rachel @ typed truths

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate

It’s an ordinary assignment, nothing more. The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews.

He dreams familiar dreams: to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests. He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he’s done before, it’s routine, a constant, like the tides.

Yet there’s something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air. Someone stalking the ship.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Antiziganism (g slur)
Homomisia & internalised homomisia
Hate crimes
Suicide
Blood & gore depiction

Gem and Dixie by Sara Zarr

Gem & Dixie by Sara Zarr

Gem has never known what it is to have security. She’s never known an adult she can truly rely on. But the one constant in her life has been Dixie. Gem grew up taking care of her sister when no one else could: not their mother, whose issues make it hard for her to keep food on the table, and definitely not their father, whose intermittent presence is the only thing worse than his frequent absence. Even as Gem and Dixie have grown apart, they’ve always had each other.

When their dad returns home for the first time in years and tries to insert himself back into their lives, Gem finds herself with an unexpected opportunity: three days with Dixie—on their own in Seattle and beyond… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parental abandonment
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use & abuse

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Jill MacSweeney just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she’s been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends—everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she’s somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one.

Mandy Kalinowski understands what it’s like to grow up unwanted—to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she’s sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It’s harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child sexual abuse
Teen pregnancy
Nonconsensual pregnancy*
Alcohol consumption
Smoking mentioned
Emesis
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a father

* Note : The protagonist fears she became pregnant when she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend.

Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr

Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr

When she is caught in the backseat of a car with her older brother’s best friend—Deanna Lambert’s teenage life is changed forever. Struggling to overcome the lasting repercussions and the stifling role of “school slut,” she longs to escape a life defined by her past.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slut shaming
Sexual assault
Dubious consent scenario*
Teen pregnancy
Physical assault

*Note : Flashbacks of the protagonist having sex with a seventeen-year-old boy when she was thirteen-years-old.

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr

After losing her soul mate, Cameron, when they were nine, Jennifer, now seventeen, transformed herself from the unpopular fat girl into the beautiful and popular Jenna, but Cameron’s unexpected return dredges up memories that cause both social and emotional turmoil.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parental abuse mentioned
Alcohol consumption

Palaces of Spies by Sarah Zettel

Palace of Spies by Sarah Zettel

A warning to all young ladies of delicate breeding who wish to embark upon lives of adventure: Don’t.

Sixteen-year-old Peggy is a well-bred orphan who is coerced into posing as a lady in waiting at the palace of King George I. Life is grand, until Peggy starts to suspect that the girl she’s impersonating might have been murdered. Unless Peggy can discover the truth, she might be doomed to the same terrible fate. But in a court of shadows and intrigue, anyone could be a spy—perhaps even the handsome young artist with whom Peggy is falling in love…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexual assault
Alcohol consumption
Blood depiction
Death of a mother
Murder
Poisoning

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin

If Naomi had picked tails, she would have won the coin toss. She wouldn’t have had to go back for the yearbook camera, and she wouldn’t have hit her head on the steps. She wouldn’t have woken up in an ambulance with amnesia. She certainly would have remembered her boyfriend, Ace. She might even have remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. She’d know about her mom’s new family. She’d know about her dad’s fiancée. She never would have met James, the boy with the questionable past and the even fuzzier future.

But Naomi picked heads.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Amnesia & memory loss
Graphic attempted suicide
Alcohol consumption
Smoking mentioned

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere’s museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatric practice.

Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver’s license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Overdose mentioned
Cancer mentioned
Death of a child
Plane crash mentioned
Car accident mentioned

Three Sisters in Black by Norman Zierold

Three Sisters in Black by Norman J. Zierold

On November 29, 1909, police were called to a ramshackle home in East Orange, New Jersey, where they found the emaciated body of twenty-four-year-old Oceana “Ocey” Snead facedown in the bathtub—dead of an apparent suicide by drowning. There was even a note left behind.

But it would not take authorities long to discover that Ocey’s death was no suicide. And Ocey’s own mother and two aunts were far from the sorrowful caretakers they appeared to be… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Substance addiction mentioned
Suicide
Death of a child
Murder
Drowning

Busted by Karin Slaughter

Busted by Karin Slaughter

Detective Will Trent is standing in a Georgia convenience store, waiting on an obstinate Icee frozen drink machine. To the surveillance cameras and bored staff of the Lil’ Dixie Gas-n-Go, however, Will appears to be someone very different—the menacing ex-con Bill Black. Going undercover as Bill, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent is about to infiltrate the most corrupt town in the most corrupt county in the new American South. But first: his Icee.

Everything changes in one horrific instant, as all hell breaks loose at the Lil’ Dixie. A cop is shot. A bag of cash goes flying across the floor. A young woman disappears while a killer takes off in a battered pick-up truck.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Murder
Gun violence