Forced & Arranged Marriage – Page 6 – Trigger Warning Database

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Misogyny
Persecution for witchcraft
Martial rape & sexual assault
Arranged marriage
Miscarriage
Murder
Immolation
Drowning
Torture

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

Thirteen-year-old Kyra has grown up in an isolated community without questioning the fact that her father has three wives and she has twenty brothers and sisters. That is, without questioning it much – if you don’t count her visits to the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels to read forbidden books, or her secret meetings with Joshua, the boy she hopes to choose for herself instead of having a man chosen for her. But when the Prophet decrees that Kyra must marry her sixty-year-old uncle – who already has six wives – she must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her family forever.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Rape
Attempted forced adult-minor marriage
Cults

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden. In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive. Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Queermisia
Transmisia
Outing
Slut shaming
Fatmisia & body shaming
Statutory rape mentioned
Sexual assault, on-page
Sexual harassment
Forced sex work mentioned
Forced adult-minor marriage
Hallucinations & delusions
Suicide by drowning, on-page
Childbirth & death from childbirth
Pregnancy & teenage pregnancy
Infertility mentioned
Blood & gore depiction
Dead bodies
Scalping & skinning, off-page
Mutilation & dismemberment mentioned
Cannibalism mentioned
Starvation
Nonconsensual branding
Scars
Death of a wife
Knife & axe violence
Whipping recounted
Lynching, on-page
Animal attack
Animal death, on-page
Animal cruelty mentioned
Bullying

To Bleed a Crystal Bloom by Sarah Parker

To Bleed a Crystal Bloom by Sarah A. Parker

Nineteen years ago, I was plucked from the heart of a bloody massacre that spared nobody else. Small. Fragile. An enigma. Now ward to a powerful High Master who knows too much and says too little, I lead a simple life, never straying from the confines of an imaginary line I’ve drawn around the castle grounds. Stay within. Never leave. Out there, the monsters lurk. Inside, I’m safe … though at a cost far greater than the blood I drip into a goblet daily. Toxic, unreciprocated love for a man who’s utterly unavailable. My saviour. My protector. My almost executioner… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Arranged marriage
Abusive relationship
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Agoraphobia
Panic attacks
Nightmares & night terrors
Self-harm
Drug use
Blood and gore depiction
Scars
Dead bodies & body parts
Death of a sibling

Careless by Kirsty Capes

Careless by Kirsty Capes

At 3.04pm on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out she’s pregnant. She could tell her social worker Henry, but he’s useless. She should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won’t understand. She really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn’t spoken to him in weeks. Bess knows more than anyone that love doesn’t come without conditions. But this isn’t a love story…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Forced marriage discussed
Rape
Foster care system
Postpartum depression
Teen pregnancy
Attempted home abortion
Attempted drowning

A Match Made in Hatred by Morgan Bridges

A Match Made in Hatred by Morgan Bridges

I hated her before I even knew her name. My bride. The daughter of my enemy. She’s nothing more than a part of my revenge. I’m the one who holds her life in my hands, as well as her body. And soon, her very will. Yet, she refuses to break. This woman disarms me, not with weapons but words and not with a fist, but with a simple kiss. A match made in hate can have no other ending except war.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Forced arranged marriage
Kidnaping

Sever by Lauren DeStefano

Sever by Lauren DeStefano

With the clock ticking until the virus takes its toll, Rhine is desperate for answers. After enduring Vaughn’s worst, Rhine finds an unlikely ally in his brother, an eccentric inventor named Reed. She takes refuge in his dilapidated house, though the people she left behind refuse to stay in the past. While Gabriel haunts Rhine’s memories, Cecily is determined to be at Rhine’s side, even if Linden’s feelings are still caught between them. Meanwhile, Rowan’s growing involvement in an underground resistance compels Rhine to reach him before he does something that cannot be undone. But what she discovers… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Adult-minor relationships included forced polygamy
Hospitalisation
Medical experimentation

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Adult-minor relationships included forced polygamy
Rape of a minor, off-page
Child pregnancy
Kidnapping

Spare and Found Parts by Sarah Maria Griffin

Spare and Found Parts by Sarah Maria Griffin

Nell Crane has always been an outsider. In a city devastated by an epidemic, where survivors are all missing parts—an arm, a leg, an eye—her father is the famed scientist who created the biomechanical limbs everyone now uses. But Nell is the only one whose mechanical piece is on the inside: her heart. Since the childhood operation, she has ticked. Like a clock, like a bomb. As her community rebuilds, everyone is expected to contribute to the society’s good . . . but how can Nell live up to her father’s revolutionary idea when she has none of her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Threats of forced marriage
Chronic heart condition
Surgery
Death of a parent

The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff

The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff

So began the ceremony that was to make young Phaedrus, ex-slave and gladiator, Horse Lord of the Dalriadain. Phaedrus had come a long way since the fight in the arena that gained him his freedom. He had left behind his old Roman life and identity and had entered another, more primitive, world—that of the British tribes in the far north. In this world of superstition and ancient ritual, of fierce loyalties and intertribal rivalry, Phaedrus found companionship and love, and something more—a purpose and a meaning to his life as he came fully to understand the significance of the Mark of the Horse… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Slavery
Sexual assault (nonconsensual kiss)
Forced arranged marriage
Suicide, on-page
Unplanned pregnancy
Emesis
Death of a father recounted
Forced murder of a friend
Animal sacrifice (horse)