Rape – Page 137 – Trigger Warning Database

He Must Like You by Danielle Younge-Ullman

He Must Like You by Danielle Younge-Ullman

Libby’s having a rough senior year. Her older brother absconded with his college money and is bartending on a Greek island. Her dad just told her she’s got to pay for college herself, and he’s evicting her when she graduates so he can Airbnb her room. A drunken hook-up with her coworker Kyle has left her upset and confused. So when Perry Ackerman, serial harasser and the most handsy customer at The Goat where she waitresses, pushes her over the edge, she can hardly be blamed for dumping a pitcher of sangria on his head.

Unfortunately, Perry is a local industry hero, the restaurant’s most important customer, and Libby’s mom’s boss. Now Libby has to navigate the fallout of her outburst, find an apartment, and deal with her increasing rage at the guys who’ve screwed up her life–and her increasing crush on the one guy who truly gets her. As timely as it is timeless, He Must Like You is a story about consent, rage, and revenge, and the potential we all have to be better people.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Victim-blaming
Rape and sexual assault
Workplace sexual harassment
Depression & PTSD
Cyberbullying

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years – from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding – that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives – the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness – are inextricable from the history playing out around them.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexism
Arranged child marriage
Child and domestic abuse
Rape and sexual abuse
Suicide
Miscarriage & abortion
Mutilation
Cancer
War themes

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Graphic rape of a child and child sexual abuse
Child sex trafficking & sexual slavery mentioned
Suicide by gun & knife, on-page
Public executions by stoning
Hanging mentioned
Gun violence

Out by Natsuo Kirino

Out by Natsuo Kirino

Natsuo Kirino’s novel tells a story of random violence in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works a night shift making boxed lunches brutally strangles her deadbeat husband and then seeks the help of her co-workers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime.

The ringleader of this cover-up, Masako Katori, emerges as the emotional heart of Out and as one of the shrewdest, most clear-eyed creations in recent fiction. Masako’s own search for a way out of the straitjacket of a dead-end life leads her, too, to take drastic action.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape
Domestic violence
Blood & gore depiction and body horror
Death of a husband
Murder

House of Dragons by Jessica Cluess

House of Dragons by Jessica Cluess

When the Emperor dies, the five royal houses of Etrusia attend the Call, where one of their own will be selected to compete for the throne. It is always the oldest child, the one who has been preparing for years to compete in the Trial. But this year is different. This year, these five outcasts will answer the call….

The Liar: Emilia must hide her dark magic or be put to death.

The Soldier: Lucian is a warrior who has sworn to never lift a sword again.

The Servant: Vespir is a dragon trainer whose skills alone will keep her in the game.

The Thief: Ajax knows that nothing is free–he must take what he wants.

The Murderer: Hyperia was born to rule and will stop at nothing to take her throne.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Rape & sexual assault
Suicide
Self-harm

Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin

Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin

Meet Rachel Grossman. She’ll stop at nothing to protect her daughter, Aviva, even if it ends up costing her everything.

Meet Jane Young. She’s disrupting a quiet life with her daughter, Ruby, to seek political office for the first time.

Meet Ruby Young. She thinks her mom has a secret. She’s right.

Meet Embeth Levin. She’s made a career of cleaning up her congressman husband’s messes.

Meet Aviva Grossman. The Internet won’t let her or anyone else forget her past transgressions.

This is the story of five women and the ~~sex~~ sexist scandal that binds them together.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slut shaming
Fatmisia
Ableist & transmisic language
Sexual harassment & rape mentioned
Depression mentioned
Miscarriage mentioned
Cancer
Bullying

The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears – imperfection, failure, loneliness – she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere eighty-eight pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape
Eating disorder (anorexia nervosa)
Suicide
Self-harm

Sour Hearts by Jenny Zhao

Sour Hearts by Jenny Zhao

Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat — dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck — these seven stories showcase Zhang’s compassion and moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy’s Complaint. A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Graphic rape of a child

Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold

Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold

You are alone in the woods, seen only by the unblinking yellow moon. Your hands are empty. You are nearly naked.

And the wolf is angry.

Since her grandmother became her caretaker when she was four years old, Bisou Martel has lived a quiet life in a little house in Seattle. She’s kept mostly to herself. She’s been good. But then comes the night of homecoming, when she finds herself running for her life over roots and between trees, a fury of claws and teeth behind her. A wolf attacks. Bisou fights back. A new moon rises. And with it, questions. About the blood in Bisou’s past and on her hands as she stumbles home. About broken boys and vicious wolves. About girls lost in the woods—frightened, but not alone.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape and sexual assault
Intimate partner violence and forced relationship
Blood depiction
Death and loss
Murder

Mosqitoland by David Arnold

Mosquitoland by David Arnold

I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.

After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the “wastelands” of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.

So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape, attempted rape and paedophilia