Tag Archives: Eating Disorders

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia and AFRID; as well as all warnings related to disordered weight & body thoughts.

For body image issues, see Fatphobia & body shaming, Emesis, and Weight loss & gain. See Institutionalisation for psychiatric hospitalisation and treatment centres. Suicide, Self-harm, and Medical treatment may be relevant. See also Anxiety, OCD, and PTSD & trauma.

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez

The García sisters and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming USA., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try find new lives. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home–and not at home–in America.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Paedophilia (one of the protagonist is lured to a car where an adult man exposes himself and masturbates in the front seat while talking to her)
  • Psychiatric hospitalisation for an eating disorder (anorexia)
  • Physical injury (broken arm)
  • Cuban Missile Crisis discussed
  • Animal hunting mentioned

Louder Than Hunger by John Schu

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books—the weird one, the outsider—and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Smoking (secondary character)
  • Anorexia, depression & Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Bullying

Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday

The fake Canadian boyfriend. It’s a thing. The get out of jail free card for all kinds of sticky social situations. “I can’t go to prom; I’m going to be out of town visiting my boyfriend in Canada.” It’s all over pop culture. But Aurora Evans did it first. Once upon a time she met a teenage hockey player at the Mall of America. He was from Canada. He was a boy. She may have fudged the “friend” part a little, but it wasn’t like she was ever going to see him again. It wasn’t like she hurt anyone. Until she did—years later—on both counts. When pro hockey player and recent widower Mike Martin walks into the dance studio where Aurora Evans… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Verbal parental abuse
  • Eating disorder recovery
  • Anxiety & panic attack, on-page
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a spouse & mother in a car accident

Hex and the City by Kate Johnson

Things you should know about Poppy: 1. She’s a witch, 2. She has magical hair like Rapunzel from Tangled, 3. She lives with Iris, the head of her coven, in a beautiful, ramshackle house next to Highgate cemetery, 4. She works at Hubble Bubble, a magic shop in Covent Garden. Though none of it is real magic as that would be highly irresponsible. Until… Poppy accidentally sells gorgeous celebrity magician Axl Storm, all six-foot-four of him, a cursed pendant. When all hell breaks loose can the guy with fake magic and the girl with real magic fix the chaos they’ve caused? Or will sparks fly both in and out of the cauldron?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Eating disorder & disordered eating (calorie counting)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Bullying mentioned

Meet the Benedettos by Katie Cotugno

Every family is complicated, and the Benedettos are no exception. A few years after a reality show skyrocketed them to pop culture fame, the five twenty-something sisters are living together in their parent’s crumbling McMansion, almost broke and teetering toward rock bottom. Their fortunes brighten when Charlie Bingley, the dashing star of Captain Fantastic, moves into the neighbourhood with Will Darcy, his best friend from Juilliard, in tow. Charlie immediately falls for warm and lovely June, the oldest Benedetto sister. While the Benedetto’s flighty matriarch, Cinta, brashly encourages the potential match, there… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Sexual assault
  • Revenge pornography
  • Anorexia & disordered eating
  • Night terrors
  • Suicide
  • Overdose

Juniper and Thorn by Ava Reid

A gruesome curse. A city in upheaval. A monster with unquenchable appetites. Marlinchen and her two sisters live with their wizard father in a city shifting from magic to industry. As Oblya’s last true witches, she and her sisters are little more than a tourist trap as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. Marlinchen spends her days divining secrets in exchange for rubles and trying to placate her tyrannical, xenophobic father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from the outside world. But at night, Marlinchen and her sisters sneak out to enjoy the city’s amenities and revel in its thrills… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Eating disorder (bulimia)
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Emesis, on-page
  • Body horror
  • Cannibalism
  • Animal death

Everybody’s Favorite by Lillian Stone

Lilian Stone—childhood evangelical, AOL girlfriend, and professional nail biter is always living on the edge of anxiety. From the pitfalls of a girl plagued by religious trauma, the incomprehensible yet unforgiving need for perfection, and a twenty-pound beagle she never meant to keep, Everybody’s Favorite is a refreshing story of what it means to pick yourself when the world is telling you otherwise. Still navigating the ins and outs of adulthood, accompanied by an obsessive-compulsive disorder that’s become an exercise in self-acceptance and thus compassion… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Religious trauma
  • Eating disorder
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Bullying

Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford

From “weird, scary, ingenious” ( The New York Times ) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, a brutally honest and hilariously frenetic memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of rigid belief systems—from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Suzuki violin training, to Richard Simmons, to 12-step programs.

Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicidal ideation
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder & intrusive thoughts
  • Bipolar Disorder
  • Eating disorder (bulimia)
  • Death of a pet

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. She spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss, since she’s tall, stoic, and originally from Switzerland. They both have dark histories, but Big Swiss chooses to remain unattached to her suffering while Greta continues to be tortured by her past… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Homomisia
  • Bimisia
  • Rape
  • Cheating
  • Domestic violence
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Suicide recounted
  • Eating disorder
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Physical assault recounted
  • Animal cruelty (dog)

Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi

Jayne Baek is barely getting by. She shuffles through fashion school, saddled with a deadbeat boyfriend, clout-chasing friends, and a wretched eating disorder that she’s not fully ready to confront. But that’s New York City, right? At least she isn’t in Texas anymore, and is finally living in a city that feels right for her.

On the other hand, her sister June is dazzlingly rich with a high-flying finance job and a massive apartment. Unlike Jayne, June has never struggled a day in her life. Until she’s diagnosed with uterine cancer… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Disordered weight & body thoughts
  • Eating disorder
  • Miscarriage
  • Cancer