Tag Archives: Emotional Abuse & Gaslighting

Training the Heart by Paisley Hope

Wade Ashby is a closed book. With the weight of the family business on his shoulders, and his ongoing battle to escape a failed marriage, he only has time for one looking after his ranch. Life has dealt Ivy Spencer some tough blows. So when the opportunity to work on the Silver Pines ranch presents itself, she grabs it by the horns. Nothing will stand in the way of her dream of training a racehorse on route to the Kentucky Derby. Wade might be determined to keep his heart under lock and key, but Ivy’s constant presence soon ignites a passion he thought he’d lost long ago… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotionally abusive relationship recounted & gaslighting
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Infertility discussed

I’m Not Done with You Yet by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Jane is unhappy. A struggling midlist writer whose novels barely command four figures, she feels trapped in an underwhelming marriage, just scraping by to pay a crippling Bay Area mortgage for a house–a life–she’s never really wanted. There’s only ever been one person she cared about, one person who truly understood her: Thalia. Jane’s best and only friend nearly a decade ago during their Creative Writing days at Oxford. It was the only good year of Jane’s life–cobblestones and books and damp English air, heady wine and sweet cider and Thalia, endless Thalia. But then one night ruined everything. The blood-soaked night…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Toxic friendship
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Social Anxiety
  • Heart attack mentioned
  • Murder by poisoning & stabbing
  • Strangulation

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet). But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Spousal emotional, verbal & financial abuse recounted
  • Dead bodies
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a sibling
  • Death of a spouse
  • Murder

Love Me Do by Lindsey Kelk

Lovelorn Brit Phoebe Chapman has barely set foot in her sister’s house in the Hollywood Hills when she’s swept up by lovable Bel, her sister’s personal trainer, and handsome Ren, the sweet and sensitive carpenter next door. Bel has a head-over-heels crush on Ren but Ren has no idea Bel even exists. Certain that the two of them are meant to be together, Phoebe offers to play matchmaker. Caught up with writing love letters and an unexpected friendship with a reclusive 82-year-old film star, Phoebe finds herself falling for the real Los Angeles – but is that all she’s falling for?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Intimate partner emotional abuse recounted

Fan Service by Rosie Danan

The only place small-town outcast Alex Lawson fits in is the online fan forum she built for The Arcane Files, a long-running werewolf detective show. Her dedication to archiving fictional supernatural lore made her Internet-famous, even if she harbors a secret disdain for the show’s star, Devin Ashwood. (Never meet your heroes – sometimes they turn out to be The Worst.) Ever since his show went off the air, Devin and his career have spiralled, but waking up naked in the woods outside his LA home with no memory of the night before is a new low. It must have been a coincidence that the once-in-a-century Wolf Blood… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment & emotional child abuse mentioned
  • Anxiety
  • Endometriosis
  • Heart attack recounted (off-page)
  • Bullying recounted

A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw

Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James—a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books—he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend. Called “Pastoral,” this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it… he disappears. Just like Maggie… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotional abuse & glasighting
  • Abusive relationship recounted
  • Suicide by overdose
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent by cancer mentioned
  • Execution by hanging

Delicate Escape by Catherine Cowles

Trust doesn’t come easily when you’ve been running for as long as I have, which is why moving in with a man I barely know is such a bad idea. Shepard Colson is all golden-boy charm and devastating good looks. But I know what it’s like to be taken in by easy smiles and the promise of forever—I have the scars to prove it. Only the handsome contractor won’t stop coming by the bakery and prying little truths from my lips. Those amber eyes of his seeing far too much. And when all the secrets come crashing down, he’s determined to keep me safe. Even if it means moving into my rundown… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic emotional abuse & gaslighting (secondary character)
  • Attempted murder by gun violence
  • Kidnapping & stalking

The Wife Upstairs by Freida McFadden

Victoria Barnett has it all. A great career. A handsome and loving husband. A beautiful home in the suburbs and a plan to fill it with children. Life is perfect—or so it seems. Then she’s in a terrible accident… and everything falls apart. Now Victoria is unable to walk. She can’t feed or dress herself. She can’t even speak. She is confined to the top floor of her house with twenty-four-hour care. Sylvia Robinson is hired by Victoria’s husband to help care for her. But it turns out Victoria isn’t as impaired as Sylvia was led to believe. There’s a story Victoria desperately wants to tell… if only she could get out the words. Then…. Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Abusive relationship
  • Infidelity
  • Murder
  • Stalking

Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour

Eighteen-year-old Mila has been in the foster system since her mother abandoned her. Now that she’s graduating high school, she has nothing to do and nowhere to call home. So when she gets an offer to work as an intern on the Farm, she readily accepts. Her main job is to take care of eight-year-old Lee. At first the Farm seems like an idyllic paradise, a remote place on the cliffs with view of the sea far below. But Mila soon realises there’s something more sinister going on. Lee’s recent trauma causes Mila’s own frightening memories to bubble to the surface…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse & neglect (theme)
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Emotional, psychological & financial domestic abuse
  • Gaslighting
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Needles & medical treatment mentioned
  • Car accident mentioned
  • Death of grandmother & grandfather mentioned
  • Fire & death from fire
  • Near-drowning incident

We Can Never Leave This Place by Eric LaRocca

A precocious young girl with an unusual imagination is sent on an odyssey into the depths of depravity. After her father dies violently, young Mara is surprised to find her mother welcoming a new guest into their home, claiming that he will protect them from the world of devastation and destruction outside their door.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape mentioned (brief)
  • Incest
  • Emotional & verbal child abuse
  • Miscarriage & stillbirth
  • Body horror
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a child mentioned
  • Murder
  • Animal death