Tag Archives: Medical Treatment & Procedures

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of medical treatment and procedures.

See also Physical Illness & Injury, Surgery, Needles, and Hospitalisation.

Nowhere Like Home by Sara Shepard

When Lenna gets a call from her old friend Rhiannon, she is startled; Rhiannon disappeared years ago without a trace. But Lenna is even more startled to learn that Rhiannon has a son and that she lives off the grid with a group of women in a community called Halcyon. Rhiannon invites Lenna, a new mother herself, to join them. Why suffer the sleepless nights by yourself? It takes a village, after all. Lenna decides to go and hopefully repair her relationship with Rhiannon, but as she drives into the desert and her cell service gets weaker, she becomes suspicious. Who are… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) & anxiety (protagonist)
  • Teen pregnancy & fertility treatments mentioned
  • Kidnapping & stalking
  • Cults

I Love It When You Lie by Kristen Bird

Just days before her eightieth birthday, Pearl Williams has the gall to up and die on everyone. Now her granddaughters must make plans for a proper send-off…all while their own lives unravel a little more each day. Tara, the pastor’s wife, makes a series of decisions that could scatter his flock. Then there’s June, who would do anything to have a baby of her own, even if her husband won’t. Clementine, the youngest, is entangled in an affair with her professor, desperate to ignore who he really is. Finally, there’s Stephanie, the sister-in-law—an outsider who knows all… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce (protagonist)
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Kidnapping of a newborn
  • Medical treatment & hospitalisation discussed (protagonist is a nurse)
  • Death of a grandmother mentioned
  • Murder

Bad in the Blood by Matteo L. Cerilli

In the city of Puck’s Port, where motorized vehicles fill the streets and new technological marvels abound, something rotten is lurking under the surface. A violent murder at the docks seems to point to a fey killer, igniting a powder keg of distrust between the city’s humans and its fey inhabitants — folks who wield wonderful but often uncontrollable magical power. Gristle Senan Maxim Junior finds himself caught in the middle. Forced into the reluctant role of private investigator, like his late father, he’s working to solve the mystery of this fiery murder… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Psychiatric hospisalition, including unethical electroshock therapy
  • Police brutality

The Lions’ Run by Sara Pennypacker

Petit éclair. That’s what the other boys at the orphanage call Lucas DuBois. Lucas is tired of his cowardly reputation, just as he’s tired of the war and the Nazi occupation of his French village. He longs to show how brave he can be. He gets the chance when he saves a litter of kittens from cruel boys and brings them to an abandoned stable to care for them. There he comes upon a stranger who is none too happy to see Alice, the daughter of a horse trainer, who is hiding her filly from German soldiers. Soon Lucas begins to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Discussions of Lebensborn hospitals (where unmarried pregnant women were forced to adopt out their children as part of a Nazi-German eugenics program)
  • Death of parents recounted
  • World War II (theme)
  • Bullying
  • Animal cruelty & death mentioned (bullies attempt to drowning a litter of kittens but the protagonist is able to save the majority of them)

Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins

A reporter has come to Wyoming to do a story on doctors for his Black newspaper back east. He thinks Colton Lee will be an interesting subject…until he meets Colton’s sister, Spring. She runs her own ranch, wears denim pants instead of dresses, and is the most fascinating woman he’s ever met. But Spring, who has overcome a raucous and scandalous past, isn’t looking for, nor does she want, love. As their attraction grows, will their differences come between them or unite them for an everlasting love?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny, slut-shaming & racism
  • Slavery recounted (protagonist)
  • Dubious consent scenario recounted (‘dubcon’)
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Hospitalisation & surgery for gunshot wound
  • Gun violence
  • Cheyenne Massacre mentioned

All in Her Hands by Audrey Blake

Dr. Nora Gibson is the only female surgeon in London. In all of England, even. After earning her medical degree and overcoming the prejudice of those who wished to see her fail, she’s finally earned her place at the Great Queen Street Hospital alongside her newlywed husband and her eccentric but ailing adoptive father, the great Dr. Horace Croft. But peace is hard to come by as a physician, and for one like Nora, it’s almost impossible. When Nora takes up the fight to bring midwives into the medical field, her already fragile reputa… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical misogyny
  • Physical injury & illness and medical treatment (theme), including a cholera outbreak
  • Unplanned pregnancy (protagonist)

Hail Mariam by Huda Al-Marashi

Iraqi American Mariam Hassan transfers to a local Catholic school and before her first day her parents remind her that she might be the first Muslim her classmates have ever met. No big deal, right? Just represent an entire religion while making new friends, keeping up with schoolwork, and figuring out who she is. When Mariam’s younger sister, Salma, is diagnosed with a serious lung condition, her family faces endless doctor visits and sleepless nights. Mariam tries to lighten their burden and keep her own problems to herself—including the fact that she’s just… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sibling hospitalised for cancer treatment
  • Minor blood depiction

Pour Decisions by Audrey Vaughn

When I move back to my ex’s small town, I want to avoid him at all costs. JD didn’t just break my heart ten years ago. He ran it over, then backed over it again. So naturally, I end up as his physical therapist. And to rub salt in the wound, he finds out I’m living out of my car and demands I move into his spare room. Yeah, he’s as bossy as ever. He still acts like he’s allergic to laughter. But he also pampers me after a long night out, remembers my favorite lunch…and insists on making it for me when I forget to eat. The more he grumpily dotes on me, the more I remember how good… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce recounted
  • Verbal child abuse recounted
  • Alcohol consumption & mentions of drug use
  • Surgery recounted
  • Death of a grandparent mentioned
  • Eviction (on-page)

False Hearts by Laura Lam

Raised in the closed cult of Mana’s Hearth and denied access to modern technology, conjoined sisters Taema and Tila dream of a life beyond the walls of the compound. When the heart they share begins to fail, the twins escape to San Francisco, where they are surgically separated and given new artificial hearts. From then on they pursue lives beyond anything they could have previously imagined. Ten years later, Tila returns one night to the  twins’ home in the city, terrified and covered in blood, just before the police arrive and arrest her for murder–the first… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Surgery to separate conjoined twins due to heart failure recounted (protagonist)
  • Psychedelic, mind-altering drug use discussed
  • Blood depiction
  • Organised crime
  • Cult recounted

Faceless by Alyssa Sheinmel

When Maisie is struck by lightning, her face is partially destroyed. She’s lucky enough to get a face transplant, but how do you live your life when you can’t even recognize yourself anymore? She was a runner, a girlfriend, a good student …a normal girl. Now, after a single freak accident, all that has changed. As Maisie discovers how much her looks did and didn’t shape her relationship to the world, she has to redefine her own identity, and figure out what ‘lucky’ really means.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Hospitalisation for plastic surgery to repair facial burn scars sustained in a lightning strike