Tag Archives: Self-Harm

At the Edge of the Universe by Shaun David Hutchinson

Tommy and Ozzie have been best friends since the second grade, and boyfriends since eighth. They spent countless days dreaming of escaping their small town—and then Tommy vanished. More accurately, he ceased to exist, erased from the minds and memories of everyone who knew him. Everyone except Ozzie. Ozzie doesn’t know how to navigate life without Tommy, and soon he suspects that something else is going on: that the universe is shrinking. When Ozzie is paired up with the reclusive and secretive Calvin for a physics project, it’s hard for him to deny the feelings developing between them, even if he still loves… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Child abuse
  • Statutory rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Self-harm
  • Depression
  • Explosion
  • Plane crash

We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button. Only he isn’t sure he wants to. After all, life hasn’t been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimer’s. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriend’s suicide last year…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia & slurs
  • Outing
  • Sexual assault & attempted rape
  • Alcoholism
  • Grandparent with Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Self-harm mentioned
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Miscarriage
  • Nonconsensual medical procedures and experimentation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a boyfriend from suicide recounted
  • Bullying & cyberbullying

The No-Show by Beth O’Leary

Siobhan is a quick-tempered life coach with way too much on her plate. Miranda is a tree surgeon used to being treated as just one of the guys on the job. Jane is a soft-spoken volunteer for the local charity shop with zero sense of self-worth. These three women are strangers who have only one thing in common: They’ve all been stood up on the same day, the very worst day to be stood up–Valentine’s Day. And, unbeknownst to them, they’ve all been stood up by the same man. Once they’ve each forgiven him for standing them up, they let him back into their lives and are in serious… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual harassment
  • Cheating
  • Dementia
  • Panic attacks
  • Self-harm
  • Pregnancy
  • Miscarriage
  • Stalking

23:27 by HL Roberts

Fame. Money. Glory. These were all the things that you would expect from being famous. The bait that the producers of the industry would tempt you with to get you on their side. These were all the things that you would expect from being famous. The bait that the producers of the industry would tempt you with to get you on their side. They don’t tell you about the pressure that’s always on the verge of crushing you when you’re forced to do everything that the public demands for and not what you truly desire. They don’t tell you about the self-hatred that would soon take over your entire being at the thought that you will never be good enough. No – they don’t tell you these things at all… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Depression
  • Suicide
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Ableism
  • Queermisia
  • Hate crime
  • Rape mentioned
  • Alcoholism
  • Self-harm
  • Abortion
  • Cancer
  • Dead bodies
  • Murder & mass murder
  • War themes

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

In a lonely cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood summer companions and the killer that stalked the small New England town. Of the body they found, and the horror of that discovery echoing down the decades. And of Sky, Wilder’s one-time best friend, who stole his unfinished memoir and turned it into a lurid bestselling novel, Looking Glass Sound. But as Wilder writes, the lines between memory and fiction blur. He fears he’s losing his grip on reality when he finds notes hidden around the cottage written in Sky’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Conversion therapy mentioned
  • Depression
  • Panic attack
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use mentioned
  • Abortion
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Poisoning
  • Kindapping of a child
  • Drowning mentioned
  • Stalking

The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey

Julie Crews is a coked-up, burnt-out thirty-something who packs a lot of magic into her small body. She’s been trying to establish herself in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs to claw her way to the top. Julie is desperate for a quick career boost to break the dead-end grind, but her pleas draw the attention of an eldritch god who is hungry for revenge. Her power grab sets off a deadly chain of events that puts her closest friends – and the entire world – directly in the path of annihilation.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Intimate partner violence, off-page
  • Self-harm
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Torture, off-page
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)

Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle

Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess. Powers that would ruin her life if the wrong person were to discover them. To gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school’s most reclusive student, Baz—a boy already well-versed in the deadly nature of darker magic, whose sister happened to be one of the drowned… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Depression
  • Self-harm & bloodletting
  • Institutionalisation
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Drowning

Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig

Elspeth and Ravyn have gathered most of the twelve Providence Cards, but the last, and most important one remains to be found: The Twin Alders. If they are going to find it before the Solstice and cure the kingdom of the dark magic infecting it, they will need to journey beyond the dangerous mist-cloaked forest that surrounds their kingdom. And the only one who can lead them there is the monster that shares Elspeth’s head. The Nightmare. And he’s not eager to share any longer.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Self-harm for magic
  • Suicidal ideation mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)

A Curse for True Love by Stephanie Garber

Evangeline Fox ventured to the Magnificent North in search of her happy ending, and it seems as if she has it. She’s married to a handsome prince and lives in a legendary castle. But Evangeline has no idea of the devastating price she’s paid for this fairytale. She doesn’t know what she has lost, and her husband is determined to make sure she never finds out . . . but first he must kill Jacks, the Prince of Hearts.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Self-injury for magic
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption & drugging (protagonist)
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder by stabbing & knife violence
  • Torture mentioned
  • Protagonist is kidnapped, bound, pushed into a well, magically stripped of her memories, and nearly killed with a knife
  • Animal death (fox by arrow)