Tag Archives: Paedophilia, Grooming & CSA

Most of All You by Mia Sheridan

Most of All You by Mia Sheridan

Crystal learned long ago that love brings only pain. Feeling nothing at all is far better than being hurt again. She guards her wounded heart behind a hard exterior and carries within her a deep mistrust of men, who, in her experience, have only ever used and taken. Then Gabriel Dalton walks into her life. Despite the terrible darkness of his past, there’s an undeniable goodness in him. And even though she knows the cost, Crystal finds herself drawn to Gabriel. His quiet strength is wearing down her defences and his gentle patience is causing her to question everything she thought… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Abandonment
  • Rape & sexual assault, on-page
  • Rape of a child recounted
  • Sex work
  • Child abuse, on-page
  • Death of a parent
  • Kidnapping of a child recounted

Flawless by Elsie Silver

Flawless by Elsie Silver

The rules were simple. Keep my hands off his daughter and stay out of trouble. But now I’m stuck with her. There’s only one bed. And well, rules are made to be broken. I’m the face of professional bull riding—the golden boy. Or at least I was, until it all blew up in my face. Now my agent says I have to clean up my image, so I’m stuck with his ball-busting daughter for the rest of the season as my “full-time supervision.” But I don’t need a goddamn babysitter, especially one with skin-tight jeans, a sexy smirk, and a mouth she can’t stop running. A mouth I can’t stop thinking… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Parental infidelity recounted
  • Toxic relationship & grooming*
  • Child abuse
  • Divorce
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Congenital heart defect recovery including heart surgery mentioned
  • Heart attack of a parent
  • A bull-riding accident resulting in broken ribs and a severe concussion
  • Dieting & food shaming mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother in childbirth recounted
  • Stalking*

*Context : The heroine was in a secret relationship with her surgeon, at age eighteen, for two years until he became engaged to her sister. There were elements of grooming and manipulation that advance to stalkerish behaviour in the current plotline. The protagonist is also her love interest’s sports agent

The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup

The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup

If you find one, he’s already found you. A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen. His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene. Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago. A tragic coincidence—or something more twisted? To save innocent lives, a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to piece together the... Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Anti-immigration rhetoric
  • Paedophilia & rape of a child
  • Child pornography
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Mutilation
  • Torture
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping & disappearance of a child
  • Stalking
  • Fire

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain

Anna Hart is a missing persons detective in San Francisco. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna’s childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Physical child abuse
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Animal abuse

From Scratch by Katrina Jackson

From Scratch by Katrina Jackson

Sea Port is a tiny southern town on the verge of collapse looking to entice people to move to the middle of nowhere and start life anew. Mary Woods, stinging from her life as a failed academic, takes the opportunity by the reins and resettles in Sea Port to try her hand as a small-town baker. A few days before the opening of her shop, Confections by Mary, she runs into small-town cop, Miguel Santos, and small-town fire chief, Billy Knox and there’s a whole lot of chemistry to go around. Welcome to Sea Port, where the town baker, cop and fire chief fall heavily in lust.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Queermisia
  • Child sexual abuse recounted
  • Physical child abuse mentioned
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Parent with alcoholism & alcohol abuse mentioned
  • Physical assault mentioned

Hooked by Emily McIntire

James has always had one agenda: destroy his enemy, Peter Michaels. When Peter’s twenty-year-old daughter Wendy shows up in James’s bar, he sees his way in. Seduce the girl and use her for his revenge. It’s the perfect plan until things in James’s organization begin to crumble. Suddenly, he has to find the traitor in his midst, and his plan for revenge gets murkier as James starts to see Wendy as more than just a pawn in his game. Wendy has been cloistered away most of her life by her wealthy cold father, but a spontaneous night out with friends turns into an intense and addictive love affair with the dark and brooding James… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Paedophilia
  • Drugging
  • Pregnancy
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction including amputation and emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent in a car accident recounted
  • Death of a relative in a plane crash
  • Murder
  • Graphic torture
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping
  • Consensual choking (breath pay)

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined ‘Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months‘. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of ‘real life’ that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But ‘here’ turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell – and the more devious their machinations to make them… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Paedophilia & sexual assault of a child
  • Body horror
  • Starvation
  • Cannibalism
  • Infanticide, on-page
  • Torture
  • Animal death (cat)

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the case of January Jacobs, who was found dead in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbours. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist, but she’s always been haunted by the fear that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice. When Margot returns home to help care for her sick uncle, it feels like walking into a time capsule… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault of a minor, off-page
  • Domestic abuse
  • Relative with dementia
  • Suicide
  • Miscarriage
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world-famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is so profound it is known as “the beautiful mystery.” But when the renowned choir director is murdered, the lock on the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Paedophilia
  • Substance addiction
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Police brutality
  • Gun violence

White Houses by Amy Bloom

White Houses by Amy Bloom

Lorena Hickok meets Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932 while reporting on Franklin Roosevelt’s first presidential campaign. Having grown up worse than poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as the most prominent woman reporter in America, “Hick,” as she’s known to her friends and admirers, is not quite instantly charmed by the idealistic, patrician Eleanor. But then, as her connection with the future first lady deepens into intimacy, what begins as a powerful passion matures into a lasting love and a life that Hick… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Incest
  • Paedophilia