Tag Archives: Death of a Parent & Guardian

Sweet Dandelion by Micalea Smeltzer

Dandelion Meadows is cursed. Horrible name. Horrible luck. At eighteen she should be headed off to college, all smiles and naivety. Instead, a victim of a school shooting, she’s starting her senior year in a new city and living with her brother. Nightmares of that terrible day haunt her, affecting her daily life and the relationships around her. Forced to meet with the school counsellor, Dani finds him chipping away at the walls she’s built around herself, and even her heart. Lachlan Taylor doesn’t know what to make at first of the broken student he’s tasked with helping. She’s survived a trauma he’s not sure he can save her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Adult-minor relationship between a patient and counsellor
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from a school shooting
  • Death of a mother

The Confidence of Wildflowers by Micalea Smeltzer

My future is a big ‘what if’ at the moment and I’m fine with that. For the most part. When Thayer Holmes moves in next door, the grumpy landscaper both fascinates and amuses me. When he asks me to nanny his kid, it’s a great way to make some extra money. It’s impossible not to fall in love with Thayer and his adorable son. There’s a big problem though. I’m eighteen. He’s thirty-one. Falling for someone almost fifteen years older than me wasn’t part of my plans, but sometimes things happen when you least expect them.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault of a child mentioned
  • Cheating
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Anxiety, panic attacks & night terrors
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent from cancer recounted
  • Death of a child

The Resurrection of Wildflowers by Micalea Smeltzer

It took me a while to learn that sometimes no matter how much, or how hard you love someone, or something, you have to let them go. You can’t save a sinking ship. Sometimes, you have someone else you have to be strong for, who needs you more. You make a choice. A devastating one. And you hope, maybe one day, they’ll come back to you.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Pregnancy & childbirth
  • Death of a mother from cancer
  • Car accident

Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. But when her birthday finally comes around, instead of the idyllic life she was hoping for with her true love, she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day. Forced to become the mistress of the brutal man who owns the jail, Pheby faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart in this powerful, thrilling story of one slave’s fight for freedom.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & colourism
  • Slavery
  • Sexual assault
  • Starvation
  • Death of a parent
  • Physical assault
  • Drowning of a baby

6 Times We Almost Kissed [and One Time We Did] by Tess Sharpe

Penny and Tate have always clashed. Unfortunately, their mothers are lifelong best friends, so the girls’ bickering has carried them through playdates, tragedy, and more than one rom-com marathon with the Moms. When Penny’s mother decides to become a living donor to Tate’s mom, ending her wait for a liver transplant, things go from clashing to cataclysmic. Because in order to help their families recover physically, emotionally, and financially, the Moms combine their households the summer before senior year. So Penny and Tate make a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety
  • Emotional child abuse & neglect
  • Cheating recounted*
  • Sexual assault mentioned*
  • Suicidal ideation mentioned
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical illness & injury*
  • Ovarian cancer mentioned including discussions of the original diagnosis, remission, and death
  • Surgery recounted, including organ donation and an oophorectomy
  • Death of a father, on-page

*Context : The protagonist’s ex cheated on her in the past. Mentions of an interrupted assault that happened twenty-five years earlier. Mentions of dealing with Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency and surgery required for a tug o’ war injury that nearly severed fingers.

1:35AM by Scott Cawthorn, Andrea Waggener and Elley Cooper

From twisted toys to gut-wrenching games, this collection of terrifying tales is unsettling enough to mess with even the most hardened Five Nights at Freddy’s fans. In this volume, horror master Scott Cawthon spins three sinister novella-length stories from different corners of FNAF’s canon. Each story comes complete with accompanying artwork from a fan-favorite game artist to bring the horror to life in a whole new way. Readers beware: In this startling world, desperate wishes have an unexpected cost, beautiful trinkets reveal appalling powers, and harmless pranks can go awry in ghastly ways.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & ableist slurs
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Domestic abuse recounted
  • Foster care recounted
  • Insomnia
  • Dieting
  • Cancer
  • Murder
  • Death of a parent recounted

Asking for Trouble by Tessa Bailey

Brent Mason and Hayden Winstead can’t stand each other. She plans exclusive parties for her rich family’s charities. He’s a rough and tumble cop who rigs explosives for a living. Could two people be any less suited for conversation? They think not and prefer to keep it that way. Unfortunately, their two best friends are deeply, disgustingly in love. Forced together, the mutual attraction simmering beneath the surface of Brent and Hayden’s non-relationship grows with every argument until it explodes into a scintillating night of mind-blowing sex. And it wont be the last, as far as Brent’s concerned. Hayden has a secret… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Sexual harassment
  • Death of a father from overdose recounted

Our Hideous Progeny by C. E. McGill

It’s 1853 London. Ex-medical student Victor Frankenstein has been missing for years now. Frankenstein’s great niece Mary Saville and her husband, Henry, are trying to follow in his scientific footsteps and become renowned paleontologists. They have the brains and the ambition; the only thing they lack is the reputation. Mary is a woman with a sharp mind but a fierce tongue and Henry is an unemployed gambling addict: none of this earning appeal with their peers… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Classism
  • Misogyny
  • Ableism
  • Sexual assault
  • Chronic illness
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Death of an infant mentioned
  • Animal death & experimentation

The Nanny by Lana Ferguson

After losing her job and being on the brink of eviction, Cassie Evans finds herself with two choices: get a new job (and fast) or fire up her long-untouched OnlyFans account. But there are no jobs to be found, and as for OnlyFans… Well, there are reasons she can’t go back. Just when all hope seems lost, an ad for a live-in nanny position seems the solution to all her problems. It’s almost too perfect—until she meets her would-be employer… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Heart attack (sc)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted

A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll

After many lonely years, Abby’s just gotten married. She met her new husband―a recently widowed dentist―when he arrived in town with his young daughter, seeking a new start. Although it’s strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband’s first wife, the more things don’t add up. And Abby starts to wonder . . . was Sheila’s death really by natural causes? As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila’s memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide mentioned
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder