rachel @ typed truths

Here We Are Now by Jasmine Warga

Here We Are Now by Jasmine Warga

Despite sending him letters ever since she was thirteen, Taliah Abdallat never thought she’d ever really meet Julian Oliver. But one day, while her mother is out of the country, the famed rock star from Staring Into the Abyss shows up on her doorstep. This makes sense – kinda – because Julian Oliver is Taliah’s father, even though her mother would never admit it to her.

Julian asks if Taliah if she will drop everything and go with him to his hometown of Oak Falls, Indiana, to meet his father – her grandfather – who is nearing the end of his life. Taliah, torn between betraying her mother’s trust and meeting the family she has never known, goes.

With her best friend Harlow by her side, Taliah embarks on a three-day journey to find out everything about her ‘father’ and her family. But Julian isn’t the father Taliah always hoped for, and revelations about her mother’s past are seriously shaking her foundation. Through all these new experiences, Taliah will have to find new ways to be true to herself, honoring her past and her future.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Death of a grandfather

Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

Jude never thought she’d be leaving her beloved older brother and father behind, all the way across the ocean in Syria. But when things in her hometown start becoming volatile, Jude and her mother are sent to live in Cincinnati with relatives.

At first, everything in America seems too fast and too loud. The American movies that Jude has always loved haven’t quite prepared her for starting school in the US—and her new label of “Middle Eastern,” an identity she’s never known before. But this life also brings unexpected surprises—there are new friends, a whole new family, and a school musical that Jude might just try out for. Maybe America, too, is a place where Jude can be seen as she really is.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Islamophobia
Hate crimes
Pregnancy
Blood depiction
War themes

My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

My Heart & Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There’s only one problem: she’s not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel’s convinced she’s found her solution: a teen boy with the username FrozenRobot (aka Roman) who’s haunted by a family tragedy is looking for a partner.

Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other’s broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together. Except that Roman may not be so easy to convince.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Suicide (theme)
Suicidal ideation (theme)
Depression

A Heart Made of Gold by Christina H. Childers

A Heart Made of Gold by Christina H. Childers

Her hands are blessed with the power to transform anything she touches into gold. A single mindless touch changes the course of her life forever.

After her husband’s sudden death, Queen Kalyca of Aristos must protect herself and the vacant throne from a tyrant hellbent on becoming king. With the help of newfound allies—a divine-borne, a flirtatious hero, a famous strongwoman, and a determined youth—she finds all the strength she needs to survive in a cruel world where gods are eager to play behind the scenes.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Suicidal ideation
Anxiety
Panic attacks
Trauma

Between by Jessica Warman

Between by Jessica Warman

Elizabeth Valchar-pretty, popular, and perfect-wakes up the morning after her eighteenth birthday party on her family’s yacht, where she’d been celebrating with her six closest friends. A persistent thumping noise has roused her. When she goes to investigate, what she finds will change everything she thought she knew about her life, her friends, and everything in between.

As Liz begins to unravel the circumstances surrounding her birthday night, she will find that no one around her, least of all Liz herself, was perfect-or innocent.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Eating disorder (anorexia)
Drug use
Murder
Emesis
Death of a mother recounted

Passing Strange by Ellen Klages

Passing Strange by Ellen Klages

San Francisco in 1940 is a haven for the unconventional. Tourists flock to the cities within the city: the Magic City of the World’s Fair on an island created of artifice and illusion; the forbidden city of Chinatown, a separate, alien world of exotic food and nightclubs that offer “authentic” experiences, straight from the pages of the pulps; and the twilight world of forbidden love, where outcasts from conventional society can meet.

Six women find their lives as tangled with each other’s as they are with the city they call home. They discover love and danger on the borders where mystery, science, and art intersect.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Misogyny
Racism
Homomisia
Sexual assault
Domestic abuse
Parental abuse
Suicide
Terminal illness mentioned

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

If I could have a fiddle made of Daddy’s bones, I’d play it. I’d learn all the secrets he kept.

Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle, but she also knows the fiddle’s tunes bring nothing but trouble and darkness.

But when her brother is accused of murder, she can’t let the dead keep their secrets.

In order to clear his name, she’s going to have to make those ghosts sing.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableist language
Attempted rape recounted (chp. 23)
Child abuse recounted, including being locked in the attics for extended periods of tie
Agoraphobia
Panic attack (chp. 24)
Death of a mother to suicide recounted
Recreational drug use (on-page in chp. 5 & mentioned otherwise)
Hospital (chp. 5 & 24)
Grief & loss (theme)
Death of a father recounted
Death of a stepfather (off-page)
Death of a sister recounted
Gun violence (chp. 28)
Police violence (chp. 28)
Hanging mentioned (chp. 9)
Near-drowning incident
Car accident (on-page, chp. 23-24)
Death of a child to a wasp attack recounted

What Momma Left Me by Renée Watson

What Momma Left Me by Renée Watson

How is it that unsavory raw ingredients come together to form a delicious cake? What is it about life that when you take all the hard stuff and rough stuff and add in a lot of love, you still just might have a wonderful life?

For Serenity, these questions rise up early when her father kills her mother, and leaves her and her brother Danny to live with their kind but strict grandparents. Despite the difficulties of a new school, a new church, and a new neighborhood, Serenity gains strength from the family around her, the new friends she finds, and her own careful optimism.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Domestic violence
Sexual assault mentioned
Suicide mentioned
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a mother recounted
Gun violence
Poverty themes

Some Places More Than Others by Renée Watson

Some Places More Than Others by Renée Watson

All Amara wants is to visit her father’s family in Harlem. Her wish comes true when her dad decides to bring her along on a business trip. She can’t wait to finally meet her extended family and stay in the brownstone where her dad grew up. Plus, she wants to visit every landmark from the Apollo to Langston Hughes’s home.

But her family, and even the city, is not quite what Amara thought. Her dad doesn’t speak to her grandpa, and the crowded streets can be suffocating as well as inspiring. But as she learns more and more about Harlem—and her father’s history—Amara realizes how, in some ways more than others, she can connect with this other home and family.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Pregnancy
Miscarriage recounted

This Side of Home by Renée Watson

The Side of Home by Renée Watson

Identical twins Nikki and Maya have been on the same page for everything—friends, school, boys and starting off their adult lives at a historically African-American college. But as their neighborhood goes from rough-and-tumble to up-and-coming, suddenly filled with pretty coffee shops and boutiques, Nikki is thrilled while Maya feels like their home is slipping away. Suddenly, the sisters who had always shared everything must confront their dissenting feelings on the importance of their ethnic and cultural identities and, in the process, learn to separate themselves from the long shadow of their identity as twins.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Alcoholism