Tag Archives: Mental Illness

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighbourhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors.

Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape of a child
  • Anxiety
  • Eating disorder
  • Parent with alcoholism

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Depression
  • Eating disorders mentioned
  • Suicide, off-page
  • Self harm
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Cancer
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Events of 9/11 recounted

Play With Me by Alisha Rai

Play With Me by Alisha Rai

Jewellery designer Tatiana Belikov may have matured enough to curb her impulsive nature, but wickedness is still her best accessory. When family troubles bring her to Las Vegas and face-to-face with the man who knows all her darkest desires, resisting temptation is futile. A night of no-holds-barred sin? Jackpot.

Once billionaire Wyatt Caine had nothing to offer Tatiana except his heart, but time has changed his fortunes. Now he’s the king of vice, and the king always gets what he wants. Especially when all he wants is her, all grown up and ready to play every dirty game he can devise… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia
  • Sex worker shaming
  • Parental estrangement
  • Child emotional abuse recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Parent with alcoholism recounted
  • Death of a mother recounted

Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai

Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai

Accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Jackson Kane fled his home, his name, and his family. Ten years later, he’s come back to town: older, wiser, richer, tougher—and still helpless to turn away the one woman he could never stop loving, even after she married his brother.

Sadia Ahmed can’t deal with the feelings her mysterious former brother-in-law stirs, but she also can’t turn down his offer of help with the cafe she’s inherited. While he heats up her kitchen, she slowly discovers that the boy she adored has grown into a man she’s simply unable to resist.

An affair is unthinkable, but their desire is undeniable. As secrets and lies are stripped away, Sadia and Jackson must decide if they’re strong enough to face the past…and step into a future together.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Suicide mentioned
  • Anxiety
  • Panic attack
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a spouse recounted
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Fire recounted
  • Incarceration recounted

First Comes Like by Alisha Rai

First Comes Like by Alisha Rai

Beauty expert and influencer Jia Ahmed has her eye on the prize: conquering the internet today, the entire makeup industry tomorrow, and finally, finally proving herself to her big opinionated family. She has little time for love, and even less time for the men in her private messages—until the day a certain international superstar slides into her DMs, and she falls hard and fast. There’s just one wrinkle: he has no idea who she is.

The son of a powerful Bollywood family, soap opera star Dev Dixit is used to drama, but a strange woman who accuses him of wooing her online, well, that’s a new one. As much as he’d like to focus on his Hollywood fresh start, he can’t get Jia out of his head. Especially once he starts to suspect who might have used his famous name to catfish her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Panic attack
  • COVID-19 mentioned
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Catfishing

Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai

Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai

One minute, Katrina King’s enjoying an innocent conversation with a hot guy at a coffee shop; the next, a stranger has live-tweeted the entire episode with a romantic meet-cute spin and #CafeBae is the new hashtag-du-jour. The problem? Katrina craves a low-profile life, and going viral threatens the peaceful world she’s painstakingly built. Besides, #CafeBae isn’t the man she’s hungry for…

With the internet on the hunt for the identity of #CuteCafeGirl, Jas Singh, bodyguard, friend, and possessor of the most beautiful eyebrows Katrina’s ever seen, comes to the rescue and whisks her away to his family’s home. Alone in a remote setting with the object of her affections? It’s a recipe for romance. But after a long dating dry spell, Katrina isn’t sure she can trust her instincts when it comes to love—even if Jas’ every look says he wants to be more than just her bodyguard…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Sexual assault (groping) recounted
  • Emotional parental abuse
  • Anxiety
  • Panic attack, on-page
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Nightmares
  • Dissociation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a parent
  • Torture recounted
  • Explosion recounted
  • Kidnapping recounted
  • Blackmail
  • Military service recounted
  • Doxing

Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai

Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai

One night. No one will know. That was the deal. Every year, Livvy Kane and Nicholas Chandler would share one perfect night of illicit pleasure. The forbidden hours let them forget the tragedy that haunted their pasts—and the last names that made them enemies. Until the night she didn’t show up.

Now Nicholas has an empire to run. He doesn’t have time for distractions and Livvy’s sudden reappearance in town is a major distraction. She’s the one woman he shouldn’t want… so why can’t he forget how right she feels in his bed?

Livvy didn’t come home for Nicholas, but fate seems determined to remind her of his presence—and their past. Although the passion between them might have once run hot and deep, not even love can overcome the scandal that divided their families. Being together might be against all the rules . . . but being apart is impossible.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Emotional parental abuse
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Panic attack
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Car accident recounted
  • Japanese internment camps mentioned

The Year of the Crocodile by Courtney Milan

The Year of the Crocodile by Courtney Milan

Tina Chen and Blake Reynolds have been together for almost a year. In that time, they’ve grown closer on just about every front. The one exception? Blake’s father has never let anything stop him. Tina’s parents have never let anyone push them around. And they’ve never met.

That’s about to change. But don’t worry—fireworks are traditional at Chinese New Years.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Religious persecution & refugee experiences
  • Chinese education camps
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Eating disorder recovery
  • Substance addiction recovery
  • Heart attack recounted

Second Position by Katherine Locke

Second Position by Katherine Locke

Four years ago, a car accident ended Zedekiah Harrow’s ballet career and sent Philadelphia Ballet principal dancer Alyona Miller spinning toward the breakdown that suspended her own. What they lost on the side of the road that day can never be replaced, and grief is always harshest under a spotlight…

Now twenty-three, Zed teaches music and theatre at a private school in Washington, D.C. and regularly attends AA meetings to keep the pain at bay. Aly has returned to D.C. to live with her mother while trying to recover from the mental and physical breakdown that forced her to take a leave of absence from the ballet world and her adoring fans… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Anxiety
  • Eating disorder
  • Self-harm
  • Loss of limb in a car accident reconted

The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor

The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor

Sixteen-year-old Alice is spending the summer in Paris, but she isn’t there for pastries and walks along the Seine. When her grandmother passed away two months ago, she left Alice an apartment in France that no one knew existed. An apartment that has been locked for more than seventy years.

Alice is determined to find out why the apartment was abandoned and why her grandmother never once mentioned the family she left behind when she moved to America after World War II. With the help of Paul, a charming Parisian student, she sets out to uncover the truth. However, the more time she spends digging through the mysteries of the past, the more she realizes there are secrets in the present that her family is still refusing to talk about… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parent with depression
  • Attempted suicide of a parent recounted
  • Death of a grandmother, off-page
  • World War Two