Author Archives: rachel @ typed truths

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

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi and translated by Cathy Hirano

Elin’s family has an important responsibility: caring for the fearsome water serpents that form the core of their kingdom’s army. So when some of the beasts mysteriously die, Elin’s mother is sentenced to death as punishment. With her last breath she manages to send her daughter to safety.

Alone, far from home, Elin soon discovers that she can talk to both the terrifying water serpents and the majestic flying beasts that guard her queen. This skill gives her great powers, but it also involves her in deadly plots that could cost her life. Can she save herself and prevent her beloved beasts from being used as tools of war? Or is there no way of escaping the terrible battles to come?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Death of a parent
  • Fire
  • Animal abuse

Waking Olivia by Elizabeth O’Roark

Waking Olivia by Elizabeth O’Roark

A failing farm. His father’s debt. And a struggling college track team. Will Langstrom has too many responsibilities, and the last thing he needs is Olivia Finnegan, a beautiful but troubled new transfer student.

A smart mouth. A strong right hook. And a secret that could destroy her. Olivia is her own worst enemy, with a past she can’t seem to escape, and the last person she wants help from is a cocky track coach she can never seem to please.

Refusing to be pushed away, Will is determined to save her. And determined to resist an attraction that could destroy them both.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Attempted sexual assault mentioned
  • Disordered eating
  • Uxoricide recounted*
  • Disappearance of a sibling
  • Murder of a pet

* Note : As a child, the protagonist witnessed her father murdering her mother.

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

All Lina wanted was to be desired. How did she end up in a marriage with two children and a husband who wouldn’t touch her?

All Maggie wanted was to be understood. How did she end up in a relationship with her teacher and then in court, a hated pariah in her small town?

All Sloane wanted was to be admired. How did she end up a sexual object of men, including her husband, who liked to watch her have sex with other men and women?

Three Women is a record of unmet needs, unspoken thoughts, disappointments, hopes and unrelenting obsessions.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia
  • Slut-shaming
  • Rape
  • Statutory rape
  • Eating disorder (anorexia)
  • Suicide mentioned

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.

Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family— which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother— he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Queermisic slurs
  • Attempted suicide
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Death of a child
  • Murder

Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover

Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover

When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she knows it isn’t love at first sight. They wouldn’t even go so far as to consider themselves friends. The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. Once their desires are out in the open, they realize they have the perfect set-up. He doesn’t want love, she doesn’t have time for love, so that just leaves the sex. Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her.

Never ask about the past. Don’t expect a future. They think they can handle it, but realize almost immediately they can’t handle it at all. Hearts get infiltrated. Promises get broken. Rules get shattered. Love gets ugly.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Incest
  • Pregnancy & childbirth
  • Death of a child
  • Car accident

The Stand by Stephen King

The Stand by Stephen King

A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge—Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them—and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Ableist language
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Rape
  • Suicide
  • Abortion discussed
  • Dead bodies
  • Murder
  • Graphic gun violence
  • Suffocation
  • White supremacy & the KKK mentioned

The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros

The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros

Beckett, If you’re reading this, well, you know the last-letter drill. You made it. I didn’t. Get off the guilt train, because I know if there was any chance you could have saved me, you would have. I need one thing from you: get out of the army and get to Telluride. My little sister Ella’s raising the twins alone. She’s too independent and won’t accept help easily, but she has lost our grandmother, our parents, and now me. It’s too much for anyone to endure. It’s not fair. And here’s the kicker: there’s something else you don’t know that’s tearing her family apart. She’s going to need help.

So if I’m gone, that means I can’t be there for Ella. I can’t help them through this. But you can. So I’m begging you, as my best friend, go take care of my sister, my family. Please don’t make her go through it alone. Ryan

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Pediatric cancer (theme)
  • Death of a child

Full Measures by Rebecca Yarros

Full Measures by Evangeline Parsons Yazzie

Twenty years as an army brat and Ember Howard knew, too. The soldiers at the door meant her dad was never coming home. What she didn’t know was how she would find the strength to singlehandedly care for her crumbling family when her mom falls apart.

Then Josh Walker enters her life. Hockey star, her new next-door neighbour, and not to mention the most delicious hands that insist on saving her over and over again. He has a way of erasing the pain with a single look, a single touch. As much as she wants to turn off her feelings and endure the heartache on her own, she can’t deny their intense attraction. Until Josh’s secret shatters their world. And Ember must decide if he’s worth the risk that comes with loving a man who could strip her bare.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Death of a parent

The Rise of Magicks by Nora Roberts

The Rise of Magicks by Nora Roberts

After the sickness known as the Doom destroyed civilization, magick has become commonplace, and Fallon Swift has spent her young years learning its ways. Fallon cannot live in peace until she frees those who have been preyed upon by the government or the fanatical Purity Warriors, endlessly hunted or locked up in laboratories, brutalized for years on end. She is determined to save even those who have been complicit with this evil out of fear or weakness–if, indeed, they can be saved.

Strengthened by the bond she shares with her fellow warrior, Duncan, Fallon has already succeeded in rescuing countless shifters and elves and ordinary humans. Now she must help them heal–and rediscover the light and faith within themselves. For although from the time of her birth, she has been The One… Read more.

.Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Torture
  • Animal death

Hideaway by Nora Roberts

Hideaway by Nora Roberts

Caitlyn Sullivan, a daughter of Hollywood royalty, was already a star at ten, but still loved to play hide-and-seek with her cousins at the family home in Big Sur. It was during one of those games that she disappeared.

Despite her glamorous background, Cate was a shrewd, scrappy survivor, and she managed to escape her abductors. Callan Cooper was shocked to find the bruised and terrified girl huddled in his ranch house kitchen—but when the teenager and his family heard her story they provided refuge and comfort, reuniting her with her loved ones… Read more.

.Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Antiziganism (g slur)
  • Kidnapping of a child