Tag Archives: Death of a Parent & Guardian

The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert

In the course of a single winter’s night, four people vanish without a trace across a small town. Nora’s estranged best friend, Becca, is one of the lost. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca’s disappearance, she discovers a darkness in her town’s past, as well as a string of coded messages Becca left for her to unravel. These clues lead Nora to a piece of local folklore: a legendary goddess of forgotten origins who played a role in Nora and Becca’s own childhood games…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Self-injury
  • Car accident
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent (off-page)
  • Murder by suffocation

After Annie by Anna Quindlen

When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her four young children and her closest friend are left to struggle without the woman who centred their lives. Bill Brown finds himself overwhelmed, and Annie’s best friend Annemarie is lost to old bad habits without Annie’s support. It is Annie’s daughter, Ali, forced to try to care for her younger brothers and even her father, who manages to maintain some semblance of their former lives for them all, and who confronts the complicated truths of adulthood. Yet over the course of the next year, while Annie looms large in…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (Theme)
  • Death of a mother & wife from a brain aneurism

Tender Beasts by Liselle Sambury

With the death of Sunny’s mother, matriarch of the wealthy Behre family, Sunny’s once picture-perfect life is thrown into turmoil. Her mother had groomed her to be the family’s next leader, so Sunny is confused when the only instructions her mother leaves is a mysterious note: “Take care of Dom.” The problem is, her youngest brother, Dom, has always been a near-stranger to Sunny…and seemingly a dangerous one, if found guilty of his second-degree murder charge. Still, Sunny is determined to fulfil her mother’s dying wish. But when a classmate is gruesomely murdered, and Sunny finds her brother with blood on his hands, her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Terminal cancer mentioned
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Fire
  • Car accident
  • Stalking

The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu

Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers about her family’s past and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother was their savvy, charismatic North Star, setting up two successful nail salons and orchestrating every success―until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. After the funeral, no one was ever allowed to talk about her or what had happened. For the next twenty years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone―why did the most perfect… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a mother during cosmetic surgery

Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez

Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it’s now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They’ll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other’s out, and they’ll both go on to find the love of their lives. It’s a bonkers idea… and it just might work. Emma hadn’t planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abandonment & neglect recounted
  • Foster care experiences mentioned
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Depression
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent in a car accident mentioned
  • Incarceration of a parent

The Prospects by K.T. Hoffman

Hope is familiar territory for Gene Ionescu. He has always loved baseball, a sport made for underdogs and optimists like him. He also loves his team, the minor league Beaverton Beavers, and, for the most part, he loves the career he’s built. As the first openly trans player in professional baseball, Gene has nearly everything he’s ever let himself dream of—that is, until Luis Estrada, Gene’s former teammate and current rival, gets traded to the Beavers, destroying the careful equilibrium of Gene’s life. Gene and Luis can’t manage a civil conversation off the field or a competent play on it, but in the close confines… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Transphobia mentioned & deadnaming recounted
  • Coming out themes
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking mentioned (secondary character)
  • Parent with alcoholism recounted
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Surgery & needles mentioned
  • Hospitalisation for fainting from dehydration after a panic attack
  • Minor sport injury (secondary character)
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Car accident recounted*

*Context : A protagonist had a panic attack while driving. Mentions of scars from top surgery, and the use of needles for testosterone injections and ear piercings. A protagonist is adopted by his uncle after his alcoholic mother abandoned him as a child.

Colton Gentry’s Third Act by Jeff Zentner

Colton Gentry is riding high. His first hit in nearly a decade has caught fire, he’s opening for country megastar Brant Lucas, and he’s married to one of the hottest acts in the country. But he’s hurting. Only a few weeks earlier, his best friend, Duane, was murdered onstage by a mass shooter at a country music festival. One night, with his trauma festering and Jim Beam flowing through his veins, Colton stands before a sold-out arena crowd of country music fans and offers his unfiltered opinion on guns. It goes over poorly. Immediately, his career and marriage… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend & parent
  • Mass shooting discussed

Swift River by Essie J. Chambers

It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: She’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and the fact that since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on. But when Diamond receives a letter from a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Death of a parent
  • Bullying

Powerless by Lauren Roberts

She is the very thing he’s spent his whole life hunting. He is the very thing she’s spent her whole life pretending to be. Only the extraordinary belong in the kingdom of Ilya—the exceptional, the empowered, the Elites. The powers these Elites have possessed for decades were graciously gifted to them by the Plague, though not all were fortunate enough to both survive the sickness and reap the reward. Those born Ordinary are just that—ordinary. And when the king decreed that all Ordinaries be banished in order to preserve his Elite society, lacking an ability suddenly became a crime—making Paedyn Gray a felon by fate and… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic abuse
  • Panic attack
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Graphic blood & injury depiction
  • Plague recounted
  • Death of a mother from a fever recounted
  • Death of a father from sword violence recounted
  • Genocide
  • Explosions & fire
  • Knife, sword, spear & weapons violence
  • Whipping
  • Animal death
  • Rockslide

Where Foxes Hunt with Wolves by K.A. Merikan

Yevhen. Forest ranger. Werewolf. Stifled by pack rules. Radek. Foxy ginger brat. Changeling. Will avoid responsibility at all cost. Banished from his pack for being gay, Yev has one last chance to redeem himself in the eyes of his family. He needs to stick to the rules for a year, and bury his sexuality forever. Shouldn’t be so hard, since he can’t have a relationship with a human without revealing his werewolf nature. That is until one night, a drunk ginger brat points a rifle in his face. Radek finished University months ago but thinking about the future is not on his agenda. Life would be great if he could just avoid any and all… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Loss of limb & amputation
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Animal abuse