Physical Injuries & Illness – Trigger Warning Database

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering

Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl who harbors a simple, impossible wish. These three characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and, ultimately, into each other’s lives. What happens then? As Kate DiCamillo would say: Reader, it is your destiny to find out.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Physical child abuse
Physical injury resulting in hearing loss
Animal injury

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

In less than twenty-four hours, I’ll be sixteen. Countless stories, songs and poems have been written about this wonderful age, when a girl finds true love and the stars shine for her and the handsome prince carries her off into the sunset.

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan Chase’s life, ever since her father disappeared when she was six. Ten years later, when her little brother also goes missing, Meghan learns the truth—she is the secret daughter of a mythical faery king and a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she’ll go to save someone she loves, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism & ableist language
Misogyny
Attempted gang rape, on-page
Parental abandonment recounted
Self-sacrifice
Alcohol consumption
Drugging
Blood depiction
Serious injury of a loved one
Death of a friend, implied
Murder & attempted murder
Gun violence
Drowning mentioned
Loss of autonomy (possession)
Animal attack
Death of a pet
Bullying
Cyberbullying, including faked revenge pornography

The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband by Julia Quinn

The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband by Julia Quinn

With her brother Thomas injured on the battlefront in the Colonies, orphaned Cecilia Harcourt has two unbearable choices: move in with a maiden aunt or marry a scheming cousin. Instead, she chooses option three and travels across the Atlantic, determined to nurse her brother back to health. But after a week of searching, she finds not her brother but his best friend, the handsome officer Edward Rokesby. He’s unconscious and in desperate need of her care, and Cecilia vows that she will save this soldier’s life, even if staying by his side means telling one little lie…

When Edward comes to, he’s more than a little confused. The blow to his head knocked out six months of his memory, but surely he would recall getting married. He knows who Cecilia Harcourt is—even if he does not recall her face—and with everyone calling her his wife, he decides it must be true, even though he’d always assumed he’d marry his neighbor back in England… Read more.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Physical injury
Death of a sibling
Death of a parent recounted
Disappearance of a sibling
War themes

Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

Sometimes you find love in the most unexpected of places… This is not one of those times.

Everyone expects Billie Bridgerton to marry one of the Rokesby brothers. The two families have been neighbors for centuries, and as a child the tomboyish Billie ran wild with Edward and Andrew. Either one would make a perfect husband… someday.

There is only one Rokesby Billie absolutely cannot tolerate, and that is George. He may be the eldest and heir to the earldom, but he’s arrogant, annoying, and she’s absolutely certain he detests her. Which is perfectly convenient, as she can’t stand the sight of him, either… Read more.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Physical injury
Disappearance of a loved one

Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn

Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn

Honoria Smythe-Smith is a) a really bad violinist, b) still miffed at being nicknamed “Bug” as a child, c) not in love with her older brother’s best friend, d) all of the above.

Marcus Holroyd is a) the Earl of Chatteris, b) regrettably prone to sprained ankles, c) not in love with his best friend’s younger sister, and d) all of the above.

Together they: a) eat quite a bit of chocolate cake, b) survive a deadly fever and the world’s worst musical performance, c) fall quite desperately in love…. or d) all of the above.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Graphic medical procedures
Physical illness

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovers this when she is nine years old. Lost in the woods.

Trisha has only veered a little way off the path. But in her panic to get back to her family, she takes a turning that leads into the tangled undergrowth, deeper into the woods.

At first it’s just the bugs, midges and mosquitoes. Then comes the hunger. For comfort she tunes her Walkman into broadcasts of the Red Sox baseball games and the performances of her hero Tom Gordon.

As darkness begins to fall and Trisha struggles for survival and a way out, she realizes that she is not alone. There’s something else in the woods – watching. Waiting…

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Hallucinations
Pneumonia
Hospitalisation

Gerald’s Game by Stephen King

Gerald’s Game by Stephen King

Jessie is trapped: during an ill-fated S&M game, she kicks her husband and induces a fatal coronary. She is handcuffed to the bed in a lakeside cabin in the middle of nowhere, with no means of escape. Voices in her head force her to confront a buried childhood trauma.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Fatmisia & body shaming
Attempted martial rape, on-page
Paedophilia & incestuous child sexual assault (father-daughter)
Hallucinations, delusions & intrusive thoughts
Dehydration
Blood & gore depiction
Physical injury
Death of a husband from a heart attack

Duma Key by Stephen King

Duma Key by Stephen King

When Edgar Freemantle moves to the remote island of Duma Key to escape his past, he doesn’t expect to find much there.

But Duma has been waiting for him. The shells beneath his house are whispering to him, and something in the view from his window urges him to discover a talent he never knew he had.

Edgar Freemantle begins to paint. And as he paints, the island’s secrets begin to stir. Secrets of children lost in the undertow, of a ghost ship riding the distant horizon – and a family’s buried past reaching long hands into the present.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Domestic violence
Suicidal ideation
Attempted suicide by gunshot recounted
Dementia
Blood depiction
Physical injuries from a workplace accident, including an amputated right arm and a head injury impairing speech, vision and memory
Death of a wife & daughter recounted
Death of a sister by drowning
Paternal flicide by drowning

The Dead Zone by Stephen King

The Dead Zone by Stephen King

It was as if his eyes were awake, and the rest of him still slept

Meet Johnny Smith. A young man whose streak of luck ends dramatically in a major car crash. Followed by blackness. A long, long time in cold limbo.

When he wakes up life has been turned upside down. His fiancee has met someone else. And Johnny is cursed with the power to perceive evil in men’s souls. He’s had these hunches since he had an ice-skating accident as a child. Now he has an ability to see into the future. An ability which will bring him into a terrifying confrontation with a charismatic, power-hungry and dangerous man…

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Cheating
Coma, resulting in neural injury
Suicide
Death of a child
Murder & attempted murder
Gun violence
Car accident
Explosion (car bomb)
Blackmail
Nuclear disaster discussed
Animal death (dog)

It by Stephen King

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Homomisia
Hate crimes
Sexual assault
Domestic abuse
Suicide
Graphic blood & gore depiction
Physical injuries, including broken bones & amputation
Dead bodies
Decapitation
Hospitalisation
Death of a child
Death of a father
Death of a friend
Murder & attempted murder
Bullying
Animal death