Content Warnings
In the author's opinion, the spoilers in some of the content warnings below may ruin the reading experience. Read at your own risk.
Becca Wenman does not write scenes of graphic violence nor gratuitous swear words. Her writing style does not glorify injury to nor degradation of any living beings. Where there is trauma, her characters rise from it and take ownership of their destinies.
If you require additional information about content warnings, please review the specific warnings below. Spoilers are described at the bottom of each content warning.
Contains approximately fourteen swear words.
But You Were Gone deals carefully and gently with all discussed trauma. The author wrote the book with the intention of NOT traumatizing nor retraumatizing readers. This book contains no on-page violence.
The description below contains SPOILERS.
This book includes includes two scenes which describe the lead-up to sexual assault involving a date-rape drug. There is no on-page description of the actual assault. There is reference to another sexual assault, though discussion of the assault is minimal. Survivors of sexual assault in this novel accept that they deserve no blame for being victims of assault. They begin to reclaim their pre-assault identities. This book follows a young woman who became a parent due to sexual assault.
This book includes mentions and brief descriptions of two assaults (non-sexual) and one military-derived traumatic brain injury. Assaults described occurred several years before the setting of the book.
This book discusses the deaths of a mother, a father, two adult sons, and a grandparent, including consideration of how to honor cremated remains.
Contains approximately fifteen swear words.
This book mentions sex and includes discussion about the relative importance of sex to the characters. This book does not contain on-page sex, discussions of specific sexual activities, or anatomical or slang-anatomy terms.
A character in this book experiences symptoms that could be described as depression.
This book represents a foster family poorly by indicating that the foster caregiver cares more for their biological family than for a foster child. The author personally believes that there are many great foster caregivers in the world; the role of the unempathetic foster caregiver is not a statement of foster caregivers generally.
Contains approximately than fifteen swear words.
This book includes some on-page sexual foreplay.
This book discusses:
theft;
stalking;
kidnapping (off-page);
the death of a sister, two mothers, and a father (off-page);
alcoholism (historical, off-page);
a relationship between a brother and sister that worsened over time.
The description below contains SPOILERS.
Off the page, a man engages in a sexual encounter with his similar-aged stepmother and the stepmother murders the father. The stepmother uses the resulting child to blackmail the brother.