Drowning – Trigger Warning Database

Codebreaker by Jay Martel

Mia Hayes has peaceful plans for the summer—find a part-time job at a coffee shop and work on her application for Harvard. Those plans are shattered one night when government agents arrive unannounced at her home seeking something they believe her father has taken. When the dust settles, her mother is dead and her father is gone, a fugitive on the run. Three weeks later, and still reeling from her father’s betrayal, Mia spends her seventeenth birthday at a protest in the heart of D.C., where she meets Logan, a rebellious and charming hacker. Just as she’s enjoying… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Minor injury depiction, including a concussion & gunshot wounds
Grief & loss depiction
Death of parents in a car accident recounted
Car chase, resulting in a car falling into the river and a fatal drowning
Gun violence
Physical assault (fistfights)

Iron Crowne by C.D. Reiss

Byron Crowne is a gentleman on the outside, and a pure savage on the inside. I detest him. I can’t resist him. He’s awakened desires I didn’t know I had. When he touches me, I need to fight him . . . and I need him to win. Our one night stand bruises my skin and leaves dents in the walls, but the sheets aren’t the only thing we shred that night. And suddenly, the stakes are higher than ever. Olivia Monroe lights a fire in me that died a long time ago. I’m a different man when I’m with her. I need to own her, take her, mark her as mine. Everything changes when she might be pregnant… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Self-harm
Drowning

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

In her brilliantly inventive and haunting debut collection of stories, Julia Armfield explores bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of her characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession, love and revenge.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Homophobia (Cassandra After)
Body-shaming (Mantis)
Infidelity (Cassandra After)
Divorce (Formally Feral, Smack)
Depression (Smack, Cassandra After)
Suicide mentioned (The Collectables)
Self-harm mentioned (Cassandra After)
Alcohol consumption & smoking (The Collectables)
Pregnancy & mention of miscarriage/pregnancy loss (Salt Slow)
Blood & injury depiction (Mantis, Formally Feral, Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax, Granite, Salt Slow)
Heart attack mentioned (The Collectables)
Weight loss, dieting & starvation mentioned (Mantis, Salt Slow)
Emesis (Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax)
Death of a parent recounted (Smack)
Death of a partner (Cassandra After)
Car accident mentioned (Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax)
Fire (The Collectables)
Drowning (Salt Slow)
Bullying (Formally Feral)

Private Rites by Julia Armfield

It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revel.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Child abuse recounted
Parental infidelity mentioned
Anxiety & panic attacks
Nightmares & sleep issues mentioned
Pica mentioned (recovery)
Attempted suicide & self-harm recounted
Alcohol consumption & smoking
Emesis
Death of a father from a stroke & heart attack mentioned
Death of a mother recounted
Drowning
Cults discussed
Animal injury (fish

Curse of the Night Witch by Alex Aster

On Emblem Island all are born knowing their fate. Their lifelines show the course of their life and an emblem dictates how they will spend it. Twelve-year-old Tor Luna was born with a leadership emblem, just like his mother. But he hates his mark and is determined to choose a different path for himself. So, on the annual New Year’s Eve celebration, where Emblemites throw their wishes into a bonfire in the hopes of having them granted, Tor wishes for a different power. The next morning Tor wakes up to discover a new marking on his skin…the symbol of a curse that has… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Suicide
Cannibalism mentioned (a mother forced to eat her children to survive)
Sword & arrow violence
Monsters attempting to drown their children mentioned
Loss of autonomy (magic)
Animal attack (frog, snake)

Skyshade by Alex Aster

Back in Grim’s castle on Nightshade, Isla is reeling in the wake of a brutal battle and the devastating truths it exposed. Her future—and the fate of the world—now hinge on a heart split in two. Past Isla, who fell in love with the ruler of Nightshade, fights to resist feelings she considers treasonous. The Isla of the present, who has seen the ruin her powers can cause, will do anything to save Lightlark and its king. As the line between enemy and friend is tested, Isla is more desperate than ever to understand the oracle’s final prophecy… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Infidelity
Self-injury for magic & scars
Alcohol consumption
Blood & gore depiction, including removal of the heart, decapitation & dead bodies
Murder
Near-drowning incident (in blood)
Knife, sword & weapon violence

Barbie Dreamscape by Alex Aster

Barbie’s life is perfect. She lives in a pink-hued paradise called Heartland where everything is in order and everyone has a role to play, thanks to the mysterious and all-powerful beings who will soon assign her a Fate at graduation from the enchanted Swancrest Academy. She’s worked hard to earn a good one. Her years of endless studying and acing every challenge are about to pay off. But when the unthinkable happens and Barbie is left Fateless—the first in Heartland’s history—her carefully ordered world shatters. Sh… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Death of a mother recounted
Near-drowning incident
Building collapse
Animal attack (magical bird)

The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri

The prophecy of the nameless god—the words that declared Malini the rightful empress of Parijatdvipa—has proven a blessing and curse. She is determined to claim the throne that fate offered her. But even with rage in her heart and the army of loyal men by her side, deposing her brother is going to be a brutal and bloody fight. The power of the deathless waters flows through Priya’s blood. Now a thrice born priestess and an Elder of Ahiranya, she dreams of seeing her country rid of the rot that plagues it: both Parijatdvipa’s poisonous rule, and the blooming sickness that is spread… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Homophobia & sexism
Suicide (self-immolation & self-sacrifice)
Self-injury
Alcohol consumption
Murder, physical assault & torture (off-page)
Poisoning
Kidnapping of a child
Drowning
Loss of autonomy (godly possession)
War themes & battle scenes
Animal death (horse)

Dead in the Water by John Marrs

When Damon survives a near-drowning, his life flashes before his eyes. Every memory is crystal clear—except one. A dead boy. A face he can’t place. A moment he doesn’t remember living. At first he tells himself it’s a trick of the mind. But everything else he saw was real. So why not this? With his waking life stalked by the disturbing scene, confusion quickly turns to obsession. Desperate for answers, Damon digs into his fractured past, and becomes convinced that the only way to remember…is to die again. And again. And again. When he meets a perfect stranger who’s all too… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Child abuse mentioned
Suicide & suicidal ideation
Depression mentioned
Abortion mentioned
Death of a child
Fatal hit-and-run car accident
Near-drowning incident

A Deeper Darkness by J.T. Ellison

As a medical examiner, Samantha Owens knows her job is to make a certain sense of death with crisp methodology and precision instruments. But the day the Tennessee floods took her husband and children, the light vanished from Sam’s life. She has been pulled into a suffocating grief no amount of workaholic ardor can penetrate;until she receives a peculiar call from Washington, D.C. On the other end of the line is an old boyfriend’s mother, asking Sam to do a second autopsy on her son. Eddie Donovan is officially the victim of a vicious carjacking, but under Sam’s sharp eye the forensics tell a darker story. The ex-Rang… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Death of a husband & children by drowning
Murder