Exploitive Relationships – Page 9 – Trigger Warning Database

The Good Girls by Claire Eliza Bartlett

The troublemaker. The overachiever. The cheer captain. The dead girl. Like every high school in America, Jefferson-Lorne High contains all of the above. After the shocking murder of senior Emma Baines, three of her classmates are at the top of the suspect list: Claude, the notorious partier; Avery, the head cheerleader; and Gwen, the would-be valedictorian. Everyone has a label, whether they like it or not–and Emma was always known as a good girl. But appearances are never what they seem. And the truth behind what really happened to Emma may just be lying in plain sight… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Biphobia & slut-shaming
Statutory rape & sexual assault, grooming & teacher-student relationship
Disordered food & weight thoughts
Alcohol consumption & drug use
Death of a sibling recounted
Murder & gun violence

Killer Instinct by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Seventeen-year-old Cassie Hobbes has a gift for profiling people. Her talent has landed her a spot in an elite FBI program for teens with innate crime-solving abilities, and into some harrowing situations. After barely escaping a confrontation with an unbalanced killer obsessed with her mother’s murder, Cassie hopes she and the rest of the team can stick to solving cold cases from a distance. But when victims of a brutal new serial killer start turning up, the Naturals are pulled into an active case that strikes too close to home: the killer is a perfect copycat of Dean’s incarcerat… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Parental abandonment & child physical and verbal abuse recounted
Student-teacher relationship mentioned (secondary character)
Physical injury (concussion)
Graphic murder & kidnapping
Gun violence

Goodbye, Perfect by Sara Barnard

When I was wild, you were stead… Now you are wild – what am I? Eden McKinley knows she can’t count on much in this world, but she can depend on Bonnie, her solid, steady, straight-A best friend. So it’s a complete shock when, five days before the start of their GCSEs, Bonnie runs away with a guy Eden knows nothing about. And it’s the last person she would ever have expected. As the days pass, and her world begins to unravel, Eden is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her best friend and herself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Adult-minor teacher-student relationship (theme), including discussions of paedophilia & grooming (the protagonist’s teenaged best friend ‘runs away’ with their music teacher whose in his 30s)
Child pornography mentioned
Adoption due to child neglect (protagonist)

Against the Rules by AR Barley

Against the Rules by A.R. Barley

Kelly O’Connor’s out of control. An RA at Halton University, he spends his off nights at a club, hoping to find what he’s looking for in rough sex with strangers. Until one night the play gets a little too rough. An isolated room, a dangerous situation… and an unexpected rescue.

Ian Rankin knows what Kelly wants—a true Dom, someone who will protect him instead of using him, someone who can take him to the edge without pushing him into unsafe territory. Ian knows just what Kelly needs, and he’s the only man who can give it to him.

There’s only one problem: Kelly is a student, and Ian is a teacher.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Grief & loss depiction
Death of a parent
Teacher-student relationship

Need Me by Tessa Bailey

Need Me by Tessa Bailey

When Honey Perribow traded in her cowboy boots for stilettos and left her small Kentucky town to attend Columbia University, she never expected to find a dirt-cheap apartment or two new best friends. No stranger to hard work, Honey is completely focused on her medical degree … until she sees newly minted professor Ben Dawson, and her concentration is hijacked. Honey is fascinated by her gorgeous young English professor and vows to find a crack in his tweed-wearing, glasses-clad exterior.

At an off-campus party, an accident lands Ben in a dark, locked closet with a sexy-sounding Southern belle … and their chemistry is explosive. But when he discovers that the girl in his arms is the same beautiful student he can’t stop thinking about, he is stunned. Student-teacher relationships are strictly forbidden … yet no matter how hard he tries, Ben can’t stay away from Honey.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Teacher-student relationship*

*Note : The student is a nineteen-year-old woman and the teacher is a twenty-five-year-old male professor.

Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon

After a nasty divorce and a thousand mile move, Dr. Sloan Copeland and her twin daughters are finally getting the hang of their new life in Los Angeles. When their live-in nanny bails with no warning, Sloan is left scrambling to find a competent caretaker to wrangle her smart, sensitive girls. Nothing less will do.

Enter Rafe Whitcomb. He’s all of those things, not to mention good-natured and one heck of a whiz in the kitchen. He’s also tall, and handsome, and bearded, and ripped, and tatted, wrist to neck.

It doesn’t take long for the Copelands to invite Rafe into their home. Just as quickly, both Sloan and Rafe find themselves succumbing to a heady mutual attraction, neither of them wants to deny.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Emotionally abusive relationship recounted
Boss-employee relationship
Death of a family member from cancer mentioned
Physical assault
Incarceration recounted

Madam by Phoebe Wynne

Madam by Phoebe Wynne

For 150 years, above the Scottish cliffs, Caldonbrae Hall has sat as a beacon of excellence in the ancestral castle of Lord William Hope. A boarding school for girls, it promises a future where its pupils will emerge ‘resilient and ready to serve society’.

Rose Christie, a 26-year-old Classics teacher, is the first new hire for the school in over a decade. At first, Rose feels overwhelmed in the face of this elite establishment, but soon after her arrival she begins to understand that she may have more to fear than her own ineptitude… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Lesbomisia
Paedophilia & grooming
Sexual harassment
Teacher-student relationship
Child abuse
Emotional abuse & gaslighting

Fractured by Karin Slaughter

Fractured by Karin Slaughter

When Atlanta housewife Abigail Campano comes home unexpectedly one afternoon, she walks into a nightmare. A broken window, a bloody footprint on the stairs and, most devastating of all, the horrifying sight of her teenage daughter lying dead on the landing, a man standing over her with a bloody knife. The struggle which follows changes Abigail’s life for ever.

When the local police make a misjudgement which not only threatens the investigation but places a young girl’s life in danger, the case is handed over to Special Agent Will Trent.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slut shaming
Rape
Teacher-student relationship
Child abuse
Suicide
Alcohol consumption
Murder
Torture
Strangulation
Kidnapping
Home invasion

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

It’s been so long since Auden slept at night. Ever since her parents’ divorce—or since the fighting started. Now she has the chance to spend a carefree summer with her dad and his new family in the charming beach town where they live.

A job in a clothes boutique introduces Auden to the world of girls: their talk, their friendship, their crushes. She missed out on all that, too busy being the perfect daughter to her demanding mother. Then she meets Eli, an intriguing loner and a fellow insomniac who becomes her guide to the nocturnal world of the town… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Teacher-student relationship mentioned
Cheating
Alcohol consumption

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Everyone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather be. For four high-school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there.

Cara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother Conner spiraling toward suicide. For her, perfect means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. Kendra covets the perfect face and body—no matter what surgeries and drugs she needs to get there. To score his perfect home run—on the field and off—Sean will sacrifice more than he can ever win back. And Andre realizes that to follow his heart and achieve his perfect performance, he’ll be living a life his ancestors would never understand.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Outing
Physical child abuse
Cheating
Teacher-student relationship mentioned
Date rape
Revenge pornography
Suicide
Parent with alcoholism
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Hospitalisation
Knife violence & stabbing