Infertility – Trigger Warning Database

Absolution by Alice McDermott

In Saigon in 1963, two young American wives form a wary alliance. Tricia is a starry-eyed newlywed, married to a rising oil engineer “on loan” to US Navy Intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a talented hostess and determined altruist, on a mission to relieve the “wretchedness” she sees all around her. When Tricia miscarries, Charlene sweeps her into a cabal of well-dressed do-gooder American wives. Armed with baskets filled with candy and toys, they descend on hospitals, orphanages, and a leper colony on the coast, determined to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Infertility & miscarriages
Vietnam War

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquillity is shattered by a woman’s terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who’d happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism & ableism, including mentions of police brutality
Physical child abuse by alcoholic parent(secondary character)
Dieting mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Parental infertility mentioned (secondary character)
Physical injury & mentions of the COVID-19 pandemic
Death of a father from a heart attack mentioned (secondary character)
Death of a sister in a mountaineering accident recounted
Murder
Mugging with knife (secondary character)
Phyiscal assault
Incarceration for the murder of a stepfather in self-defence (secondary character)
Homelessness mentioned
Bushfires mentioned

Words We Cannot Say by Sita Romero

Labor and delivery nurse Penelope is an expert at her job but a complete mess when it comes to her personal life. After her boyfriend dumps her in favor of saving his marriage, Penelope discovers she’s pregnant. Now Penelope must face motherhood, her greatest fear, or consider the alternatives. Jesenia, a first-generation American, made her mark as a model then quit the business in favor of a nine-to-five and wedded bliss. After three years of fertility treatments and pressure from her family, trying to become a mother is her full-time job. But when her past mistakes… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Infertility
Miscarriage & abortion

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Alice is twenty-nine. She adores sleep, chocolate, and her ramshackle new house. She’s newly engaged to the wonderful Nick and is pregnant with her first baby. There’s just one problem. All that was ten years ago. Alice has slipped in a step aerobics class, hit her head and lost a decade. Now she’s a grown-up, bossy mother of three in the middle of a nasty divorce and her beloved sister Elisabeth isn’t speaking to her. This is her life but not as she knows it. Clearly Alice has made some terrible mistakes. Just how much can happen in a decade? Can she ever get back to the woman she used to be?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Divorce
Amnesia
Miscarriage & infertility
Car accident

We Don’t Talk About Carol by Kristen L. Berry

In the wake of her grandmother’s passing, Sydney Singleton finds a hidden photograph of a little girl who looks more like Sydney than her own sister, or mother. She soon discovers the mystery girl in the photograph is her aunt, Carol, who was one of six local North Carolina Black girls to go missing in the 1960s. For the last several decades, not a soul has talked about Carol or what really happened to her. With her grandmother gone and Sydney looking to start a family of her own, she is determined to unravel the truth behind her long-lost aunt and the sinister silence surround… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Infertility & IVF treatments (protagonist)

Bombshell by C.D. Reiss

Hollywood bad boy Brad Sinclair always gets his way, whether it’s the role he wants or the bikini-clad model he has to have. But when a bombshell gets dropped in his lap in the form of a dimpled five-year-old from a forgotten relationship, he knows his life is about to change forever. Cara DuMont isn’t exactly thrilled when she gets assigned to be the nanny for the latest box-office king. She has one rule: no celebrity fathers, especially single ones with devilish good looks and rock-hard abs. But as soon as Cara meets… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Botched abortion as a teen resulting in infertility discussed
Death of a mother mentioned

Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry

The gods sent monsters to the five kingdoms to remind mortals they must kneel. I’ve spent my life kneeling―to their will and to my father’s. As a princess, my only duty is to wear the crown and obey the king. I was never meant to rule. Never meant to fight. And I was never supposed to be the daughter who sealed an ancient treaty with her own blood. But that changed the fateful day I stepped into my father’s throne room. The day a legendary monster hunter sailed to our shores. The day a prince ruined my life. Now I’m crossing treacherous lands beside a warrior who despises me as… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Suicidal ideation & mentions of suicide
Alcohol consumption
Infertility, stillbirths & pregnancy mentioned
Blood & injury depiction, including forced medical experimentation, hospitalisation, & dismemberment
Death of a partner during childbirth mentioned
Poisoning mentioned
Fire
Animal death

The Love of Our Lives by Emma Steele

Maggie should be living life to the full. She should be travelling the world, jumping out of planes, skiing in the mountains. Everything she dreamed of doing. But a year ago she fell ill and needed a heart transplant, losing all her confidence. This new heart is a gift, and Maggie believes that the best way to honour it is to be careful, cautious, safe. Then something impossible happens. Maggie wakes up one morning in a flat that’s not her own, in pyjamas that aren’t her own and when she looks in the mirror – she sees another woman’s face looking back at her. Somehow, magical… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Infidelity
Heart disease & organ transplantation recounted
Fertility issues mentioned

The New Neighbours by Claire Douglas

When Lena helps her teenage son gather sounds for his media studies project, she doesn’t expect her boom-microphone to pick up a conversation between her neighbours, the Morgans. And she’s certain they are planning a crime. Her family and friends tell her that she must have misheard. After all, the Morgans are a well-respected, upstanding couple in their early sixties. They’ve never been in trouble with the law. Yet Lena can’t stop thinking about it. Because what if she hasn’t misheard? What if she can prevent something awful happening? After all, stopping it could help ease her conscience about her own dark past…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Divorce mentioned
Drug use & mentions of an overdose
Infertility
Knife violence
Kidnapping & captivity
Blackmail

Savage Blooms by S.T. Gibson

Adam has been in love with his best friend Nicola since college, but the closest he can come to admitting his feelings is inviting her to travel with him to Scotland in search of a legendary cave from his grandfather’s bedtime stories. When a storm washes out the road, Adam and Nicola find themselves at the mercy of Eileen, an eccentric aristocrat, and Finley, her brooding groundskeeper. The Americans quickly get more than they bargained for as they become entangled in Eileen and Finley’s world of mind games, kink, and ancient enchantment.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Forced marriage
Child abuse & neglect
Consensual non-consent
Suicidal ideation
Alcohol abuse
Traumatic childbirth & infertility mentioned
Near-drowning incident