Tag Archives: Death of a Sister

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of death of a sister.

See also Grief & loss depiction.

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin

Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men – employees at the resort – are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives. Years later, Claire is living and working in New York… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder of a sister

Change of Plans by Dylan Newton

When disaster strikes and chef Bryce Weatherford is given guardianship of her three young nieces, her life goes from cooking with fire…to controlling a dumpster fire. Five‑year‑old Addison refuses to remove her fairy wings, eight‑year‑old Cecily won’t bathe, and tween June is majoring in belligerence. With all this chaos, Bryce jettisons hope for a life outside of managing her family and her new job. It’s been years since Ryker Matthews had his below‑the‑knee amputation, yet the phantom pain for his lost limb and Marine career haunts him. To cope, he focuses on his vehicle… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Military Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Leg amputation due to IED explosion sustained during military service (protagonist)
  • Parent with dementia
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother & sister-in-law in a car accident

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead. There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more. But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod’s family.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Drugging
  • Murder of a father, mother & sister by stabbing
  • Kidnapping
  • Gun & knife violence
  • Car accident mentioned (hit-and-run)
  • Bullying

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquillity is shattered by a woman’s terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who’d happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & ableism, including mentions of police brutality
  • Physical child abuse by alcoholic parent(secondary character)
  • Dieting mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Parental infertility mentioned (secondary character)
  • Physical injury & mentions of the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Death of a father from a heart attack mentioned (secondary character)
  • Death of a sister in a mountaineering accident recounted
  • Murder
  • Mugging with knife (secondary character)
  • Phyiscal assault
  • Incarceration for the murder of a stepfather in self-defence (secondary character)
  • Homelessness mentioned
  • Bushfires mentioned

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