Tag Archives: Terminal Illness

Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin’-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass” scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Parental abandonment
  • Infidelity*
  • Divorce recounted
  • Miscarriage recounted
  • Emesis
  • Sibling with end-stage renal failure and autoimmune disease
  • Anxiety & panic attacks, on-page
  • Depression

*Context: The female protagonist’s ex-husband cheated on her with her friends.

The Only One Left by Riley Sager

Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Cheating
  • Suicide by hanging
  • Overdose
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Childbirth
  • Teenage accidental pregnancy
  • Blood depiction
  • Terminal illness
  • Death of an infant discussed
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Death from a fall recounted
  • Death of a father
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence

Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen

Catherine Sterling thinks she knows her mother. Ruth Sterling is quiet, hardworking, and lives for her daughter. All her life, it’s been just the two of them against the world. But now, Catherine is ready to spread her wings, move from home, and begin a new career. And Ruth Sterling will do anything to prevent that from happening. Ruth Sterling thinks she knows her daughter. Catherine would never rebel, would never question anything about her mother’s past or background. But when Ruth’s desperate quest to keep her daughter by her side begins to reveal… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racial slur
  • Sexual assault of a minor
  • Parental abandonment
  • Child abuse
  • Self-harm mentioned
  • Alcoholism
  • Unplanned teen pregnancy
  • Terminal illness
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder

Equivalent Exchange by Christina C. Jones

Keris Bradford is a woman on the brink. Of what? She doesn’t quite know. Her life is shifting, rapidly, and the sudden, captivating intrusion of Laken Kimble isn’t exactly… reassuring. For Keris, Laken is comfort and risk wrapped in one very appealing package. For Laken, Keris is barrier and providence all at once. For both, there arises a need to navigate those contrasts to a conclusion neither was looking for… a need to answer a simple question. If you want this… what are you willing to offer in exchange?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableist language
  • Slut-shaming
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Rape by a partner recounted
  • Domestic violence
  • Divorce recounted
  • Infertility issues mentioned
  • Ectopic pregnancy recounted
  • Mentions of physical injury and facial scars sustained during a car accident
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother form an overdose mentioned
  • Death of a father from an undiagnosed brain tumor, heart failure & seizure recounted

The Marvels by Brian Selznick

The journey begins at sea in 1766, with a boy named Billy Marvel. After surviving a shipwreck, he finds work in a London theatre. There, his family flourishes for generations as brilliant actors until 1900, when young Leontes Marvel is banished from the stage.

Nearly a century later, runaway Joseph Jervis seeks refuge with an uncle in London. Albert Nightingale’s strange, beautiful house, with its mysterious portraits and ghostly presences, captivates Joseph and leads him on a search for clues about the house, his family, and the past… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • HIV & AIDs
  • Terminal illness
  • Attempted murder
  • Drowning
  • Fire (theme)
  • Car accident
  • Shipwreck
  • Poverty
  • Animal death
  • Bullying

Master’s Schiavo by Laura Lascarso

Patience, humility, subservience, gratitude… these are the virtues of a schiavo.

For three years, Giovanni has followed his Master’s rules with love and devotion. But when Master, a New York City crime lord, must tie up loose ends with the family business, Giovanni is sent away to embark upon a life no one could have prepared him for.

Forced to stay with Signore, Master’s younger brother, Giovanni realizes Signore is everything his Master is not – brash, boisterous, impulsive… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Substance addiction
  • Drug use
  • Grandparent with terminal cancer
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Blackmail

The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett

A magician (with one memorable appearance on the Johnny Carson Show to his credit) takes the name Parsifal. He is gay. He has a Vietnamese lover, Phan. When Phan dies of AIDS, Parsifal marries the woman who has always adored him and who has lived with them both, his assistant Sabine.

Then Parsifal himself dies in California, suddenly and shockingly, of an aneurysm. Parsifal always said that he had no living family and that he came from wealthy upscale Connecticut stock… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • AIDs (theme)
  • Death of a husband from an aneurism
  • Death of a lover recounted

Too Hot to Touch by Katy James

He’s spent a lifetime putting up walls to protect himself, but he never expected one woman to break them all down. Between working multiple jobs and tackling her dissertation, it’s hardly unexpected PhD student Murray Silva is a hot mess. What is unexpected? Tyler Valentine. When the hockey playboy and former—okay, current—crush shows up in her summer school class, he immediately becomes the kind of distraction she doesn’t need. Want, however? That’s a whole other story. Tyler Valentine understands… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia & internalised homomisia including parental estrangement
  • Forced outing recounted
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Sports injuries including dislocated shoulders and broken bones
  • Parent in remission for breast cancer

*Context : The protagonist was outed by his partner to their hockey team in the past, resulting in bullying and being traded to another team.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it’s a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a future different from the expected path of wife and mother; Cecelia, the family’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Depression
  • Attempted suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Terminal illness
  • Death of a sister and child recounted

A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev

A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev

Mili Rathod hasn’t seen her husband in twenty years–not since she was promised to him at the age of four. Yet marriage has allowed Mili a freedom rarely given to girls in her village. Her grandmother has even allowed her to leave India and study in America for eight months, all to make her the perfect modern wife. Which is exactly what Mili longs to be–if her husband would just come and claim her. Bollywood’s favourite director, Samir Rathod, has come to Michigan to secure a divorce for his older brother. Persuading a naive village girl to sign the papers should be easy for… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child marriage
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Parent with terminal cancer
  • Pregnancy & childbirth
  • Death of a parent mentioned