Tag Archives: Forced & Arranged Marriage

Hideaway by Penelope Douglas

Buried in the shadows of the city, there’s a hotel called The Pope. Ailing, empty, and dark, it sits abandoned and surrounded by a forgotten mystery. But you think it’s true, don’t you, Kai Mori? The story about the hidden twelfth floor. The mystery of the dark guest who never checked in and never checks out. You think I can help you find that secret hideaway and get to him, don’t you? You and your friends can try to scare me. You can try to push me. Because even though I struggle to hide everything I feel when you look at me–and have ever since I was a girl–I think maybe what you seek is so much closer than you’ll ever realize… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism & slut-shaming
  • Attempted rape, sexual assault & sexual harassment (protagonist)
  • Physical & emotional child and sibling abuse (protagonist)
  • Incestuous child sexual abuse recounted
  • Parental infidelity mentioned
  • Forced marriage
  • Familial estrangement & disownment
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking (cigars, cigerattes)
  • Emesis
  • Alcoholism & substance addiction (secondary character)
  • Murder recounted
  • Arson & burn scars from child abuse
  • Physical assault recounted
  • Animal abuse (dog)

Context : The protagonist’s father orders her bodyguard to assault her but she is able to get away; her cousin also hired someone to grope her at a party. A secondary character also kissed and assault her while she was asleep. The protagonist was hidden in a closet with headphones while her half-brother’s mother abused him; later, he beats her. The protagonist’s father burned her with cigarettes.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendiá family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad and alive with unforgettable men and women—brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul—this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child marriage, paedophilia & incest
  • War themes

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again.Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Forced arranged marriage
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Death of a parent (off-page)
  • Attempted murder by poisoning
  • Attempted kidnapping of a child
  • War themes

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder… where nothing is as it seems.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted forced arranged marriage
  • Domestic violence

The Sacrifice by Shantel Tessier

A Lord is to marry after he graduates from Barrington University, an elite college for the rich. A Lady’s job is to help him fit into a world unaware of his secret society. The Lord does not get to choose who he spends the rest of his life with. But there is always an exception to the rule. And I just so happen to be his. I was to wed a Lord of my parents’ choosing. Wealth can’t buy you everything, or I would have had freedom years ago. Instead, my strict parents made sure I lived a dull life in a mansion resembling a prison. But on my wedding day, I was handed over to another man-an even more ruthless Lord that my family hatred. Tyson… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Slut-shaming
  • Adult-minor relationship mentioned
  • Forced marriage
  • Parental infidelity
  • Rape & attempted rape
  • Intimate partner violence
  • Emotional & physical child abuse
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drugging
  • Unplanned pregnancy due to reproductive assault and medical abuse
  • Involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation
  • Body modifications including branding and involuntary implantation of a tracker
  • Needles
  • Emesis
  • Dieting & weight loss recounted
  • Faked death of a pregnant sister and girlfriend recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping
  • Arson & immolation

*Context : The female protagonist (FMC) is raped while sedated and involuntarily instituitionalised by a secondary character. The FMC’s fiancé intended to drug and rape her. The FMC’s doctor administers a hormone injection to aid with ovulation under the disguise of birth control; she becomes pregnant as a result. The FMC’s mother was married to a 23-year-old man when she was only 17-years-old. The MMC threatens to kill the FMC’s brother if she doesn’t marry him. The FMC’s father installed cameras without the FMC or MMC’s consent and watched them have sex.

The Sinner by Shantel Tessier

I was raised in a world where money and power are at your fingertips. My father is a LORD, a very respected member of a secret society that knows no bounds. When tragedy struck my family, we discovered we weren’t untouchable. Just when I thought life couldn’t get any worse, I was shown what hell is really like. Then he came and saved me. The devil disguised as my personal hero. But of course, nothing is for free. Not when a soul is up for grabs. Easton Bradley Sinnett—Sin—uses his power for his own sick pleasure. Like a typical Lord, he never thought about the consequences of his actions. I grew up with him, obsessed over… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Slut-shaming & victim-blaming
  • Rape, including rape of a minor and rape by coercion, on-page & recounted
  • Sexual assault including reproductive assault
  • Involuntary voyeurism
  • Intimate partner violence & abuse
  • Forced marriage
  • Professor-student relationship
  • Infidelity recounted
  • Panic attack & nightmare
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Substance abuse & overdose
  • Attempted forced miscarriage (secondary character)
  • Emesis
  • Voluntary & involuntary body modifications including tattoos, nipple piercings and branding
  • Murder & staged suicide of a father recounted
  • Kidnapping & captivity mentioned
  • Torture
  • Stalking

*Context : The male protagonist (MMC) sexually assaults the female protagonist (FMC) with his body and an object (gun). The MMC also rapes the FMC by pretending to be someone else while she is blindfolded and tied up. The FMC was drugged and raped in the past by her professor. She was also raped by the MMC’s father when she was a minor. The MMC tampers with the FMC’s birth control, their condoms, and later forgoes a condom without consent. Secondary character hide cameras in the FMCs rooms to record sex without consent. The MMC is physically and emotionally abusive to the FMC, threatens to kill her, and tricked her into signing a marriage license. The FMC slaps the MMC. The MMC slept with a married woman in the past.

Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb

Fitz has survived his first hazardous mission as king’s assassin, but is left little more than a cripple. Battered and bitter, he vows to abandon his oath to King Shrewd, remaining in the distant mountains. But love and events of terrible urgency draw him back to the court at Buckkeep, and into the deadly intrigues of the royal family. Renewing their vicious attacks on the coast, the Red-Ship Raiders leave burned-out villages and demented victims in their wake. The kingdom is also under assault from within, as treachery threatens the throne of the ailing king. In this time of great danger, the fate of the kingdom may rest in Fitz’s hands—and his role in its salvation may require the ultimate sacrifice.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Classism
  • Elder abuse
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Forced political marriage
  • Depressive episode recounted
  • Suicidal ideation mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Pregnancy & miscarriage discussed
  • Graphic injuries & illness
  • Blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
  • Emesis
  • Seizures
  • Chronic illness
  • Death of a father from medical complications due to chronic alcoholism recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Infanticide
  • Poisoning
  • Physical assault
  • Knife, arrow and axe violence
  • Imprisonment
  • Loss of autonomy (mind control & invasion)
  • War themes & battle scenes
  • Naval warfare
  • Regicide
  • Animal abuse (wolf)
  • Animal death mentioned, including the death of a pet dog.

In Bed with a Highlander by Maya Banks

Ewan McCabe, the eldest, is a warrior determined to vanquish his enemy. Now, with the time ripe for battle, his men are ready and Ewan is poised to take back what is his—until a blue-eyed, raven-haired temptress is thrust upon him. Mairin may be the salvation of Ewan’s clan, but for a man who dreams only of revenge, matters of the heart are strange territory to conquer. The illegitimate daughter of the king, Mairin possesses prized property that has made her a pawn—and wary of love. Her worst fears are realized when she is rescued from peril only to be forced into marriage by her charismatic and commanding saviour… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape, off-page
  • Forced marriage
  • Graphic emesis
  • Death of a wife mentioned
  • Poisoning
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping

96 Words for Love by Rachel Roy and Ava Dash

Ever since her acceptance to UCLA, 17-year-old Raya Liston has been quietly freaking out. She feels simultaneously lost and trapped by a future already mapped out for her. Then her beloved grandmother dies, and Raya jumps at the chance to spend her last free summer at the ashram in India where her grandmother met and fell in love with her grandfather. Raya hopes to find her centre and her true path. But she didn’t expect to fall in love… with a country of beautiful contradictions, her fiercely loyal cousin, a local girl with a passion for reading, and a boy who teaches her that in Sanskrit, there are 96 different… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Forced public outing
  • Sex trafficking
  • Arranged marriage mentioned
  • Addiction recovery
  • Suicide
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Disappearance & kidnapping of a child

Killers and Monsters by Clio Evans

The dragon has come to claim his mafia wife, but I already belong to a knight. My shadow. The bodyguard whose world revolves around me. After ten years of the same routine, I discover that I’m not the woman I thought I was. I’m a killer. The daughter of a fierce god.
As danger strikes, the three of us find that hate can become lust and enemies can become lovers. Our destiny has been written, and we are determined to change it—even if it means a battle against those who would rather see us stay apart.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape
  • Paedophilia*
  • Forced marriage
  • Dieting mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother & father recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Physical assault
  • Stalking & non-consensual voyeurism

*Context : One of the male protagonist becomes interested in the female protagonist when she was 17-years-old.