Difference between revisions of "Newest Teens Reviews"

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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=C L Taylor
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|author=Leanne Egan
|title=The Treatment
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|title=Lover Birds
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=When Drew's brother is once again expelled from school, and sent away to a special reform school, Drew doesn't really care. She has enough of her own troubles to deal with. But then one day she is followed home from school by a mysterious doctor, who claims to have a sinister message from her brother, begging Drew to help him because the school is not a reform school, and actually all the children there are being brainwashed.
+
|summary=When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her.  A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it?  Because Lou is straight, isn't she? Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so far, and she's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabel, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0008240566</amazonuk>
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|isbn=000862657X
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Peternelle van Arsdale
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|title= The Beast is an Animal
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|title=Wild East
|rating= 5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre= Teens
 
|summary=The Beast is an Animal, but what does that make Alys? Alys was only seven when her village was set upon by the Soul Eaters, she was the only one to see them. Alys and the other orphans are sent to the neighbouring village but this place is not like home. In the strange village of Defaid people are pious, they say that Alys's village must have been in league with the Beast, that they drew the Soul Eaters in. People in Defaid are suspicious, and they are particularly suspicious of Alys, though she never tells a soul what she has seen. Despite it's piety and it devotion to the ways of the Shepherd, Defaid feels the Soul Eaters creeping ever closer, luring them with their singing. Alys does not like Defaid or its residents and she does not belong there, Alys knows the danger of the Soul Eaters but she is drawn to them. As she grows older and the danger grows greater, the dark question grows larger in Alys's mind, is she bad like them?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471160459</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Julie Bertagna
 
|title= Exodus
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary=  Exodus is a book which, though fifteen years old, strikes some horrifying truths about the world we live in right at this moment. Set in a world ravaged by global warming and melting ice-caps, this is the story of the last inhabitants of an island called Wing, who set sail in search of a new life once Wing is sunk under the rising tide. It turns out to be a much wilder story than you'd thing, and one which dredges up so many interesting questions.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509854517</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Simon P Clark
 
|title=Not Yet Dark
 
|rating= 4.5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= Philippa and Danny have been friends since they were tiny. But now, at fifteen and into the unforgiving world of adolescence, there are stresses and pressures. Danny has some new friends in the rugby team and they are full of the obnoxious, somewhat sexist, bravado of the jock world. They make jokes about Philippa and she doesn't like it. She gets angry when Danny doesn't shut them down. And, if she's truthful, she's a tiny bit jealous of the time Danny spends with them. For his part, Danny feels a bit suffocated by this.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472111001</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Amy Reed
 
|title=The Nowhere Girls
 
|rating= 4.5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= Amy Reed’s ''The Nowhere Girls'' is another timely novel that aims to educate young women about feminism- a very hot political topic at the moment. It sees Grace, Erin and Rosina- three extremely socially awkward teenagers- unite to create a movement, known as The Nowhere Girls, which will challenge the sexist culture at their school. In the process, they hope to get justice for Lucy, a local girl who was forced to leave town as a result of the abuse she received after truthfully accusing three of her male peers of gang rape.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349003076</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Stephanie Perkins
 
|title= There's Someone Inside Your House
 
|rating= 3.5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= Makani Young is still adjusting to her new life with her grandmother in landlocked Nebraska after her parents send her away from her beloved Hawaiian home. She's made friends and has even had a hint of romance, yet her old life is hard to forget. But things in her new quiet little Nebraskan town take a strange turn when one by one, her classmates are violently murdered. No one knows who is next on the killer's list or why they are being targeted, but Makani realises her past may soon catch up with her.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509859802</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sally Gardner
 
|title=My Side of the Diamond
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=''You have to accept that if two people jump from the dome of St Paul's they would be bound to landThey'd be dead but they would land.''  Except, in this most unusual book, they didn't.  Two people were seen leaving the outside of the London Cathedral's dome, but were never found at the foot of it – and someone has been in prison ever since for pushing them off.  It's a most peculiar scenario, and our narrator Jaz is struggling to tell her mysterious interrogator, Mr Jones, all about it – and all about her relationship with her best friend.  Now Becky, the friend, was a child prodigy sci-fi author, until something happened – she realised she wanted something else from lifeRushing around to investigate the case of the fallers, she seems to have found that, in the shape of a hot-blooded romance.  But what is Jaz doing starting her testimony with talk of inquests, evidence and hatred?
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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 troubleHe 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471406431</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0241645441
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Louis de Bernieres
 
|title=Blue Dog
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Mick's mother had a mental breakdown after his father's death and Mick was sent to live in in the outback with Granpa.  On the face of it you'd think that it was going to be a lonely life for an eleven-year-old city boy, with no school to attend, in fact no other children anywhere near.  Granpa's busy too: life on a cattle station is brutal for anyone, with all the heat and the dust.  But they've all got to make the best of the situation.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784704172</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Nick Lake
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|author=Jenny Valentine
|title=Satellite
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|title=Us in the Before and After
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Born and raised, along with twins Orion and Libra, on the space station Moon 2, Leo has never set foot on Earth. And yet, everyone calls it home. Moon 2 orbits about 250 miles above Earth. It travels at 17,500 miles an hour, making one full orbit every ninety minutes. If you ever look out of the porthole beneath, you'll usually see ocean. What would it be like to see the ocean for real? Leo and the twins may soon be able to do that now that they are teenagers and the scientists below think they are strong enough to come home. Each has their own idea of what it will be like and what they would like to do. Orion wants to go to a concert. Libra wants to dig her hands in soil. Leo wants to throw a ball and observe its arc. Everyone wants to see a bird in flight.
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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>1444936778</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=The Dollmaker of Krakow
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|author=Max Boucherat
|author=R M Romero
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Karolina is a refugee from the Land of the Dolls. Her homeland has been ravaged by rats and Karolina was blown by a magical wind into Krakow, Poland, at the height of WWII. She finds herself in a workshop belonging to Cyryl, known as the Dollmaker of Krakow. Lonely, crippled Cyryl repairs Karolina and the two cement a strong friendship which helps Cyryl in his life outside the workshop. But it's not just the Land of the Dolls suffering under a vicious enemy: it's Poland, too. Together, Karolina and Cyryl befriend their Jewish neighbours and determine to do whatever the can to save from the monstrous Nazi regime...
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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 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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406375632</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Danny Weston
+
|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=Scarecrow
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|title=Compass and Blade
|rating=5
+
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
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|genre=Teens
|summary= When Jack's dad discovers illegal activity at work and blows the whistle, he makes some very powerful and dangerous enemies. He and Jack are forced to go into hiding in a remote cottage in the Scottish highlands. Miles from anywhere and anyone, they hope they will be alone and safe. But it quickly transpires that they are neither. Dad's enemies already know where they are heading and, even before they move in, Jack starts to have doubts whether they are actually alone. Did he really see the scarecrow next to their cottage move?
+
|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783445319</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=Steve Cole
+
|author=Harry Allen
|title=Senseless
+
|title=Children of the Sun
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
 
|summary=16 year old Kenzie Mitchell, otherwise known as K-Boy, thinks his every dream has come true when he's wins the chance to attend a top gaming tournament at Sensia HQ on a remote tropical island. The contestants are flown in on their own private jet and transferred by limo to the swankiest of hotels. It all seems too good to be true – which of course it is. Within hours, events start to take a sinister turn. Kenzie wakes in the night unable to see and one by one his other senses – touch, hearing, smell and taste – flicker in and out. And he's not on his own. It's happening to the other contestants too, sometimes with fatal consequences. Kenzie wants to believe it isn't really happening. He wants to believe it's just a really good virtual reality game. But with Sensia in control, the line between realities has almost entirely disappeared.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781127336</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Phill Featherstone
 
|title= Paradise Girl
 
|rating= 3
 
|genre= General Fiction
 
|summary= Kerryl Shaw lives on a Yorkshire farm – a somewhat idealised one that survives on a few hens and two or three cows and a few sheep.  The kind of farm that might have been profitable in the 1950s but by the time Kerryl has arrived should have been struggling. A teenage boy not pulling his weight, now that the grandparents are old and the father is dead, would not be met with exasperated indulgence.  There are no stock-hands, no farm managers, no applications for subsidies, or worries about the tax return. Maybe the unwelcome wind turbine covers the costs of the rest of it.  Already, in setting, it's feeling a little unreal.  But maybe we can forgive that…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785898728</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=We See Everything
 
|author=William Sutcliffe
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lex lives in what used to be London. Today, it is a closed-off, bombed-out area known as ''The Strip''. Nobody comes in and nobody can go out. Drones are a constant presence overhead. Alan spends all his time watching The Strip. His talent as a gamer got him the job of drone pilot. He hasn't bombed anyone yet but he's hyped up to do it. It's fighting terrorism, after all. Alan's observation target is a high-profile target - a man high up in the resistance organisation known as ''The Corps''. Alan calls him #K622. But Lex calls him Dad.
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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.
 
+
|isbn=1805140493
Lex and Alan will never meet. But their lives will collide in devastating ways...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408890194</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jay Jay Burridge
+
|author=Alexia Casale
|title=Supersaurs 1: Raptors of Paradise
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=''I'm thirteen years OLD, not young.''  And it's a good job too, for her grandma and godfather have taken Bea on an extended holiday to Indonesia, where the wild dinosaurs live.  Yes, this is a world where they never went extinct, and have been used for riding for leisure or as pack animals ever since mankind domesticated them.  But wild and dangerous ones still exist, such as the Raptors of Paradise.  Bea's older guardians have another reason to go there, though – they are in search of clues that might lead them to at last discover the fate of Bea's birth parents, who disappeared a decade ago.  She's unaware of this being the final grasp at one last clue – and all of them are ignorant of how the real danger and mystique on the island may actually come not from the fabulous beasts, but from other humans…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786968002</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Robin Jarvis
 
|title= Time of Blood
 
|rating= 4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Travel back over a hundred years into Whitby's past to see two witches battle an ancient evil. Follow young Lil as she tries to avoid spoilers and find her best friend.  
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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>1405280255</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Brian Gallagher
 
|title= Pawns
 
|rating= 3.5
 
|genre= Confident Readers
 
|summary=''Pawns'' tells the story of Johnny, Stella and Alice, all of whom are growing up in Ireland during the War of Independence, and who have somehow become friends in spite of their very different political views. Stella is passionately pro-British, while Johnny frequently risks his life to pass information to the pro-Irish rebels, and Alice is left stranded in the middle, supporting neither side of the dispute.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847178936</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Zillah Bethell
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|author=Simon Fox
|title=The Extraordinary Colours of Auden Dare
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|title=Deadlock
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Auden has a condition called achromatopsia, which means that he can't see colours. He likes to pretend that it doesn't matter but it does. And the older Auden gets, the more it seems to matter. Mind you, so does everything else...
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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 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.
... because Auden lives in a near-future Britain in a world where climate change has taken root. It never rains any more. Britain, an island with plenty of coastline, is doing better than many countries thanks to its desalination plants. But water is still rationed and the Water Authority Board is now a quasi-government as the most important and powerful body in the land. Water wars have broken out worldwide and Auden's father is away fighting.
+
|isbn=1839944420
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848126085</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Adam Silvera
+
|author=Lex Croucher
|title= They Both Die at the End
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|rating= 4
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= ''No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end''
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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 attachmentsBut 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?
   
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|isbn=1526651793
The year is 2017, the place is America, but this is not a place we recognise. A company called Death-Cast know the exact date of everyone's death and make it their mission to inform Deckers that they will be dead within the next twenty-four hours. Many have tried to cheat death, all have failed.   
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471166201</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Moonrise
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|author=Nick Brooks
|author=Sarah Crossan
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|title=Promise Boys
|rating=5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Joe is seventeen and he hasn't seen his brother for ten years. And the reason for that is brutal - Ed is on Death Row in Texas, convicted of the murder of a police officer. Ed says he's innocent. Aunt Karen doesn't believe him. And Mum is long gone, no-one knows where. When the execution date comes through, Joe passes up on his job and a spot on a summer athletics scholarship and treks from New York across the country so that Ed is not alone. He is determined to spend these last weeks with his brother no matter what anybody else thinks.
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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>140886780X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=I am Traitor
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|isbn=1919635017
|author=Sif Sigmarsdottir
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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=Alien ships have arrived in the skies above London. The Prime Minister appeared on TV to announce this ominous visitation and order a curfew. After that, he went AWOL and took all reliable information with him, leaving the army to patrol the streets. Not that the army has any answer to the long pipes that snake down from the ships and gobble up teenagers. To where, nobody knows.
+
|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>1444934473</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Charlotte Says
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|author=Alex Bell
+
|title=Different for Boys
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Teens  
|summary=''Charlotte says... don't open the door.''
+
|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 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.
 
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|isbn=1529509491
Jemima's mother died in an awful fire not long ago and that is why Jemima decides to leave London and take up a job as a teacher on the Isle of Skye. But leaving the place doesn't mean escaping the memories and Jemima is tormented by second-guessing what actually happened on that terrible night. It doesn't help that Miss Grayson, the mistress at the school, is a strange, forbidding sort, while the school itself is a thoroughly creepy old building.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847158404</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lucy Adlington
+
|isbn=1800901232
|title=The Red Ribbon
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|title=Stitched Up
|rating=4.5
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|author=Steve Cole
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|rating=5
|summary=Ella is rushing to her audition for a job in fashion, as are several other young womenThrown in at the deep end in the high-pressure workplace, she is tasked with creating a dress from scratch for an important client before four pm that dayBut she manages it, even working through the non-existent lunch break, to design a silk wonder worthy of any environmentBut this is no typical make-or-break-'em fashion design house, and this is no normal environment for the recipient to be wearing the frock. This is Birchwood – or Auschwitz-Birkenau to you and I.
+
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471406288</amazonuk>
+
|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 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.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= E Lockhart
+
|author=Patrice Lawrence
|title= Genuine Fraud
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|title=Needle
|rating= 4
+
|rating=3
|genre= Teens
+
|genre=Teens
|summary=  I'm going to straight up say that I'm not going to mention the plot in this review, because I can't without inevitably spoiling something in this twisting, turning, great suspense of a novel. All I will say is that I felt like I was watching a proper thriller movie while I was reading it; I feel like I might see this advertised as a film on the side of a bus any time soon, and if that happens, then it will have an excellent female lead that kicks some serious backside.  
+
|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>1471406628</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Sally Nicholls
+
|author= Ann Sei Lin
|title= Things A Bright Girl Can Do
+
|title= Rebel Skies
|rating= 4
+
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|genre= Teens
|summary=''Things a Bright Girl Can Do'' tells the story of three teenage girls, all of whom are fighting for women's suffrage, despite coming from very different backgrounds. There's Evelyn, an upper-class girl expected to marry at a young age, May, a middle-class girl with an opinionated Mother, and Nell, a working-class girl who does what she can to help her large family scrape by. The novel chronicles both their contributions to the fight for suffrage, and the way their lives change when World War One begins.
+
|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>1783445254</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1406399590
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Ryan Graudin
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title= Invictus
+
|title=Wrath
|rating= 4.5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre= Teens
+
|genre=Teens
|summary= It's the 24th century and human beings have cracked the secret of time travel. Farway Gaius McCarthy is 17 and dreams of following in his mother's footsteps as a Recorder for the Corps of Central Time Travellers. If he succeeds, he is determined to track down Empra, who disappeared on a mission when her son was just 7. But Farway tanks his final exam and his ambitions seem crushed. He's given another chance by Lux, a black marketeer who employs teams of rogue time travellers to plunder the past of its artifacts - artifacts that fetch fortunes in credits in the Central Time world.
+
|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>1510102868</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= M A Bennett
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|title= S.T.A.G.S
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
|rating= 4.5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre= Teens
 
|summary=''One weekend. Three deadly activities''. Greer MacDonald is a new student at the prestigious St Aidan the Great Boarding School, known to its exclusive pupils as S.T.A.G.S. It is a school where technology is absent, the teachers are replaced by friars, and a group of elite students –known as the Medievals – run the school. When Greer inexplicably receives an invitation from the Medievals to spend a weekend at the stately home of Henry de Warlencourt, the most popular boy at school, she is too curious decline such an invitation. But little does Greer realise that there is more to the weekend than she initially understands. Ultimately she and the other two students who have been invited must come together to uncover the truth about the infamous Medievals, and the blood sports they have been chosen to take part in.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471406768</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ruth Lauren
 
|title=Prisoner of Ice and Snow
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Valor is under arrest for the attempted assassination of Anatol, Demidova's Crown Prince. Queen Ana is furious and sentences Valor to life imprisonment in Tyur'ma - a brutal prison constructed of stone and ice...
+
|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.
... it's not sounding too great for Valor, is it? But the thing is, this is exactly what she had been hoping for and she's even prepared to risk her parents' respected positions at Demidova's court to achieve it. Because Valor's sister Sasha is already in Tyur'ma - accused of stealing a national treasure vital to cementing a peace treaty between Demidova and a neighbouring nation. Valor is convinced of her sister's innocence and intends to break her out.
+
|isbn=1789098130
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408872757</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Kate Ling
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|title=The Glow of Fallen Stars
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=
+
|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.
''The Glow of Fallen Stars'' is the second book in Kate Ling's ''Ventura'' series - you can read our review of the first instalment [[The Loneliness of Distant Beings by Kate Ling|here]]. Seren and Dom, together with Ezra and Mariana, have escaped the Ventura, the spaceship on which they have spent their whole lives, and crash landed on the planet Huxley 3. At last, they are away from the stifling authoritarianism of life on board the ship and free to pursue their own lives underneath a real sky, walking on real land.
+
|isbn=1788452372
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1510200185</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Chloe Seager
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|title=Editing Emma
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Emma Nash is a typical 16 year old with all the insecurities and obsessions that come with this age. When the love of her life ''ghosts'' her (i.e. breaks up with her by acting as if she doesn't exist), she spends the summer moping in her pyjamas. However, September arrives all too soon bringing with it the start of Sixth Form and a resolution to make some important ''edits'' to her life. This includes e-tweaking herself with disastrous, and often hilarious, consequences. The whole experiment is recorded in Emma's private blog: a blog that she might just regret ever writing.
+
|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>0008220972</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Vicki Grant
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|title= 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|rating= 3.5
+
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Teens
 
|genre= Teens
|summary=''Two random strangers. Thirty-six questions guaranteed to make them fall in love. What's not to like?''
+
|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?
+
|isbn=1406394815
Based on a psychological theory, Grant's novel explores the concept that love can be engineered by using thirty-six ''simple'' questions. Questions such as ''What would constitute a perfect day?'' or ''When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?'' are designed to reveal the souls and characters of both participants, enabling them to form a deep connection with a stranger. In a modern world dominated by technology, this face to face interaction is performed to test whether genuine human interaction can give love a ''push'' or will it leave them feeling vulnerable and reserved?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147140708X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Non Pratt
 
|title= Truth or Dare
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary= After an accident leaves his brother, Kam, with severe neurodisability, it's obvious that the lives of Sef and his family will never be the same again. Plagued by feelings of guilt and struggling to cope, Sef turns all his attention to the only way that he might be able to help - money. In an attempt to raise funds for his brother's care, he enlists the help of Claire. As a volunteer at the facility looking after Kam, she's the only person from school that really appreciates just how dire Kam's situation is, and how important it is to get the funding that he needs. Aided by Claire's equipment and YouTube know-how, the two create a channel where their alter-egos, Truth Girl and Dare Boy, play an escalating game of Truth or Dare to persuade viewers to donate to their cause. However, £60,000 is no small amount, and fundraising through YouTube is no easy feat. Just how far are they willing to go for their cause?  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406366935</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]

Latest revision as of 09:54, 8 July 2024

000862657X.jpg

Review of

Lover Birds by Leanne Egan

4.5star.jpg Teens

When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn't she? Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so far, and she's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabel, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she? Full Review

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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

1406399590.jpg

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

1800900899.jpg

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

Move on to Newest Thrillers Reviews