Tag Archives: Murder & Attempted Murder

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of murder and attempted murder.

See also Genocide and mass murder, and War themes & military violence.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Physical child abuse & domestic abuse mentioned
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & nightmares
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use mentioned
  • Teen pregnancy recounted
  • Death of a friend & child (on-page & recounted)
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Gang violence
  • Incarceration recounted
  • Police brutality & violence, including the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black teen

Violet Ghosts by Leah Thomas

Violet Ghosts by Leah Thomas

Dani’s best friend, Sarah, is a ghost. But maybe that’s normal when you’ve spent your childhood running from an abusive parent.

Dani and Sarah might be more than friends, though Dani dares not say so. Dani is afraid that if he tells Sarah he’s trans, she won’t bother haunting him anymore. Sarah’s got good reason to distrust boys, having been strangled by one.

After Sarah and Dani come across another ghost haunted by her own brutal murder, they set out to bring peace and safety to spirits like her. But when an old rival reenters Dani’s life, their unexpected friendship gives Dani a strange new feeling of belonging. As Dani starts to find his place in the living world, he’ll need to let go of his ghosts.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Misgendering
  • Child sexual abuse
  • Rape
  • Violence against a sex worker
  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide
  • Strangulation recounted
  • Murder
  • Death of an infant to cancer
  • Bullying
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These Vicious Masks by Tarun Shanker & Kelly Zekas

These Vicious Masks by Tarun Shanker & Kelly Zekas

England, 1882. Evelyn is bored with society and its expectations. So when her beloved sister, Rose, mysteriously vanishes, she ignores her parents and travels to London to find her, accompanied by the dashing Mr. Kent. But they’re not the only ones looking for Rose. The reclusive, young gentleman Sebastian Braddock is also searching for her, claiming that both sisters have special healing powers. Evelyn is convinced that Sebastian must be mad, until she discovers that his strange tales of extraordinary people are true—and that her sister is in graver danger than she feared.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Sex worker shaming
  • Slut-shaming
  • Attempted rape, on-page
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood depiction
  • Chronic illness
  • Physical injury
  • Human medical experimentation
  • Hospital
  • Death of a brother reounted
  • Death of a mother mentioned
  • Death of a father mentioned
  • Mugging with a knife
  • Gun violence
  • Murder
  • Attempted murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Disappearance of a sibling
  • Fire
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Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

Noah Ramirez thinks he’s an expert on romance. He has to be for his popular blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem—all the stories are fake. What started as the fantasies of a trans boy afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe.

When a troll exposes the blog as fiction, Noah’s world unravels. The only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. Then Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place: Drew is willing to fake-date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realizes that dating in real life isn’t quite the same as finding love on the page.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism mentioned
  • Transmisia & transmisogyny mentioned
  • Anxiety
  • Panic attacks
  • Attempted suicide recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Emesis
  • Bullying mentioned
  • Cyberharassment
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Wild and Crooked by Leah Thomas

Wild and Crooked by Leah Thomas

In Samsboro, Kentucky, Kalyn Spence’s name is inseparable from the brutal murder her father committed when he was a teenager. Forced to return to town, Kalyn must attend school under a pseudonym . . . or face the lingering anger of Samsboro’s citizens, who refuse to forget the crime.

Gus Peake has never had the luxury of redefining himself. A Samsboro native, he’s either known as the “disabled kid” because of his cerebral palsy, or as the kid whose dad was murdered. Gus just wants to be known as himself.

When Gus meets Kalyn, her frankness is refreshing, and they form a deep friendship. Until their families’ pasts emerge. And when the accepted version of the truth is questioned, Kalyn and Gus are caught in the center of a national uproar. Can they break free from a legacy of inherited lies and chart their own paths forward?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist slurs (r slur)
  • Classism
  • Slut-shaming
  • Queermisia (f & d slur)
  • Transmisia
  • Conversion therapy
  • Child abuse
  • Recreational drug use
  • Descriptions of dead bodies
  • Murder
  • Incarceration of a parent
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Nancy Drew: The Palace of Wisdom by Kelly Thompson

Nancy Drew: The Palace of Wisdom by Kelly Thompson & illustrated by Jenn St. Onge

Nancy Drew is seventeen and good at everything… ESPECIALLY solving crimes. But her totally-in-control-and-obviously-running-perfectly-smooth-(but-not-really) life hits a snag when a mysterious message drags her back to the hometown she left behind. There she’ll have to find out which of her friends are still her friends, which are enemies, and who exactly is trying to kill her…and (hopefully) stop them before they succeed.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism mentioned
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Recreational drug use
  • Hospital
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping & hostage situation
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The Rosewater Insurrection by Tade Thompson

The Rosewater Insurrection by Tade Thompson

All is quiet in the city of Rosewater as it expands on the back of the gargantuan alien Wormwood. Those who know the truth of the invasion keep the secret.

The government agent Aminat, the lover of the retired sensitive Kaaro, is at the forefront of the cold, silent conflict. She must capture a woman who is the key to the survival of the human race. But Aminat is stymied by the machinations of the Mayor of Rosewater and the emergence of an old enemy of Wormwood…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Rape & rape camps mentioned
  • Body horror
  • Loss of limb
  • Paedophilia & child sexual assault
  • Mass murder
  • Death by fire (‘necklacing’)

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless—people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers.

Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn’t care to again—but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Misogyny
  • Rape mentioned
  • Body horror
  • Medical experimentation
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Animal abuse

An Affair of Poisons by Addie Thorley

An Affair of Poisons by Addie Thorley

After unwittingly helping her mother poison King Louis XIV, seventeen-year-old alchemist Mirabelle Monvoisin is forced to see her mother’s Shadow Society in a horrifying new light: they’re not heroes of the people, as they’ve always claimed to be, but murderers. Herself included. Mira tries to ease her guilt by brewing helpful curatives, but her hunger tonics and headache remedies cannot right past wrongs or save the dissenters her mother vows to purge.

Royal bastard Josse de Bourbon is more kitchen boy than fils de France. But when the Shadow Society assassinates the Sun King and half of the royal court, he must become the prince he was never meant to be in order to save his injured sisters and the petulant dauphin. Forced to hide in the sewers beneath the city, Josse’s hope of reclaiming Paris seems impossible―until his path collides with Mirabelle’s.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Classism
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Parental neglect
  • Panic attacks
  • Blood depiction
  • Emesis
  • Needles
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father (on-page & recounted)
  • Death of a husband recounted
  • Torture
  • Death from hanging recounted
  • Explosions recounted
  • Gun violence
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Poisoning (theme)
  • Fire
  • Incarceration
  • Political coup, rebellion & military violence
  • Regicide
  • Animal death

The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

The Mermaid, the Witch & the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Aboard the pirate ship Dove, Flora the girl takes on the identity of Florian the man to earn the respect and protection of the crew. For Flora, former starving urchin, the brutal life of a pirate is about survival: don’t trust, don’t stick out, and don’t feel. But on this voyage, as the pirates prepare to sell their unsuspecting passengers into slavery, Flora is drawn to the Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, who is en route to a dreaded arranged marriage with her own casket in tow. Flora doesn’t expect to be taken under Evelyn’s wing, and Evelyn doesn’t expect to find such a deep bond with the pirate Florian.

Soon the unlikely pair set in motion a wild escape that will free a captured mermaid (coveted for her blood, which causes men to have visions and lose memories) and involve the mysterious Pirate Supreme, an opportunistic witch, and the all-encompassing Sea itself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Slavery & human trafficking
  • Misogyny
  • Rape & sexual assault mentioned
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Forced arranged marriage
  • Alcoholism & alcohol abuse
  • Starvation
  • Blood depiction & physical injury
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Graphic torture (on-page)
  • Whipping
  • Hanging mentioned
  • Imprisonment
  • Poverty themes
  • Homelessness
  • War & colonialism themes
  • Animal abuse & death