rachel @ typed truths

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type happens to be girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun–but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relation… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Alcohol consumption
Physical assault (fistfight)

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps. Then. . . . After. Nothing is ever the same.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Alcohol consumption & smoking (on-page)
Death of a friend in an implied suicide by car

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that. What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Ableism
Fatphobia & body-shaming from relatives
Gang rape recounted
Paraplegia due to a motorcycle accident
Depression & suicidal ideation including discussions of a planned suicide and death by physician-assisted suicide
Alcohol consumption

On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel

Arcade and Daffodil are twins born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for escape, they form an unbreakable bond nurtured by their grandmother’s stories. Together, they disappear into their imaginations and forge a world all their own. But what the two sisters can’t escape are the generational ghosts that haunt their family. Growing up in the shadow of their rural Ohio town, the sisters cling tightly to one another. Years later, Arcade wrestles with the memories of her early life, just as a local woman is discovered drowned in the river. Soon, more bodies are found. As her… Read More.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Sex work
Graphic drug use
Death of a parent mentioned
Murder & torture
Animal cruelty

When You’re Dying by M.Q. Webb

When you’re dying, a lot goes through your mind… A shock diagnosis forces Verity Casmere to consider how she wants to spend the time she has left. The question haunting Verity is what happened to her missing sister, Ashlee. Was she murdered, like the police suspect? How far will Verity go to learn the truth? Moved by her situation, Forensic Psychiatrist, Oscar de la Nuit, agrees to help Verity learn what happened, but with the truth comes consequences neither of them could predict. Can they resurface before a dark secret consumes them both?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Terminal cancer
Drugging
Hospitalisation for an injury sustained from a fall
Disappearance of a sibling

What the Neighbors Saw by Melissa Adelman

When Alexis and her husband Sam buy a neglected Cape Cod house in an exclusive DC suburb, they are ecstatic. Sam is on the cusp of making partner at his law firm, Alexis is pregnant with their second child, and their glamorous neighbours welcome the couple with open arms. Things are looking up, and Alexis believes she can finally leave her troubled past behind. But the neighbourhood’s picture-perfect image is shattered when their neighbour Teddy – a handsome, successful father of three – is found dead on the steep banks of the Potomac River. The community is shaken… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Pregnancy from rape mentioned
Infidelity
Incest (half-siblings)
Disordered eating
Murder

Context : The protagonist has her husband murdered because she finds out they’re half-siblings and she can’t deal with the public humiliation. She also learns she is the product of rape.

The Book Swap by J.E. Rowney

Newly-separated Laura is back home living with her mum. She spends her days reading and escaping from the realities of her new life alone – until that life suddenly becomes more complicated than she could ever have imagined. When a novel received from an online book swap contains a chilling note, Laura has to overcome her own fears to help a stranger. First, she must uncover just exactly who is it that needs to be saved, and from what.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Divorce (protagonist)

A Death at the Party by Amy Stuart

Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbours all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite—everything’s going according to plan. But Nadine—devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter—finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this? Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But her husband is of… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Slut-shaming
Teacher-student relationship
Attempted suicide
Alcohol consumption
Murder

The Perfect Neighborhood by Liz Alterman

When actress and model Allison Langley leaves her former rockstar husband, Christopher, in the middle of the night, it’s all her Oak Hill neighbours can talk about. The gossip comes to an abrupt halt when five-year-old Billy Barnes goes missing on his walk home from kindergarten. Billy’s mother, Rachel, blames herself for being at work and letting her only child walk alone. Cassidy, Billy’s teenage babysitter, was also late to arrive on the afternoon he disappeared and blames herself for his disappearance. As the clock ticks down, police are unable to find any trace of Billy.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Infidelity
Teacher-student relationship
Infertility & miscarriage
Kidnapping & drugging of children

The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar

Somewhere in New York, in a cramped two-bed apartment that wilts beneath the intense August heat, a young woman stays at home with her baby. Women have done this before now: given birth, nursed their children, held, carried, soothed. But our narrator, a talented translator in another life, doesn’t know what it means to be a mother. This does not feel natural. This doesn’t feel like any of the stories she has heard about parenthood. As she struggles to adjust to her role as a mother, a lifeline appears in the form of Peter, a neighbour who, like her, is confined to this apartment building. But soon his visits start to disturb as much as soothe, leaving her more fragmented than ever.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Postnatal depression & postpartum psychosis
Suicide mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Blood depiction, needles & mentions of cancer