Tag Archives: Sexual Assault

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of sexual assault. It is also used as an umbrella tag for any form of sexual violence.

See also Rape, Paedophilia & CSA, and Sex work.

The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson

1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his par­ents… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Sexual assault of a child
  • Miscarriage & stillbirth

Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. But when her birthday finally comes around, instead of the idyllic life she was hoping for with her true love, she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day. Forced to become the mistress of the brutal man who owns the jail, Pheby faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart in this powerful, thrilling story of one slave’s fight for freedom.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & colourism
  • Slavery
  • Sexual assault
  • Starvation
  • Death of a parent
  • Physical assault
  • Drowning of a baby

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.

Our Hideous Progeny by C. E. McGill

It’s 1853 London. Ex-medical student Victor Frankenstein has been missing for years now. Frankenstein’s great niece Mary Saville and her husband, Henry, are trying to follow in his scientific footsteps and become renowned paleontologists. They have the brains and the ambition; the only thing they lack is the reputation. Mary is a woman with a sharp mind but a fierce tongue and Henry is an unemployed gambling addict: none of this earning appeal with their peers… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Classism
  • Misogyny
  • Ableism
  • Sexual assault
  • Chronic illness
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Death of an infant mentioned
  • Animal death & experimentation

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her.

Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.

When Alejandra visits a therapist, she begins exploring her family’s history, starting with the biological mother she never knew… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Ableism
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Parental abandonment
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Miscarriage
  • Blood, injury & gore depiction

Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison

Rory Morris isn’t thrilled to be moving back to her hometown, even if it is temporary. There are bad memories there. But her twin sister, Scarlett, is pregnant, estranged from the baby’s father, and needs support, so Rory returns to the place she thought she’d put in her rearview. After a night out at a bar where she runs into an old almost-flame, she hits a large animal with her car. And when she gets out to investigate, she’s attacked. Rory survives, miraculously, but life begins to look and feel different. She’s unnaturally strong, with an aversion to silver–and suddenly the moon has her in its thrall. She’s changing into someone else… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Physical child abuse & neglect recounted
  • Infidelity recounted
  • Smoking
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned (secondary character)
  • Emesis
  • Hospitalisation
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction
  • Animal death & attack

A Dawn of Onyx by Kate Golden

Arwen Valondale never expected to be the brave one, offering her life to save her brother’s. Now she’s been taken prisoner by the most dangerous kingdom on the continent, and made to use her rare magical abilities to heal the soldiers of the vicious Onyx King. Arwen knows better than to face the ancient, wicked woods that surround the castle on her own, which means working with a fellow prisoner might be her only path to freedom. Unfortunately, he’s as infuriating as he is cunning—and seems to take twisted pleasure in playing on Arwen’s deepest fears. But here in… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Sexual harassment
  • Emotional and physical child abuse by a step-parent mentioned
  • Blood, gore and injury depiction
  • Parent with chronic health condition
  • Death of a mother
  • Kidnapping
  • War themes

Reasonable Adults by Robin Lefler

The morning after a humiliating post-breakup social media post (#sponsoredbywine), Kate Rigsby learns she’s lost her marketing job along with her almost-fiancé. Worse, she realizes how little she truly cared about either. Craving a reset, Kate flees the big-city life she spent many years building—and almost as many doubting—to take a temporary gig at Treetops, a swanky, off-the-grid creative retreat in Muskoka, complete with meditation circles, deluxe spa, and artisanal cocktails. At least, that’s what the brochure promises. The reality is a struggling resort that’s struck in the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault, on-page

Maybe Once, Maybe Twice by Alison Rose Greenberg

You know that old saying, “if we are still single when we’re 35, we should get married?” Well, Maggie Vine made that vow with two different people, at two very different stages of her life. And they both showed up. Maggie Vine’s life is going extra-medium. At 35 she’s pursuing her dreams of being a singer and being a mother—though neither is successfully panning out. So when Garrett Scholl—stifled hedge fund manager by day but electrifying aspiring rock singer by night—comes to her 35th birthday party with the intention to kiss Maggie senseless, it feels like one piece might click into place. Except he’s engaged to someone… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault, off-page
  • Depression
  • Infertility due to Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)

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