Tag Archives: Exploitive Relationships

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of exploitive relationships, such as teacher-student, boss-employee or doctor-patient relationships.

The Naked Fisherman by Jewel Ann

The Naked Fisherman by Jewel E. Ann

It’s official. I’m eighteen and a young woman with endless possibilities on my way to reunite with my mom in Colorado after five years apart—she had a little weed incident in Nebraska. At the airport, she springs the news on me … she’s leaving for a month of job training. And me? I’m left on my own in the basement she’s renting from the fisherman, aka her landlord who lives upstairs. He’s ten years older than me. Never wears a shirt. Did I mention he’s also my new boss?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Age-gap relationship*
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Cancer
  • Death of a parent
  • Incarceration of a parent

*Context : Eighteen-year-old heroine and a twenty-eight-year-old hero.

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Hate Crush by A Zavarelli

Hate Crush by A. Zavarelli

When I crash-landed into him on my first day at Loyola Academy, I was sure that couldn’t be true. He was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in real life. Little did I know he was also the cruellest. I went from starstruck to stunned the moment his cynical eyes cut through me. I can’t tell you what it was that made him want to punish me. But from that day forward the brooding recluse of a man-made it his goal to torment me. I want to loathe him, and some days, I do. But good or bad, nobody’s attention has ever tasted so sweet. What do you do when you have a hate crush on your bully? Worse yet, what do you do when he’s also your teacher?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Bullying

Slingshot by Mercedes Helnwein

Slingshot by Mercedes Helnwein

Grace Welles had resigned herself to the particular loneliness of being fifteen and stuck at a third-tier boarding school in the swamps of Florida, when she accidentally saves the new kid in her class from being beat up. With a single aim of a slingshot, the monotonous mathematics of her life are obliterated forever…because now there is this boy she never asked for. Wade Scholfield.

With Wade, Grace discovers a new way to exist. School rules are optional, life is bizarrely perfect, and conversations about wormholes can lead to make-out sessions that disrupt any logical stream of thoughts… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slut shaming
  • Sexual harassment
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Physical parent abuse
  • Cheating

Such a Good Girl by Amanda Morgan

Such a Good Girl by Amanda K. Morgan

Riley Stone is just about perfect. (Ask anyone.) She has a crush on her French teacher, Alex Belrose. And she suspects he likes her, too. Riley has her entire life planned out. The plan is nonnegotiable. She’s never had a secret she couldn’t keep.
Riley is sure that her life is on the right track. And nothing will change that. She’s nothing like a regular teenager.
But she doesn’t have any problem admitting that.

Riley doesn’t usually play games. But when she does, she always wins. She thinks a game is about to start but Riley always has a plan… and she always wins.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Teacher-student relationship

Dirty Headlines by LJ Shen

Dirty Headlines by L.J. Shen

I could have impressed him, if not for last month’s unforgettable one-night stand. I left it with more than orgasms and a pleasant memory–namely, his wallet. Now he’s staring me down like I’m the dirt under his Italian loafers, and I’m supposed to take it. But the thing about being Judith “Jude” Humphry is I have nothing to lose. Brooklyn girl. Infamously quirky. Heir to a stack of medical bills and a tattered couch. When he looks at me from across the room, I see the glint in his eyes, and that makes us rivals. He knows it. So do I. Every day in the newsroom is a battle. Every night in his bed, war. But it’s my heart at stake, and I fear I’ll be raising the white flag. 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Boss-employee relationship
  • Parent with cancer (on-page)

Pretty Reckless by LJ Shen

Pretty Reckless by L.J. Shen

I’d had four years to stew on what Daria Followhill did to me, and now my heart was completely iced. I took her first kiss. She took the only thing I loved. I was poor. She was rich. The good thing about circumstances? They can change. Fast. Now, I’m her parents’ latest shiny project. Her housemate. Her tormentor. The captain of the rival football team she hates so much. Yeah, baby girl, say it—I’m your foster brother. There’s a price to pay for ruining the only good thing in my life, and she’s about to shell out some serious tears. Daria thinks she is the queen. I’m about to prove to her that she’s nothing but a spoiled princess.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slur
  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Grey-area cheating
  • Statutory rape recounted
  • Principal-student relationship
  • Domestic violence
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcohol consumption & overdose mentioned

Call It What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer

Call It What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer

When his dad is caught embezzling funds from half the town, Rob goes from popular lacrosse player to social pariah. Even worse, his father’s failed suicide attempt leaves Rob and his mother responsible for his care.

Everyone thinks of Maegan as a typical overachiever, but she has a secret of her own after the pressure got to her last year. And when her sister comes home from college pregnant, keeping it from her parents might be more than she can handle.

When Rob and Maegan are paired together for a calculus project, they’re both reluctant to let anyone through the walls they’ve built. But when Maegan learns of Rob’s plan to fix the damage caused by his father, it could ruin more than their fragile new friendship…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Classism (theme)
  • Queermisia & homomisia mentioned
  • Conversion therapy recounted
  • Cheating
  • Physical & emotional child abuse
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Disownment recounted
  • Panic attacks
  • Suicide discussed
  • Graphic attempted suicide of a parent recounted
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Pregnancy
  • Abortion discussed
  • Emesis (multiple scenes)
  • Blood & graphic physical injuries depiction
  • Stroke mentioned
  • Attempted murder by strangulation, off-page
  • Physical assault, on-page
  • Gun violence recounted
  • Imprisonment of a parent
  • Bullying
  • Poverty (theme)

You’ll Be the Death of Me by Karen McManus

You’ll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus

Ivy, Mateo, and Cal used to be close. Now all they have in common is Carlton High and the beginning of a very bad day.

Type A Ivy lost a student council election to the class clown, and now she has to face the school, humiliated. Heartthrob Mateo is burned out–he’s been working two jobs since his family’s business failed. And outsider Cal just got stood up…. again.

So when Cal pulls into campus late for class and runs into Ivy and Mateo, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn a bad day around. They’ll ditch and go into the city. Just the three of them, like old times. Except they’ve barely left the parking lot before they run out of things to say. … Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Murder

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top-ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends–Krystal, Akil, and Alexander–are the prime suspects, thanks to “The Proctor,” someone anonymously incriminating them via the school’s social media app.

They all used to be Jamie’s closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy’s full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Parental neglect
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self harm
  • Panic attack
  • Recreational drug use
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Blackmail
  • Fire

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it.

But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn’t so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Sexual assault
  • Statutory rape
  • Rape recounted
  • Student-teacher relationship
  • Suicide
  • Disordered eating mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Nonconsensual drugging (roofies)
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder
  • Car accident recounted
  • Kidnapping
  • Blackmail
  • Animal death
  • Bullying
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