Tag Archives: Physical Assault

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of physical assault, including fisticuffs, beatings, mugging, and battery.

See also Hate crimes, Murder & attempted murder, and Bullying.

The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Raúf

There used to be an empty chair at the back of my class, but now a new boy called Ahmet is sitting in it. He’s eight years old (just like me), but he’s very strange. He never talks and never smiles and doesn’t like sweets – not even lemon sherbets, which are my favorite! But the truth is, Ahmet really isn’t very strange at all. He’s a refugee who’s run away from a War. A real one. With bombs and fires and bullies that hurt people. And the more I find out about him, the more I want to be his friend. That’s where my best friends Josie, Michael and Tom come in. Because you see, together we’ve come up with a plan.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a sister mentioned
  • Death of a parent in a car accident mentioned
  • Bombing raid mentioned
  • Physical assault
  • Exile mentioned
  • Bullying
  • Death of a pet cat mentioned

Real Players Never Lose by Micalea Smeltzer

Dandelion Meadows is cursed. Horrible name. Horrible luck. At eighteen she should be headed off to college, all smiles and naivety. Instead, a victim of a school shooting, she’s starting her senior year in a new city and living with her brother. Nightmares of that terrible day haunt her, affecting her daily life and the relationships around her. Forced to meet with the school counsellor, Dani finds him chipping away at the walls she’s built around herself, and even her heart. Lachlan Taylor doesn’t know what to make at first of the broken student he’s tasked with helping. She’s survived a trauma he’s not sure he can save her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Body-shaming
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Physical assault

Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. But when her birthday finally comes around, instead of the idyllic life she was hoping for with her true love, she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day. Forced to become the mistress of the brutal man who owns the jail, Pheby faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart in this powerful, thrilling story of one slave’s fight for freedom.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & colourism
  • Slavery
  • Sexual assault
  • Starvation
  • Death of a parent
  • Physical assault
  • Drowning of a baby

Funny Feelings by Tarah Dewitt

Farley Jones is a loud, chaotic, and hilariously clever standup comedian on the way to stardom. The only thing she loves more than the rush of telling jokes in front of a revved-up audience is her hot older manager Meyer, though he doesn’t have a clue. Keeping her feelings hidden from him is agony (a tragedy, even―in lieu of flowers, please send cash…) but Meyer has been Farley’s closest and most treasured friend, not to mention vital to the trajectory of her career. She can’t risk ruining their relationship by telling him how she truly feels. After all, who else would have the patience to put up with a hot mess like her? A form… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a secondary character from childbirth complications recounted
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Physical assault
  • Ableist bullying mentioned

Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney

Twenty years after a baby is stolen from a stroller, a woman is murdered in a care home. The two crimes are somehow linked, and a good bad girl may be the key to discovering the truth.

Edith may have been tricked into a nursing home, but at eighty-years-young, she’s planning her escape. Patience works there, cleaning messes and bonding with Edith, a kindred spirit. But Patience is lying to Edith about almost everything… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Postpartum depression
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping of a child
  • Physical assault
  • Animal cruelty

Tough Luck by Annabeth Albert

I’m a SEAL. Or rather, I was. Retired at the grand old age of thirty-eight, I’m at loose ends. My best friend wants me to join his security team. I’m not sure I’m bodyguard material, but he needs someone to protect his kid brother. How hard can spoiled brat duty be?

Somehow, I missed the part where former child star Danny Love went from dorky TV darling to all grown up and disturbingly attractive. All the gossip about his wild ways fails to mention that he’s trying hard to clean up his act. But now he’s got a stalker… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Night terrors
  • Addiction recovery discussed
  • Physical assault with a knife
  • Home invasion
  • Naval service recounted
  • Stalking

After She Falls by Carmen Schober

Strong-willed Adri Rivera always dreamed of becoming a professional mixed martial artist, but then she fell in love with a man who smashed everything to pieces. When their tumultuous relationship finally comes to a head, Adri flees with their young daughter to her small hometown in the mountains of Pennsylvania. There, she must face the people she left behind and put her broken life back together as a single mother. Adri struggles to regain her independence after so many years under the oppressive influence of her ex, but a job opportunity at a local gym gives her hope that she’ll be able to stand on her own two feet. The… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Physical assault
  • Animal abuse

The Fever King by Victoria Lee

In the former United States, sixteen-year-old Noam Álvaro wakes up in a hospital bed, the sole survivor of the viral magic that killed his family and made him a technopath. His ability to control technology attracts the attention of the minister of defense and thrusts him into the magical elite of the nation of Carolinia.

The son of undocumented immigrants, Noam has spent his life fighting for the rights of refugees fleeing magical outbreaks—refugees Carolinia routinely deports with vicious efficiency. Sensing a way to make change, Noam accepts the minister’s offer… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut shaming
  • Child sexual abuse
  • Statutory rape
  • Physical abuse
  • Suicide, off-page
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing. After a failed attempted tgo escape an arranged marriage, SIlas is diagnosed… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Homomisia & transmisia
  • Misgendering & deadnaming
  • Misogyny & sexism
  • Conversion therapy
  • Sexual assault of a child, on-page
  • Dissociation
  • Forced institutionalisation
  • Involuntary pregnancy
  • Graphic self-abortion
  • Miscarriage discussed
  • Graphic body horror & eye trauma
  • Graphic medical procedures & experimentation
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a mother and father
  • Physical assault

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink

Keisha Taylor lived a quiet life with her wife, Alice, until the day that Alice disappeared. After months of searching, presuming she was dead, Keisha held a funeral, mourned, and gradually tried to get on with her life. But that was before Keisha started to see her wife, again and again, in the background of news reports from all over America. Alice isn’t dead, and she is showing up at every major tragedy and accident in the country… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism
  • Physical assault