Grief & Loss Depiction – Page 66 – Trigger Warning Database

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Jill MacSweeney just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she’s been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends—everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she’s somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one.

Mandy Kalinowski understands what it’s like to grow up unwanted—to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she’s sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It’s harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child sexual abuse
Teen pregnancy
Nonconsensual pregnancy*
Alcohol consumption
Smoking mentioned
Emesis
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a father

* Note : The protagonist fears she became pregnant when she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend.

Bright Burning Stars by AK Small

Bright Burning Stars by A.K. Small

Best friends Marine Duval and Kate Sanders have trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School since childhood, where they’ve formed an inseparable bond forged by respective family tragedies and a fierce love for dance. When the body of a student is found in the dorms just before the start of their final year, Marine and Kate begin to ask themselves what they would do to win the ultimate prize: to be the one girl selected to join the Opera’s prestigious corps de ballet. Would they die? Cheat? Seduce the most talented boy in the school, dubbed the Demigod, hoping his magic would make them shine, too? Neither girl is sure… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Eating disorder (anorexia)
Restrictive & disordered eating (theme)
Disordered food & weight thoughts
Suicide & attempted suicide
Self harm
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Body dysmorphia
Abortion
Death from starvation
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a sibling

Ghost Medicine by Andrew Smith

Ghost Medicine by Andrew Smith

The summer before Troy Stotts turns seventeen, his mother dies. Troy and his father barely speak, communicating instead by writing notes on a legal pad by the phone. Troy spends most of his time with his closest friends: Tom Buller, brash and fearless, the son of a drunk; Gabe Benavidez, smart enough to know he’ll never take over the family ranch; and Gabe’s sister, Luz, whose family overprotects her, and who Troy has loved since they were children… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parent with alcoholism
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a mother
Death of a brother

Stand Off by Andrew Smith

Stand Off by Andrew Smith

It’s his last year at Pine Mountain, and Ryan Dean should be focused on his future, but instead, he’s haunted by his past. His rugby coach expects him to fill the roles once played by his lost friend, Joey, as the rugby team’s stand-off and new captain. And somehow he’s stuck rooming with twelve-year-old freshman Sam Abernathy, a cooking whiz with extreme claustrophobia and a serious crush on Annie Altman—aka Ryan Dean’s girlfriend, for now, anyway.

Equally distressing, Ryan Dean’s doodles and drawings don’t offer the relief they used to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Grief & loss depiction
Death of a friend recounted*
Murder by physical assault recounted

*Note: The protagonist’s gay best friend was beaten to death in a brutal hate crime in the previous book.

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

Macy has little to look forward to while her boyfriend is away at Brain Camp. Days will be spent at a boring job in the library, practicing vocabulary drills for the SATs, and spare time with her mother, sharing a silent grief at the traumatic loss of Macy’s father.

But sometimes, unexpected things can happen—things such as the catering job at Wish. Or her sister’s project of renovating the neglected beach house. Things such as meeting Wes, a boy with a taste for Truth-telling and an amazing artistic talent, the kind of boy who could turn any girl’s world upside down.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Grief & loss depiction
Death of a father & husband recounted

The Survivors by Jane Harper

The Survivors by Jane Harper

Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home.

Kieran’s parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn.

When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parent with Dementia
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a friend
Death of a sibling recounted
Murder
Disappearance of a sibling recounted

The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge

The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge

Martha can tell things about a person just by touching their clothes, as if their emotions and memories have been absorbed into the material. It started the day she fell from the tree at her grandma’s cabin and became blind in one eye.

Determined to understand her strange ability, Martha sets off to visit her grandmother, Mormor – only to discover Mormor is dead, a peculiar boy is in her cabin and a terrifying creature is on the loose. Then the spinning wheel starts creaking, books move around and terror creeps in . . .

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Disfigurmisia & internalised disfigurmisia
Cheating
Child abuse mentioned
Parent with alcoholism mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Dead bodies
Hospitalisation recounted
Eyeball trauma & loss of vision (theme)
Scars
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a father in a car accident recounted
Death of a grandmother
Murder
Gun violence
Hanging mentioned
Homelessness

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & racist language
Domestic abuse
Alcohol consumption & abuse
Miscarriage
Blood depiction
Cancer
Emesis
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a son

Wires and Nerve, Vol 2 by Marissa Meyer

Wires & Nerve, Vol. 2 by Marissa Meyer and illustrated by Stephen Gilpin

Iko. an audacious android and best friend to the Lunar Queen Cinder. has been tasked with hunting down Alpha Lysander Steele, the leader of a rogue band of bioengineered wolf-soldiers who threaten to undo the tenuous peace agreement between Earth and Luna. Unless Cinder can reverse the mutations that were forced on them years before, Steele and his soldiers plan to satisfy their monstrous appetites with a massacre of the innocent people of Earth. And to show he’s serious, Steele is taking hostages.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Ableism & ableist language
Child abuse recounted
Psychosis & hallucinations mentioned
Blood, gore & injury depiction
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a friend & sister
Death of a father recounted
Murder
Physical assault
Kidnapping & hostage situation
War themes

Recursion by Blake Crouch

Recursion by Blake Crouch

That’s what NYC cop Barry Sutton is learning, as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived.

That’s what neuroscientist Helena Smith believes. It’s why she’s dedicated her life to creating a technology that will let us preserve our most precious memories. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent.

As Barry searches for the truth, he comes face to face with an opponent more terrifying than any disease—a force that attacks not just our minds, but the very fabric of the past. And as its effects begin to unmake the world as we know it, only he and Helena, working together, will stand a chance at defeating it.

But how can they make a stand when reality itself is shifting and crumbling all around them?

At once a relentless pageturner and an intricate science-fiction puzzlebox about time, identity, and memory, Recursion is a thriller as only Blake Crouch could imagine it—and his most ambitious, mind-boggling, irresistible work to date.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableist language
Gaslighting
Depression
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Alcohol consumption
Forced drug use
Alzheimers’ disease
Needles
Nonconsensual human experimentation, on-page
Forced & coerced sensory deprivation
Grief depiction
Death of a daughter, recounted
Death of a child
Torture, including psychological torture
Death by a fall, on-page
Captivity
Kidnapping
Atomic bomb
Animal medical testing