Tag Archives: Poverty & Financial Difficulties

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of poverty and financial difficulties, including eviction.

See also Food/water scarcity, Displacement, and Gentrification.

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

The Marvels by Brian Selznick

The journey begins at sea in 1766, with a boy named Billy Marvel. After surviving a shipwreck, he finds work in a London theatre. There, his family flourishes for generations as brilliant actors until 1900, when young Leontes Marvel is banished from the stage.

Nearly a century later, runaway Joseph Jervis seeks refuge with an uncle in London. Albert Nightingale’s strange, beautiful house, with its mysterious portraits and ghostly presences, captivates Joseph and leads him on a search for clues about the house, his family, and the past… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • HIV & AIDs
  • Terminal illness
  • Attempted murder
  • Drowning
  • Fire (theme)
  • Car accident
  • Shipwreck
  • Poverty
  • Animal death
  • Bullying

Mirage by Somaiya Daud

In a star system dominated by the brutal Vathek empire, eighteen-year-old Amani is a dreamer. She dreams of what life was like before the occupation; she dreams of writing poetry like the old-world poems she adores; she dreams of receiving a sign from Dihya that one day, she, too, will have adventure, and travel beyond her isolated moon.
But when adventure comes for Amani, it is not what she expects: she is kidnapped by the regime and taken in secret to the royal palace, where she discovers that she is nearly identical to the cruel half-Vathek Princess Maram… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Cheating
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Nightmares
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injury & illness
  • Medical procedures
  • Needles
  • Death of a grandfather & grandmother
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a sister
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Hostage situation
  • Fire
  • Colonialism (theme)
  • Poverty
  • Animal attack

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But 18-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette. To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Panic attack
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Cigarette & cigar smoking mentioned
  • Medical treatment including needles
  • Blood, gore and physical injury
  • Emesis
  • Death of a sister from drowning recounted
  • Death of a mother from being hit by a train
  • Military service discussed
  • Graphic war themes & battle scenes including bombings and chemical gassing, on-page
  • Poverty

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood.
Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Poverty themes
  • Racism, specifically Nazis, mentioned
  • Prejudice against Indigenous peoples mentioned
  • Attempted suicide mentioned
  • Suicidal ideations
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Substance abuse
  • Blood depiction
  • Cancer discussed
  • Grief depiction
  • Fire
  • Murder

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Told in Kvothe’s own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen.

The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of travelling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Death of parents
  • Fire, arson & burns
  • Murder
  • Poisoning
  • Poverty themes
  • Homelessness

So Sweet by Rebekah Weatherspoon

So Sweet by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Desperate times call for desperate measures… And desperate is the only way to describe Kayla Davis’s current situation. Out of work and almost out of money to cover her bills, Kayla finally caves to her roommate’s nagging and follows her to Arrangements, an online dating site that matches pretty young women with older men of a certain tax bracket.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia
  • Homomisia mentioned
  • Slut shaming
  • Sexual assault
  • Sexual harassment
  • Parent with dementia
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Financial difficulties (theme)