Tag Archives: Death of a Parent & Guardian

Practice Makes Perfect by Sarah Adams

Annie Walker is on a quest to find her perfect match-someone who nicely compliments her happy, quiet life running her flower shop in Rome, Kentucky. Unfortunately, she worries her goal might be too far out of reach when she overhears her date saying she is “so unbelievably boring.” Is it too late to become flirtatious and fun like the leading ladies in her favorite romance movies? Maybe she only needs a little practice…and Annie has the perfect person in mind to become her tutor: Will Griffin… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Child abuse discussed
  • Social anxiety (SAD)
  • Grandparent with Alzheimer’s Disease mentioned
  • Death of parents recounted

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center

Sadie Montgomery never saw what was coming . . . Literally! One minute she’s celebrating the biggest achievement of her life—placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition—the next, she’s lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a “probably temporary” condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. Imagine trying to read a book upside down and in another language. This is Sadie’s new reality with every face she sees… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sibling abuse recounted*
  • Cheating recounted
  • Prosopagnosia
  • Brain surgery & recovery
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted

*Context: Discussions of the toxic relationship and harassment from a stepsibling including being bullied and being kicked out of school, and being framed for cheating, stealing, and tormenting a classmate resulting in attempted suicide.

The Only One Left by Riley Sager

Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Cheating
  • Suicide by hanging
  • Overdose
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Childbirth
  • Teenage accidental pregnancy
  • Blood depiction
  • Terminal illness
  • Death of an infant discussed
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Death from a fall recounted
  • Death of a father
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence

Maame by Jessica George

It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.

When her mum returns from her latest trip to Ghana, Maddie leaps at the chance to get out of the family home and finally start living… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Panic attacks
  • Parkison’s Disease
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent

A Multitude of Dreams by Mara Rutherford

Princess Imogen of Goslind has lived a sheltered life for three years at the boarded-up castle—she and the rest of its inhabitants safe from the bloody mori roja plague that’s ravaged the kingdom. But Princess Imogen has a secret, and as King Stuart descends further into madness, it’s at great risk of being revealed. Rations dwindle each day, and unhappy murmurings threaten to crack the facade of the years-long charade being played within the castle walls… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anti-semitism
  • Poverty
  • Emotional abuse
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Blood drinking
  • Dead bodies
  • Decapitation
  • Pandemic/contagion
  • Starvation
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Mass deaths from pandemic
  • Captivity
  • Murder

Unseelie by Ivelisse Housman

Twin sisters, both on the run, but different as day and night. One, a professional rogue, searches for a fabled treasure; the other, a changeling, searches for the truth behind her origins, trying to find a place to fit in with the realm of fae who made her and the humans who shun her.  Iselia “Seelie” Graygrove looks just like her twin, Isolde… but as an autistic changeling trying to navigate her unpredictable magic, Seelie finds it more difficult to fit in with the humans around her. When Seelie and Isolde are caught up in a heist gone wrong and make some unexpected allies… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & fantastical eugenics
  • Child abuse recounted (secondary character)
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Murder
  • Knife violence
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Loss of autonomy (magical compulsion)
  • Fire
  • Bullying

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Drug use
  • Miscarriage
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a spouse
  • Animal death

Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall

Valentine Layton, the Duke of Malvern, has twin problems: literally.

It was always his father’s hope that Valentine would marry Miss Arabella Tarleton. But, unfortunately, too many novels at an impressionable age have caused her to grow up…romantic. So romantic that a marriage of convenience will not do and after Valentine’s proposal she flees into the night determined never to set eyes on him again… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Internalised amisia
  • Physical injury, including a gunshot wound
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Gun violence (pistol duel)
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Animal death (bird)

The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

The rule is simple: don’t bleed.

For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she’s been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Incest*
  • Necrophilia mentioned
  • Delusions, including a diagnosis of Capgras Syndrome
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm including cutting and self-inflicted wounds
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction (theme)
  • Body horror
  • Medical procedures including autopsies
  • Dismemberment
  • Hospital
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother and father, off-page
  • Death of a child
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Strangulation
  • Gun violence
  • Graphic knife violence & stabbing
  • Graphic physical assault
  • Captivity
  • Fire
  • Death of a pet dog
  • Animal death & dead bodies including butchery

Context: a) there is a scene where the protagonist is interrupted having sex with her boyfriend by her doppelgänger and they let her join in and b) it is mentioned that the protagonist’s father caught her touching her doppelgänger’s genitals when she was a kid.

What Once Was Mine by Liz Braswell

Desperate to save the life of their queen and her unborn child, the good people of Corona search for the all-healing Sundrop flower to cure her—but mistakenly acquire the shimmering Moondrop flower instead. Nonetheless it heals the queen, and she delivers a healthy baby girl with hair as silver and gray as the moon. With it comes dangerous magical powers: the power to hurt, not heal. For her safety and the safety of the kingdom, Rapunzel is locked in a tower and put under the care of powerful goodwife, Mother Gothel… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infertility
  • Cancer