Top 5 Wednesday is a great feature created by GingerReadsLainey and hosted by ThoughtsonTomes. To find out more about Top 5 Wednesday and the upcoming topics, check out its Goodreads page. This weeks it’s all about hard topics which could mean books about mental health, sexual assault, terminal illness or other books you found tough to read.

The Hounding of David Oluwale – Kester Aspden
This is the true story about how the police didn’t bother to look into the death of David Olwale, a homeless immigrant from Nigeria and a former patient in a mental hospital, until eighteen months later when a lengthy campaign of harassment by two high-ranking policeman was uncovered. This is one of those true stories that are tough to read and it shows how racism and police discrimination has been around for decades and while some stuff has changed, it is not enough.

Lost Boi by Sassafras Lowrey
This is a retelling of Peter Pan that really isn’t child-friendly. There’s a lot of BDSM elements but the view of it is still incredibly childlike it’s a little disturbing. It is a good book full of queer characters but it’s definitely full of hard topics including drug use.

 

Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates
This is a non-fiction book full of true stories and statistics about everyday sexism. It encompasses many things, school life, discrimination at work, street harassment and more. It’s a fascinating book but it’s tough to read sometimes because you can’t help but get frustrated by society’s gender expectations that fall on both men and women, and how women are discriminated against every day, even if it’s just small macroaggressions that many people have just learnt to ignore.

The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson
This features two sisters whose mother has bipolar and how difficult it is living with her but they still love her. It’s great at showing how you might still love your mum but you might not always like them.

 

 

Seed by Lisa Heathfield
Seed is often an uncomfortable book to read. There’s no two ways about it, Seed is a cult. As a reader you can see the signs but to fifteen year old Pearl, everything is normal and how it should be. It’s also a hard book to read because while nothing is explicit, sexual abuse of children is implied throughout and it’s a slow build for some of the characters to realise or react to what’s happening.