Author Archives: rachel @ typed truths

a tired aussie reader with a love of cats, libraries & sunflowers • she/her

Wild Love by Elsie Silver

Forbes may have labeled Ford Grant the World’s Hottest Billionaire, but all he cares about is escaping the press and opening a recording studio in gorgeous small town Rose Hill. Something that comes to a screeching halt when he ends up face-to-face with a young girl who claims he’s her biological father. Now, he spends his days balancing business with parenting a sullen twelve-year-old, all while trying desperately to keep his hands the hell off his best friend’s sister, Rosie Belmont. After living in the city, Rosie came blasting back into town like a storm. Beautiful, messy, and chaotic. And one wide-eyed, desperate plea for a job is all it takes… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual harassment
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) mentioned

Done and Dusted by Lyla Sage

For the first time in her life, Clementine “Emmy” Ryder has no idea what she’s doing. She’s accomplished everything on her to-do list. She left her small hometown of Meadowlark, Wyoming; went to college; and made a career for herself by doing her favoourite thing: riding horses. But after an accident makes it impossible for her to get back into the saddle, she has no choice but to return to the hometown she always wanted to escape. Luke Brooks is Meadowlark’s most notorious bad boy, bar owner, and bachelor. He’s also the unofficial fifth member of the Ryder family. As Emmy’s older brother’s best friend, Luke… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment & child neglect mentioned
  • Anxiety & panic attacks (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a parent recounted (off-page)

Swift and Saddled by Lyla Sage

She’s the city girl that refuses to give him the time of day. He’s the cowboy that wants her anyway. The last thing Ada Hart needs is a man to take care of her. Not anymore. After failing out of her interior design program and the disaster that was her short-lived marriage, Ada clawed her way up from her rock bottom. Now, the only person she trusts is herself, and that has gotten her further than other people ever did. She has her own business, and one of the largest ranches in Wyoming just hired her for the most important project of her career. When Ada arrives in Meadowlark, she finds herself in a dive bar where she can’t.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotionally abusive relationship recounted
  • Depression & panic attacks
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a parent recounted (off-page)

Perfect by Rachel Joyce

In 1972, two seconds were added to time. It was in order to balance clock time with the movement of the earth. Byron Hemming knew this because James Lowe had told him and James was the cleverest boy at school. But how could time change? The steady movement of hands around a clock was as certain as their golden futures. Then Byron’s mother, late for the school run, makes a devastating mistake. Byron’s perfect world is shattered. Were those two extra seconds to blame? Can what follows ever be set right?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce

When Queenie Hennessy discovers that Harold Fry is walking the length of England to save her, and all she has to do is wait, she is shocked. Her note had explained she was dying. How can she wait? A new volunteer at the hospice suggests that Queenie should write again; only this time she must tell Harold everything. In confessing to secrets she has hidden for twenty years, she will find atonement for the past. As the volunteer points out, ‘Even though you’ve done your travelling, you’re starting a new journey too.’ Queenie thought her first letter would be the end of the story… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Hospice care for terminal cancer (protagonist) including mentions of previous surgery and medical procedures

Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce

It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist–the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind. Fun-loving Enid Pretty in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • MIscarriage
  • Suicide by gun violence
  • Stalking
  • Death of a pet & animal abuse

Maureen by Rachel Joyce

Maureen Fry has settled into the quiet life she shares with her husband after his iconic walk across England ten years ago. When an unexpected message from the North disturbs her equilibrium again, it is now her turn to make a journey. But Maureen is not like Harold. By turns outspoken, then vulnerable, she struggles to form bonds with the people she meets, and the landscape she crosses has radically changed. And Maureen has no sense of what she will find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she has to get there… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a son from suicide recounted

Our Sister, Again by Sophie Cameron

On the Scottish coast, Isla and her family are grieving the loss of her older sister Flora, who died three years ago. Then they’re offered the chance to be part of a top-secret trial, which revives loved ones as fully lifelike AI robots using their digital footprint. Isla has her doubts about Second Chances, but they evaporate the moment the ‘new’ Flora arrives. This girl is not some uncanny close likeness; she is Flora – a perfect replica. But not everyone on their island feels the same. And as the threats to Flora mount, she grows distant and more secretive. Will Isla be able to protect the new Flora and bring the community back together?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a sister recounted

Away With Words by Sophie Cameron

Gala and her dad, Jordi, have just moved to a town in Scotland, to live with Jordi’s boyfriend Ryan. Gala doesn’t speak much English, and feels lost, lonely and unable to be her usual funny self. Until she befriends Natalie, a girl with selective mutism. The two girls find their own ways to communicate, which includes collecting other people’s discarded words. They use the words to write anonymous supportive poems for their classmates, but then someone begins leaving nasty messages using the same method – and the girls are blamed. Gala has finally started adapting to her new life in Scotland and is determined to find the culprit. Can she and Natalie show the school who they really are?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Selective mutism (secondary character)

Still Life by Sarah Winman

Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amongst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses’s life for the next four decades. As Ulysses returns.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical sexism & homophobia mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • World War II