Difference between revisions of "Newest Teens Reviews"

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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah Pinborough
+
|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|title=13 Minutes
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|title=Wild East
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=If you think about it, you can count several things in 13s.  It probably took me 13 months to find a book more emotionally satisfying than this author's previous release, [[The Death House by Sarah Pinborough|The Death House]].  It probably took me 13 seconds to accept by email the chance to read this titleYou can almost hear Andy Warhol changing his adage to '13 minutes of fame', considering that the Internet he would never have known about just makes fame even faster to achieve than ever, and one of those social media starlets – as far as ''the hive'' of Brackston Community School is concerned – Natasha Howland, was clinically dead for 13 minutes, before she was fished out of a frozen river one pre-dawn January morningThis utterly dramatic teen read is concerned with the fight for her to work out why she was in that river, although it's mostly taken from the point of view of a girl on the edge of her circle, Becca.
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|summary=Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white schoolThe move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble.  He listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapperBut now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473214033</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0241645441
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Rebecca Lim
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|author=Jenny Valentine
|title=Afterlight
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|title=Us in the Before and After
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Teens
|summary= A freak motorbike accident that claims the life of your parents is really all it takes to make your world fall apart.  You might hope that a new beginning in a different high school is going to jumpstart your life; that a chance to reinvent yourself as just Sophie Teague, rather than Sophie-The-One-Whose-Parents-Died might just be all you need to get by.  But before Sophie gets the chance to find out, she is visited by Eve. Eve isn’t like other girls.  She is beautiful and mesmerizing and Eve needs Sophie to be her go-to girl.  Because Eve can’t do much for herself since she died.  Eve is a ghost and dealing with the dead who have ''unfinished business'' could be the biggest challenge of Sophie’s life.
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|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection.  They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time.  But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable.   Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925240495</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Beautiful Broken Things
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|author=Sara Barnard
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Caddy and Rosie have been best friends for years and even going to different schools hasn't parted them. And this is the summer that Rosie intends to be different. She'll get a boyfriend, finally. Perhaps even lose her virginity. And experience a Significant Life Event. But the best laid plans and all that...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>150980353X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Jo Cotterill and Cathy Brett
 
|title= Electrigirl
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Confident Readers
 
|summary= Holly Sparkes is an ordinary 11-year-old schoolgirl, until she is struck by a mysterious bolt of lightning and then everything changes and she becomes extraordinary! Just like one of the characters in her brother's much loved comics Holly has developed superpowers. Holly can generate a massive amount of electricity in seconds, a skill that can, as Holly discovers, cause mayhem unless she can learn to control it. Her brother Joe, an expert in these things, decides to become her mentor and together they resolve to use Holly's new powers to good effect. They get the opportunity sooner than they expect with the arrival in their town of the company CyberSky and the sinister Professor Macavity.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192743554</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Daniel Whelan
 
|title=The Box of Demons
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Meet Ben Robson.  He is haunted by owning a Box of Demons, which like those TV-advertised DIY liquids, does exactly what it says on the tin.  It contains three demons, of different kinds, that have hampered his concentration at school, caused no end of mischief he has had to take the blame for, and may even have had something to do with his mother being incarcerated in a special hospital.  But is that all it contains?  The demons, as naughty as they might be – where do they sit in the grand scheme of things, and where as a result might Ben end up, if the forces of good and evil choose now (a wet and stormy February), and here (North Wales) to have it out once and for all?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447273737</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mimi Thebo
 
|title=Dreaming the Bear
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Darcy's a typical teenager whose natural habitat is the shopping mall and the multiplex. It's, therefore, not surprising that she's finding it almost impossible to adjust to living in a snowy wilderness without television, a phone signal or wifi. It doesn't help that she's also recovering from pneumonia and tires quickly. But it is this very weakness that changes her life when, exhausted, she stumbles into the shelter of a cave and finds herself embraced by a hibernating grizzly bear.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192745883</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ross Welford
 
|title=Time Travelling with a Hamster
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Al Chaudhury.  He lives, unknowingly, among a family of time travellersHis grandfather has such a brilliant memory he can use a mind palace to store anything and everything, and could tell you what happened on every day of his life, and take himself back with his thoughts.  His father knows the starlight at night is years old, and is a snapshot of a sun that is remote both in time and space.  But even harder to fathom is that Al's father is a real time traveller, and is going to speak from beyond the grave, and send Al on a true mission through time, one that will either save his life, or completely ruin all Al's forevers, for, er, for ever.
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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 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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000815631X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Anna and the Swallow Man
+
|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|author=Gavriel Savit
+
|title=Compass and Blade
|rating=5
+
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=It's Poland in 1939. And Anna's linguistics professor father is about to be rounded up in the Nazi purge of intellectuals. Knowing this is likely to happen, he leaves her in the care of a friend for the day. When her father doesn't return to collect her, the frightened friend loses his nerve and abandons Anna to a new and dangerous world. Anna is just seven years old and will never see her father again.
+
|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178230052X</amazonuk>
+
 
 +
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.
 +
|isbn=0008664730
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grant
+
|author=Harry Allen
|title= Front Lines
+
|title=Children of the Sun
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary=1942: Hitler is pushing his way ever further, the USA adds its strength to the Alliance and women are allowed to fight in the military for the first time. Rio Richlin’s sister has already died in the war, Frangie Marr is desperate for a way to keep her family’s heads above water and Rainy Schulterman wants to kill the man who is murdering Jews.  All three go to war and all three are changed. Although they do they do not start together, their paths intersect as they all take on roles that leave more scars than expected.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405273828</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Courtney Summers
 
|title=All The Rage
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=In a small town, where everyone knows everything about everyone else, a teenage girl is raped. ''All The Rage'' is as simple as that, and yet it is so much more complicated too. It touches upon the blame that is laid at the victim's feet; the ways in which survivors cope with the days and weeks and years after such an ordeal; the idea that, while it changes you, it cannot fully erase what makes you you.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>150981759X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Juno Dawson
 
|title=Mind Your Head
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=
+
|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.
The number of young people suffering from mental ill health is increasing year-on-year. Yet we still find it difficult to talk about. And mental health still hasn't achieved parity with physical health in terms of services and healthcare available. Enter Mind Your Head.
+
|isbn=1805140493
This is a frank and accessible overview of the issues facing young people with regards to mental ill health. It covers the various types of illness, the treatments available, how to manage them. It includes personal stories and exercises and is written in a chatty but serious way. Juno Dawson is the transgender author you might have known before as James Dawson. She's brought in clinical psychologist Dr Olivia Hewitt to help her. And also illustrator Gemma Correll to avoid any appearance of dourness. Because Mind Your Head is about serious things but is an absolute pleasure to read.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471405311</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Alyssa Sheinmel
 
|title=Faceless
 
|rating= 4.5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary=Maisie is a normal high school student. She's the star of the school running team, has a wonderful boyfriend, a great best friend and she's all set to go to a good college. But when an early morning run ends in tragedy, Maisie finds herself in hospital in the serious burns unit and without most of her face. When a donor appears, Maisie is given a miraculous face transplant. Her doctors, parents and her annoyingly beautiful and upbeat physical therapist all keep telling her how lucky she is... But Maisie doesn't feel lucky. Under this new face, with its heavy scarring, she has no idea who she is anymore.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910655198</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=How not to Disappear
+
|author=Alexia Casale
|author=Clare Furniss
+
|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Hattie is having rather a miserable summer. Both her best friends, Reuben and Nat, are away, living it up in the south of France and Edinburgh respectively. Hattie, meanwhile, is stuck at home babysitting her younger siblings and working at a burger joint. It's hardly glamorous and it's very dispiriting to be the one waiting at home for the odd text or email from friends who are having the times of their lives. Ho hum.
+
|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>1471120309</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Caroline Lawrence
+
|author=Simon Fox
|title=Queen of the Silver Arrow
+
|title=Deadlock
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=King Metabus had not been a good king and his escape from his kingdom was hurried and pursued.  When he reached the river he had to make a decision and he thought first of the safety of the baby daughter he carried in his arms and tied her to his javelin, which he threw across the torrent, pledging as he did so that he would serve the Goddess Diana.  Camilla should have grown up as a Princess but instead she lived in a cave with her father and ran wild in the forestIn nearby Laurentum, Acca had grown up hearing the story of how Camilla giggled as she swung on the javelin embedded in the ground and dreamed of meeting her, but this didn't happen until after the death of Camilla's father, when the girls became firm friends.
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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>1781125260</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Mary Hooper
+
|author=Lex Croucher
|title=A Dark Trade
+
|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
 
|summary=Georgina Friday, known to everyone as Gina, grew up in an orphanage and when she was sixteen went to be a servant is a big house in central London.  There were seven members of the family and twelve servants - and Gina was the one at the bottom who had to run about after everyone and who was the butt of practical jokes.  She could cope with that, but what she couldn't cope with was the attentions of one of the young men of the family.  She'd already heard the stories of what had happened to another young maid who'd caught his eye - thrown out on the streets to fend for herself and her baby - and could see no way of escape from ''him'' other than to run away.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781125163</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kathryn Evans 
 
|title=More of Me
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=At school, sixteen year old Teva Webb seems normal. But at home Teva's life is about as far from normal as it's possible to get. Locked away in what everyone outside thinks is a haunted house are eleven other Tevas, all different ages. Why? Because every year Teva separates in two with the new Teva going out in the world while the previous Teva is kept inside, trapped as her younger self.
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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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1474903029</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1526651793
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Changers, Book One: Drew
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|author=Nick Brooks
|author=Allison Glock-Cooper and T Cooper
+
|title=Promise Boys
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=''Some teenagers worry about who they'll wake up next to. Others worry about who they'll wake up as...''
+
|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?
 
+
|isbn=1035003155
Ethan, who is 14, is just hoping to wake up in time to begin his high school career in a brand new town. Imagine his shock when he wakes up AS A GIRL. What the what? How can this happen? It turns out that Ethan, now Drew, is a Changer, one of an ancient race of humankind, and he will undergo not one, but THREE more such changes - one for each year of his time at high school. Drew's parents are overjoyed at their offspring's transformation but Drew is not happy at all.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349002428</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=River of Ink 1: Genesis
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|isbn=1919635017
|author=Helen Dennis
+
|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
|rating=4
+
|author=Kitt Townsend
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=''Some people believe that when you drown, your whole life flashes before you. The boy in the river saw only bottles, driftwood and the dented licence plate of a foreign car. Not his life. But he knew for certain that he was drowning.''
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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...
 
 
But River Boy doesn't drown. He holds on. And when he washes up on the banks of the Thames, something propels him to St Paul's Cathedral, where Reverend Solomon finds him, drenched, bedraggled, wild-eyed and wordless. After several days in hospital, River Boy remains unable to find his voice. Or his memory. Who is this boy? Why was he in the Thames? Will anyone claim him? What are the strange signs he obsessively draws?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144492043X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Maria Turtschaninoff and Annie Prime (translator)
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|title=Maresi (The Red Abbey Chronicles)
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|title=Different for Boys
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Teens  
|summary=Despite the name, there is nothing masculine about the island of Menos at all.  Apart from a few male farm animals and birds, everything is feminine – the island is a rugged mountain land, home to only one abbey where everyone is female, and worshipping a female holy trinity – one Mother Goddess in three ages of lifeThe novices there are on the cusp, in several ways – of girls turning to women, of students turning to Sisters, of people learning what the religion means for them starting to practise it with a duty to othersAnd, of course, they are on the border between the past that took them to the abbey and what could come if they ever leaveMaresi comes from a family that lost one daughter through famine, and the inability to support themselvesNew girl Jai, who has latched on to Maresi like her shadow to learn the ropes, has come from a place even darker – but whose future might be more blackened by darkness is for you to discover, in this trilogy-opening fantasy.
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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 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782690913</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1529509491
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}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1800901232
 +
|title=Stitched Up
 +
|author=Steve Cole
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
 +
|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 missedSome money changed hands and Hanh was on the mini-bus to HanoiOnly, 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.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Melissa Keil
+
|author=Patrice Lawrence
|title=The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl
+
|title=Needle
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Alba and her friends have just finished high school. Now they must decide what to do with the rest of their lives. Move to the city? Enrol at university? Get a job and make a life in their rural Australian backwater? Pair off? Stay single? Alba herself must decide whether or not a career in art and comic books is possible. And if it is, is it worth leaving a happy life and a friendship group for? It's a frightening choice. Is she good enough? And in any case, the friendship group might disappear whatever she decides. Because each member of it has the same choice before them.
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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>1847156835</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Becca Fitzpatrick
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|author= Ann Sei Lin
|title=Dangerous Lies
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|title= Rebel Skies
|rating=4
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|rating= 5
|genre=Teens
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|genre= Teens
|summary=Whisked into the witness protection programme, 17 year old Estella's life is turned upside down. She's torn away from her long-term boyfriend and forced to abandon both her friends and her identity. Leaving city life behind her, she's convinced there is no way she will be able to adapt to Thunder Basin, Nebraska. But, then, she hadn't expected to fall for the boy next door.  
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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>1471125084</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1406399590
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Gary D Schmidt
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title=Orbiting Jupiter
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|title=Wrath
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Twelve year-old Jack is informed that his parents will be fostering another boy – fourteen year-old Joseph. But Joseph isn't like most fourteen year-olds. He's troubled: the rumour is that he spent time in juvenile incarceration for trying to kill his teacher. And there's something else about Joseph, too: he has a daughter.
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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>1783443944</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800900899
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=A A Milne and E H Shepard
 
|title=Winnie-the-Pooh's Little Book Of Wisdom
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Lifestyle
 
|summary=For a Bear of Very Little Brain Winnie-the-Pooh talks an awful lot of sense and we should be honoured that he's chosen to share with us a few of his wise words.  You see, occasionally (well, an awful lot of the time, if we're honest) we look for wisdom in the wrong places and forget about those who have a very simple approach to life and who may well have discovered the secret of happiness. Pooh's take on life is very simple and none the worse for that.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405281278</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|title=Never Evers
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Two English schools, six 14 year-old friends and a ski / snowboarding trip to France. Add a 15 year-old French popstar shooting his latest video and you have the perfect recipe for a light-hearted and funny teen romance.  
+
|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>1910002364</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Candy Harper
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|title=Keep The Faith
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= The basics of the plot here are that Faith is going on a French exchange, which best friend Megs is strangely reluctant to join her on. Meanwhile there's more boy trouble, while she's also trying to juggle revising for exams and applying to become a prefect (despite perhaps being a less than obvious choice in the minds of certain teachers!) The plot is never really the main point of a Faith book though - instead it's a welcome way to catch up with one of the best friendship groups in recent YA fiction.
+
|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>1471124193</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Dan Corns
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|title=Lucerin: Identity
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Aiden Chase seems, on the face of it, to be a normal teenage schoolboy facing real-world issues like bullies, homework and girls. He has no idea that he has Lucerin blood; the key to unlocking uncanny abilities like stopping time and even materialising solid items from thin air. This legacy has made Aiden very desirable to one person in particular: Lukas Voorman. Voorman is head of a group of powerful Lucerin who 'pull the strings' behind the world scenes. Initially a force for peace, the Lucerin mission has been slowly corrupted in the last few years. Could a boy like Aiden have the power to change all of that and bring harmony to the Lucerin once more?
+
|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>0955078083</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Malala Yousafzai
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|title= I Am Malala
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|rating= 5
+
|rating= 4
|genre= Autobiography
+
|genre= Teens
|summary= ''She's a phenomenon'' is my OH's response to any mention of Malala. I can't disagree on some level, but what this book proves is that on another she is just a girl. One voice among many.  It's just that she decided to speak louder than most. We know about Malala because she got lucky.  She got lucky because when she got shot by the Taliban there were people nearby, doctors who got her to a hospital, and then luckier still because when her condition worsened, nearby there were western doctors with access to western facilities and she was flown to the UK for treatment.
+
|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>1780622163</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1406394815
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Chris Priestley
+
|author=Mercedes Helnwein
|title=Anything That Isn't This
+
|title=Slingshot
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Frank Palp lives in a dull, dystopian world, where ''The Grey'' pervades every aspect of life, from the food to the architecture. So insidious are these changes, that no-one seems to have noticed them, apart from Frank. His family, schoolmates and society in general seem to be completely oblivious to the sinister nature of the world around them and seem strangely content with the status quo. The all-powerful ''Ministry'' has a stranglehold on everything and everyone, with each household having its own assigned student, who records everything and reports suspicious activity to the mysterious Mr Vertex. Frank thinks he is the only person who hates this oppressive world, but one day he finds a message in a bottle with a wish for ''anything that isn't this,'' and goes on a desperate search for the person who wrote it; his potential soul-mate.
+
|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>1471404641</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=152905818X
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= E R Murray
 
|title= The Book of Learning
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary= An orphan with only her beloved grandpa for company, Ebony Smart's world is turned upside down when he dies. Sent to Dublin to live with an Aunt she didn't know existed, Ebony soon discovers that her new home, 23 Mercury Lane, is full of secrets.  Discovering that she is part of an ancient order of people who have the power to reincarnate, Ebony is soon under threat from a terrible evil that threatens to destroy their existence. With just her pet rat Winston, and a mysterious book to help her, she must figure out why her people are disappearing and how to save their souls, and her own, before time runs out…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781173621</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
 
|author=Jim Carrington
 
|title=Boy 23
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=''Boy 23 isn't in My Place any more. He can't see The Screen, he can't hear The Voice. Boy 23 is alone.''
 
  
Before being dumped alone in the forest by The Voice, Boy 23 - or Jesper, as we shall call him - has lived in a room entirely by himself. He has never met another human being or been outside. His only experience of the world has been through a few short video clips, shown to him on his Screen by The Voice in My Place. Now, he finds himself alone with only a bag full of survival equipment and some brief words from The Voice: his life is in danger, people have been sent to kill him, he must head north west to the Low Countries, The Voice will meet him there and explain everything.
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408822776</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Revision as of 13:35, 17 June 2024

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Review of

Wild East by Ashley Hickson-Lovence

4.5star.jpg Teens

Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble. He listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapper. But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words. Full Review

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Review of

Us in the Before and After by Jenny Valentine

5star.jpg Teens

Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together. Full Review

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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

Move on to Newest Thrillers Reviews