Tag Archives: PTSD & Trauma

Colters’ Woman by Maya Banks

Adam, Ethan and Ryan aren’t looking for women. They’re looking for a woman. One woman to share their lives and their beds. They don’t want a casual romp in the hay, they want the woman who will complete them and they’re losing hope of finding her. That is until Adam finds Holly lying in the snow just yards from their cabin. He knows she’s different the minute he holds her in his arms. But before Adam gets his hopes up, he knows he has to gauge his brothers’ reactions. Soon it’s evident that she’s the one. There are a few problems, however, like convincing her she belongs with them and keeping her safe from the man who wants her dead.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Dubious consent scene (nonconsensual somnophilia)
  • Military Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from torture as a prisoner of war
  • Illness from exposure to the cold and dehydration
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence

Sweet Dandelion 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

  • Adult-minor relationship between a patient and counsellor
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from a school shooting
  • Death of a mother

738 Days by Stacey Kade

At fifteen, Amanda Grace was abducted on her way home from school. 738 days later, she escaped. Her 20/20 interview is what everyone remembers—Amanda describing the room where she was kept, the torn poster of TV heartthrob Chase Henry on the wall. It reminded her of home and gave her the strength to keep fighting. Now, years later, Amanda is struggling to live normally. Her friends have gone on to college, while she battles PTSD. She’s not getting any better, and she fears that if something doesn’t change soon she never will. Six years ago, Chase Henry defied astronomical odds, won a coveted role on a new TV… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism
  • PTSD & trauma
  • Kidnapping & captivity of a child recounted

6 Times We Almost Kissed [and One Time We Did] by Tess Sharpe

Penny and Tate have always clashed. Unfortunately, their mothers are lifelong best friends, so the girls’ bickering has carried them through playdates, tragedy, and more than one rom-com marathon with the Moms. When Penny’s mother decides to become a living donor to Tate’s mom, ending her wait for a liver transplant, things go from clashing to cataclysmic. Because in order to help their families recover physically, emotionally, and financially, the Moms combine their households the summer before senior year. So Penny and Tate make a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety
  • Emotional child abuse & neglect
  • Cheating recounted*
  • Sexual assault mentioned*
  • Suicidal ideation mentioned
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical illness & injury*
  • Ovarian cancer mentioned including discussions of the original diagnosis, remission, and death
  • Surgery recounted, including organ donation and an oophorectomy
  • Death of a father, on-page

*Context : The protagonist’s ex cheated on her in the past. Mentions of an interrupted assault that happened twenty-five years earlier. Mentions of dealing with Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency and surgery required for a tug o’ war injury that nearly severed fingers.

Midnight Is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead

For fans of Verity and A Flicker in the Dark, this is a twisted tale of murder, obsessive love, and the beastly urges that lie dormant within us all…even the God-fearing folk of Bottom Springs, Louisiana. In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist. Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than the God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners’ bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights. When a skull is found… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape
  • Religious trauma
  • Alcohol abuse

Hopeless by Elsie Silver

Beau Eaton is the town prince, a handsome military hero with a tortured past. I’m the outcast bartender, a shy girl from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s thirty-five and all man, and I’m twenty-two and all… virgin. He’s also my fiancé. Correction: my fake fiancé. We start out as a bet. He doesn’t believe that anyone holds my last name against me. So he offers me his to prove a point. It’s win-win. He gets a break from his concerned family’s prying, and I get a chance to shed my family’s reputation while I save up to ditch this small town. He says all I have to do is wear his ring, follow his lead, and pretend I can’t keep my hands off of him… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Alcoholism discussed
  • Skin grafts for burns
  • Military service recounted

At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop

Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land. Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Explosions

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

Serving Sin by Angelina M. Lopez

In the years since, Roman’s risen from his humble Texas roots: He is now the head of an elite security firm and the reluctant half-prince of a glamorous wine-growing Spanish kingdom. And today, Cenobia–“Cen”–is finally in the CEO role she’s trained for her whole life. But serious, growing threats against her are derailing a product launch that will change the Mexican industrial landscape forever. She’s done the hard work to recover from her kidnapping, but therapy hasn’t changed the fact that Roman Sheppard will forever represent safety in her mind. He’s the only one she can trust.… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Rape
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Pregnancy from rape
  • Death of a parent
  • Kidnapping

After by Amy Efaw

An infant left in the trash to die. A teenage mother who never knew she was pregnant . . . Before That Morning, these were the words most often used to describe straight-A student and star soccer player Devon: responsible, hardworking, mature. But all that changes when the police find Devon home sick from school as they investigate the case of an abandoned baby. Soon the connection is made—Devon has just given birth; the baby in the trash is hers. After That Morning, there’s only one way to define attempted murderer.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child neglect
  • PTSD & trauma
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Childbirth mentioned
  • Incarceration in a juvenile detention center
  • Attempted infanticide by abandonment