a heart defect at 12-years-old recounted

Context : The protagonist decides to place his daughter with Downs Syndrome in an institution but tells his wife she had passed away at birth.

Do Not Disturb by Claire Douglas

After what happened in London, Kirsty needs a fresh start with her family. And running a guesthouse in the Welsh mountains sounds idyllic. But then their first guest arrives. Selena is the last person Kirsty wants to see. It’s 17 years since she tore everything apart. Why has she chosen now to walk back into Kirsty’s life? Is Selena running from something too? Or is there an even darker reason for her visit?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Attempted suicide & mentions of depression
  • Chronic illness
  • Blackmail mentioned

Do Me a Favor by Cathy Yardley

Willa Lieu-Endicott moved from California to the Pacific Northwest to start over. Since her husband’s death, she’s been struggling to get back her old career as a cookbook ghostwriter. Unfortunately, her latest project—ghostwriting for a viral cooking sensation known more for his washboard abs than his meals—has her stuck. Until she meets her new neighbour. Hudson Clark, the handyman next door, lives on a farm with his parents and two adult children. He’s the opposite of everything she’s ever known. His happily chaotic life includes biker barbecues, an escape artist dog, and adorably menacing goats. He’s also got a sinfully… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a husband due to diabetes-related complications