Substance Addiction – Page 20 – Trigger Warning Database

Needlework by Julia Watts

Needlework by Julia Watts

While other sixteen-year-old boys in Morgan, Kentucky, love hunting and football, Kody prefers to spend his time quilting with his grandmother (“Nanny”), watching Golden Girls reruns, and listening to old Dolly Parton albums. Nanny is Kody’s main caregiver, but it takes both Nanny and Kody to take care of Kody’s mother, whose drug problem is spinning out of control. Between looking after Mommy and trying to survive in a place that doesn’t look kindly on feminine boys, Kody already has a hard time making sense of his life. But then he uncovers a family secret that will change everything in his life.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Religious homomisia
Parent with a substance addiction
Death of a parent

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith, and Donna Tartt. But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Sexism
Homomisia
Rape
Cheating
Alcoholism
Substance addiction
Drug use & abuse
Alcohol consumption & abuse
Overdose
Death from a heart attack
Murder
Poisoning
Physical assault
Drowning
Gun violence
Car accident
Blackmail

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band–and meeting the man who would become her husband–her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Addiction
Alcoholism
Abortion
Cancer
Death of a parent
Depiction of grief

The Year of the Crocodile by Courtney Milan

The Year of the Crocodile by Courtney Milan

Tina Chen and Blake Reynolds have been together for almost a year. In that time, they’ve grown closer on just about every front. The one exception? Blake’s father has never let anything stop him. Tina’s parents have never let anyone push them around. And they’ve never met.

That’s about to change. But don’t worry—fireworks are traditional at Chinese New Years.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Religious persecution & refugee experiences
Chinese education camps
Alcohol consumption
Eating disorder recovery
Substance addiction recovery
Heart attack recounted

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Fatmisia
Racism
Sexual assault
Substance addiction
Drug use
Physical injuries
Cancer
Police brutality
Imprisonment
Animal death

There There by Tommy Orange

There There by Tommy Orange

Tommy Orange’s wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American–grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Rape
Domestic violence
Alcoholism
Substance addiction
Gun violence & mass shooting

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter’s dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better world.

But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter’s college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexual assault
Cheating
Substance addiction
Drug use & abuse

Release by Patrick Ness

Release by Patrick Ness

It’s Saturday, it’s summer and, although he doesn’t know it yet, everything in Adam Thorn’s life is going to fall apart. Relationships will change, he’ll change, but maybe, just maybe, he’ll find freedom in the release.

Time is running out though, because way across town a ghost as risen from the lake. Searching, yearning, she leaves a trail of destruction in her wake…

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia
Victim blaming
Sexual assault
Substance addiction
Drug use & abuse
Graphic dismemberment
Murder
Strangulation
Drowning

Run by Kody Keplinger

Run by Kody Keplinger

Bo Dickinson is a girl with a wild reputation, a deadbeat dad, and an alcoholic mom. Everyone in town knows the Dickinsons are a bad lot, but Bo doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

Agnes Atwood has never stayed out past ten p.m., never gone on a date and never broken any of her parents’ overbearing rules. Rules that are meant to protect their legally-blind daughter, but Agnes isn’t quite sure what they are protecting her from.

Despite everything, Bo and Agnes become best friends. But when Bo shows up in the middle of the night, police sirens wailing in the distance, Agnes is faced with the biggest choice she’s ever had to make. Run, or stay?

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slut shaming
Toxic friendships
Substance addiction
Drug use & abuse
Alcohol consumption

The Risk by Elle Kennedy

The Risk by Elle Kennedy

Everyone says I’m a bad girl. They’re only partly right—I don’t let fear rule me, and I certainly don’t care what people think. But I draw the line at sleeping with the enemy. As the daughter of Briar’s head hockey coach, I’d be vilified if I hooked up with a player from a rival team.

And that’s who Jake Connelly is. Harvard’s star forward is arrogant, annoying, and too attractive for his own good. But fate is cruel—I require his help to secure a much-coveted internship, and the sexy jerk isn’t making it easy for me.

I need Connelly to be my fake boyfriend. For every fake date, he wants a real one… Read more.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism & ableist language
Misogyny
Substance addiction
Panic attack
Drug abuse
Teen pregnancy recounted
Miscarriage recounted
Abortion mentioned