Tag Archives: Death of a Parent & Guardian

Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese

Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese

Isobel Gamble is a young seamstress carrying generations of secrets when she sets sail from Scotland in the early 1800s with her husband, Edward. An apothecary who has fallen under the spell of opium, his pile of debts have forced them to flee Edinburgh for a fresh start in the New World. But only days after they’ve arrived in Salem, Edward abruptly joins a departing ship as a medic––leaving Isobel penniless and alone in a strange country, forced to make her way by any means possible. When she meets a young Nathaniel Hawthorne, the two are instantly drawn to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Slavery
  • Misogyny
  • Domestic violence
  • Substance addiction
  • Self-harm including self-flagellation
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Lynching
  • Kidnapping
  • Torture

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

As Princesses of Crete and daughters of the fearsome King Minos, Ariadne and her sister Phaedra grow up hearing the hoofbeats and bellows of the Minotaur echo from the Labyrinth beneath the palace. The Minotaur – Minos’s greatest shame and Ariadne’s brother – demands blood every year When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives in Crete as a sacrifice to the beast, Ariadne falls in love with him. But helping Theseus kill the monster means betraying her family and country, and Ariadne knows only too well that in a world ruled by mercurial gods – drawing their attention…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Rape
  • Incest (mother-stepson)
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Pregnancy
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Bestiality
  • Animal cruelty
  • Animal death

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, it’s her dad: the vital, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Parent with terminal cancer
  • Death of a parent

Hooked by Emily McIntire

James has always had one agenda: destroy his enemy, Peter Michaels. When Peter’s twenty-year-old daughter Wendy shows up in James’s bar, he sees his way in. Seduce the girl and use her for his revenge. It’s the perfect plan until things in James’s organization begin to crumble. Suddenly, he has to find the traitor in his midst, and his plan for revenge gets murkier as James starts to see Wendy as more than just a pawn in his game. Wendy has been cloistered away most of her life by her wealthy cold father, but a spontaneous night out with friends turns into an intense and addictive love affair with the dark and brooding James… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Paedophilia
  • Drugging
  • Pregnancy
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction including amputation and emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent in a car accident recounted
  • Death of a relative in a plane crash
  • Murder
  • Graphic torture
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping
  • Consensual choking (breath pay)

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill. In the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Incest
  • Alcoholism
  • Cancer
  • Death of a parent
  • Car accident
  • Bullying

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace he’d only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings, he sits on a bench holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. “There is a balm in Gilead,” his neighbour Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket, “to make the wounded whole.” While Gamache doesn’t talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells him about hers. Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home. Failed to show up as promised on… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Car accident

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

Welcome to winter in Three Pines, a picturesque village in Quebec, where the villagers are preparing for a traditional country Christmas, and someone is preparing for murder. No one liked CC de Poitiers. Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter—and certainly none of the residents of Three Pines. CC de Poitiers managed to alienate everyone, right up until the moment of her death. When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Sûreté du Québec, is called to investigate, he quickly realizes he’s dealing with someone quite extra… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia & body-shaming
  • Forced institutionalisation
  • Eating disorder
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Nora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby. Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Depression mentioned
  • Stroke (parent)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother recounted

Prisoner B3087 by Alan Gratz

Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz

Survive. At any cost. 10 concentration camps. 10 different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly. It’s something no one could imagine surviving. But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face. As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prison, his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087. He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism & Nazism
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a friend
  • Imprisonment in concentration camps (theme)
  • War World Two & the Holocaust

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs. Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody old… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Chronic illness (Type 1 Diabetes)
  • Death of a parent recounted