Nightmares & Sleep Disorders – Page 14 – Trigger Warning Database

What the Woods Keep by Katya de Becerra

Hayden tried to put the past behind her, and it worked. She’s getting ready for college, living in a Brooklyn apartment, and hanging out with her best friend and roommate Del. But now it’s all catching up with her: her mother’s mysterious disappearance a decade before, her father’s outlandish theories about a lost supernatural race, and Hayden’s own dark dreams of strange symbols and rituals in the Colorado woods where she grew up. As soon as Hayden arrives at her hometown, her friend Del in tow, it begins: Neighbors whisper secrets about Hayden’s mother… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Ableism & ableist language
Child abuse mentioned
Sleep disorders
Graphic self-harm
Graphic consensual & nonconsensual medical treatment and needles
Burns
Physical assault
Hanging mentioned
Captivity mentioned
Bullying recounted

The Quiet You Carry by Nikki Barthelmess

Victoria Parker knew her dad’s behavior toward her was a little unusual, but she convinced herself everything was fine—until she found herself locked out of the house at 3:00 a.m., surrounded by flashing police lights. Now, dumped into a crowded, chaotic foster home, Victoria has to tiptoe around her domineering foster mother, get through senior year at a new school, and somehow salvage her college dreams . . . all while keeping her past hidden. But some secrets won’t stay buried—especially when unwanted memories make Victoria freeze up at random moments and… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Incestuous sexual assault (father-daughter), and subsequent foster care experiences
Attempted suicide by drinking bleach & self-harm
Eating disorder, trauma & nightmares

The Lovely and the Lost by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Kira Bennett’s earliest memories are of living alone and wild in the woods. She has no idea how long she was on her own or what she had to do to survive, but she remembers the moment that Cady Bennett and one of her search-and-rescue dogs found her perfectly. Adopted into the Bennett family, Kira still struggles with human interaction years later, but she excels at the family business: search-and-rescue. Along with Cady’s son, Jude, and their neighbor, Free, Kira works alongside Cady to train the world’s most elite search-and-rescue dogs. Someday, all three… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Physical child abuse in the past, implied
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & night terrors
Minor physical injuries depiction
Disappearance of a child & friend (theme)
Kidnapping (a teenaged secondary character is charged with kidnapping for removing his sister from an abusive home)
Death of a pet dog from old age & mentions of animal cruelty & hunting

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R Austin

Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace. In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Ableism
Homophobia & slurs
Anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares & intrusive thoughts
Depression & dissociation (protagonist)
Disordered eating including binging and purging
Suicidal ideation & attempted suicide
Sibling with alcoholism
Self-harm
Alcohol consumption
Emesis (multiple, on-page)
Death of a husband from cancer mentioned (secondary character)
Death of an estranged uncle by overdose mentioned
Housefire
Car accident resulting in injury (broken arm)
Animal death (rabbit, recounted & discussed)

Curse of the Forgotten City by Alex Aster

After unwillingly inheriting all of the Night Witch’s abilities, Tor Luna is the most powerful person on Emblem Island—though he doesn’t want power at all. Fresh from their last adventure, a girl from a forgotten underwater city named Vesper, with the same water-breathing emblem as Tor, washes ashore—with a warning. Pirates are coming to attack Emblem Island. Using the Night Witch’s enchanted ship, Tor, Melda, Engle, and Vesper set off on a dangerous journey to find the only thing that can save Emblem… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Nightmares
Alcohol consumption
Physical injury
Death of a parent recounted
Attempted murder recounted
Shipwreck
Drowning
Death from a fall
Animal attack (shark)

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.

Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Misogyny
Sexual harassment
Self harm
Nightmares
Blood depiction
Dead bodies
Emesis
Nonconsensual psychiatric hospitalisation
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a friend
Death of a brother recounted
Death of a mother, father & guardian recounted
Murder
Torture
Physical assault
Explosion
Poisoning
Loss of autonomy (mind control)
Imprisonment
Homelessness

Whistle Blowing by Ada Maria Soto

Whistle Blowing by Ada Maria Soto

Former Navy medic Sebastian Thompson has classic good looks and a true blue heart. But that doesn’t mean he has the confidence to make a move on the gorgeous young blond who just breezed in to the Blue Dragon Bar. Fate will play its hand, anyway. Finding the same young blond beaten to the edge of death, terrified of a hospital, Sebastian has to choose – walk away, or try to save a life.

This one chance encounter will lead Sebastian into a web of danger. Who is the enemy and who is a friend? Who will he trust? How far will he go, and what will it cost, to do the right thing?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexual assault (off-page)
Nightmares
Graphic medical treatment
Physical injuries
Gun violence

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba’s high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country’s growing political unrest–until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary…

Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother. Elisa’s last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she’ll need the lessons of her grandmother’s past to help her understand the true meaning of courage

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parental abandonment
Death of a grandmother
Murder
Imprisonment
Kidnapping
War themes

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Adult-minor relationship discussed
Physical child abuse recounted
Cheating mentioned
Nightmares & night terrors
Murder-suicide mentioned
Suicide by asphyxia mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Prescription pill use
Cancer mentioned
Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a father
Death of a husband
Death of a sister
Death of a child
Murder mentioned
Home invasion
Strangulation
Disappearance of a child recounted
Bullying recounted

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.

As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Classism
Cheating recounted
Nightmares
Suicide (on-page & recounted)
Self harm by burning (on-page)
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Nonconsensual drugging
Blood & physical injuries depiction
Nonconsensual medical procedures & experimentation
Emesis
Hospital
Surgery
Needles & syringes
Cancer & terminal illness mentioned
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a mother & father mentioned
Death of a friend
Murder & attempted murder
Knife violence
Gun violence
Graphic fire (on-page)
Kidnapping & captivity
Car accident
Disappearance of a friend (theme)
Death from a fall (on-page)
Poverty theme
Homelessness