Death of a Partner & Spouse – Page 15 – Trigger Warning Database

Times Like These by Ana McKenzie

Times Like These by Ana McKenzie

Merren Hardy is delighted when her thirst for new experiences turns into a holiday job for an attractive older woman. She’s more than happy to be muse, model, assistant, and lover – especially lover – for brilliant and successful Bianca Graves. After all, Merren’s smart with a big-picture view of the world and a practical streak wide enough to deal with Bianca’s difficulties. She’s a problem-solver. Except there’s one problem Merren’s never had to solve before – what happens when you fall in love with a woman who can’t see you properly? Bianca’s an artist losing… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Anxiety & panic attacks
Death of a spouse recounted

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous. One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Alcoholism
Suicide
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a husband

The Dream Hunter by Laura Kinsale

The Dream Hunter by Laura Kinsale

Desperate to find safety in England, Zenia, the descendent of the Queen of the Desert, dresses herself as a Bedouin boy. For protection, she agrees to guide Arden, the Lord of Winter, through the wilds of her dangerous desert homeland as he searches for a legendary Arabian mare. Consigned by her mother to live disguised, Zenia hasn’t the courage to admit her sex to Arden. Yet, as they cross a merciless desert, she comes to yearn for this fearless, untamable man to know the feminine heart beating beneath her Bedouin rags. Lord Winter’s loneliness and adventurous spirit have always driven him to the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Antiziganism
Misogyny
Unplanned pregnancy
Childbirth
Alcohol consumption
Death of a fiancé by drowning
Death of a mother
Gun violence
Kidnapping
Imprisonment
Animal attack (snake) mentioned

Bloodwitch by Susan Dennard

Bloodwitch by Susan Dennard

High in a snowy mountain range, a monastery that holds more than just faith clings to the side of a cliff. Below, thwarted by a lake, a bloodthirsty horde of raiders await the coming of winter and the frozen path to destroy the sanctuary and its secrets. The Bloodwitch Aeduan has teamed up with the Threadwitch Iseult and the magical girl Owl to stop the destruction. But to do so, he must confront his own father, and his past.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Nightmares
Graphic blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
Graphic physical injuries & illness
Emesis
Death of a baby, on-page
Death of a wife & daughter mentioned
Murder & attempted murder
Mass murder & massacres, on-page
Torture mentioned
Gun violence
Knife violence & stabbing
Fire
Explosions, on-page
Decapitation
Loss of autonomy (possession)
Kidnapping
Disappearance of a friend
Imprisonment mentioned
War & military violence (theme)

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Margot Lee’s mother, Mina, isn’t returning her calls. It’s a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unravelling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother’s life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother. Interwoven with Margot’s present-day search is Mina’s story of her first year in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. While… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Attempted rape & sexual assault
Sexual harassment
Domestic abuse mentioned
Suicidal ideation
Cancer
Death of a mother
Death of a daughter
Death of a husband
Gun violence
Stalking mentioned

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband’s authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Period-typical misogyny
Anti-indigenous racism
Colonialism
Religious bigotry and persecution for witchcraft (theme) including the on-page depiction of witch trials and burning women at the stake
Graphic martial rape and sexual assault
Infidelity*
Forced marriage
Pregnancy and pregnancy from rape discussed including childbirth
Miscarriage
Alcohol consumption
Blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
Death of a friend, on-page
Death of a father, husband and brother mentioned
Mass death by boating accident
Murder, on-page
Torture, implied
Imprisonment mentioned
Near-drowning incident
Animal death

*Context : The protagonist falls in love with a woman but is in a forced arranged marriage with a man.

Cancer Ships Aquarius by Anyta Sunday

Cancer Ships Aquarius by Anyta Sunday

Dumped by the fifth girl in two years and abandoned by his best friends, Reid Glover is alone and in need of a home. Desperate, he interviews to become a live-in manny aboard widowed Sullivan Bell’s yacht, the Aquarian. The job? Not to look after thirteen-year-old Joanna. No, this child-mastermind needs Reid to befriend her dad, urge him to participate more in family life, encourage him to date, oh, and become his closest confidant and help him unleash his bottled emotions.
No pressure. At least he’s not entirely out of his depth. Okay, so he may have a slight aversion to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Parental abandonment mentioned
Alcohol consumption, accidental
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a spouse recounted
Homelessness mentioned

The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane by Kelly Harms

The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane by Kelly Harms

For heartbroken Janine “Janey” Brown, this announcement has the hallmarks of one of her Aunt Midge’s harebrained plans to lure her from her tiny kitchen, where she’s been submerging her grief in the pursuit of the perfect pot-au-feu. Meanwhile, across town, Janine “Nean” Brown couldn’t be more thrilled. She just knows that this house is her destiny, the chance to escape the latest in her revolving door of crappy jobs and drunken boyfriends. When both Janine Browns descend on Christmas Cove, Maine, to claim the prize they both think is theirs, however… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Foster care system
Agoraphobia
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a fiancé

City of Orange by David Yoon

City of Orange by David Yoon

A man who can not remember his own name wakes up in an apocalyptic landscape, injured and alone. He has vague memories of life before, but he can’t see it clearly and can’t grasp how his current situation came to be. He must learn to survive by finding sources of water and foraging for food. Then he encounters a boy–and he realizes nothing is what he thought it was, neither the past nor the present. City of Orange is a novel that is both harrowing and heartfelt, charged with a speculative energy but grounded in intimate character study. It is a novel about coming to grips… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Amnesia & memory loss
Death of a wife & daughter in a car accident

Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson

Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson

Abigail Baskin never thought she’d fall in love with a millionaire. Then she met Bruce Lamb. But right before the wedding, Abigail has a drunken one-night stand on her bachelorette weekend. She puts the incident—and the sexy guy who wouldn’t give her his real name—out of her mind, and now believes she wants to be with Bruce for the rest of her life. Then the mysterious stranger suddenly appears—and Abigail’s future life and happiness are turned upside down. He insists that their passionate night was the beginning of something special and he’s tracked her down to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Rape by coercion, on-page
Domestic abuse & violence
Cheating
Alcohol consumption, on-page
Recreational drug use & smoking, on-page
Drugging, on-page
Blood & gore depiction
Death of a husband, on-page
Graphic murder & attempted murder, on-page
Knife violence & stabbing, on-page
Bow & arrow violence
Torture & psychological torture
Kidnapping & captivity
Stalking
Bullying mentioned