The Last Girl To Die by Helen Sarah Fields

In search of a new life, sixteen-year-old Adriana Clark’s family moves to the ancient, ocean-battered Isle of Mull, far off the coast of Scotland. Then she goes missing. Faced with hostile locals and indifferent police, her desperate parents turn to private investigator Sadie Levesque. Sadie is the best at what she does. But when she finds Adriana’s body in a cliffside cave, a seaweed crown carefully arranged on her head, she knows she’s dealing with something she’s never encountered before. The deeper she digs into the island’s secrets, the more urgent her quest to find the killer grows. Because what if Adriana is not the last girl to die?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence mentioned
  • Sexual assault
  • Murder & torture
  • Animal death (off-page)

The Darkness Within Us by Tricia Levenseller

By hiding her intelligence and ambition behind the mask of a beautiful air-headed girl, she has become a wealthy duchess. And, once her elderly husband dies, she will have all the freedom, money, and safety she’s ever wanted. Or so she thought.A man claiming to be the estranged grandson of Chrysantha’s lecherous late husband has turned up to steal her inheritance. To make matters worse, her little sister is going to be queen and is rubbing it in her face. Chrysantha decides that the only thing to do is upstage Alessandra at her own wedding. And as for this grand… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Murder by poisoning

The Sea Knows My Name by Laura Brooke Robson

If there’s one thing Thea Fowler has learned from her mother, it’s that the only way for a woman to survive in a man’s world is to make herself strong—invulnerable, even. Strength, after all, is how Clementine Fowler survived after her world was washed away by ash and lava and became one of the most notorious pirates the world has ever known. Unfortunately, Thea has inherited none of her mother’s ruthlessness and grit. After a lifetime of being told she is a disappointment, Thea longs to escape life under her mother’s thumb. And when she falls for a handsome sailor… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault (theme)
  • Physical injury
  • Gun & knife violence
  • Earthquake
  • Animal death

Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig

Flynn’s girlfriend has disappeared. How can he uncover her secrets without revealing his own? Flynn’s girlfriend, January, is missing. The cops are asking questions he can’t answer, and her friends are telling stories that don’t add up. All eyes are on Flynn—as January’s boyfriend, he must know something. But Flynn has a secret of his own. And as he struggles to uncover the truth about January’s disappearance, he must also face the truth about himself.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Rape & sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Murder

Saha by Cho Nam-Joo

In a country called ‘Town’, Su is found dead in an abandoned car. The suspected killer is presumed to come from the Saha Estates. Town is a privatised country, controlled by a secretive organisation known as the Seven Premiers. It is a society clearly divided into the haves and have-nots and those who have the very least live on the Saha Estates. Among their number is Jin-Kyung, a young woman whose brother, Dok-yung, was in a relationship with Su and quickly becomes the police’s prime suspect. When Dok-yung disappears, Jin Ky-ung is determined to get to the bottom of things.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & classism
  • Sexual assault
  • Pregnancy & abortion
  • Suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Unethical human experimentation & medical procedures (on-page)
  • Gun violence
  • Police brutality
  • Animal cruelty

The Stalker by Sarah Alderson

Newly-weds Liam and Laura are spending their honeymoon in paradise: just the two of them on a remote island off the coast of Scotland. But they soon discover that all is not as it seems, and the island has a tragic past. And they can’t shake the feeling of being watched… When one morning, they wake to find a message scratched into the window, their worst fears are confirmed. They aren’t alone on the island. And this stranger wants them dead.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia and body shaming (on-page)
  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Domestic violence and intimate partner abuse including food deprivation, captivity, physical & sexual assault (on-page)
  • Rape by a spouse/partner (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Mentions of a parent recovering from cancer
  • Physical injury and amateur medical treatment (on-page, glass shard stuck in foot)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a fiance
  • Death of a mother from a fall down the stairs (later revealed to be murder)
  • Murder of a husband by gun violence (on-page, self-defence for abuse)
  • Stalking
  • Animal injury (crow)
  • Kidnapping of a pet dog
  • Murder of a kitten (abusive partner kills the cat off-page by the body is found on-page)

Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever. Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself. Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for…Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Sexual assault
  • Panic attacks & suicidal ideation
  • Pregnancy (protagonist)
  • Abortion
  • Cancer

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention….

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism & Nazism mentioned
  • Rape & sexual assault
  • Child pornography, paedophilia & grooming mentioned
  • Disordered eating & body dysmorphia
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption & drug abuse (on-page)
  • Murder

Penance by Eliza Clark

It’s been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time. That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the ‘definitive account’ of the murder – and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & lesbophovia
  • Sexual assault of a child recounted (protagonist)
  • Necrophilia & hybristophilia discussed
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • Death of a daughter from suicide mentioned
  • Death of a classmate from drowning mentioned
  • Murder by being burned alive (on-page)
  • School shooting mentioned
  • Bullying

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.