Tag Archives: Death of a Sister

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a sister from suicide by overdose

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down’s Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this story that unfolds over… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Divorce
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned
  • Hospitalisation of a child for a severe allergic reaction (bee sting)
  • Death of a sister from a heart defect at 12-years-old recounted

Context : The protagonist decides to place his daughter with Downs Syndrome in an institution but tells his wife she had passed away at birth.

Swimming at Night by Lucy Clarke

People go traveling for two reasons: because they are searching for something, or they are running from something. Katie’s world is shattered by the news that her headstrong and bohemian younger sister, Mia, has been found dead at the bottom of a cliff in Bali. The authorities say that Mia jumped—that her death was a suicide. Although they’d hardly spoken to each other since Mia suddenly left on an around-the-world trip six months earlier, Katie refuses to accept that her sister would have taken her own life. Distraught that they never made peace, Katie leaves her order… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Suicide discussed
  • Death of a sister
  • Death of a mother from cancer
  • Death of a father from suicide mentioned

The Songbird & the Heart of Stone by Carissa Broadbent

Mische lost everything when she was forcibly Turned into a vampire – her home, her humanity, and most devastating of all, the love of the sun god to whom she had devoted her life. Now, sentenced to death for murdering the vampire prince who Turned her, redemption feels impossible. But when Mische is saved by Asar, the bastard prince of the House of Shadow with a past as brutal as his scars, she’s forced into a mission worse than execution: a journey to the underworld to resurrect the god of death himself. Yet, Mische’s punishment may be the key to her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Statutory rape & child sexual abuse recounted
  • Sex work recounted (secondary character)
  • Exile recounted
  • Nightmares
  • Dementia (secondary character)
  • Blood & injury depiction (scars, burns, broken leg, etc) & blood-drinking, including protagonist with facial and body scars and vision impairment (loss of left eye)
  • Emesis
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Murder of sister & friend recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Infanticide recounted
  • Physical assault
  • Loss of autonomy (mind invasion)
  • Imprisonment
  • Murder of a pet dog recounted

Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay

After a late night of partying, NYU student Matt Pine returns to his dorm room to devastating news: nearly his entire family—his mom, his dad, his little brother and sister—have been found dead from an apparent gas leak while vacationing in Mexico. The local police claim it was an accident, but the FBI and State Department seem far less certain—and they won’t tell Matt why. The tragedy makes headlines everywhere because this isn’t the first time the Pine family has been thrust into the media spotlight. Matt’s older brother, Danny—currently serving a life sentence for the murder… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Prescription drug abuse & recreational drug use
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a girlfriend, daughter & sister
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Murder
  • Stabbing
  • Gassing
  • Physical assault
  • Wrongful imprisonment
  • Animal attack mentioned

Unveiled by Courtney Milan

Of all Ash Turner’s accomplishments, stealing a dukedom from his old enemy is by far the most brazen. Now that he’s been recognized as the heir, nothing remains but to head to Parford Manor and survey the estate that will be his. He expects opposition. He gets Lady Margaret. Margaret lost everything when Ash claimed the dukedom: her dowry, her legitimacy, and her place in society. Now Ash wants to take her family home, too. She disguises herself as a nurse, determined to learn his weaknesses. But the closer she comes to Ash, the greater the pull of his reckless… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Parental bigamy mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Childhood poverty & food scarcity mentioned
  • Bullying recounted

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau by Kristin Harmel

Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance. But one night in 1942, it all went wrong. Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared in the chaos of the raid, along with an… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & antisemitism
  • Hate crime
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sister/child
  • Kidnapping
  • World War II (theme)

The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis

Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbed to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before. The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls—a little odd, think some; a little high on themselves, perhaps—they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As,… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny & toxic masculinity
  • Sexual harassment
  • Alcoholism
  • Infertility
  • Murder
  • Animal death & cruelty

Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie. When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave,… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & racial slurs (on-page)
  • Slavery of a child on a plantation (protagonist, on-page)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sister

The Fix by Mia Sheridan

Eleven years ago, Cami Cortlandt’s mother and sister died cruelly in a violent home invasion. The trauma and notoriety still linger, but Cami has managed to build a life in her hometown despite everything she’s lost. Then one day it all comes rushing back. A distorted voice on the phone: Would you like a do-over? A disturbing video of a room with bars on the window, trapping a young boy inside who looks achingly, impossibly familiar. Four days to find him. With the help of Rex Lowe, an old classmate whose past is inextricably tied to her own, Cami races to uncover everything she can about the boy—where he is, who he is, and why… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape (multiple by captor, on-page & discussed)
  • Teen pregnancy & adoption
  • Drugging
  • Murder of a mother & sister in a home invasion (on-page)
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping & captivity