Home by Martha Wells
This short story is told from the point of view of Dr. Mensah and follows the events in Exit Strategy.
Trigger & Content Warnings:
- PTSD & flashbacks
- Kidnapping recounted
- Captivity recounted
Home by Martha Wells
Tag Archives: Mental Illness
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right?
Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.
But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue? And what will become of it when it’s caught?
Trigger & Content Warnings:
- Amnesia
- Blood depiction & physical injuries
- Attempted murder
- Explosion
- Strangulation
- Kidnapping & hostage situation
Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen
Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen
When eighteen-year-old Ever Wong’s parents send her from Ohio to Taiwan to study Mandarin for the summer, she finds herself thrust among the very over-achieving kids her parents have always wanted her to be, including Rick Woo, the Yale-bound prodigy profiled in the Chinese newspapers since they were nine—and her parents’ yardstick for her never-measuring-up life.
Unbeknownst to her parents, however, the program is actually an infamous teen meet-market nicknamed Loveboat, where the kids are more into clubbing than calligraphy and drinking snake-blood sake than touring sacred shrines.
Free for the first time, Ever sets out to break all her parents’ uber-strict rules—but how far can she go before she breaks her own heart?
Trigger & Content Warnings:
- Racism
- Slut shaming
- Revenge porn*
- Abusive relationship
- Cheating
- Depression
- Suicidal ideation & suicide recounted
- Alcohol consumption
- Emesis
- Blood depiction
*Note: Release of nude photographs without consent.
By Your Side by Kasie West
By Your Side by Kasie West
When Autumn Collins finds herself accidentally locked in the library for an entire weekend, she doesn’t think things could get any worse. But that’s before she realizes that Dax Miller is locked in with her. Autumn doesn’t know much about Dax except that he’s trouble. Still, she just keeps reminding herself that it is only a matter of time before Jeff, her almost-boyfriend, realizes he left her in the library and comes to rescue her. Only he doesn’t come. No one does. Instead it becomes clear that Autumn is going to have to spend the next couple of days living off vending-machine food and making conversation with a boy… Read more.
Trigger and Content Warnings
- Anxiety & substance addiction
- Car accident
The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead
The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When a recent arrival from Virginia tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day.
Trigger & Content Warnings:
- Racism & racial slurs
- White supremacy & the Klu Klux Klan
- Slavery
- Rape & sexual assault
- Paedophilia
- Domestic violence
- PTSD
- Suicide & attempted suicide
- Sterilization
- Murder
- Lynching
- Whipping
Heart and Seoul by Erin Kinsella
Heart & Seoul by Erin Kinsella
Beside herself with excitement, best-selling author Tessa Hale flies to the vibrant city of Seoul, where she’s meeting the cast of the film adaptation of her book. The thrill shifts to star-struck panic when she discovers the actor cast as the lead is the idol she’s been high-key crushing on for years.
Baek Eun Gi is part of one of the biggest K-pop groups in the business. Music has lost its lustre, and he’s hoping a shift in focus will bring back that connection he craves. Although he’s estranged from his family, he has his friends, and a healthy respect for the dating restrictions imposed upon him.
When their paths collide in the most unexpected—and embarrassing— of ways, they try to put it behind them. Too bad there are photos. The music company is irate and offers them a way out of the scandal—a marriage of convenience. Their lives are about to turn upside down, but it just might be the best thing that’s ever happened to them.
Trigger & Content Warnings:
- Child abuse mentioned
- Anxiety & panic attacks
- PTSD
- Detention
Spinning by Tillie Walden
Spinning by Tillie Walden
For ten years, figure skating was Tillie Walden’s life. She woke before dawn for morning lessons, went straight to group practice after school, and spent weekends competing at ice rinks across the state. It was a central piece of her identity, her safe haven from the stress of school, bullies, and family.
But over time, as she switched schools, got into art, and fell in love with her first girlfriend, she began to question how the close-minded world of figure skating fit in with the rest of her life, and whether all the work was worth it given the reality: that she, and her friends on the figure skating team, were nowhere close to Olympic hopefuls. It all led to one question: What was the point? The more Tillie thought about it, the more Tillie realized she’d outgrown her passion–and she finally needed to find her own voice.
Trigger & Content Warnings:
- Homomisia
- Sexual assault
- Depression
- Suicidal ideation
- Car accident
- Bullying
Giant Days, Vol 3 by John Allison, Lissa Treiman & Max Sarin
Giant Days, Vol 3 by John Allison, Lissa Treiman & Max Sarin
Best friends Susan, Esther, and Daisy are rounding out their first semester at university. The girls, along with their male hall-mates Ed and McGraw, find that college is more than academics and bad microwavable meals. Add some pub-hopping, hookups, breakups, and political scandal and this might just be the most eventful first semester ever.
Collecting issues 9-12 of the critically acclaimed series, Giant Days, vol. 3 gives us another comedic slice of life from creator John Allison (Bad Machinery, Scary Go Round), and fantastic newcomer, Max Sarin.
Trigger & Content Warnings:
- Anxiety
- Alcohol consumption
- Recreational drug use, specifically smoking
- Teenage pregnancy, recounted
- Dead bodies
- Scalpels
- Fire
- Bullying, specifically the spreading of rumours
Giant Days, Vol 2 by John Allison & Lissa Treiman
Giant Days, Vol 2 by John Allison & Lissa Treiman
Continuing their first semester at university, fast friends Susan, Esther, and Daisy want to find their footing in life. But in the face of hand-wringing boys, holiday balls, hometown rivals, and the willful, unwanted intrusion of “academia,” they may be lucky just to make it to spring alive.
Collects issues #5-8.
Trigger & Content Warnings:
- Coming out themes
- Sexual harassment
- Dubious consent, specifically kissing while intoxicated
- Toxic relationship
- Panic attack, on-page
- Alcohol consumption
- Recreational drug use, specifically smoking
The Lessons by Naomi Alderman
The Lessons by Naomi Alderman
Hidden away in an Oxford back street is a crumbling Georgian mansion, unknown to any but the few who possess a key to its unassuming front gate. Its owner is the mercurial, charismatic Mark Winters, whose rackety trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous. Mark gathers around him an impressionable group of students: glamorous Emmanuella, who always has a new boyfriend in tow; Franny and Simon, best friends and occasional lovers; musician Jess, whose calm exterior hides passionate depths. And James, already damaged by Oxford and looking for a group to belong to. For a time they live in a charmed world of learning and parties and love affairs. But university is no grounding for adult life, and when, years later, tragedy strikes they are entirely unprepared. Universal in its themes of ambition, desire and betrayal, this spellbinding novel reflects the truth that the lessons life teaches often come too late.
Trigger & Content Warnings:
- Ableist tropes, specifically the demonising of mental illness
- Queermisic tropes, specifically “cheating bisexuals”
- Domestic abuse
- Cheating
- Mental health
- Suicidal ideation
- Self-harm
Trigger Warning Database 