Tag Archives: Death of a Parent & Guardian

Cruel Seduction by Katee Robert

He was my enemy. My lover. My husband.

And the one man I swore by all Olympus I would destroy.

Aphrodite has never flinched at getting her perfectly manicured hands dirty, and she’s not about to start now—even if that means marrying Olympus’s enemy number one, the new Hephaestus. She has a wicked plan to keep her deadly new husband off-balance, seducing the one person he seems to care about most in this world: Pandora, a woman as beautiful as she is sweet… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Attempted sexual assault, off-page
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of parents mentioned
  • Murder & attempted murder

Witch of Wild Things by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Legend goes that long ago a Flores woman offended the old gods, and their family was cursed as a result. Now, every woman born to the family has a touch of magic.

Sage Flores has been running from her family—and their “gifts”—ever since her younger sister Sky died. Eight years later, Sage reluctantly returns to her hometown. Like slipping into an old, comforting sweater, Sage takes back her job at Cranberry Rose Company and uses her ability to communicate with plants to discover unusual heritage specimens in the surrounding lands… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Threats of revenge pornography
  • Domestic abuse recounted
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Death of a parent & sibling recounted

Tempt Our Fate by Kat Singleton

I’ve spent my entire life in the small town of Sutten Mountain where everyone knows everyone and you can spot trouble from a mile away.

Camden is trouble.

He’s an arrogant, self-absorbed billionaire from the city with too much money and not enough manners.

And he just opened a fancy art gallery next door to my bakery… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent, off-page

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

Evangeline Fox was raised in her beloved father’s curiosity shop, where she grew up on legends about immortals, like the tragic Prince of Hearts. She knows his powers are mythic, his kiss is worth dying for, and that bargains with him rarely end well.

But when Evangeline learns that the love of her life is about to marry another, she becomes desperate enough to offer the Prince of Hearts whatever he wants in exchange for his help to stop the wedding. The prince only asks for three kisses… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction & mentions of blood-drinking
  • Death of a parents mentioned (off-page)
  • Murder
  • Blackmail
  • Forced starvation (magical, vampires caged without blood)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Animal attack (wolf)

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Told in Kvothe’s own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen.

The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of travelling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Death of parents
  • Fire, arson & burns
  • Murder
  • Poisoning
  • Poverty themes
  • Homelessness

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See

From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom.

But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Pregnancy
  • Childbirth
  • Miscarriage
  • Infertility
  • Foot binding
  • Death of a mother
  • Grief depiction

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Hate crimes
  • Classism
  • Death of a parent
  • Child death
  • Physical assault
  • Animal cruelty

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, including slurs & cultural appropriation
  • Classism
  • Colourism
  • Misogyny & sexism
  • Islamophobia
  • Violent hate crime
  • Slavery, including child labour
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide discussed
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Blood depiction
  • Emesis
  • Feet binding discussed
  • Plague
  • Death of mother
  • Grief depiction
  • Murder
  • Police brutality
  • Genocide
  • Gun violence
  • Torture
  • Physical assault
  • Colonization
  • War themes

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Bullying
  • Anxiety
  • Emesis
  • Heart failure mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of an animal
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Poisoning mentioned
  • War themes

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year. The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotional child abuse discussed (on-page)
  • Hallucinations (protagonist)
  • Physical injury & illness (on-page)
  • Emesis
  • Death of a father from suicide by drowning after terminal cancer discussed (off-page)
  • Graphic animal death & injury (theme) including the protagonist being swallowed alive by a sperm whale

*Context : The protagonist’s father uses dive weights to drown after his terminal cancer diagnosis. A general warning for content sensitive for readers with claustrophobia.