rachel @ typed truths

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E Lockhart

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14: Debate Club. Her father’s ‘bunny rabbit’. A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks: No longer the kind of girl to take ‘no’ for an answer. Especially when ‘no’ means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society. Not when her ex-boyfriend… Read more.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Alcohol consumption
Hazing

We Were Liars by E Lockhart

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Memory loss
Hallucinations
Self harm
Suicidal ideation
Migraines
Near-drowning incident

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb…

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island… Read more.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Antisemitism & Nazism
Concentration camps
Genocide
Emesis
Death of a parent
Torture
War themes
Animal death

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy’s heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Suicide

Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

Also known as The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic.

Meet Rebecca Bloomwood. She’s a journalist. She spends her working life telling others how to manage their money. She spends her leisure time … shopping.

Retail therapy is the answer to all her problems. She knows she should stop, but she can’t. She tries Cutting Back, she tries Making More Money. But neither seems to work. The stories she concocts become more and more fantastic as she tries to untangle her increasingly dire financial difficulties. Her only comfort is to buy herself something – just a little something. Can Becky ever escape from this dream world, find true love, and regain the use of her Switch card?

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Alcohol consumption

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job “a million girls would die for.” Hired as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously successful editor of Runway magazine, Andrea finds herself in an office that shouts Prada! Armani! Versace! at every turn, a world populated by impossibly thin, heart-wrenchingly stylish women and beautiful men clad in fine-ribbed turtlenecks and tight leather pants that show off their lifelong dedication to the gym. With breathtaking ease, Miranda can turn each and every one of these hip sophisticates into a scared, whimpering child.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Alcohol consumption
Coma
Car accident

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she’ll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child abuse
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Alcohol consumption
Death of a sibling recounted
Death of a parent recounted
Fire recounted
Animal abuse

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.

So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Ableism & ableist language
Emotional & physical abuse
Suicide mentioned
Drowning

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned–from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren–an enigmatic artist and single mother–who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community… Read more.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Classism
Child abandonment
Abortion
Miscarriage mentioned
Hospitalisation
Death of a sibling recounted
Death of a friend recounted
Car accident recounted
Kidnapping
Fire

Dune by Frank Herbert

Dune by Frank Herbert

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for…

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

Goo d reads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Death of a child
Murder
Attempted genocide