Mental Illness – Page 165 – Trigger Warning Database

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.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

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.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

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.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

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

Giant Days, Vol 3 by John Allison, Lissa Trieman and Max Sarin book cover

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.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

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

Giant Days, Vol 2 by John Allison and Lissa Trieman book cover

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.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

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.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

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

Ziggy, Stardust and Me by James Brandon

Ziggy, Stardust and Me by James Brandon

The year is 1973. The Watergate hearings are in full swing. The Vietnam War is still raging. And homosexuality is still officially considered a mental illness. In the midst of these trying times is sixteen-year-old Jonathan Collins, a bullied, anxious, asthmatic kid, who aside from an alcoholic father and his sympathetic neighbor and friend Starla, is completely alone. To cope, Jonathan escapes to the safe haven of his imagination, where his hero David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and dead relatives, including his mother, guide him through the rough terrain of his life. In his alternate reality, Jonathan can be anything: a superhero, an astronaut… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia & homomisic slurs
Conversion therapy
Racism & racial slurs
Hate crimes
Sexual assault
Alcoholism
Anxiety
Suicide, mentioned
Death of a parent, recounted
Police brutality

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

“I need Owen to explain this. Because yes, I do know that Owen would never do that, but I also know Hannah would never lie about something like that.”

Mara and Owen are about as close as twins can get. So when Mara’s friend Hannah accuses Owen of rape, Mara doesn’t know what to think. Can the brother she loves really be guilty of such a violent crime? Torn between the family she loves and her own sense of right and wrong, Mara is feeling lost, and it doesn’t help that things have been strained with her ex-girlfriend and best friend since childhood, Charlie.

As Mara, Hannah, and Charlie navigate this new terrain, Mara must face a trauma from her own past and decide where Charlie fits in her future. With sensitivity and openness, this timely novel confronts the difficult questions surrounding consent, victim blaming, and sexual assault.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Coming out themes
Bimisia
Internalised enbymisia
Slut-shaming
Victim blaming, discussed
Misogyny
Racist microaggressions
Rape, central theme
Sexual assault
Paedophillia*
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Panic attacks, multiple occurrences on-page
Alcohol consumption
Minor injury, mentioned
Hospital visit, mentioned
Medical procedure including a rape kit, recounted
Physical assault
Bullying

*Main character, who is a minor, is sexually abused by her teacher

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle.

But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic–the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience–have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Fatmisia
Hate slurs
Slavery
Sexual assault
Domestic abuse
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Blood and gore depiction
Medical experimentation
Murder and attempted murder
Gun violence
Explosions
Child trafficking

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando

Six were taken. Eleven years later, five come back–with no idea of where they’ve been.

Eleven years ago, six kindergarteners went missing without a trace. After all that time, the people left behind moved on, or tried to.

Until today. Today five of those kids return. They’re sixteen, and they are . . . fine. Scarlett comes home and finds a mom she barely recognizes, and doesn’t really recognize the person she’s supposed to be, either. But she thinks she remembers Lucas. Lucas remembers Scarlett, too, except they’re entirely unable to recall where they’ve been or what happened to them. Neither of them remember the sixth victim, Max. He doesn’t come back. Everyone wants answers. Most of all Max’s sister Avery, who needs to find her brother–dead or alive–and isn’t buying this whole memory-loss story.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Child abuse
Absent parent
Cheating
Alcoholism
Depression
Asthma
Grief depiction
Death of a friend
Death of a child
Death of a sibling
Murder
Kidnapping