Tag Archives: Suicide & Attempted Suicide

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of suicide and attempted suicide, including ideation and acts of self-immolation and self-sacrifice.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Incest
  • Sexual abuse
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Adultery
  • Depersonalisation & derealisation
  • Alcoholism
  • Schizophrenia
  • Agoraphobia
  • Claustrophobia
  • Panic attacks
  • Hallucinations & delusions
  • Suicide
  • Drug use
  • Hospitalisation
  • Hypothermia
  • Loss of limb
  • Death of a sibling
  • Death of an uncle
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Grief depiction
  • Gun violence
  • Stalking
  • Graphic death of a dog

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual assault
  • Family death, due to natural causes
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Bullying

Solanin by Inio Asano

Solanin by Inio Asano

Solanin by Inio Asano

Meiko Inoue is a recent college grad working as an office lady in a job she hates. Her boyfriend Naruo is permanently crashing at her apartment because his job as a freelance illustrator doesn’t pay enough for rent. And her parents in the country keep sending her boxes of veggies that just rot in her fridge. Straddling the line between her years as a student and the rest of her life, Meiko struggles with the feeling that she’s just not cut out to be a part of the real world.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Mental illness
  • Alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Suicidal thoughts & ideation
  • Emesis

The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrick Backman

The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrick Backman

The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrick Backman

A father and a son are seeing each other for the first time in years. The father has a story to share before it’s too late. He tells his son about a courageous little girl lying in a hospital bed a few miles away. She’s a smart kid—smart enough to know that she won’t beat cancer by drawing with crayons all day, but it seems to make the adults happy, so she keeps doing it.

As he talks about this plucky little girl, the father also reveals more about himself: his triumphs in business, his failures as a parent, his past regrets, his hopes for the future.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Absent parent
  • Suicide
  • Cancer
  • Terminal illness
  • Child death
  • Grief depiction

Playboy Pilot by Penelope Ward and Vi Keeland

Playboy Pilot by Penelope Ward & Vi Keeland

Money or love? Which would you choose? You probably just answered the question in your head thinking it’s an easy decision. For me, it’s not. Did I mention it’s a lot of money? A hell of a lot. I needed to go far away to think it through. As I embarked on an impulsive trip, I hit a detour when I met sexy Carter in the airport lounge. We struck up a heated conversation.

Then, he left. I thought I’d never see him again. But fate had other plans. Surprise! He was the pilot of my flight. The bigger surprise was the adventure that followed after the plane landed. Carter was dangerous and always on the move but I was addicted. Nothing else mattered anymore. And I was going to get hurt. Because a part of me wanted to be the one to finally ground the playboy pilot. All good things must come to an end, right? Except our ending was one I didn’t see coming.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Depression
  • Suicide
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Pregnancy mentioned

Bad Boy by Elliot Wake 

Bad Boy by Elliot Wake

Vlog star Renard Grant has nothing to prove: he’s got a pretty face, chiselled body, and two million adoring video subscribers. Plus the scars on his chest and a prescription for testosterone. Because Ren is transgender: assigned female at birth, living now as male. He films his transition and shares it bravely with the world; his fans love his honesty and positivity. But Ren has been living a double life.

Off-camera, he’s Cane, the muscle-bound enforcer for social justice vigilante group Black Iris. As Cane, he lets his dark side loose. Hurts those who prey on the disempowered. Indulges in the ugly side of masculinity. And his new partner, Tamsin Baylor, is a girl as rough and relentless as him. Together, they terrorize the trolls into silence… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Rape
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Doxxing

Islands of Mercy by Rose Tremain

Islands of Mercy by Rose Tremain

In the city of Bath, in the year 1865, an extraordinary young woman renowned for her nursing skills is convinced that some other destiny will one day show itself to her. But when she finds herself torn between a dangerous affair with a female lover and the promise of a conventional marriage to an apparently respectable doctor, her desires begin to lead her towards a future she had never imagined.

Meanwhile, on the wild island of Borneo, an eccentric British ‘rajah’, Sir Ralph Savage, overflowing with philanthropy but compromised by his passions, sees his schemes relentlessly undermined by his own fragility, by man’s innate greed and by the invasive power of the forest itself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Domestic violence
  • Suicide
  • Miscarriage
  • Graphic surgery
  • Blood & gore depiction

Ghost by A Zavarelli 

Ghost by A. Zavarelli

I have always been a bird. Caged by one prison or another. Then the only thing I ever wanted was to fly away. Sold. Beaten. Starved. Drugged. Nothing scares me anymore. Until him. He makes the numbness go away. He is hazardous to me. It has nothing to do with his mafia lifestyle, and everything to do with what he offers. A gilded prison. A retreat from everything that I once knew. The reality I have no desire to return to. He thinks he’s caged me, but soon… I’m going to fly.

I live by a code. The Vory code. In this mafiya world, there are traditions. Expectations. She does not care for these things. She does not care about anything. She thinks she has me fooled with her haunted eyes. What she can’t know is that I see her better than most. She wants to fly but I’m going to clip her wings. And make her my wife.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Human sex trafficking
  • Rape
  • Child sexual abuse by a foster parent recounted
  • Cheating recounted
  • Pregnancy
  • Drug use
  • Death of a parent from suicide, off-page
  • Death of a sibling
  • Murder & attempted murder

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top-ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends–Krystal, Akil, and Alexander–are the prime suspects, thanks to “The Proctor,” someone anonymously incriminating them via the school’s social media app.

They all used to be Jamie’s closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy’s full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Parental neglect
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self harm
  • Panic attack
  • Recreational drug use
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Blackmail
  • Fire

After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell

After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell

A distraught young woman boards a train at King’s Cross to return to her family in Scotland. Six hours later, she catches sight of something so terrible in a mirror at Waverley Station that she gets on the next train back to London.

AFTER YOU’D GONE follows Alice’s mental journey through her own past, after a traffic accident has left her in a coma. A love story that is also a story of absence, and of how our choices can reverberate through the generations, it slowly draws us closer to a dark secret at a family’s heart.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Abusive relationship
  • Rape
  • Suicide
  • Coma