Tag Archives: Drowning

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of drowning.

See also Murder & attempted murder and Asphyxia.

Backwards to Oregon by Jae

“Luke” Hamilton has always been sure that she’d never marry. She accepted that she would spend her life alone when she chose to live her life disguised as a man.
After working in a brothel for three years, Nora Macauley has lost all illusions about love. She no longer hopes for a man who will sweep her off her feet and take her away to begin a new, respectable life. But now they find themselves married and on the way to Oregon in a covered wagon, with two thousand miles ahead of them.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape & attempted rape
  • Sexual harassment
  • Domestic abuse
  • Miscarriage
  • Drowning

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is Kingston’s disturbing and fiercely beautiful account of growing up Chinese-American in California. The young Kingston lives in two worlds: the America to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” Her mother tells her traditional tales of strong, wily women warriors – tales that clash puzzlingly with the real oppression of women. Kingston learns to fill in the mystifying spaces in her mother’s stories with stories of her own, engaging her family’s past and her own present with anger, imagination, and dazzling passion.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Cheating
  • Suicide by drowning
  • Alcohol consumption & mentions of smoking
  • Pregnancy
  • Murder
  • Sword violence
  • Animal death

Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley

Years ago, Rachel had a crush on Henry Jones. The day before she moved away, she tucked a love letter into his favorite book in his family’s bookshop. She waited. But Henry never came. Now Rachel has returned to the city—and to the bookshop—to work alongside the boy she’d rather not see, if at all possible, for the rest of her life. But Rachel needs the distraction, and the escape. Her brother drowned months ago, and she can’t feel anything anymore. She can’t see her future. Henry’s future isn’t looking too promising, either. His girlfriend dumped him. The bookstore is slipping… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a brother from drowning recounted
  • Bullying mentioned

Fall of the School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

What rises . . . must fall. Two brothers One Good. One Evil. In exchange for power and immortality, they watch over the Endless Woods and rule the School for Good and Evil. Yet all School Masters must face a test. Theirs is loyalty. But what happens when loyalty is corrupted? When the bonds of blood are broken? Who will survive? Who will die? And what will become of the school and its students? The journey that started a hundred years ago throttles towards its end.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Smoking
  • Blood depiction & mentions of blood-drinking
  • Death of children mentioned
  • Torture by waterboarding/drowning
  • Physical assault & fantasy violence

Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane

Achilles has fled her home and her vicious Myrmidon clan to live as a woman with the kallai, the transgender priestesses of Great Mother Aphrodite. When Odysseus comes to recruit the “prince” Achilles for a war against the Hittites, she prepares to die rather than fight as a man. However, her divine mother, Athena, intervenes, transforming her body into the woman’s body she always longed for, and promises her everything: glory, power, fame, victory in war, and, most importantly, a child born of her own body. Reunited with her beloved cousin, Patroklos, and his brilliant wife, the sorceress Meryapi, Achilles sets out to war with a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Homophobia
  • Transphobia, deadnaming & misgendering
  • Rape mentioned
  • Infidelity
  • Self-sacrifice
  • Pregnancy & childbirth
  • Blood depiction & blood-drinking
  • Ritualistic cannibalism
  • Murder
  • Immolation
  • Drowning
  • Physical assault
  • Animal sacrifice

We Don’t Swim Here by Vincent Tirado

Bronwyn is only supposed to be in rural Hillwoods for a year. Her grandmother is in hospice, and her father needs to get her affairs in order. And they’re all meant to make some final memories together. Except Bronwyn is miserable. Her grandmother is dying, everyone is standoffish, and she can’t even go swimming. All she hears are warnings about going in the water, despite a gorgeous lake. And a pool at the abandoned rec center. And another in the high school basement. Anais ties her hardest to protect Bronwyn from the shad… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Hate crime
  • Suicide discussed
  • Hospitalisation
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Drowning

Beating Heart Baby by Lio Min

When artistic and sensitive Santi arrives at his new high school, everyone in the wildly talented marching band welcomes him with open arms. Everyone except for the prickly, proud musical prodigy Suwa, who doesn’t think Santi has what it takes to be in the band.But Santi and Suwa share painful pasts, and when they open up to each other, a tentative friendship begins. And soon, that friendship turns into something more… Will their fresh start rip at the seams as Suwa seeks out a solo spotlight, and both boys come to terms with what it’ll take, and what they’ll have to let go, to realize their dreams?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & transphobia. including deadnaming (off-page) & forced outing recounted
  • Physical & emotional child abuse & abandonment
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Gender dysphoria & body dysmorphia discussed (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption & recreational drug use
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Deth of a parent recounted
  • Near-drowning incident recounted
  • Bullying

All I Want For Christmas is the Girl Next Door by Chelsea Bobulski

Graham Wallace has been in love with the girl next door for a decade. Unfortunately, she’s been dating his best friend for the past two years. Out of sheer desperation, Graham makes a wish on a shooting star—all he wants for Christmas is Sarah Clarke. When Graham wakes up the next morning, everything has changed, and he’s the one who’s been dating Sarah for the past two years, not his best friend. Graham assumes the wish would have only come true if he and Sarah were meant to be together, but as it becomes clear that he… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Dieting & self-starvation discussed
  • Drowning

Seven Dirty Secrets by Natalie D. Richards

I know seven secrets: One caused the fall. One did nothing. One saw it all. One didn’t care. One used their head. One played the hero. One was left for dead. On her eighteenth birthday, Cleo receives a mysterious invitation to a scavenger hunt. She’s sure her best friend Hope or her brother Connor is behind it, but no one confesses. And as Cleo and Hope embark on the hunt, the seemingly random locations and clues begin to feel familiar. In fact, all of the clues seem to be about Cleo’s dead boyfriend, Cyrus, who drowned on a group rafting trip exactly a year ago. A bracelet… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Abusive relationship
  • Strangulation
  • Drowning

The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander

In his village in Upper Kwanta, 11-year-old Kofi loves his family, playing oware with his grandfather and swimming in the river Offin. He’s warned though, to never go to the river at night. His brother tells him ”There are things about the water you do not know.” “Like what?” Kofi asks. “The beasts,” his brother answers. One fateful night, the unthinkable happens, and in a flash, Kofi’s world turns upside down. Kofi soon ends up in a fight for his life and what happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Colonialism
  • Slavery
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Suicide by drowning (throwing self overboard)
  • Stillbirth
  • Death of a sibling
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Shipwreck