Tag Archives: Mental Illness

Passion or Penalty by Leah Brunner

Ever sent your brother’s best friend a video expressing your undying love for him? While hopped up on pain meds? No? Just me then? Once I knew this girl who sent a video of herself to her brother’s best friend… while she was hopped up on pain meds. And he didn’t reciprocate her feelings. Sounds like a hilarious story, right? WRONG. This really happened… to ME, Melanie Taylor. That was five years ago, so I’m over it—over him. At least, I thought I was… until West got traded to the D.C. Eagles and moved to the same city as me! Oh yeah, did I forget to mention my brother’s best friend is Weston Kershaw? An incredibly talented… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Anxiety and panic attacks, on-page
  • Mentions of being trapped under ice and nearly drowning as a child

Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee

When Shuos Jedao wakes up for the first time, several things go wrong. His few memories tell him that he’s a seventeen-year-old cadet–but his body belongs to a man decades older.  Hexarch Nirai Kujen orders Jedao to reconquer the fractured hexarchate on his behalf even though Jedao has no memory of ever being a soldier, let alone a general.  Surely a knack for video games doesn’t qualify you to take charge of an army? Soon Jedao learns the situation is even worse.  The Kel soldiers under his command may be compelled to obey him, but they hate him thanks to a mass… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Dubious consent scenarios
  • Memory loss
  • Suicide
  • Body horror
  • Death of a child
  • Torture
  • Loss of autonomy (mind control)
  • War themes

The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent

The adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, Oraya carved her place in a world designed to kill her. Her only chance to become something more than prey is entering the Kejari: a legendary tournament held by the goddess of death herself. But winning won’t be easy amongst the most vicious warriors from all three vampire houses. To survive, Oraya is forced to make an alliance with a mysterious rival. Everything about Raihn is dangerous. He is a ruthless vampire, an efficient killer, an enemy to her father’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault recounted
  • Anxiety attacks
  • Self-harm mentioned
  • Blood, gore and injury depiction including dead bodies
  • Death of a wife and child recounted
  • Building collapse
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Whipping
  • Explosions & fire
  • War themes & battle scenes
  • Animal attack
  • Animal hunting & death

The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich

Two decades have passed since an inferno swept through Elmbridge High, claiming the lives of three teenagers and causing one student, Carly Johnson, to disappear. The main suspect: Kaitlyn, “the girl of nowhere.” Kaitlyn’s diary, discovered in the ruins of Elmbridge High, reveals the thoughts of a disturbed mind. Its charred pages tell a sinister version of events that took place that tragic night, and the girl of nowhere is caught in the centre of it all. But many claim Kaitlyn doesn’t exist, and in a way, she doesn’t – because she is the alter ego of Carly Johnson. Carly gets the day. Kaitlyn has the night. It’s during the night.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Sexual harassment
  • Self-harm
  • Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Murder

Working It by Christine d’Abo

Nolan Carmichael is getting a fresh start—new career, new company, new life. The only problem is, he liked his old life just fine . . . until an accident robbed him of his health, his job, his self-confidence, and his ability to go out in public without having anxiety attacks. Zack Anderson has scared away his last four administrative assistants. So when he hires Nolan on a whim, he’s not too worried, since Nolan will be gone within the week anyway. Two weeks later, Nolan has made himself indispensable, completely reforming Zack’s schedule, life . . . and libido. But in a company… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Car accident recounted

The Packing House by G. Donald Cribbs

When 16-year-old Joel Scrivener has a raging nightmare in study hall and someone records it on their phone, he awakens to a living nightmare where everyone knows his secret, one that he’s suppressed for ten years. Reeling as the whole school finds out the truth, Joel takes to the woods, leaving the bullies and his broken home behind. However, life as a runaway isn’t easy, as Joel’s hallucinations and nightmares follow him into the wilderness. To stop them once and for all, he pieces clues together with flashes of the images that play endlessly inside his head – will he figure out the identity of the person who caused his nightmare before it’s too late?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Graphic sexual assault of a child
  • Domestic abuse
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Substance & gambling addiction
  • Bullying
  • Homelessness

The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman

Ella Louise has lived in the woods surrounding Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, for nearly a decade. Publicly, she and her daughter Jessica are shunned by their upper-crust family and the Pilot’s Creek residents. Privately, desperate townspeople visit her apothecary for a cure to what ails them—until Ella Louise is blamed for the death of a prominent customer. Accused of witchcraft, both mother and daughter are burned at the stake in the middle of the night. Ella Louise’s burial site is never found, but the little girl has the most famous grave in the South: a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of interconnected white crosses… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcoholism
  • Immolation
  • Bullying

The Dragon CEO’s Assistant by Jenn Burke

The heart remembers. When Aidan Bishop staggers out of the woods, naked and suffering from amnesia, he needs to relearn who he is and where he fits in the world. His boss, nearly five-hundred-year-old dragon Nassim, head of a successful tech company, hurries to claim his wayward assistant and guide him back into the life he disappeared from. As they get to know each other again, Aidan wonders if their relationship went deeper than employer and employee. But Nassim isn’t telling, and Aidan has a secret of his own… even if he doesn’t know it yet.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Amnesia
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Drowning mentioned
  • Blackmail

Sink or Swim by Tessa Bailey

Andrew Prince wakes up before everyone else. He schedules the bar shifts, demands perfection from Long Beach’s lifeguards—most of all himself—and makes sure the family debts are paid. His unfaltering work ethic might leave him exhausted, but it comes with one advantage. It distracts him from the love he’s been harbouring since childhood for the girl next door—who he cannot have. Jiya Dalal has dreams. To fly a plane, see the world below…and prove irresistible to her best friend, Andrew. But she needs to be a good daughter first, which is becoming an increasingly difficult task, since her parents expect a good marriage… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Parent with alcoholism recounted
  • Murder of a father recounted
  • Physical assault
  • Police violence & corruption

Mouth to Mouth by Tessa Bailey

A man with a prison record has no place around a fresh faced college student. Tell that to Rory Prince. He should stay the hell away from Olive Cunningham. There’s one small problem, though. She won’t stop almost getting killed—and with this too-smart, too-sweet girl holding his heart in her hands, Rory is powerless to do anything but keep saving her. Homeschooled from a young age, Olive is now out on her own and discovering the world, one milkshake flavor at a time. Until recently, she has experienced life through books. She’s walked in a million… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisic hate crime*
  • Child abuse & neglect recounted
  • Parent with alcoholism recounted
  • Coma mentioned*
  • Physical assault*
  • Imprisonment
  • Drowning*

*Context : The male protagonist was sentenced to jail for putting a man, who was committing a hate crime by attempting to drown the protagonist’s gay older brother, in a coma.