Newest Teens Reviews
Blood Family by Anne Fine
Blood Family is the companion novel to Anne Fine's The Devil Walks. Both books feature a boy locked away from the world and what happens when he is rescued. The Devil Walks is a Gothic shiver tale, set in the past but Blood Family is a contemporary story, exploring what happens to children who have been abused and how their lives are affected. Full review...
Last Chance Angel by Alex Gutteridge
Jess turns up at the gates of Heaven a few days early, causing a major headache for Darren the Angel of Death. To keep her quiet, he agrees that she can go back to Earth in an invisible form to see her friends and family and say goodbye. Can she find closure, or even a way to stay alive? Full review...
Bruised by Sarah Skilton
Imogen is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. She's her grandmaster's top student. Agile, strong, and confident, she has dedicated years of her life to becoming this good. Then she gets the chance to use her skills when she's involved in an attempted hold-up at a diner - and freezes completely. The gunman gets shot, and she blames herself, losing all of her confidence. What good is Tae Kwon Do in the real world if she can't bring herself to do anything with it? Full review...
Rules of Summer by Joanna Philbin
Rory wanted to get away from her mother, even if it means working as an errand girl for the wealthy Rule family. Isabel Rule just wanted a summer romance with a hot guy. I wanted a fun read with engaging characters. Guess which of the three of us was disappointed? Full review...
The Fall by Claire Merle
In the future, a little way from now, people fall into one of two camps, the Pures and the Crazies, and society has changed almost beyond recognition. The distinction is made through a scientific test, but Ana has discovered something about the test which is alarming. And when the rest of the country finds out what she knows, there will be uproar. Full review...
The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen
Emeline is a conscientious student, works hard for her family's realty business, and loves her long-term boyfriend Luke. But as college draws near she wonders if there is something she has missed by living year-round at the beach. When other people come to the beach, they get to leave their real selves behind and try on a new persona. Her mom had her young and has always tried to provide Emeline with everything she could need. When a filmmaker’s assistant, Theo, comes into town, Emeline is intrigued by him and his very different New York City lifestyle. Maybe she does want something more than what her old life has offered. Full review...
Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
There's a list of names on the title page of this extraordinary and moving book. Note it well: these seventy-four women are real. As a group they were known as the Ravenbrück Rabbits, and they were the victims of medical experiments carried out to help improve surgery for German soldiers wounded in the field. Little or no anaesthetic, poor aftercare: these things, while horrible, fit in with what we know of the concentration camps. What many will not know is the truly gut-wrenching fact that sometimes the doctors did not even bother to follow up on the experiments they carried out. All that pain, infection and disability (for those lucky enough to survive the procedures), and all for nothing. They didn't even help the enemy soldiers recover from their injuries. Full review...
Shipwrecked by Siobhan Curham
Grace Delaney and her friends from her dance school are really excited to have the opportunity to perform on a South Pacific cruise ship. But when a storm hits and leaves them stranded on an island, they're left fighting to survive - and fighting with each other, as tensions build when they start to panic about whether they'll be rescued. As if that wasn't bad enough, the island has a dark secret - will they learn it before it's too late? Full review...
Parallel by Lauren Miller
Imagine waking up every day to find yourself in a new reality, an alternate future derived from a small variation in one of those what-if moments that populate every day of your life. Some of these moments are easy to identify: the moment you confirm your university choices, the moment you meet the person who'll become your best friend, the moment you tell someone you love them. Others are more subtle and harder to define, but they can have just as much an influence on your future. This is the reality of Abby Barnes, an eighteen year old whose life is constantly being warped and changed by the actions and decisions of a seventeen-year-old version of her from a parallel world. Full review...
The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
As a child, I read The Grey King, book 4 in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence. I loved the book so much it topped my Christmas list for years, but sadly Santa never delivered. As an adult I finally bought the entire sequence for myself. This book is intended as a child's book, and it is brilliant as book for children, but it is also well loved by many adults, whether as a cherished memory of their own childhood or as a book discovered as an adult. I'll admit that as child, this can book can completely draw into other worlds in a manner not possible for an adult, but this is still an excellent read, whatever age you may be. Full review...
Dare You To by Katie McGarry
Seventeen-year-old Beth Risk knows that her mother would face jail if anyone found out the truth about her. She's trying to look after her mother the best she can - until her uncle comes to the rescue. Except Beth doesn't want rescuing, and only goes with her uncle to keep him from exposing her mother. Living with him, she meets town golden boy Ryan Stone, who asks her out on a dare. What starts as an instant dislike on her part, though, turns to attraction, and she finds that Ryan has depths no-one else knows about. Can this mismatched couple help each other to find happiness? Full review...
Flutter by Jennie Wood and Jeff McComsey
When fifteen-year-old Lily moves to yet another new town, she falls for a girl who isn't interested in her. Lily, though, has a trick up her sleeve - she's a shapeshifter. She turns herself into a boy so that she can have a chance with Saffron. As Jesse, she starts to build a new life for herself at school -can this 'boy' get the girl? Additionally, why is Lily so resistant to any sort of harm, and who are the strange people who are trying to find her? Full review...
Everything is Fine (and Other Lies I Tell Myself) by Cathy Brett
Fifteen-year-old Esther Armstrong is having problems at home. Her mum and dad keep arguing, her younger brother is driving her crazy, and she's reduced to writing letters to her older brother about the situation as he's not around. When she finds some letters from a soldier to his girlfriend, she starts trying to find out what happened to them - will she work it out, and also get her own life back on track? Full review...
Dead Jealous by Sharon Jones
Poppy is a rationalist. Her sweatshirt says so: GOD IS DEAD, it proclaims. She's been swearing blind she wouldn't attend her mother and stepfather's handfasting ceremony at the annual pagan festival. It's all stuff and nonsense. But then her best friend - and secret love - Michael goes and gets a girlfriend and jealousy gets the better of Poppy. Suddenly, the festival and the handfasting seem much more inviting. Once there, Poppy meets a strange girl at the shores of Scariswater Lake. When Beth turns up dead, Poppy is sure she has been murdered. And the police don't seem to care, putting it down as an accident. Full review...
Stung by Bethany Wiggins
Fiona wakes up confused and disoriented. She's in her bedroom but her bedroom has never looked like this. It's filthy. And abandoned. Where is her family? And how has she come to have a strange tattoo on her hand? Full review...
Fragments by Dan Wells
I didn't have much hope for this book - the middle book in a series tends to be filler, and as Partials was so brilliant, I though it was going to be hard to top. I was very wrong. This book is mind-blowing. Full review...
Drummer Girl by Bridget Tyler
Lucy is really pleased when Harper McKenzie decides to start talking to her again and suggests forming a band. From then, life gets increasingly wonderful as they recruit three other girls, enter a talent show, and make it to the finals. Parties, fame, and success await - until everything comes crashing down. What went wrong? Full review...
Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff
Zach Abram has a choice - death or death. He can either choose the death of others or his own death. At the age of 12, his parents were killed and he was abducted by a shadowy American government agency, trained as an assassin and give a simple a choice kill and keep killing or die. He is told that he is a patriot, that those he kills are enemies of the state, and as such deserve to die. But this is very state which will kill him if he makes one mistake. Zach is 16 now, but he isn't Zach anymore, he is whoever the agency wants him to be, and for 2 years he has gone from one target to another. He has used his youth as cover, befriending the children of his future victims and killed without remorse or emotion. But something is different this time, he has started to experience feelings and question his assignment. This will be his most dangerous mission yet, and if he fails he will have more to fear from his own side than his enemies. But if he succeeds what will the cost be to himself? Full review...
The Watcher in the Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Good and bad luck combined have forced Irene and her family – mother Simone and insular younger brother Dorian – to live in the Normandy village of Blue Bay. It's a way to relieve the poverty her deceased father left them in, as Simone is now housekeeper to Lazarus Jann, a mysterious elderly businessman who lives in a mansion peopled by countless automata, and the isolated shell of what used to be his healthy wife. Irene herself has met the maid's brother, which the village network has immediately inflated into a long-term romance. Dorian is happy enough to be errand-boy for Jann's peculiar correspondence. So far, so interesting. But is there a dark secret to be had with the clockwork toys keeping Jann company? Is the tale of a ghost on the lighthouse islet true? And what else could be implied in the book's very title? In such a small village, for anyone to hold a secret it has to be very big, and very powerful… Full review...
Diary of a Crush: French Kiss by Sarra Manning
When Edie moves up to Manchester and starts college she’s a little scared – scared to be in a new town with new people, and none of her old friends. But then she meets a trouser-shape by the name of Dylan and everything changes. She develops a huge crush on the handsome but complicated boy, and chronicles her feelings for him in her diary. Well that explains the title, then. Full review...
Noble Conflict by Malorie Blackman
Kaspar believes in the Alliance with a whole heart. Who wouldn't? In the face of terrorist attacks from the Crusader Insurgency, the Alliance's response is non-fatal. Its security forces are equipped with stun guns and captured insurgents are not killed. They're incapacitated, given medical treatment and imprisoned. Guardians like Kaspar are trained to defend themselves against these unprovoked attacks in the least violent way possible. And considering the Crusaders destroyed their own country before attacking Kaspar's, you can see how measured and ethical the Alliance's response seems. Full review...
The Dead Girls Detective Agency by Suzy Cox
The Dead Girls Detective Agency takes us with Charlotte Feldman, an average school girl who is pushed under a train and wakes up to find that the afterlife for murdered teenagers is a downtown hotel from where they must solve their cases and get the killer to confess in order to move on. I’d call it a fresh and original take on the whodunit if I hadn't seen variants of it before. However, it does have individuality. The sole condition for moving on is solving the murder – there’s no pansying around finding absolution or atoning for transgressions. Full review...
Jelly Cooper: Alien by Lynne Thomas
Jelly Cooper is just turning fourteen. But excitement about her birthday is taking second place to sheer exhaustion. For weeks, Jelly has been having recurring nightmares that leave her shaken and afraid. And it's all taking a toll on her - her friends Humphrey and Agatha are beginning to get worried. Add the night terrors to the figurative nightmare of school, a crush on a boy so cool and gorgeous that Jelly sees no world in which he'd fancy her back, and a cheerleader out to humiliate her at every turn, and you can see that Jelly's life could be better. Full review...
Silver by Chris Wooding
'Silver' has a large ant with silver circuits on the cover, and while there are no actual ants in this book, the illustration is very well suited. This books puts a unique twist on the ever popular zombie genre. Instead of living corpses, we have nanobots which can turn humans into machines. They possess a swarm intelligence similar to ants. This sounds far fetched but a great deal of progress has been made in research currently being conducted with just this in mind - to create nanobots with swarm intelligence - a phenomenon well known in the natural sciences in which a less intelligent organism is capable of highly intelligent behaviour through a hive mind. It would be impossible for scientists to control hundreds or thousands of nanobots independently - so the idea is to control a few and have these control the rest. Of course there would always be safeguards on this type of technology and there were safeguards in the book as well - they just didn't work. Full review...
The Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel by Cathy Cassidy
Coco is the youngest of the Tanberry sisters but very much her own person. For her, life is about animals and she loves going to the stables for riding lessons even if she does overestimate her own abilities. She was hoping that she could pick up a job there a couple of evenings a week so that she could have extra lessons, but it went instead to form-mate Lawrie Marshall and they're not each other's biggest fans. Well, they're not until the pony which Coco has set her heart on is sold to someone who doesn't seem to have the animal's best interest at the front of his mind. Coco and Lawrie unite to save Caramel and another pony which is just about to foal - but how will they cope? Full review...
The Boy with Two Heads by Andy Mulligan
Richard is a nice kid. Dutiful, hardworking, rule-abiding, he makes both parents and teachers proud. But one day, everything changes. Richard wakes up with a painful lump on his neck. Rushed to hospital, his parents get some devastating news from the specialists. Richard is growing a second head. Yowzer. When the head - Rikki - emerges, Richard, his parents, his teachers and his friends, all do their best to cope. But Rikki isn't like Richard. He's spiteful. He's angry. He's rude. He says the most unsayable things and he causes a great deal of trouble. Full review...
Where You Are by Tammara Webber
Between The Lines saw seventeen year old Emma catapulted to fame as she made a film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with heartthrob Reid Alexander and started to fall for him, only to end up with more sensible Graham, another cast member. Now School Pride is nearly ready to be released, and it's time for the cast to start the publicity blitz - which means Emma and Reid, as the stars. will be spending a lot of time together. Can Emma's new relationship with Graham stay strong despite this? Not if Reid, and Brooke - who's desperate to get her hands on Graham and become more than just his friend - have got anything to do with it. Full review...
ZOM-B Angels by Darren Shan
Ok. I'm going to do this for all books in this series except the first one. Before we begin. If you haven't read the first book in this series, DON'T read this review. It contains spoilers. Read my review of the first book, read the first book itself, then come back. If you don't, you'll be sorry... Full review...
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
As far as she knows, Cassie could be the last human on Earth. Surely, she's one of the last few. After the first four waves of the Others - mysterious aliens who appeared and quickly laid waste to humanity - it's impossible for her to trust anyone she meets. Can she ever find the strength to rescue her kid brother? Full review...
Deadlands by Lily Herne
I was hesitant to choose this book. I love a good dystopian future book. The problem is, I don't define very many of them as good. I have read far too many zombie books that really don't offer anything different, plenty of blood, gore, and damsels in distress, but not enough character development, or logical thought. Psychological horror can be ever so much more chilling than blood and guts, but it is also much more difficult to pull off. Sarah and Savannah Lotz, the mother and daughter team who have written this book under the pen name Lily Herne, have managed to do this perfectly. Full review...
Inferno (Chronicles of Nick) by Sherrilyn Kenyon
I'm tempted to say I have a love/hate relationship with the Chronicles of Nick series, but that's probably overstating both aspects of it. Call it a like/dislike relationship, perhaps - at its best - notably in much of the first book, Infinity and Infamous, it's a high-octane thrill ride which is hugely entertaining thanks to the sheer amount of larger than life characters and some very well-written dialogue. At other moments, as in Invincible, Kenyon's narration can make me grit my teeth and the books can have pacing issues. Full review...
The Rising by Kelley Armstrong
Maya Delaney is on the run. Her idyllic life in Salmon Creek was an elaborate ruse run by the St. Clouds - a Mafia like family of supernaturals who want Maya and her friends because of their emerging powers, powers thought to be extinct before now. Maya is losing friends fast as they are recaptured. She'd do anything to get them back, but when making contact with a scientist who might have some answers doesn't play out how they hoped, Maya realises that she and her friends are on their own, and that confronting their enemies might be their only chance. Full review...
Dead To You by Lisa McMann
When Ethan was 7 years old, he was abducted from the street in front of his house. His parents and younger brother Blake were devastated, their lives torn apart. But now, 9 years later, a teenaged Ethan has returned, having escaped his new, often brutal life, to return to his old familiar one. Except it’s not familiar. His mind traumatised by years of neglect culminating with a spell living on the streets, Ethan remembers nothing about his life at home before the abduction. Full review...
