Tag Archives: Death of a Parent & Guardian

The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer

What’s the point of giving someone a beautiful death if you can’t give yourself a beautiful life?

From the day she watched her kindergarten teacher drop dead during a dramatic telling of Peter Rabbit , Clover Brooks has felt a stronger connection with the dying than she has with the living. After the beloved grandfather who raised her dies alone while she is traveling, Clover becomes a death doula in New York City, dedicating her life to ushering people peacefully through their end-of-life process… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical injury & illness including liver failure and death of secondary characters from heart attacks and cancer
  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Death of a grandfather & guardian

One of Us Is Back by Karen M. McManus

Ever since Simon died in detention, life hasn’t been easy for the Bayview Crew. First the Bayview Four had to prove they weren’t killers. Then a new generation had to outwit a vengeful copycat. Now, it’s beginning again.

At first the mysterious billboard seems like a bad joke: Time for a new game, Bayview. But when a member of the crew disappears, it’s clear this ‘game’ just got serious – and no one understands the rules… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cancer remission mentioned
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Attempted murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking
  • Gun violence

Congratulations, the Best is Over! by R. Eric Thomas

After going viral “reading” the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas is ready to live his best life–or, if not, at least his best-ish life.

Now, in this collection of insightful and hilarious essays, Thomas finds himself doing things completely out of character, starting with moving back to his perpetually misunderstood hometown of Baltimore. They say you can’t go home again, but what if you and home have changed beyond recognition?.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Depression & anxiety
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of grandparents from a stroke
  • Death of a father-in-law from a heart attack

You, Again by Kate Goldbeck

When Ari and Josh first meet, the wrong kind of sparks fly. They hate each other. Instantly.

A free-spirited, struggling comedian who likes to keep things casual, Ari sublets, takes gigs, and she never sleeps over after hooking up. Born-and-bred Manhattanite Josh has ambitious plans: Take the culinary world by storm, find The One, and make her breakfast in his spotless kitchen. They have absolutely nothing in common . . . except that they happen to be sleeping with the same woman… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Divorce
  • Recreational drug use
  • Death of a parent recounted

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place.

Charlie’s life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Familial estrangement
  • Mutilation of a dead body
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Murder, on-page
  • Fire
  • Bombing & missile attack

Hatchet Girls by Diana Rodriguez Wallach

When the parents of the richest family in Fall River are found murdered by axe, the town is quick to blame newcomer Vik. It doesn’t help that he was caught standing over the bodies with blood on his hands and can’t remember anything about the night in question.

But Vik’s sister, Tessa, knows that Vik would never be capable of such a gruesome crime. Haunted by the mistakes she made that led her family to Fall River in the first place, she sets out to prove her brother’s innocence… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Car accident recounted, off-page

Family Meal by Bryan Washington

Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai’s ghost won’t leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ’s family bakery. TJ’s not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said – and left unsaid – to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time?.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Sex addiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a partner
  • Death of parents in a car accident recounted

Little Dancer by Tate Monroe and Rory Ireland

Tragedy brings us together and the ties that bind are wrapped as tight as the ribbons on her pointe shoes.

I’ll make a deal with the pretty ballerina to quench my immorality.

My tiny little dancer will learn to let go and let me lead her into sin.

When it’s over, will I watch her with fondness as she spreads her wings and flies or will I shackle the radiant swan to me?.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Age-gap romance
  • Death of parents in a plane crash

*Context: Relationship between a nineteen-year-old woman and a thirty-six-year-old man.

Things We Left Behind by Lucy Score

There was only one woman who could set me free. But I would rather set myself on fire than ask Sloane Walton for anything.

Lucian Rollins is a lean, mean vengeance-seeking mogul. On a quest to erase his father’s mark on the family name, he spends every waking minute pulling strings and building an indestructible empire. The more money and power he amasses, the safer he is from threats… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence, on-page
  • Alcoholism
  • Death of a parent from cancer
  • Fire

Knockout by Sarah MacLean

With her headful of wild curls and wilder ideas and an unabashed love of experiments and explosives, society has labeled Lady Imogen Loveless peculiar…and doesn’t know she’s one of the Hell’s Belles—a group of vigilantes operating outside the notice of most of London

Thomas Peck is not most of London. The brilliant detective fought his way off the streets and into a promising career through sheer force of will and a keen ability to see things others miss, like the fact that Imogen isn’t peculiar… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abortion mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder mentioned
  • Explosions
  • Fire and resulting destruction of property
  • Police corruption