Terminal Illness – Page 11 – Trigger Warning Database

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming by Michelle Obama

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Terminal cancer
Death of a parent
Death of a friend
Gun violence & mass shootings discussed
War themes mentioned
Poverty themes

Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez

Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez

Vanessa lives life one day at a time. She isn’t willing to waste a moment when she has no idea whether she shares the same fatal genetic condition as her mother. But after her half-sister suddenly leaves Vanessa in custody of her infant daughter, she is housebound for the foreseeable future, and feeling totally out of her element.

The last person she expects to show up offering help is the unbelievably hot lawyer who lives next door, Adrian Copeland. But as they get closer, Vanessa realizes that her carefree ways and his need for a structured plan could never be compatible for the long term. Then again, she should know better than anyone that life’s too short to fear taking the biggest risk of all. . .

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parental abandonment
Addiction
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni

The Prisoner Healer by Lynette Noni

Seventeen-year-old Kiva Meridan has spent the last ten years fighting for survival in the notorious death prison, Zalindov, working as the prison healer. When the Rebel Queen is captured, Kiva is charged with keeping the terminally ill woman alive long enough for her to undergo the Trial by Ordeal: a series of elemental challenges against the torments of air, fire, water, and earth, assigned to only the most dangerous of criminals.

Then a coded message from Kiva’s family arrives, containing a single order: “Don’t let her die. We are coming.” Aware that the Trials will kill the sickly queen, Kiva risks her own life to volunteer in her place. If she succeeds, both she and the queen will be granted their freedom. But no one has ever survived.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape (off-page)
Self harm
Emesis
Plague
Terminal illness
Death of a parent
Death of a sibling
Knife violence & stabbing
Torture
Whipping
Fire
Near-drowning incident
Imprisonment

You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon

You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Eighteen-year-old twins Adina and Tovah have little in common besides their ambitious nature. Viola prodigy Adina yearns to become a soloist where overachiever Tovah awaits her acceptance to Johns Hopkins, the first step on her path toward med school. But one thing could wreck their carefully planned futures: a genetic test for Huntington’s. It’s turned their Israeli mother into a near stranger and fractured the sisters’ own bond in ways they’ll never admit.

When the results come in, one twin tests negative for Huntington’s. The other tests positive.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Social anxiety
Depression
Suicidal ideation
Self harm
Huntington’s Disease

Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott

Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott with Mikki Daughtry & Tobias Iaconis

Stella Grant likes to be in control—even though her totally out of control lungs have sent her in and out of the hospital most of her life. At this point, what Stella needs to control most is keeping herself away from anyone or anything that might pass along an infection and jeopardize the possibility of a lung transplant. Six feet apart. No exceptions.

The only thing Will Newman wants to be in control of is getting out of this hospital. He couldn’t care less about his treatments, or a fancy new clinical drug trial. Soon, he’ll turn eighteen and then he’ll be able to unplug all these machines and actually go see the world, not just its hospitals… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Terminal illness (cystic fibrosis)
Hospitalisation
Medical treatment & procedures
Death of a child

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier

Catrina and her family are moving to the coast of Northern California because her little sister, Maya, is sick. Cat isn’t happy about leaving her friends for Bahía de la Luna, but Maya has cystic fibrosis and will benefit from the cool, salty air that blows in from the sea. As the girls explore their new home, a neighbor lets them in on a secret: There are ghosts in Bahía de la Luna. Maya is determined to meet one, but Cat wants nothing to do with them. As the time of year when ghosts reunite with their loved ones approaches, Cat must figure out how to put aside her fears for her sister’s sake – and her own.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Cystic fibrosis
Death of a mother recounted

Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she’s blamed for all local misfortunes and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor.

It’s then that Morrigan discovers Jupiter has chosen her to contend for a place in the city’s most prestigious organization: the Wundrous Society. In order to join, she must compete in four difficult and dangerous trials against hundreds of other children, each boasting an extraordinary talent that sets them apart–an extraordinary talent that Morrigan insists she does not have. To stay in the safety of Nevermoor for good, Morrigan will need to find a way to pass the tests–or she’ll have to leave the city to confront her deadly fate.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child abuse
Terminal illness*
Animal death
Bullying
Kidnapping
Exile

*Note: The protagonist believes she has a terminal condition.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara & the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Grief & loss depiction
Death of a child
Terminal illness

The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

Cee has been trapped on an abandoned island for three years without any recollection of how she arrived, or memories from her life prior. All she knows is that somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, she has a sister named Kay.

In a world apart, 16-year-old STEM prodigy Kasey Mizuhara is also living a life of isolation. The eco-city she calls home is one of eight levitating around the world, built for people who protected the planet―and now need protecting from it. While Kasey, an introvert and loner, doesn’t mind the lifestyle, her sister Celia hated it. Popular and lovable, Celia much preferred the outside world. But no one could have predicted that Celia would take a boat out to sea, never to return.

Now it’s been three months since Celia’s disappearance, and Kasey has given up hope. Logic says that her sister must be dead. But as the public decries her stance, she starts to second guess herself and decides to retrace Celia’s last steps. Where they’ll lead her, she does not know. Her sister was full of secrets. But Kasey has a secret of her own.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Suicide
Suicidal ideation
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a parent (off-page)
Terminal illness
Blood & gore depiction
Emesis
Attempted murder
Drowning
Asphyxiation
Natural disasters

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel M. Moniz book cover

Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story in Milk Blood Heat delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another.

A thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter—whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family’s church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road-trip with their father’s ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them.

Wise and subversive, spiritual and seductive, Milk Blood Heat forms an ouroboros of stories that bewitch with their truth.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Cheating
Parental abandonment
Adult-minor relationship between a teacher and student
Paedophilia, implied
Parental sexual abuse, implied
Abortion, mentioned
Pregnancy
Terminal cancer
Physical assault
Suicidal ideation
Suicide
Strangulation
Death of a friend
Death of a child
Death of a father
Death from a fall
Drowning
Graphic near-drowning
Robbery
Cannibalism, implied
Hanging, mentioned