Tag Archives: Poverty & Financial Difficulties

The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden

Freddie Makin is a spy for hire. For a year he’s been watching Jiang Cheng, an academic whose life seems suspiciously normal. To Freddie it’s just a job: he never asks who’s paying him and why—until the day someone is sent to kill him, and suddenly the watcher becomes the watched. On the run from whoever wants him dead, Freddie knows he must have seen something incriminating. The only trouble is, he has no idea what. Is the CIA behind all this—or does it go higher than that? Have his trackers uncovered his own murky past? As he’s forced into a lethal dance across… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia and body-shaming
  • Classism
  • Attempted rape
  • Infidelity (on-page)
  • Discussions of domestic abuse and violence
  • Disordered eating & food thoughts including calorie counting and food shaming
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Infertility mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother from a stroke mentioned
  • Murder by gun & knife violence
  • Physical assault
  • Stalking
  • Incarceration for physical assault mentioned
  • Poverty & financial difficulties discussed

Context : The protagonist’s employee has her gigolo pretend to be an abusive, violent husband. This includes physical abuse, attempted strangulation, electronic monitoring, and food deprivation. Mentions of the protagonist working to free previous clients from domestic abuse situations, including murdering the abuser when necessary. Her neighbour attempts to rape her and she pushes him down the stairs. The police do not believe her and victim-blame. Her ex-boyfriend hides illegal drugs in his apartment in revenge, and her neighbour goes to jail for drug possession. The protagonist was in jail for assaulting her friend’s rapist because he died from his injuries. Wendy, the protagonist’s employer, also didn’t tell her real husband that she was could not get pregnant, even though he believed they were trying to have a child.

    The Lost Ticket by Freya Sampson

    When Libby Nicholls arrives in London, brokenhearted and with her life in tatters, the first person she meets on the bus is elderly Frank. He tells her about the time in 1962 that he met a girl on the number 88 bus with beautiful red hair just like hers. They made plans for a date at the National Gallery art museum, but Frank lost the bus ticket with her number on it. For the past sixty years, he’s ridden the same bus trying to find her, but with no luck. Libby is inspired to action and, with the help of an unlikely companion, she papers the bus route with posters advertising their search. Libby begins to open her guarded heart to new friendship… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Infidelity mentioned (secondary character)
    • Emotionally abusive relationship recounted
    • Alzheimer’s Disease
    • Drug withdrawal mentioned
    • Infertility mentioned (secondary character)
    • Unplanned pregnancy & childbirth (on-page) as well as mentions of pregnancy complications
    • Injury and hospitalisation from physical assault
    • Financial & house insecurity

    Thirst by Varsha Bajaj

    Minni lives in the poorest part of Mumbai, where access to water is limited to a few hours a day and the communal taps have long lines. Lately, though, even that access is threatened by severe water shortages and thieves who are stealing this precious commodity—an act that Minni accidentally witnesses one night. Meanwhile, in the high-rise building where she just started to work, she discovers that water streams out of every faucet and there’s even a rooftop swimming pool. What Minni also discovers there is one of the water mafia bosses. Now she must decide whether to expose him and risk her job and maybe her life… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Water scarcity (theme)
    • Poverty

    Play to Win by Jodie Slaughter

    Miriam Butler’s life is going nowhere in the slowest, most excruciating way possible. Stuck in the same barely-paying job she’s had since she was sixteen and spending every night sleeping in the spare twin bed in her mother’s house, her existence might be hilarious if it wasn’t so bleak. One trip to her favourite Quickie Mart upends everything when she finds herself the winner of a Mega Millions Lottery Jackpot. Unfortunately, not even life-altering roses come without their painful thorns. Hers just so happen to be in the form of an estranged husband who has the right to claim his share of her money. It’s been eight years since… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Marital abandonment & estrangement
    • Alcohol consumption
    • Death of parents & a caregiver (aunt)
    • Poverty

    Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha

    The United States went belly up 45 years ago when our power grid was wiped out. Too few live in well-protected isolation while the rest of us scrape by on the margins. The only thing that matters is survival. By any means. At any cost. Nina is an information broker with a mission: to bring hope to the darkest corners of Atlanta. She and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to help those in need. But altruism doesn’t pay the bills—raiding vaults and collecting sensitive data is where the real money is. Knox is a bitter, battle-weary supersoldier who leads the Silver Devils… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Child abuse mentioned
    • Alcohol consumption
    • Medical experimentation recounted
    • Seizures
    • Death of a sister recounted
    • Death of a friend recounted
    • Murder
    • Gun violence
    • Physical assault (cage fighting, attempted mugging)
    • Torture
    • Kidnapping
    • Poverty themes

    The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

    Years ago, a reclusive mega-bestselling children’s author quit writing under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly he resurfaces with a brand-new book and a one-of-a-kind competition, offering a prize that will change the winner’s life in this absorbing and whimsical novel.

    Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it’s like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Parental abandonment
    • Child abuse and neglect recounted
    • Foster care experiences
    • Emotionally abusive relationship recounted
    • Munchausen by Proxy mentioned*
    • Alcoholism and substance addiction recovery (love interest)
    • Alcohol consumption & abuse
    • Unplanned pregnancy & miscarriage mentioned
    • Sibling with terminal cancer
    • Death of a brother from complications during heart surgery recounted
    • Financial and housing insecurity

    *Context: The protagonist learns her sister’s childhood chronic illness was the result of her parents’ attempts to keep her sick. Discussions of children in foster care due to abusive alcoholic parents and parents’ deaths from overdoses.

    Spice Road by Maiya Ibrahim

    In the hidden desert city of Qalia, there is secret spice magic that awakens the affinities of those who drink the misra tea. Sixteen-year-old Imani has the affinity for iron and is able to wield a dagger like no other warrior. She has garnered the reputation as being the next great Shield for battling djinn, ghouls, and other monsters spreading across the sands.

    Her reputation has been overshadowed, however, by her brother, who tarnished the family name after it was revealed that he was stealing his nation’s coveted spice–a telltale sign of magical obsession… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Attempted sexual assault
    • Alcohol consumption
    • Murder
    • Torture
    • Disappearance of a sibling
    • Poverty
    • Animal death

    A Multitude of Dreams by Mara Rutherford

    Princess Imogen of Goslind has lived a sheltered life for three years at the boarded-up castle—she and the rest of its inhabitants safe from the bloody mori roja plague that’s ravaged the kingdom. But Princess Imogen has a secret, and as King Stuart descends further into madness, it’s at great risk of being revealed. Rations dwindle each day, and unhappy murmurings threaten to crack the facade of the years-long charade being played within the castle walls… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Anti-semitism
    • Poverty
    • Emotional abuse
    • Self-harm
    • Alcohol consumption
    • Blood & gore depiction
    • Blood drinking
    • Dead bodies
    • Decapitation
    • Pandemic/contagion
    • Starvation
    • Death of parents recounted
    • Mass deaths from pandemic
    • Captivity
    • Murder

    Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon

    I went up the hill, the hill was muddy, stomped my toe and made it bloody, should I wash it? Justin knows that something is wrong with his best friend. Zee went missing for a year. And when he came back, he was . . . different. Nobody knows what happened to him. At Zee’s welcome home party, Justin and the neighborhood crew play Hide and Seek. But it goes wrong. Very wrong. One by one, everyone who plays the game disappears, pulled into a world of nightmares come to life. Justin and his friends realize this horrible place is where Zee had been trapped. All they can do now is hide from the Seeker.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Phobias
    • Death of a parent recounted
    • Disappearance of a friend
    • Animal attack
    • Poverty

    Golden Boys by Phil Stamper

    Gabriel, Reese, Sal, and Heath are best friends, bonded in their small rural town by their queerness, their good grades, and their big dreams. They are about to embark on the summer before senior year of high school, where each is going on a new, big adventure. Reese is attending a design school in Paris. Gabriel is going to Boston to volunteer with a environmental nonprofit. Sal is interning on Capitol Hill for a U.S. Senator. And Heath is stuck going to Daytona Beach to help out at his aunt’s beachfront arcade… Read more.

    Goodreads

    Trigger and Content Warnings

    • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
    • Divorce
    • Anxiety
    • Alcohol consumption
    • Poverty