Tag Archives: Suicide & Attempted Suicide

Death on Ocean Boulevard by Caitlin Rother

The call came on the morning of July 13, 2011, from the historic Spreckels Mansion, a lavish beachfront property in Coronado, California, owned by pharmaceutical tycoon and multimillionaire Jonah Shacknai. When authorities arrived, they found the naked body of Jonah’s girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, gagged, her ankles tied and her wrists bound behind her. Jonah’s brother, Adam, claimed to have found Rebecca hanging by a rope from the second-floor balcony. On a bedroom door in black paint were the cryptic words: She saved hum can you save her. Was this scrawled… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia & child molestation
  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Miscarriage
  • Death of a child
  • Kidnapping

Love Songs for Skeptics by Christina Pishiris

Zoë Frixos gets the whole love song thing. Truly, she does. As an editor at a major music magazine in London, it’s part of her job description. But love? Let’s just say Zoë’s been a bit off-beat in that department. After falling hard for her best friend, Simon, at thirteen and missing every chance to tell him how she felt before he left town, Zoë came to one grand conclusion: Love stinks. Twenty years later, Simon is returning to London, newly single and as charming as ever, and Zoë vows to take her second chance. But Zoë’s got other problems now: In order to save her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted suicide mentioned
  • Drug abuse
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Overdose

Femlandia by Christina Dalcher

Miranda Reynolds always thought she would rather die than live in Femlandia. But that was before the country sank into total economic collapse and her husband walked out in the harshest, most permanent way, leaving her and her sixteen-year-old daughter with nothing. The streets are full of looting, robbing, and killing, and Miranda and Emma no longer have much choice—either starve and risk getting murdered, or find safety. And so they set off to Femlandia, the women-only colony Miranda’s mother, Win Somers, established decades ago. Although Win is no longer in the spotlight, her protégé Jen Jones has taken Femland… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Transmisia
  • Misogyny & misandry (theme)
  • Suicide
  • Pregnancy
  • Death of a mother

Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

In the Cities of Coin and Spice and In the Night Garden introduced readers to the unique and intoxicating imagination of Catherynne M. Valente. Now she weaves a lyrically erotic spell of a place where the grotesque and the beautiful reside and the passport to our most secret fantasies begins with a stranger’s kiss. Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse—a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Incest
  • Cheating
  • Suicide

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente

Severin Unck’s father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1946 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father’s films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars. For this is not our solar system, but one drawn from classic science fiction in which all the planets are inhabited and we travel through space on beautiful rockets. Severin is a realistic… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape mentioned
  • Suicide mentioned

Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

Clay: Marymount girls are good girls. We’re chaste, we’re untouched, and even if we weren’t, no one would know, because we keep our mouths shut. Not that I have anything to share anyway. I never let guys go too far. I’m behaved. Beautiful, smart, talented, popular, my skirt’s always pressed, and I never have a hair out of place. I own the hallways, walking tall on Monday and dropping to my knees like the good Catholic girl I am on Sunday. That’s me. Always in control. Or so they think. The truth is that it’s easy for me to resist them, because what I truly want, they can never be. Something soft and smooth. Someone dangerous and wild…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia & internalized homomisia
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Intimate partner violence mentioned
  • Revenge porn*
  • Staff-student relationship*
  • Parental infidelity mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother from suicide recounted
  • Death of a father from a heart attack recounted
  • Death of a brother from leukaemia
  • Bullying

*Context : The protagonist filmed a secondary character during a sexual experience and uploaded the video to the internet. A school employee has a ‘consensual ‘ sexual relationship with an underage student.

Wish You Weren’t Here by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

The Rook family run a little business: ghost hunting. And things has picked up recently. Something’s wrong. It’s been getting noticeably worse since, ooh, 2016? Bad spirits are abroad, and right now they’re particularly around Coldbay Island, which isn’t even abroad, it’s only 20 miles from Skegness. The Rooks’ ‘quick call out’ to the island picks loose a thread that begins to unravel the whole place, and the world beyond. Is this the apocalypse? This might be the apocalypse. Who knew it would kick off in an off-season seaside resort off the Lincolnshire coast? I’ll tell you who knew… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Miscarriage
  • Immolation

The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza by Shaun David Hutchinson

Sixteen-year-old Elena Mendoza is the product of a virgin birth. This can be scientifically explained (it’s called parthenogenesis), but what can’t be explained is how Elena is able to heal Freddie, the girl she’s had a crush on for years, from a gunshot wound in a Starbucks parking lot. Or why the boy who shot Freddie, David Combs, disappeared from the same parking lot minutes later after getting sucked up into the clouds. What also can’t be explained are the talking girl on the front of a tampon box, or the reasons that David Combs shot Freddie in the first place. As more… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Death of a parent from suicide mentioned

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

Fragments of the Lost by Megan Miranda

Jessa Whitworth knew she didn’t belong in her ex-boyfriend Caleb’s room. But she couldn’t deny that she was everywhere: in his photos, his neatly folded T-shirts, even the butterfly necklace in his jeans pocket… the one she gave him for safe keeping on that day. His mother asked her to pack up his things, even though she blames Jessa for his accident. How could she say no? And maybe, just maybe, it will help her work through the guilt she feels about their final moments together. But as Jessa begins to box up the pieces of Caleb’s life, they trigger memories that… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide