Tag Archives: Death of a Child

Home Is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose

After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm’s length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn’t been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before. While going through their parent’s belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories. However, the nostalgia is cut short when one of the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Substance addiction & drug abuse mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Death of mother & child
  • Murder
  • Fire

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Darcy Patel is afraid to believe all the hype. But it’s really happening – her teen novel is getting published. Instead of heading to college, she’s living in New York City, where she’s welcomed into the dazzling world of YA publishing. That means book tours, parties with her favourite authors, and finding a place to live that won’t leave her penniless. It means sleepless nights rewriting her first draft and struggling to find the perfect ending… all while dealing with the intoxicating, terrifying experience of falling in love – with another writer.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder & mentions of the serial murder of children
  • Mass shooting (terrorist attack)

A Shot at Normal by Marisa Reichardt

Juniper Jade’s parents are hippies. They didn’t attend the first Woodstock, but they were there for the second one. The Jade family lives an all-organic homeschool lifestyle that means no plastics, no cell phones, and no vaccines. It isn’t exactly normal, but it’s the only thing Juniper has ever known. She doesn’t agree with her parents on everything, but she knows that to be in this family, you’ve got to stick to the rules. That is, until the unthinkable happens. Juniper contracts the measles and unknowingly passes the disease along, with tragic consequences. She is shell-shocked. June.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Discussions of antivaxxers and child neglect
  • Physical illness (measles)
  • Death of an infant

Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Mary-Rose MacKinnon–nicknamed MR or “Mister”–is a successful YA author who has made enough from her writing to semi-retire in her early 40s. She lives in a comfortable Toronto neighbourhood with her partner, Hilary, a busy theatre director, and their 2 young children, Matthew and Maggie, trying valiantly and often hilariously to balance her creative pursuits with domestic demands, and the various challenges that (mostly) solo parenting presents. As a child, Mary-Rose suffered from an illness, long since cured and “filed separately” in her mind. But as her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Internalised racism
  • Homophobia & biphobia
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse (off-page)
  • Child abuse
  • Stillbirth (on-page)
  • Death of an infant
  • Animal death

No Hiding in Boise by Kim Hooper

When Angie is awakened by a midnight call from an officer with the Boise Police Department, she thinks there must be a misunderstanding. The officer tells her that her husband was involved in a shooting at a local bar, but how can that be possible when her husband is sleeping right next to her? Except when she turns to wake him, he isn’t there. Tessa is the twenty-three-year-old bartender who escapes to a backroom storage closet during the shooting. When it comes to light that five people were killed, she is burdened with the question of why she survived. Joyce… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Eating disorder
  • Death of a husband and son from suicide
  • Mass shooting (theme) including the death of the perpetrator to suicide

Nosy Neighbours by Freya Sampson

Twenty-five-year-old Kat Bennett has never felt at home anywhere, and especially not in crumbling Shelley House. According to her neighbours, she’s prickly and unapproachable, but beneath her tough exterior, Kat is plagued by guilt from her past. Seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling is Shelley House’s longest resident, and if you believe the other tenants, she’s as cantankerous and vindictive as they come. Except there’s a good reason Dorothy spends her days spying on her neighbours—a closely guarded secret that no else knows and the reason Dorothy barely leaves her beloved home. When their building faces… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a child
  • Homelessness

Snowfall and Secrets by Kimmy Loth

Tess escapes from Florida with a secret as big as Miami. She needs to find someplace to lay low and hide from her overbearing family. Mackinac Island, Michigan, should be the perfect place to hide out. However, her timing is a little off, it’s the dead of winter and she’s never been in temperatures below fifty degrees. Just her luck, her landlord, Lukas, is as hot as the sun. He’s also moody and hiding secrets as well. Which suits Tess fine. A man is the last complication she needs. A Michigan blizzard leaves them trapped in the same house together and things heat up, fast. Tess finds herself falling for Lukas, in spite of the secrets that could ruin everything before it even begins.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape & sexual harassment
  • Domestic abuse
  • Abortion discussed
  • Emesis
  • Death of a child

Maureen by Rachel Joyce

Maureen Fry has settled into the quiet life she shares with her husband after his iconic walk across England ten years ago. When an unexpected message from the North disturbs her equilibrium again, it is now her turn to make a journey. But Maureen is not like Harold. By turns outspoken, then vulnerable, she struggles to form bonds with the people she meets, and the landscape she crosses has radically changed. And Maureen has no sense of what she will find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she has to get there… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a son from suicide recounted

Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles

1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild devastated French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen—children’s libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears. 1987: When NYPL librarian and aspiring writer Wendy Peterson stumbles across a passing… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Death of an infant (off-page)
  • World War I

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo–until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. On the way, Nuri is sustained by the knowledge that waiting for them is Mustafa, his cousin and business partner, who has started an apiary and is teaching fellow refugees in Yorkshire to keep bees. As Nuri and Afra travel through a.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a son in a explosion & loss of vision from injuries sustained during said explosion (protagonist)
  • War themes