Tag Archives: Drugging

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

See also Drug use & abuse and Alcohol consumption. For Date rape, see Rape or Sexual assault. For drug addiction, see Substance addiction and Alcoholism

All Fired Up by Jenn Burke

Paranormals are dying. All over the city, with no explanation and only one thing in common: their magic is missing. Vampire and private investigator Evan Fournier isn’t supposed to be taking on paranormal cases, but when the murderer hits close to home, he agrees to look into it. The last thing he expects is to become a target himself—and then to become irrevocably bonded to the man who just tried to kill him. With his memory gone and his soul bonded to a stranger, former firefighter Colin Zhang wants to be anywhere else. He doesn’t have a damn… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Amnesia
  • Suicide
  • Drugging
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Loss of autonomy (mind control)

All Fall Down by Ally Carter

Grace Blakely is absolutely certain of three things: 1) She is not crazy; 2) Her mother was murdered, and 3) Someday she is going to find the killer and make him pay. The thing is, nobody else believes her and there’s no-one she can trust. Not her grandfather, a powerful ambassador. Not her new friends, who all live on Embassy Row. Not Alexei, the Russian boy next door, who is keeping his eye on Grace for reasons she neither likes nor understands. Grace’s past has come back to haunt her and if she doesn’t stop it… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotional child abuse & gaslighting
  • Drugging
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Physical injury
  • Death of a mother (theme)
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Fire

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

Age of Deception by Patricia Vanasse

Agreeing to accompany her father’s people back to their homeworld, Kira Forrest prepares for the fight of her life. She’s agreed to undertake the Trial of the Broken, a rite of passage every member of her father’s House must pass. It offers a path to independence and freedom that is too tempting to deny. Not everyone welcomes this lost daughter of Roake. There are those who fear what her presence might bring to light. Betrayal stalks the halls of Kira’s birthplace—its roots embedded deep in the events that claimed her parent’s lives and set her on her current path… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Drugging
  • Blood and gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of parent mentioned
  • Torture
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence
  • War themes and military violence

99 Red Balloons by Elisabeth Carpenter

When eight-year-old Grace goes missing from a sweetshop on the way home from school, her mother Emma is plunged into a nightmare. Her family rallies around, but as the police hunt begins, cracks begin to emerge. What are the secret emails sent between Emma’s husband and her sister? Why does her mother take so long to join the search? And is Emma really as innocent as she seems? Meanwhile, ageing widow Maggie Taylor sees Grace’s picture in the newspaper. It’s a photograph that jolts her from the pain of her existence into a spiralling obsession with… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotional child neglect
  • Self-harm & suicidal ideation
  • Drugging
  • Cannibalism mentioned
  • Hospitalisation mentioned
  • Death of a child (off-page)
  • Gun violence
  • Explosion (bomb)
  • Animal death (pet)

The Wolves Are Waiting by Natasha Friend

Before the night of the Frat Fair, 15-year-old Nora Melchionda’s life could have been a Gen-Z John Hughes movie. She had a kind-of boyfriend, a spot on the field hockey team, good grades, and a circle of close friends. Of course there were bumps in the road: she and her lifelong BFF Cam were growing apart and her mother was trying to clone her into wearing sensible khakis instead of showy short skirts. But none of that mattered, because Nora always had her dad, Rhett Melchionda, on her side. Rhett was not only Nora’s hero, but as the Athletic Director of Faber… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism & slut-shaming
  • Date rape & sexual assault (protagonist, on-page & mentioned)

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

One bright spring morning in London, Diana Cowper – the wealthy mother of a famous actor – enters a funeral parlor. She is there to plan her own service. Six hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home. Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric investigator who’s as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. Hawthorne needs a ghost writer to document his life; a Watson to his Holmes. He chooses Anthony Horowitz. Drawn in against his will, Horowitz soon finds himself a the center of a story he cannot control. Hawthorne… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Drugging
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Brain injury
  • Death of a child
  • Murder by strangulation
  • Car accident

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost. Now, his immortal brethren have decided David must return and leave his family in Miami. Instead, David vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Slavery & racial slurs
  • Infidelity
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Elder abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Self-mutilation
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Graphic murder, including filicide by drugging & asphixiation
  • Stalking
  • Animal death (dog)

The Wicked Betrayal by Marion Blackwood

After the events surrounding the Dagger of Orias, Kenna believes that her circumstances could not possibly get any worse. But fortune is a cruel mistress. Unexpected betrayal throws her life into turmoil, and while she is still trying to recover from the shock, she also has to somehow come up with a plan to save her life. The idea is simple. And dangerous beyond belief. In order to get out of the desperate situation she has ended up in, Kenna is going to take on Mordren Darkbringer. But the Prince of Shadows is… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism
  • Slut-shaming & victim-blaming
  • Parental abandonment & neglect
  • Depression & suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption & drugging
  • Gambling
  • Blood & injury depiction, including dead bodies
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Attempted kidnapping & captivity
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Strangulation
  • Poisoning
  • Home invasion
  • Blackmail
  • Building collapse
  • Fire
  • Conscription
  • Homelessness

Fallen Jester by Devney Perry

Leo Winter loves his life. He works when he needs money. He rides when he craves freedom. He frequents the local bar when he wants a good time. The Tin Gypsies might be a memory, but the bachelor life he lived with his motorcycle club still suits him fine. So when a one-night stand surprises him at a family barbecue and claims she’s pregnant with his child, he’s certain he’s died and gone to hell. Cassandra Cline took one night off from her structured life. One. And now her wild fling with the local bad boy has turned her life sideways. Her dreams and academic career are circling the drain, and none of it would have…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Drugging recounted
  • Kidnapping recounted
  • Pregnancy