Nowhere Girl by Cheryl Diamond

What if the people you love most are not who you thought they were? What if you don’t know who you are, either? Cheryl Diamond’s memoir begins when she is four and her family is in Kashmir, India, hurtling down the Himalayas in their battered station wagon headed for the Golden Temple, the holiest site in the Sikh religion. The family are Sikhs. Today. In a few years they will be Jewish. Cheryl’s name is Harbhajan. Today. But in a few years she will be Crystal. By the time she turns nine, Cheryl has had at least six assumed identities. She has lived on five continents, fleeing the specter of Interpol and law enforcement. Her father, a master financial criminal, or so she believes… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Incest & child sexual abuse
  • Emotional, verbal & child abuse

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez

The García sisters and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming USA., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try find new lives. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home–and not at home–in America.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Paedophilia (one of the protagonist is lured to a car where an adult man exposes himself and masturbates in the front seat while talking to her)
  • Psychiatric hospitalisation for an eating disorder (anorexia)
  • Physical injury (broken arm)
  • Cuban Missile Crisis discussed
  • Animal hunting mentioned

The Way I Am Now by Amber Smith

Eden and Josh never had a fair shot at a healthy relationship. When they dated in high school, they each had their own problems getting in the way of the deep connection they felt toward one another. Unbeknownst to Josh, Eden was carrying the burden of a devastating sexual assault, while Josh was dealing with his own private struggle of having an alcoholic father. Months after Eden and two other girls publicly accuse their rapist, Eden is starting college while her case goes to trial. Now when she and Josh reconnect, it seems like it might finally be in the right place at the right time for them to make it work. But is their love… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic rape of a teenager recounted
  • Addiction recovery (theme)
  • Physical assault

Second Sister by Chan Ho-Kei

Nga-Yee, a librarian, lives a quiet life with her fifteen-year-old sister Siu-Man. After a difficult, impoverished upbringing and the deaths of their parents, they are finally finding a bit of stability. Then one day, Nga-Yee comes home to find her teenage sister has jumped to her death. Was it suicide, or was she pushed? And does it have anything to do with a recent trip on the Hong Kong subway which left Siu-Man silent and withdrawn? Nga-Yee cannot rest until she knows the truth about her sister – even if that means tracking down her sister’s friends one by one and making them confess.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sex slavery
  • Paedophilia
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Self harm
  • Bullying & cyberharassment

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child physical & sexual abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Foster care system
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Childhood trauma

Sweet Vengeance by Viano Oniomoh

Joy needs a deal with a demon to bring an end to the man who’d ruined her life. Malachi needs a deal with a human so he can remain in the mortal realm, far from the sentries looking to drag him back to his sect in hell. It’s a match seemingly made in heaven. Except, Malachi doesn’t expect Joy’s thirst for vengeance to taste so sweet, and Joy doesn’t expect a freaking demon to revive everything in her she’d thought long-dead. After the deal is struck, and their contract had some to an end, they both realise that one contract will not nearly be enough.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Victim-blaming recounted
  • Rape & incestuous childhood sexual abuse recounted
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Nightmares & panic attacks
  • Self-harm
  • Murder
  • Stalking

Merciless Saviors by H.E. Edgmon

That day at the First Church of Gracie changed everything for Gem Echols, and not just because Marian and Poppy betrayed them. Forced to use the Ouroboros knife on Zephyr, who had kidnapped their parents, Gem now has the power of the God of Air. While for any other god things might work out okay, the Magician—whose role within the pantheon is to keep the balance—having the power of another god has thrown everything into chaos. The Goddess of Death can now reanimate corpses; the God of Art’s powers are now corrupted and twisted, giving life to his macabre creations; and, while the God of Land has always been able to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Incest & child sexual abuse recounted
  • Memory loss
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Involuntary pregnancy & pregnancy loss mentiod
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Animal death

False Witness by Karin Slaughter

Leigh Coulton has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She has a good job as a defence attorney, a daughter doing well in school, and even her divorce is relatively civilised – her life is just as unremarkable as she’d always hoped it would be. But Leigh’s ordinary life masks a childhood which was far from average… a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, and finally torn apart by a devastating act of violence. Then a case lands on her desk – defending a wealthy man accused of rape. It’s the highest profile case she’s ever been given – a case which could transform her career, if she wins. But when she meets the accuse…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Graphic child sexual abuse
  • Child pornography
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Graphic drug use
  • Substance addiction
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Chronic pain
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder
  • Death of a sibling

Beyond Shame by Kit Rocha

All Noelle Cunningham has ever wanted is a life beyond–beyond the walls of Eden, where only the righteous are allowed to remain, and beyond her stiflingly restrictive existence as a councilman’s daughter. But only ruins lie outside the City, remnants of a society destroyed by solar storms decades earlier. he sectors surrounding Eden house the corrupt, the criminal–men like Jasper McCray, bootlegger and cage fighter. Jas clawed his way up from nothing to stand at the right hand of Sector Four’s ruthless leader, and he’ll defend the O’Kane gang with his life. But no fight ever prepared him for the exiled City girl who… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault recounted
  • Underage sex work mentioned*
  • Physical injury
  • Torture mentioned
  • Gun violence
  • Organised crime

*Context : The female protagonist was trained to be a sex worker as a child.

The Sinner by Shantel Tessier

I was raised in a world where money and power are at your fingertips. My father is a LORD, a very respected member of a secret society that knows no bounds. When tragedy struck my family, we discovered we weren’t untouchable. Just when I thought life couldn’t get any worse, I was shown what hell is really like. Then he came and saved me. The devil disguised as my personal hero. But of course, nothing is for free. Not when a soul is up for grabs. Easton Bradley Sinnett—Sin—uses his power for his own sick pleasure. Like a typical Lord, he never thought about the consequences of his actions. I grew up with him, obsessed over… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Slut-shaming & victim-blaming
  • Rape, including rape of a minor and rape by coercion, on-page & recounted
  • Sexual assault including reproductive assault
  • Involuntary voyeurism
  • Intimate partner violence & abuse
  • Forced marriage
  • Professor-student relationship
  • Infidelity recounted
  • Panic attack & nightmare
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Substance abuse & overdose
  • Attempted forced miscarriage (secondary character)
  • Emesis
  • Voluntary & involuntary body modifications including tattoos, nipple piercings and branding
  • Murder & staged suicide of a father recounted
  • Kidnapping & captivity mentioned
  • Torture
  • Stalking

*Context : The male protagonist (MMC) sexually assaults the female protagonist (FMC) with his body and an object (gun). The MMC also rapes the FMC by pretending to be someone else while she is blindfolded and tied up. The FMC was drugged and raped in the past by her professor. She was also raped by the MMC’s father when she was a minor. The MMC tampers with the FMC’s birth control, their condoms, and later forgoes a condom without consent. Secondary character hide cameras in the FMCs rooms to record sex without consent. The MMC is physically and emotionally abusive to the FMC, threatens to kill her, and tricked her into signing a marriage license. The FMC slaps the MMC. The MMC slept with a married woman in the past.