rachel @ typed truths

Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

In Life of the Party, Olivia Gatwood she weaves together her own coming of age with an investigation into our culture’s romanticization of violence against women. In precise, searing language—at times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant—she explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. How does one grow from a girl to a woman in a world wracked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim? What is the meaning of bravery? Visceral and haunting, this multifaceted collection illustrates that what happens to our bodies makes us who we are

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Misogyny
Sexual assault
Sexual harassment
Self harm
Alcohol consumption
Smoking
Cancer
Murder

Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin

Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin

What will become of our self-destructed planet

An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind—hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out eons ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Fatmisia
Racism & white supremacy
Misogyny
Eugenics

Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier

Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier

Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They’re admired in their community and are a loving family—until their world falls apart the day their son Sebastian is taken.

A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. She hires a P.I. to pick up where the police left off, but instead of finding Sebastian, she learns that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman. This discovery sparks Marin back to life. She’s lost her son; she’s not about to lose her husband, too. Kenzie is an enemy with a face, which means this is a problem Marin can fix. Permanently.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Suicidal ideation
Drug abuse
Overdose
Kidnapping of a child

Murder With Peacocks by Donna Andrews

Murder With Peacocks by Donna Andrews

So far Meg Langslow’s summer is not going swimmingly. Down in her small Virginia hometown, she’s maid of honor at the nuptials of three loved ones–each of whom has dumped the planning in her capable hands. One bride is set on including a Native American herbal purification ceremony, while another wants live peacocks on the lawn. Only help from the town’s drop-dead gorgeous hunk keeps Meg afloat in a sea of dotty relatives and outrageous neighbors.

And, in whirl of summer parties and picnics, Southern hospitality is strained to the limit by an offensive newcomer who hints at skeletons in the guests’ closets. But it seems this lady has offended one too many when she’s found dead… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slut shaming
Alcohol abuse
Emesis
Murder
Poisoning

The Academy by Quinn Anderson

The Academy by Quinn Anderson

Nick Steele just wants a normal life, cliché or not. He had one once, back in Chicago. Before his father died and he took a year off from college to grieve. Now, he’s starting fresh at a prestigious—but tiny—Catholic university. Adjusting to small-town life will be a challenge, along with making friends and keeping his scholarship. All he wants to do is blend in, get his diploma, and go back home. But Sebastian Prinsen—campus heartthrob and a notorious player—has other plans. He notices Nick right away and makes a bet with his two best friends: Who can kiss the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Grief & loss depiction
Death of a father recounted

The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess in exile from a faraway land — are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy’s regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians’ fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments — and his own chilling role in them.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & racist slurs
Slavery
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Autopsy
Murder
Physical assault
Flogging
Animal death
Animal experimentation

Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed by Laurie Halse Anderson & illustrated by Leila del Duca

Princess Diana believes that her 16th birthday will be one of new beginnings–namely acceptance into the warrior tribe of Amazons. The celebrations are cut short, however, when rafts of refugees break through the Themysciran barrier. Diana tries to help them, but she is swept away by the sea–and from her home–thus becoming a refugee herself.

Now Diana must survive in the world outside of Themyscira for the first time; the world that is filled with danger and injustice. She must redefine what it means to belong, to be an Amazon, and to make a difference.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child trafficking
Sexual harassment
Gun violence
Physical assault

Quicksilver by RJ Anderson

Quicksilver by R.J. Anderson

Back home Tori was the girl who had everything a sixteen-year-old could want—popularity, money, beauty. Everything. Including a secret. That secret made her very valuable.

Now she’s left everything from her old life behind, including her real name and Alison, the only person who truly understood her. She can’t lose the secret. But if she wants to have anything resembling a normal life, she has to blend in and hide her unique…talents.

Plans change when the enigmatic Sebastian Faraday reappears in Tori’s life and delivers bad news: she hasn’t escaped…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Adult-minor relationship

Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

When fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan deep in the forbidden woods of Neverland, the two form an unbreakable bond. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland’s inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. And yet, she is willing to risk everything—her family, her future—to be with him.

Then an English girl named Wendy Darling arrives on the island. With dangers tightening around them, Tiger Lily soon finds out how far she is willing to go to keep Peter with her in Neverland… and discovers that the deadliest enemies lurk inside even the most loyal and loving heart.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Queermisia
Transmisia
Death of a father to suicide by drowning

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

Tina never worries about being ‘ordinary’—she doesn’t have to, since she’s known practically forever that she’s not just Tina Mains, average teenager and beloved daughter. She’s also the keeper of an interplanetary rescue beacon, and one day soon, it’s going to activate, and then her dreams of saving all the worlds and adventuring among the stars will finally be possible. Tina’s legacy, after all, is intergalactic—she is the hidden clone of a famed alien hero, left on Earth disguised as a human to give the universe another chance to defeat a terrible evil.

But when the beacon activates, it turns out that Tina’s destiny isn’t quite what she expected. Things are far more dangerous than she ever assumed.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Transmisia
Racism
Eugenics
Parental abuse recounted
Emesis
Torture
Gun violence
Kidnapping
Bullying
Homelessness