Difference between revisions of "Newest Teens Reviews"

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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Martin Jenkins and Stephen Biesty
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|author=Max Boucherat
|title=Exploring Space: From Galileo to the Mars Rover and Beyond
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|rating=5
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=I take it as read that you know some of the history of space exploration, even if the young person you buy books for doesn't know it allSo I won't go into the extremes reached by the ''Voyager'' space craft, and the processes we needed to be expert in before we could launch anythingYou probably have some inkling of how we learnt that we're not the centre of everything – the gradual discovery of how curved the planet was, and how other things orbited other things in turn proving we are not that around which everything revolvesWhat you might not be so genned up on is the history of books conveying all this to a young audience.  When I was a nipper they were stately texts, with a few accurate diagrams – if you were lucky.  For a long time now, however, they've been anything but stately, and often aren't worried about accuracy as such in their visual design.  They certainly long ago shod the boring, plain white page.  Until now…
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|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesomeWhat could possibly go wrong?  Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's worldBut first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spookyFor the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering.  When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406360082</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Robert Swindells
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|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=Knife Edge
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|title=Compass and Blade
|rating=4
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|rating=3.5
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
 
|summary=I'm just not interested.  I'm not interested in there ever being a knife in junior fiction, unless it comes with a lesson.  And I'm just not interested unless that lesson tells you one thing – that they're quick.  Knives can be quick to find, are quick to whip out, and quick to get the bearer into trouble, whether they actually meet flesh or not.  Sam is the student of that lesson here – his school has a Citizenship campaign whereby the pupils do odd jobs for local elderly, and he finds a perfect knife he thinks will defend him from the local gang – a gang whose leader he constantly rattled in primary school.  As for the rest – I'll leave his personable first-person narrative to teach you…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781126860</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Mary G Thompson
 
|title= Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary=Six years ago, cousins Amy and Dee were abducted. They were never recovered and no trace of them was ever found - that is until Amy suddenly returns home, alone and unable to tell anyone where Dee is or what happened to her. Amy's unexpected homecoming gives hope to her family, but she's a different person after spending most of her teen years in captivity, and she's not sure if she can ever fully go back to her old life. Amy is someone she left behind when she was 10 years old and in the years of her absence, she became Chelsea and Dee became Stacie. But why has she come back now? Who took them in the first place? And where is Dee
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910655813</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Angie Stanton
 
|title=Waking in Time
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Abbi has had a hard year. Her beloved grandmother died and, before the grief really had a chance to settle, Abbi has left the safety and security of home to start college in Wisconsin. And it really does feel as though she has left the two most important people in her life - mother and grandmother - behind. But it's hard to forget and somehow the past keeps hold of Abbi's mind. And then, one morning, she wakes in her dorm room to find herself transported back in time to 1983. And it won't be the first time-shift she experiences. As Abbi jumps further and further back in time, she meets Will. Time is pushing Will forwards, not backwards and his journey began in 1927.
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|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782025936</amazonuk>
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 +
Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is one of the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, they capture the island's leader and Mira's father. Desperate to save him from death, Mira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, she sets off in search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the ones she holds most dear.
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|isbn=0008664730
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Stephanie Garber
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|author=Harry Allen
|title=Caraval
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|title=Children of the Sun
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Scarlett Dragna has had one desire all her life: to visit a Caraval.  These interactive events put on by magician and entrepreneur Legend are world famous but very exclusive.  It's therefore a huge surprise when Scarlett and her sister Tella receive tickets.  These will take them away from their sadistic father and prison-like island home for the first time.  Caraval is never what one expects though and when Tella is kidnapped, Scarlett experiences the sinister side of a game in which nothing is what it seems.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473629144</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=K M Peyton
 
|title=Wild Lily
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lily did love Antony.  She was just 14 years old and he was 17, but Antony was the son of the big house and Lily was the daughter of one of the estate workers.  They laughed and played together with all the other teens and children on the estate and Antony accepted Lily's adoration and was fond of her.  He was an odd mixture of a spoiled brat and a neglected child. His mother was long dead and his father mainly absent on business and parenting was something which was bought in.  In the early 1920s cars and aeroplanes were in their infancy and for his 17th birthday (his father thought it was his 12th...) Antony asked for an aeroplane.  His father agreed and Antony went to Brooklands and bought a Sopwith.
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|summary= Ra Eun Seo lives in a North Korean town and she is a talented singer. Life is hard and food is difficult to come by, so Seo and her friends Nari and Min go foraging every evening, looking for tree bark and edible grasses to supplement the meagre rations of rice and kimchi at home.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910989282</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1805140493
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lisa Williamson
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|author=Alexia Casale
|title=All About Mia
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Mia thinks she's being ironic when she has the phrase 'All About Mia' emblazoned on her T-shirt. Ironic because it's NEVER about her. How can it be? She's just the mess in the middle – sandwiched between her oh-so-perfect straight A grade sister, Grace, and her super-talented soon-to-be Olympic swimmer sister, Audrey. As far as Mia's concerned she may as well get permanently wasted. She's convinced there's no point trying until a series of events coincide to show her just how wrong she is.
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|summary=It's hard enough to navigate your teenage years without suddenly finding that you're having to navigate a life-changing disability too, but that's what Ven is dealing with after collapsing on stage in the middle of a dance performance that was going to change her life.  But she comes back fighting, desperate to avoid the pity stares, and desperate to get back to a life that's as normal as she can possibly manage. Meanwhile there's a new (cute!) boy in school, her music A Level performance piece to try to sort out, and just the day to day traumas of all the challenges her body continues to throw at her to navigate.  So even though she can't dance anymore, might she be able to sing her way through instead?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>191098910X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Trenton Lee Stewart
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|author=Simon Fox
|title= The Secret Keepers
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|title=Deadlock
|rating= 5
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|rating=4.5
|genre= Confident Readers
 
|summary=Reuben is a small boy growing up with his mum in a big city full of injustice and fear. The family have little money and working two jobs means that Reuben's mum trusts him to be on his own a lot. For a young child Reuben develops a lot of independence, which really helps him when he finds an unusual and precious object and decides to try to uncover its secret. He hopes it might be valuable and dreams of being able to buy his mum her ideal home. Unfortunately there is someone else also looking for the object and Reuben enters into a dangerous game of hide and seek as he dares to take on the most powerful and ruthless man in the city
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911077287</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lisa Thompson
 
|title=The Goldfish Boy
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Matthew has OCD.  Not that he knows that's what it is.  He just likes things clean, he really hates germs, or going outside, and he feels safest upstairs in his room and the front bedroom, where he can control the dirt, and where he can watch everything that's going on outside, making notes on his neighbours' activitiesWhen a little boy, Teddy, from next door goes missing one day, it turns out that Matthew was the last person to see him, and with all of his neighbours as suspects Matthew struggles against his crippling anxieties in order to try and uncover the truth of what happened to Teddy.
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|summary=Late one night Graham Blake is late back from his shift on the force, and then suddenly rings Archie, demanding he fetch something from a secret place, and join him on the runThey get together, but barely begin to smell the whiff of Southern trains when the father is arrested, leaving Archie on the late express to Brighton, toting a tin his father was determined to keep away from his colleagues, and the bearer of a whole heap of questions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407170996</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan
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|author=Lex Croucher
|title=We Come Apart
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|rating=5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=''We Come Apart'' tells the story of a burgeoning friendship and romance between Jess and Nicu. Both have problems to deal with. Jess has an abusive stepfather who beats up her mother. Nicu is a Romanian immigrant to the UK and faces xenophobia in the UK as well as an unwanted arranged marriage when he returns home. Both kids get caught shoplifting and are sent on a rehabilitative course (mostly involving picking up litter). The friendship they strike up is born of circumstance yet gradually becomes more, a lot more...
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|summary=Who knew that what I really needed to read right now was a gay Arthurian RomCom?  But honestly, it lifted my spirits in a most delightful way.  In this story, Gwen and Arthur have been betrothed since they were tiny, much to their mutual disgust!  Gwen, you see, is in love with Bridget (the kingdom's only female knight) - something that Art discovers from her private diaries. And then when Gwen then catches Art kissing a boy they find themselves becoming reluctant allies, creating the subterfuge of falling in love with each other, when really they are enabling their own other romantic attachments. But as their impending wedding draws ever closer, will they find a way in which they can both truly be themselves, or are they destined to live a lie their whole lives?
... but is there a future for Jess and Nicu?
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|isbn=1526651793
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408878852</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Perdita Cargill and Honor Cargill
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|author=Nick Brooks
|title=Waiting for Callback: Take Two
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|title=Promise Boys
|rating=5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Everything seems to be slotting into place for 15 year-old wannabe actress, Elektra James. The summer's here and she's finally landed the boy of her dreams. Added to that she's about to start filming a blockbuster film with internationally famous co-stars. Could life get any better? Ur… maybe… No, definitely … especially when said boy of her dreams lands his own starring role in a TV series that's filming in Transylvania. And, to make matters worse, shooting a blockbuster film (while dressed in a costume that looks like a sack) isn't quite as smooth and glamorous as Elektra imagined.
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|summary=When the principal (headmaster) of Urban Promise Prep school is murdered, three boys find themselves called into the police station as suspects. Each, seemingly, has a grudge of some description against Principal Moore, and each could have been there at the time of his murder. But who killed him, and why, and if any of the boys are innocent, will they be able to clear their names?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471144852</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=The Memory Book
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|isbn=1919635017
|author=Lara Avery
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|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
 +
|author=Kitt Townsend
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Sam McCoy has her life all planned out. She is going to win the national debating competition, go to college in New York and become a human rights lawyer. She is so sure of this that it almost feels ordained. And she has worked for it too, sacrificing relationships and friendships in the service of ambition. You can imagine, then, that Sammie views a diagnosis of Niemann–Pick type C as little more than a rock in the road. She won't let a pesky health condition stand in her way.
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|summary= Solomon Klyne isn't a bad lad, so why is he running around London committing a series of robberies? And how did he learn to crack safes? You'll have to wait to get an answer to the second question because I avoid spoilers. But I'll answer the first one: for his grandmother...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784299243</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Mary Hoffman
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|title=Tilt
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|title=Different for Boys
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
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|genre=Teens
|summary=To make an author, you first show someone books.  To make a reader, you first show them the books they want to, and/or can, readTo make a builder, you first show someone buildingsI use those platitudes to introduce Simonetta, or Netta, who lives in Pisa late in the thirteenth centuryShe is surrounded by fabulous buildings – it's not for nothing the area will become known as the Field of Miracles, for the Cathedral, Baptistry and bell tower look gorgeous.  But something is wrong with the latter one – it's definitely leaning, cracks are showing, and over the hundred-plus years it's taken to get this far people have built the floors at odd angles to correct the problemNetta is intent on being the person who can solve it, alongside her father who's employed to finish it off.  But therein lies the problem – it's all well and good showing someone buildings, and making them want to be an architect, but if they're the wrong gender then all hope is lost… or is it?
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|summary=Ant is in Year Eleven at quite a standard school, and is surprised to find his geography class (within which it seems absolutely nothing about geography is ever learnt) has been restructured, so his desk is one of four with both his best buddy from the football team, and two other old muckers – in fact they all go back to primary school days togetherAs they're all fired up, straining at the leash only a single-sex school can form, the talk in class and out often turns to sexWhich is confusing for Ant, as he doesn't know what his score is, where his achievements in that regard lieHe's had a casual relationship, a secret one, for several months now, and so has effectively progressed up the ladder headed by 'experienced', but whether that's set in stone, he can't be sureAnd that's mostly because of who he's been having the relationship and the sex with.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781125651</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1529509491
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Linda Newbery
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|isbn=1800901232
|title=Until We Win
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|title=Stitched Up
 +
|author=Steve Cole
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly  
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|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|summary=The best journeys are made with little stepsLizzy is slowly leaving her boring village behind – by being cheeky yet clever at her lessons, and getting a job in an office in the nearest proper town – and by saving to buy, and teaching herself to ride, a bicycleAll that's under the watchful eye of a mother insistent she learns to knuckle down with the housework on behalf of the men, and an older brother working at the village hunt. At the office, however, further steps are suggested to her – shorthand and typing classes, but she gets diverted. A chance encounter in a tea rooms puts more stepping stones in her way – en route to becoming a fully committed Suffragette, concerned only with making demands for votes for women.
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|summary=Twelve-year-old Hanh wanted to be a fashion designerLife in the rural village where she lived with her family was happy, if not prosperous, so when the smartly-dressed man and woman came to the village to offer Hahn a job in Hanoi it was an opportunity not to be missed.  Some money changed hands and Hanh was on the mini-bus to Hanoi.  Only, Hanh and the other girls were not going to work in a shop, they were to work in virtual slavery in an illegal garment factoryYou know those jeans you really wanted: the ones with intricate embroidery and beading on the legs? The ones with the artfully-placed rips and distressed seams that felt so soft when you touched them? It's quite possible that Hanh and her co-workers made them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781125791</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=The One Memory of Flora Banks
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|author=Patrice Lawrence
|author=Emily Barr
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|title=Needle
|rating=5
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|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Flora Banks has anterograde amnesia. This means that she hasn't laid down any new memories since she was ten years old and had a brain tumour removed. She's now seventeen and can remember life before the tumour but can't hold on to anything that happened after that for more than an hour or two. She gets by with the help of her very protective parents and her best friend Paige, and from the endless notes she writes to herself that tell her who she is, what's wrong with her, and what's been happening in her life. Flora has a tattoo on her arm. It simply says ''be brave''.
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|summary=Brave. Charlene, the 'heroine' of this piece is extremely hard for some people to like, characters and readers both. Kicked out of multiple homes and schools, she's fostering with a pleasant yoga tutor, Annie, and has taken up residence in her son Blake's old room while he's at uni. Such a tempestuous personality may be in need of a comfort blanket, you might perhaps think, and the creation of one such item is part of the plot here, as Charlene is a wonder knitter, and is making something full of love for her younger sister – a younger sister she's allowed contact with no more. We see Charlene prove her belligerence with a store detective, and then force people to give her two days off school, when she shouts someone down as expletively ignorant. And then... well, what exactly happens is not for me to say, only to remark how sharp and pointy those knitting needles can be...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141368519</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Life in a Fishbowl
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|author= Ann Sei Lin
|author=Len Vlahos
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|title= Rebel Skies
|rating=4
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|rating= 5
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Jared Stone has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. It's inoperable and he has only a few months left to live. Desperate to ensure financial security for his family after he's gone, Jared decides to auction himself - the rest of his life, his death, everything - on eBay for a reserve price of one million dollars. Unsurprisingly, eBay cancels the auction as against their terms and conditions but that's okay because Jared has come to the attention of a reality TV producer...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408870630</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Elizabeth Laird
 
|title=Welcome to Nowhere
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre= Teens
 
|genre= Teens
|summary= Omar is a twelve-year-old boy living in Bosra, Syria. He works two small jobs before and after school. He prefers the jobs to school. Omar dreams of becoming a successful entrepreneur with a network of businesses to rule over. He's already developing a successful sales patter. Omar has a clever sister who wants to be a teacher, and a clever brother who few realise is clever because he has cerebral palsy and people can't see past his speech impediment. He has a father who works for the government, a mother who worries too much, a hypercritical granny and a couple of annoying younger siblings.
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|summary= Kurara has spent her entire life as a servant on the Midori, a massive dining hall floating in the sky where soldiers of the Empire come to drink and make merry between their conquests. However, when a man named Himura arrives to tell her that she is a Crafter like him, someone with the power to form paper into whatever she desires – a power sought after all across the Empire. He asks her to come with him, to leave the life of dreary servitude that is all she has known. Well, soon Kurara won't have any say in the matter, because the Midori is destroyed by a monstrous paper spirit known as a shikigami, and she is forced to flee out into the world. She joins Himura aboard the Orihime, a sky-ship whose express purpose is to hunt down shikigami, and a whole world of adventure awaits her…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509853448</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1406399590
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sara Barnard
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|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title= A Quiet Kind of Thunder
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|title=Wrath
|rating= 4.5
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|rating=4.5
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= Steffi has just started a) sixth form and b) medication for her anxiety. It's all rather tricky, as you can imagine, particularly as Tem, Steffi's best - well, only - friend has enrolled at the local FE college to do an NVQ and so Steffi is all by herself. On the first day, a teacher introduces Steffi to Rhys, a new boy to the school and also just starting sixth form. Rhys is deaf and Steffi knows a little bit of sign language, hence the introduction. Both kids have communication barriers - Rhys can't hear and Steffi, who suffers from selective mutism and severe anxiety, often can't talk.
 
And they fall into friendship, attraction, and love. But it's a rocky road...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509810986</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jonathan Maberry
 
|title=The X-Files Origins: Devil's Advocate
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Dana Scully can be added to the list of teenaged people upset by their family moving home in those key years. Her naval father being relocated has meant she has been uprooted from a nun's Catholic school to a regular, secular school elsewhere, but echoes of religion are still everywhere – not least a no-longer-used church opposite their new home.  But it's inside that the strongest taste of faith is residing Dana is seeing visions that could be claimed to be precognitive, and dreams possibly peopled by a satanic angel figure. That would all be troubling enough, but school children are dying in allegedly drug-fuelled car wrecks that nobody can really believe in, so straight-edged are the victims – and Dana is having even more troubling experiences as a result.  Working out the cause and effect here could fill an X-File, but of course we're in the years long before those exist.  Dana might well be on her own in her investigations...
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|summary=Meet Fitz, a young Scottish lad full of frustration at himself. Lockdown is only just over, and he should be free to do what he wants, to go where he wants and with whom he wants, but he cannot stop himself from putting his foot in it when he talks to his best friend, Cassie. They were half of a desultory school band, but Cassie was also one hundred per cent the enigmatic saying she could hear a subhuman hum coming from the earth. Is this connected with one of her eco-warrior parents saying the end of the world is already a done deal? Is it some spooky new kind of music she's dreaming of? Is she just bonkers? And can Fitz find out the truth? Well, not when Cassie has gone missing he can't...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349002983</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Kami Garcia
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|author=Tori Bovalino
|title=The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos
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|title=The Devil Makes Three
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Give a person a book and you might change their day.  Give the right person the right book and you might change their life.  That is the philosophy of The Major, the father of the nearest thing Fox Mulder has to a best schoolmate.  He may well appear to be a wacky – some could even go as far as saying Spooky – conspiracy nut, with some novel manner in home security, but he certainly swears that the truth to his wife's death, and so much more, is either out there, or in the pages of a Michael Moorcock fantasy novel. It's a situation not a million miles away from that which Fox finds himself in, for he is eternally frustrated at the lack of effort he sees in the search for his own baby sister.  But before he can settle back with his new read, and before The Major can really prove himself formative, Fox gets rapt in new, local cases of child kidnap, that even though he and his father moved state recently, have a galling familiarity…
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|summary= Working all summer in her boarding school's library is the last thing Tess Matheson wants to do — especially when she gets a request for over a hundred books that she has to deliver herself. What makes it worse is the man who requested the books: Mr Birch. The boarding school's headmaster, and a man Tess hates. As a petty act of revenge for making her find and deliver such a large request, Tess sticks post-it notes on each of the books, scribbled with the ugliest insults she can think of. They're never meant to reach him, of course. Her plan is to get her anger out like this, and then take them all off before delivering them. No harm done… Or it would be, if someone hadn't delivered them for her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349002967</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Phil Earle
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|title=Mind The Gap
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|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens 
 
|summary= When Mikey's dad dies, he stops caring about anything. Indeed, he becomes so desperate to feel something that he deliberately provokes the one person on the estate who no one messes with. Not surprisingly it ends badly and not just for him. Mikey's best mate also ends up in a pool of blood. But that doesn't matter because his friend has already lost something more important. He lost Mikey when his dad died and he's determined to find a way to bring his best friend back. That's why he sets off on a one boy crusade to find a way to help Mikey remember his dad. He just needs to find a movie, a radio extract, or a YouTube clip – something that will allow his friend to remember his dad's voice. Mikey's dad was an actor, so how difficult can it be?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781125899</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Keren David
 
|title=The Liar's Handbook
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Everyone tells River that he's a liar but he doesn't see it that way – as far as River is concerned he just thinks up interesting stuff to fill in the gaps in what he knows. His lies are harmless: unlike the lies that his mum's new boyfriend, Jason, tells. Jason is a total fake and River is on a crusade to expose him. However, River's investigation doesn't work out as planned. He does uncover a serious deception (involving his biological father and the police) but will anyone believe him?
+
|summary=In a word, rich. There is certainly an abundance of riches in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildsea, British but way west, beyond the Scillies. There are troll people on it, and sea-witches, and legends of the Dark family that has to keep watch for magical islands and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sail. The current Darks are the Watcher, Andrewe, who has to keep notes of activity from the Hidden Lands, his brother Will who lives in London with too much science in his head to worry about such local yokel superstitions, and Andrewe's foundling daughter, who washed up out of the sea one day eleven years ago. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himself, both his sullen brother and his curious ward are thrust into the world of protecting their island, like it or not.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781126801</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Jeanne Ryan
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|title=Charisma
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Charismatic is exactly what Aislyn was not. She was shy, to the extent that she panicked when she was in large crowds. This shyness clearly affected her, and at the beginning of the book it showed how much of an impact it would have on her future had it been left untreated. Her best friend, Evie, knows just how bad it is and has tried multiple ways to help her, but to no avail. So, naturally, when Aislyn is offered Charisma, an underground drug with a guarantee to bring her out of her shell, she accepts it.  
+
|summary=Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers for a summer, in the far NE of the Scottish islands.  Here be Vikings, that kind of Scottish island. Dad is going to be automating the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt the elusive Greenland shark. And Julia, well, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one night.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471163938</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Johanna Handley
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|title= The Burning of Juniper Slaide (The Juniper Series)
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|rating= 5
+
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Teens
 
|genre= Teens
|summary=Juniper and James are best friends, but their friendship is more intense than most, even though James' father is in prison for murdering Juniper's family. Most outsiders would consider their relationship ''toxic,'' but for painfully shy Juniper, having a close friend who can make decisions for her and speak in her behalf is her comfort blanket. So for now, it's James and Juniper against the world. Well, it would be, if James hadn't gone missing. Now Juniper feels guilty. She was the last person to see James alive and they had a terrible argument. Now Juniper is all alone and exposed, with nobody to shield her from the scary outside world.
+
|summary= Scarlett McCain is an outlaw, rejecting the draconian conformity of the Surviving Towns and Faith Houses to wander the wildlands between the Seven Kingdoms of Britain, robbing banks and shooting other outlaws to keep herself alive. But then she meets Albert Browne, a dark boy with dark powers and a darker past. With mysterious militiamen hunting them down, they plan to flee to the mythical Free Isles of the London Lagoon. Together, they must brave man-eating wildlife, the cannibalistic Tainted and all the horrors of post-apocalyptic society to reach the Free Isles, but will they be any more accepted there than they are in the rest of Britain?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>191095716X</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1406394815
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Anne Cassidy
+
|author=Mercedes Helnwein
|title=No Virgin
+
|title=Slingshot
|rating=4
+
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=This book, although rather short, managed to put its message across clearly. I was interested to read this, as it is a theme that I had not read before in a book. I found it very difficult to read at times, but I always found myself turning the next page a minute after the last. I was quite nervous to read this, but after I had finished, I could not have been more glad I had chosen it - it showed me the mind-set of the main character after her experience. I found this an interesting and unique book.
+
|summary=Gracie Welles has resigned herself to being lonely. As a secret illegitimate daughter of a man with a "real" family, she is used to not being a priority in people's lives. But when she defends a random boy in her class with her slingshot, her simple existence is changed for good. No longer can she spend her time writing novels in solitude, for her life now has a boy in it that she never asked for: Wade Scholfield.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471405788</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=152905818X
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|title=The Song from Somewhere Else
+
|author= T L Huchu
|author=A F Harrold and Levi Pinfold
+
|title= The Library of the Dead
 +
|rating= 4.5
 +
|genre= Teens
 +
|summary= Ropa Moyo is a ghostalker, using Zimbabwean magic (and a bit of Scottish pragmatism) to take messages from the dead of Edinburgh for their living relatives. Ever since she dropped out of school, she's been using it to support not only herself, but her younger sister and her aging grandmother. However, there's an evil stalking the ruined streets of Edinburgh, targeting the city's children. Soon, Ropa is pulled into the search for a missing boy at the request of his dead mother. She will end up discovering an occult library and realise that the world of magic is far bigger and more dangerous than she ever could've imagined. Will she find the missing children and bring an end to this evil, or will it claim her too?
 +
|isbn= 1529039452
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Kristen O'Neal
 +
|title=Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=If you were being stalked by the school bully and his two sidekicks, and if a kindly soul rescued you from them in the park, you'd be grateful, right? Or would you? Frank knows she should be grateful when Nick rescues her from Neil Noble and his acolytes Rob and Roy. But she also knows that Nick - laughed at for being flea-ridden and smelly at school - is not a person you'd want to be associated with. So Frank intends to say thanks and get the heck out of Nick's house as quickly as she can...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408853361</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Sun is also a Star
 
|author=Nicola Yoon
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Natasha is a rationalist. She thinks life is all about observable facts: data and the effective analysis of it. In fact, she wants to become a data analyst and help make the world a better place through the evidence-based policies that will flow from it. But this ambition is looking less likely now. Because Natasha is an undocumented immigrant to New York, the authorities have found out about it thanks to her reckless father, and unless there's a miracle, Natasha will be deported back to Jamaica in just twelve hours.
+
|summary= Having recently been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, Priya has to come to terms with the fact that she may be in constant pain for the rest of her life. She joins ''Oof Ouch My Bones'', an online support group where she talks to a bunch of other teens living with chronic illnesses. They talk about their troubles and help each other out, while also providing an escape to just joke and mess around. When Brigid—one of her closest friends—doesn't respond to the chat for a while, Priya becomes concerned. She decides to steal her parents' car and drive to Brigid's house to check up on her. But what she doesn't expect to find there is a werewolf in the basement – and for that werewolf to be the girl she has been talking to online for the past few months.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552574244</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1683692349
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]

Revision as of 09:13, 8 April 2024

0008666482.jpg

Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn? Full Review

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Review of

Compass and Blade by Rachel Greenlaw

3.5star.jpg Teens

I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.

Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is one of the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, they capture the island's leader and Mira's father. Desperate to save him from death, Mira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, she sets off in search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the ones she holds most dear. Full Review

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Review of

Children of the Sun by Harry Allen

5star.jpg Teens

Ra Eun Seo lives in a North Korean town and she is a talented singer. Life is hard and food is difficult to come by, so Seo and her friends Nari and Min go foraging every evening, looking for tree bark and edible grasses to supplement the meagre rations of rice and kimchi at home. Full Review

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Review of

Sing if you Can't Dance by Alexia Casale

5star.jpg Teens

It's hard enough to navigate your teenage years without suddenly finding that you're having to navigate a life-changing disability too, but that's what Ven is dealing with after collapsing on stage in the middle of a dance performance that was going to change her life. But she comes back fighting, desperate to avoid the pity stares, and desperate to get back to a life that's as normal as she can possibly manage. Meanwhile there's a new (cute!) boy in school, her music A Level performance piece to try to sort out, and just the day to day traumas of all the challenges her body continues to throw at her to navigate. So even though she can't dance anymore, might she be able to sing her way through instead? Full Review

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

Late one night Graham Blake is late back from his shift on the force, and then suddenly rings Archie, demanding he fetch something from a secret place, and join him on the run. They get together, but barely begin to smell the whiff of Southern trains when the father is arrested, leaving Archie on the late express to Brighton, toting a tin his father was determined to keep away from his colleagues, and the bearer of a whole heap of questions. Full Review

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Review of

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

4star.jpg Teens

Who knew that what I really needed to read right now was a gay Arthurian RomCom? But honestly, it lifted my spirits in a most delightful way. In this story, Gwen and Arthur have been betrothed since they were tiny, much to their mutual disgust! Gwen, you see, is in love with Bridget (the kingdom's only female knight) - something that Art discovers from her private diaries. And then when Gwen then catches Art kissing a boy they find themselves becoming reluctant allies, creating the subterfuge of falling in love with each other, when really they are enabling their own other romantic attachments. But as their impending wedding draws ever closer, will they find a way in which they can both truly be themselves, or are they destined to live a lie their whole lives? Full Review

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Review of

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

4star.jpg Teens

When the principal (headmaster) of Urban Promise Prep school is murdered, three boys find themselves called into the police station as suspects. Each, seemingly, has a grudge of some description against Principal Moore, and each could have been there at the time of his murder. But who killed him, and why, and if any of the boys are innocent, will they be able to clear their names? Full Review

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Review of

A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend

4.5star.jpg Teens

Solomon Klyne isn't a bad lad, so why is he running around London committing a series of robberies? And how did he learn to crack safes? You'll have to wait to get an answer to the second question because I avoid spoilers. But I'll answer the first one: for his grandmother... Full Review

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Review of

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix

4.5star.jpg Teens

Ant is in Year Eleven at quite a standard school, and is surprised to find his geography class (within which it seems absolutely nothing about geography is ever learnt) has been restructured, so his desk is one of four with both his best buddy from the football team, and two other old muckers – in fact they all go back to primary school days together. As they're all fired up, straining at the leash only a single-sex school can form, the talk in class and out often turns to sex. Which is confusing for Ant, as he doesn't know what his score is, where his achievements in that regard lie. He's had a casual relationship, a secret one, for several months now, and so has effectively progressed up the ladder headed by 'experienced', but whether that's set in stone, he can't be sure. And that's mostly because of who he's been having the relationship and the sex with. Full Review

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Review of

Stitched Up by Steve Cole

5star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

Twelve-year-old Hanh wanted to be a fashion designer. Life in the rural village where she lived with her family was happy, if not prosperous, so when the smartly-dressed man and woman came to the village to offer Hahn a job in Hanoi it was an opportunity not to be missed. Some money changed hands and Hanh was on the mini-bus to Hanoi. Only, Hanh and the other girls were not going to work in a shop, they were to work in virtual slavery in an illegal garment factory. You know those jeans you really wanted: the ones with intricate embroidery and beading on the legs? The ones with the artfully-placed rips and distressed seams that felt so soft when you touched them? It's quite possible that Hanh and her co-workers made them. Full Review

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Review of

Needle by Patrice Lawrence

3star.jpg Teens

Brave. Charlene, the 'heroine' of this piece is extremely hard for some people to like, characters and readers both. Kicked out of multiple homes and schools, she's fostering with a pleasant yoga tutor, Annie, and has taken up residence in her son Blake's old room while he's at uni. Such a tempestuous personality may be in need of a comfort blanket, you might perhaps think, and the creation of one such item is part of the plot here, as Charlene is a wonder knitter, and is making something full of love for her younger sister – a younger sister she's allowed contact with no more. We see Charlene prove her belligerence with a store detective, and then force people to give her two days off school, when she shouts someone down as expletively ignorant. And then... well, what exactly happens is not for me to say, only to remark how sharp and pointy those knitting needles can be... Full Review

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Review of

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin

5star.jpg Teens

Kurara has spent her entire life as a servant on the Midori, a massive dining hall floating in the sky where soldiers of the Empire come to drink and make merry between their conquests. However, when a man named Himura arrives to tell her that she is a Crafter like him, someone with the power to form paper into whatever she desires – a power sought after all across the Empire. He asks her to come with him, to leave the life of dreary servitude that is all she has known. Well, soon Kurara won't have any say in the matter, because the Midori is destroyed by a monstrous paper spirit known as a shikigami, and she is forced to flee out into the world. She joins Himura aboard the Orihime, a sky-ship whose express purpose is to hunt down shikigami, and a whole world of adventure awaits her… Full Review

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Review of

Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick

4.5star.jpg Teens

Meet Fitz, a young Scottish lad full of frustration at himself. Lockdown is only just over, and he should be free to do what he wants, to go where he wants and with whom he wants, but he cannot stop himself from putting his foot in it when he talks to his best friend, Cassie. They were half of a desultory school band, but Cassie was also one hundred per cent the enigmatic – saying she could hear a subhuman hum coming from the earth. Is this connected with one of her eco-warrior parents saying the end of the world is already a done deal? Is it some spooky new kind of music she's dreaming of? Is she just bonkers? And can Fitz find out the truth? Well, not when Cassie has gone missing he can't... Full Review

1789098130.jpg

Review of

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

4.5star.jpg Teens

Working all summer in her boarding school's library is the last thing Tess Matheson wants to do — especially when she gets a request for over a hundred books that she has to deliver herself. What makes it worse is the man who requested the books: Mr Birch. The boarding school's headmaster, and a man Tess hates. As a petty act of revenge for making her find and deliver such a large request, Tess sticks post-it notes on each of the books, scribbled with the ugliest insults she can think of. They're never meant to reach him, of course. Her plan is to get her anger out like this, and then take them all off before delivering them. No harm done… Or it would be, if someone hadn't delivered them for her. Full Review

1788452372.jpg

Review of

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

5star.jpg Confident Readers

In a word, rich. There is certainly an abundance of riches in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildsea, British but way west, beyond the Scillies. There are troll people on it, and sea-witches, and legends of the Dark family that has to keep watch for magical islands and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sail. The current Darks are the Watcher, Andrewe, who has to keep notes of activity from the Hidden Lands, his brother Will who lives in London with too much science in his head to worry about such local yokel superstitions, and Andrewe's foundling daughter, who washed up out of the sea one day eleven years ago. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himself, both his sullen brother and his curious ward are thrust into the world of protecting their island, like it or not. Full Review

1510107789.jpg

Review of

Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston

4star.jpg Confident Readers

Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers for a summer, in the far NE of the Scottish islands. Here be Vikings, that kind of Scottish island. Dad is going to be automating the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt the elusive Greenland shark. And Julia, well, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one night. Full Review

1406394815.jpg

Review of

The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud

4star.jpg Teens

Scarlett McCain is an outlaw, rejecting the draconian conformity of the Surviving Towns and Faith Houses to wander the wildlands between the Seven Kingdoms of Britain, robbing banks and shooting other outlaws to keep herself alive. But then she meets Albert Browne, a dark boy with dark powers and a darker past. With mysterious militiamen hunting them down, they plan to flee to the mythical Free Isles of the London Lagoon. Together, they must brave man-eating wildlife, the cannibalistic Tainted and all the horrors of post-apocalyptic society to reach the Free Isles, but will they be any more accepted there than they are in the rest of Britain? Full Review

152905818X.jpg

Review of

Slingshot by Mercedes Helnwein

3star.jpg Teens

Gracie Welles has resigned herself to being lonely. As a secret illegitimate daughter of a man with a "real" family, she is used to not being a priority in people's lives. But when she defends a random boy in her class with her slingshot, her simple existence is changed for good. No longer can she spend her time writing novels in solitude, for her life now has a boy in it that she never asked for: Wade Scholfield. Full Review

1529039452.jpg

Review of

The Library of the Dead by T L Huchu

4.5star.jpg Teens

Ropa Moyo is a ghostalker, using Zimbabwean magic (and a bit of Scottish pragmatism) to take messages from the dead of Edinburgh for their living relatives. Ever since she dropped out of school, she's been using it to support not only herself, but her younger sister and her aging grandmother. However, there's an evil stalking the ruined streets of Edinburgh, targeting the city's children. Soon, Ropa is pulled into the search for a missing boy at the request of his dead mother. She will end up discovering an occult library and realise that the world of magic is far bigger and more dangerous than she ever could've imagined. Will she find the missing children and bring an end to this evil, or will it claim her too? Full Review

1683692349.jpg

Review of

Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O'Neal

5star.jpg Teens

Having recently been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, Priya has to come to terms with the fact that she may be in constant pain for the rest of her life. She joins Oof Ouch My Bones, an online support group where she talks to a bunch of other teens living with chronic illnesses. They talk about their troubles and help each other out, while also providing an escape to just joke and mess around. When Brigid—one of her closest friends—doesn't respond to the chat for a while, Priya becomes concerned. She decides to steal her parents' car and drive to Brigid's house to check up on her. But what she doesn't expect to find there is a werewolf in the basement – and for that werewolf to be the girl she has been talking to online for the past few months. Full Review

Move on to Newest Thrillers Reviews