Author Archives: rachel @ typed truths

a tired aussie reader with a love of cats, libraries & sunflowers • she/her

Skandar and the Phantom Rider by AF Steadman

The Island shall have its revenge. Skandar Smith has achieved his dream to train as a unicorn rider. But as Skandar and his friends enter their second year at the Eyrie, a new threat arises. Immortal wild unicorns are somehow being killed, a prophecy warns of terrible danger, and elemental destruction begins to ravage the Island. Meanwhile, Skandar’s sister, Kenna, longs to join him – and Skandar is determined to help her, no matter what. As the storm gathers, can Skandar discover how to stop the Island tearing itself apart – before it’s too late for them all? 

Goodreads

Trigger & Content Warnings

Hate, Discrimination & Oppression

Sex & Sexual Violence

Abuse & Relationships

Mental Health & Suicide

Alcohol & Drugs

Pregnancy & Childbirth

Medical, Gore & Injury
  • Mentions of a child who is comatose for three weeks after falling from a cliff
Death & Loss

Violence & Crime
  • Battle/fight scenes involving fire and weapons
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
War & Genocide

Natural Disasters
  • Earthquakes
  • Floods
  • Tornadoes & lightning storms
Animal Death & Cruelty
  • Animal injury
  • Animal death & cruelty
    • A unicorn is found dead
    • Animals are imprisoned and forced to compete in fighting rings where some die.

Invisible Son by Keri Beevis

Life can change in an instant. When you’re wrongfully accused of a crime. When a virus shuts everything down. When the girl you love moves on. Andre Jackson is determined to reclaim his identity. But returning from juvie doesn’t feel like coming home. His Portland, Oregon, neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying, and COVID-19 shuts down school before he can return. And Andre’s suspicions about his arrest for a crime he didn’t commit even taint his friendships. It’s as if his whole life has been erased. The one thing Andre is counting on is his relationship  with the Whitaker kids…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger & Content Warnings

Hate, Discrimination & Oppression
  • Racism (theme)
  • Racial slurs recounted
Sex & Sexual Violence

Abuse & Relationships

Mental Health & Suicide
  • Suicide mentioned
Alcohol & Drugs
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Smoking mentioned (cigarettes)
Pregnancy & Childbirth

Medical, Gore & Injury

Death & Loss

Violence & Crime
  • False incarceration of a minor
  • Police violence
    • The protagonist is tackled and held to the ground before his arrest.
    • The murder of George Floyd & Breonna Taylor happens off-page.
War & Genocide
  • Gentrification
Natural Disasters

Animal Death & Cruelty

Kala by Colin Walsh

Kala by Colin Walsh

In the seaside village of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, three old friends meet for the first time in years. They—Helen, Joe and Mush—were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann at its white-hot centre. But later that year, Kala disappeared without a trace. Now remains have been discovered in the woods—including a skull with a Polaroid photo tucked inside—and the town is both aghast and titillated at reopening this old wound. One the eve of this gruesome discovery, Helen had reluctantly… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Sexual assault
  • Incest
  • Child abuse

Kismat Connection by Ananya Devarajan

Kismat Connection by Ananya Devarajan

Madhuri Iyer is doomed. Doomed for her upcoming senior year to be a total failure, according to her astrology-obsessed mother, and doomed to a happily ever after with her first boyfriend, according to her family curse. Determined to prove the existence of her free will, Madhuri devises an experimental relationship with the one boy she knows she’ll never fall for: her childhood best friend, Arjun Mehta. But Arjun’s feelings for her are a variable she didn’t account for. As Madhuri starts to fall for her experimental boyfriend, she’ll have to decide if charting her own destiny is worth breaking Arjun’s heart—and her own.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism & internalised racism
  • Parental abandonment
  • Parent with Chron’s Disease
  • Hospitalisation

You Don’t Have a Shot by Racquel Marie

You Don’t Have a Shot by Racquel Marie

Valentina “Vale” Castillo-Green’s life revolves around soccer. Her friends, her future, and her father’s intense expectations are all wrapped up in the beautiful game. But after she incites a fight during playoffs with her long-time rival, Leticia Ortiz, everything she’s been working toward seems to disappear. Embarrassed and desperate to be anywhere but home, Vale escapes to her beloved childhood soccer camp for a summer of relaxation and redemption…only to find out that she and the endlessly aggravating Leticia will be co-captaining a team that could play in front of college scouts. But the competition might be… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Anxiety & anxiety attacks
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Physical injuries (minor sports injury)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother from breast cancer
  • Bullying

Deep Dark Secrets by Keri Beevis

Deep Dark Secrets by Keri Beevis

Lizzie Kent wasn’t supposed to babysit the night she was murdered. She was covering for her best friend, Nell. Nell has lived with the guilt ever since. Eighteen years later Nell returns to the area, desperate to escape a bad relationship after inheriting her aunt’s rundown guesthouse. But her return isn’t welcomed by everyone – in particular Sam Kent, who blames Nell for his sister’s death. And after a few unsettling incidents, it becomes apparent that someone is trying to scare her. Is Sam responsible or has Nell’s abusive ex-boyfriend managed to track her down? Or is someone else, with a more sinister agenda, responsible?

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Abusive relationship recounted
  • Murder of a friend in a home invasion recounted

Need to Know by Karen Cleveland

Need to Know by Karen Cleveland

Vivian Miller is a CIA analyst assigned to uncover Russian sleeper cells in the USA. After accessing the computer of a potential Russian spy, she stumbles on a secret dossier of deep-cover agents living in her own country. Five seemingly normal people living in plain sight. A few clicks later, everything that matters to Vivian is threatened – her job, her husband, even her four children. Vivian has vowed to defend her country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But now she’s facing impossible choices. Torn between loyalty and betrayal, allegiance and treason… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Threats of rape, on-page
  • Suicide, on-page
  • Miscarriage, on-page
  • Cancer
  • Murder, on-page
  • Gun violence, on-page
  • Blackmail

In Bed with the Devil by Lorraine Heath

In Bed with the Devil by Lorraine Heath

They call him the Devil Earl—a scoundrel and accused murderer who grew up on the violent London streets. A proper young lady risks more than her reputation when consorting with the roguishly handsome Lucian Langdon, but Lady Catherine Mabry believes she has no choice. To protect those she loves, she would do anything—even strike a bargain with the devil himself. Lucian desires respectability and a wife above all else, but the woman of his choosing lacks the social graces to be accepted by the aristocracy. Catherine can help Lucian gain everything he wants. But what she asks for in exchange will put their very lives in… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape of a child recounted
  • Domestic violence (sc)
  • Cheating*
  • Death of a parent, on- & off-page
  • Murder of an uncle, off-page
  • Murder of parents

*Context : While the hero falls in love with the heroine, he proposes to another woman who does not love him back.

The Killing Lessons by Saul Black

The Killing Lessons by Saul Black

When the two strangers turn up at Rowena Cooper’s isolated Colorado farmhouse, she knows instantly that it’s the end of everything. For the two haunted and driven men, on the other hand, it’s just another stop on a long and bloody journey. And they still have many miles to go, and victims to sacrifice, before their work is done. For San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart, their trail of victims–women abducted, tortured and left with a seemingly random series of objects inside them–has brought her from obsession to the edge of physical and psychological… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Sexism
  • Rape
  • Child abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Miscarriage
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Military PTSD, implied
  • Physical injury (broken leg)
  • Hospitalisation