Genital Mutilation – Trigger Warning Database

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede

By day, Maeve Fly works at the happiest place in the world as every child’s favorite ice princess. By the neon night glow of the Sunset Strip, Maeve haunts the dive bars with a drink in one hand and a book in the other, imitating her misanthropic literary heroes. But when Gideon Green – her best friend’s brother – moves to town, he awakens something dangerous within her, and the world she knows suddenly shifts beneath her feet. Untethered, Maeve ditches her discontented act and tries on a new persona.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Rape
Drugging
Graphic genital mutilation
Dismemberment
Murder
Torture
Animal injury

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Body dysmorphia
Rape
Graphic self-harm including burning and cutting
Dismemberment of hands and fingers, eye trauma, and mutilation like cutting out tongues
Murder
Torture including whipping, skinning and mentions of foot binding and boiling someone alive
Drowning

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Misgendering
Slavery mentioned
Depression
Alcohol consumption
Plague
Nonconsensual castration recounted
Emesis mentioned
Starvation
Cannibalism mentioned
Death of children
Murder & mass murder
Torture, off-page
Bombings
War themes
Animal injury
Animal death

The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

Maya is cursed. With a horoscope that promises a marriage of death and destruction, she has earned only the scorn and fear of her father’s kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her whole world is torn apart when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. Soon Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Neither roles are what she expected: As Akaran’s queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar’s wife, she finds something else entirely: Compassion. Protection. Desire. But Akaran has its own secrets… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sexism
Sexual assault by coercion
Child abuse
Domestic violence recounted
Arranged marriage
Forced attempted suicide
Stillbirth mentioned
Blood & genital mutilation mentioned
Death of a child
Death of a mother
Torture mentioned
Captivity
Bullying
War themes

Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon

Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon

The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both. But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. John’s heritage gains them safe passage through… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism, on-page
Rape
Gun violence
Scalping
Animal death

All the Truth That’s in Me by Julie Berry

All the Truth That’s in Me by Julie Berry

Four years ago, Judith and her best friend disappeared from their small town of Roswell Station. Two years ago, only Judith returned, permanently mutilated, reviled and ignored by those who were once her friends and family.

Unable to speak, Judith lives like a ghost in her own home, silently pouring out her thoughts to the boy who’s owned her heart for as long as she… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Mutilation
Kidnapping & captivity

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Stephen King

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Stephen King

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.

Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Antiziganism
Antisemitism
Nazism
Rape
Genital mutilation
Gun violence
Chemical gassing (gas chambers)
World War Two & the Holocaust (theme)
Concentration camps (theme)

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women follows Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds, as they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective. Over many decades—through the Japanese colonialism of the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, and the era of cellphones and wet suits for the women divers—Mi-ja and Young-sook develop the closest of bonds. Nevertheless, their differences are impossible to ignore: Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, forever marking her, and Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sexual assault
Domestic abuse
Breast mutilation
Jeju April 3 incident

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

With what should have been the greatest heist of their career gone spectacularly sour, Locke and his trusted partner, Jean, have barely escaped with their lives. Or at least Jean has. But Locke is slowly succumbing to a deadly poison that no alchemist or physiker can cure. Yet just as the end is near, a mysterious Bondsmage offers Locke an opportunity that will either save him or finish him off once and for all. Magi political elections are imminent, and the factions are in need of a pawn. If Locke agrees to play the role, sorcery will be used to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Rape
Suicide
Blood & gore depiction
Female genital mutilation
Eye trauma
Torture

The Wild Ones by Nafiza Azad

The Wild Ones by Nafiza Azad

Meet the Wild Ones: girls who have been hurt, abandoned, and betrayed all their lives. It all began with Paheli, who was once betrayed by her mother and sold to a man in exchange for a favor. When Paheli escapes, she runs headlong into a boy with stars in his eyes. This boy, as battered as she is, tosses Paheli a box of stars before disappearing.

With the stars, Paheli gains access to the Between, a place of pure magic and mystery. Now, Paheli collects girls like herself and these Wild Ones use their magic to travel the world, helping the hopeless and saving others from the fates they suffered… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child trafficking
Rape, implied
Suicide
Forced pregnancy
Genital mutilation mentioned
Murder of a child
Torture mentioned
Drowning