rachel @ typed truths

Conditions of a Heart by Bethany Mangle

Brynn Kwan is desperate for her high school persona to be real. That Brynn is head of the yearbook committee, the favourite for prom queen, and definitely not crumbling from a secret disability that’s rapidly wearing her down. If no one knows the truth about her condition, Brynn doesn’t have to worry about the pitying looks or accusations of being a faker that already destroyed her childhood friendships. She’s even willing to let go of her four-year relationship with her first love, Oliver, rather than reveal that a necessary surgery was the reason she ignored his existence for the entire summer. But after Brynn… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Ableism discussed
Chronic illness (Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome, and POTS)
COVID-19 pandemic mentioned

The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert

In the course of a single winter’s night, four people vanish without a trace across a small town. Nora’s estranged best friend, Becca, is one of the lost. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca’s disappearance, she discovers a darkness in her town’s past, as well as a string of coded messages Becca left for her to unravel. These clues lead Nora to a piece of local folklore: a legendary goddess of forgotten origins who played a role in Nora and Becca’s own childhood games…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Sexual assault mentioned
Self-injury
Car accident
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a parent (off-page)
Murder by suffocation

After Annie by Anna Quindlen

When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her four young children and her closest friend are left to struggle without the woman who centred their lives. Bill Brown finds himself overwhelmed, and Annie’s best friend Annemarie is lost to old bad habits without Annie’s support. It is Annie’s daughter, Ali, forced to try to care for her younger brothers and even her father, who manages to maintain some semblance of their former lives for them all, and who confronts the complicated truths of adulthood. Yet over the course of the next year, while Annie looms large in…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Grief & loss depiction (Theme)
Death of a mother & wife from a brain aneurism

Tender Beasts by Liselle Sambury

With the death of Sunny’s mother, matriarch of the wealthy Behre family, Sunny’s once picture-perfect life is thrown into turmoil. Her mother had groomed her to be the family’s next leader, so Sunny is confused when the only instructions her mother leaves is a mysterious note: “Take care of Dom.” The problem is, her youngest brother, Dom, has always been a near-stranger to Sunny…and seemingly a dangerous one, if found guilty of his second-degree murder charge. Still, Sunny is determined to fulfil her mother’s dying wish. But when a classmate is gruesomely murdered, and Sunny finds her brother with blood on his hands, her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Terminal cancer mentioned
Death of a parent
Murder
Fire
Car accident
Stalking

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Substance addiction & drug abuse
Attempted suicide & self-harm
Discussion of residential schools

Lore of the Wilds by Analeigh Sbrana

In a land ruled by ruthless Fae, twenty-one-year-old Lore Alemeyu’s village is trapped in a forested prison. Lore knows that any escape attempt is futile—her scars are a testament to her past failures. But when her village is threatened, Lore makes a desperate deal with a Fae lord. She will leave her home to catalogue / organize an enchanted library that hasn’t been touched in a thousand years. No Fae may enter the library, but there is a chance a human might be able to breach the cursed doors. She convinces him that she will risk her life for wealth, but really she’s after the one thing the Fae covet above all: magic of her own… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Rape & sexual assault mentioned
Forced pregnancy, implied
Murder
Kidnapping mentioned

The Partner Plot by Kristina Forest

To Violet Greene, fashion is everything. As a successful celebrity stylist, she travels all over the world, living out her dreams. Professionally, she’s thriving, but her personal life is in shambles. After surviving a very public breakup with her ex-fiancé six months ago, Violet is now determined to focus on her career. But life hands her something—or rather, someone—that might derail everything… Xavier Wright did not expect to run into his high school girlfriend Violet—the girl he once thought he’d marry—on a birthday trip to Vegas. As a high school teacher and basketball coach, he rarely leaves his New Jersey hometown, so… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Infidelity
Alcohol consumption
Emesis

Kindling by Traci Chee

Once, the war was fought with kindlings—elite, magic-wielding warriors whose devastating power comes at the cost of their own young lives. Now, the war is over, and kindlings have been cast adrift—their magic outlawed, their skills outdated, their formidable balar weapons prized only as relics and souvenirs. Violence still plagues the countryside, and memories haunt those who remain. When a village comes under threat of siege, it offers an opportunity for seven kindlings to fight one last time. But war changed these warriors. And to reclaim who they once were, they will have to battle their pasts, their trauma, and their… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Alcohol consumption
Blood & injury depiction
Death of a child
Murder

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed

At the northern edge of a land ruled by a monstrous, foreign tyrant lies the wild forest known as the Elmever. The villagers know better than to let their children go near—once someone goes in, they never come back out. No one knows the strange and terrifying traps of the Elmever better than Veris Thorn, the only person to ever rescue a child from the forest many years ago. When the Tyrant’s two young children go missing, Veris is commanded to enter the forest once more and bring them home safe. If Veris fails, the Tyrant will kill her; if she remains in the forest for longer than a day, she will be trapped forevermore. So Veris will… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Sexual assault mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Blood, gore & illness depiction including emesis
Death of children & parents recounted
Disappearance of a children
Animal abuse (off-page)

A Friend in the Dark by Samantha M. Bailey

Eden Miller’s world is crumbling. Her husband blindsided her with divorce, and her daughter barely speaks to her. In an impulsive decision to escape her present and revisit the past, she sends a friend request to her college crush, Justin Ward. One night twenty-three years ago changed the course of her life. It closed the door on Justin and opened the door to her husband, Dave. But what if Eden could have a do-over? .Eden begins an online relationship with Justin that awakens her in ways she never thought possible, and his voice and words make her take bold risks. But something’s off. He knows too much about her and… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Rape
Domestic abuse
Divorce
Catfishing