Difference between revisions of "Newest Teens Reviews"

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[[Category:Teens|*]]
 
[[Category:Teens|*]]
 
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<!-- Miranda -->
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{{Frontpage
*[[image:Miranda_Fragments.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0399556729?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0399556729]]
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|author=Leanne Egan
 +
|title=Lover Birds
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=Teens
 +
|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?
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|isbn=000862657X
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
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|title=Wild East
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=Teens
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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 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.
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|isbn=0241645441
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Jenny Valentine
 +
|title=Us in the Before and After
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Teens
 +
|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.
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|isbn=1471196585
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Max Boucherat
 +
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=Confident Readers
 +
|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?
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|isbn=0008666482
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}}
 +
{{Frontpage
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|author=Rachel Greenlaw
 +
|title=Compass and Blade
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|rating=3.5
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|genre=Teens
 +
|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
  
===[[Fragments of the Lost by Megan Miranda]]===
+
Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is one of the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, they capture the island's leader and Mira's father. Desperate to save him from death, Mira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, she sets off in search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the ones she holds most dear.
 
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|isbn=0008664730
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
Jessa Whitworth has lost the only boy she has ever loved. Jessa Whitworth has lost her friends. Jessa Whitworth has lost ''herself''. Many months have passed since Jessa's ex-boyfriend, Caleb, died but she still cannot find the strength to move on with her life. So when Caleb's mother asks Jessa to clean out his room, things go from bad to worse. [[Fragments of the Lost by Megan Miranda|Full Review]]
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|author=Harry Allen
<br> <br>
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|title=Children of the Sun
 
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|rating=5
<!-- Shaw -->
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|genre=Teens
*[[image:Shaw_Outwalkers.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1788450000?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1788450000]]
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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.
 
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|isbn=1805140493
===[[Outwalkers by Fiona Shaw]]===
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
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|author=Alexia Casale
 
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
Newly orphaned Jake is determined to escape from his Home Academy and to find a new home with his dog, Jet. He thinks his biggest challenge is going to be getting out and over the wall but, when he does, he finds this is the least of his worries. The governing 'Coalition' is able to track everyone in the country via the 'hub chip' in their neck and in no time 'the hubbers' (police) are on his trail. All seems lost until Jake stumbles into a gang of ''outwalker'' kids. After proving his worth, he is permitted to join their gang and together they set out on a perilous journey north towards the heavily guarded border with Scotland.[[Outwalkers by Fiona Shaw|Full Review]]
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|rating=5
<br>
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|genre=Teens
 
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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?
<!-- Khan -->
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|isbn=0571373801
*[[image:Khan Thunder.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1509874054?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1509874054]]
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
===[[I am Thunder by Muhammad Khan]]===
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|author=Simon Fox
 
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|title=Deadlock
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
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|rating=4.5
 
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|genre=Confident Readers
Adhering to the recent trend for politicised YA novels, ''I am Thunder'' explores several controversial topics relating to being a Muslim in modern Britain. It tells the story of Muzna, a shy teenager who is flattered when Arif, a fellow Muslim, chooses to ask her out despite interest from several other girls at school. However, her delight wavers when she discovers how Arif, influenced by his manipulative brother Jameel, has become angered by Western culture. [[I am Thunder by Muhammad Khan|Full Review]]
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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.
<br>
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|isbn=1839944420
 
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}}
<!-- Ahmed -->
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{{Frontpage
*[[image:Ahmed_Love.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1471407144?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1471407144]]
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|author=Lex Croucher
 
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
===[[Love, Hate and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed]]===
+
|rating=4
 
 
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
 
 
 
Love, Hate and Other Filters tells the story of Maya, a Muslim of Indian heritage. Like many other American teenagers, she is struggling to convince her parents to allow her to move away to attend university. However, in Maya's case, things are more complicated than usual, after instances of Islamophobia make her parents extra protective. [[Love, Hate and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed|Full Review]]
 
<br><br><br>
 
 
 
<!-- Holland -->
 
*[[image:Holland Everless.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1408349159?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1408349159]]
 
 
 
===[[Everless by Sara Holland]]===
 
 
 
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
 
 
 
Jules and her father live in the kingdom of Sempera. In Sempera, everything is reckoned in terms of time. Wages come in the form of blood-coins, currency taken from actual blood and denominated in weeks, months or even years of life. In Sempera, as you'd imagine, the rich live for a long time and the poor do not. In debt and struggling to afford the rent, Jules decides to ignore her father's warnings and take a job at Everless, an estate belonging to the Gerling family. But Jules's father objects for a reason: there is a royal wedding coming up, between Lord Roan Gerling and a ward of Sempera's queen, and secrets long concealed that, if revealed, would change everything... [[Everless by Sara Holland|Full Review]]
 
<br>
 
 
 
<!-- Zurcher -->
 
*[[image:Zurcher 12.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141385545?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0141385545]]
 
 
 
===[[Twelve Nights by Andrew Zurcher]]===
 
 
 
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Confident Readers|Confident Readers]], [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
 
 
 
This story opens on a terrifying note. Kay and Eloise's father is working late at his college, as usual, but when the two girls and their mother arrive to pick him up, they are told he does not work there. In fact, everyone they meet insists they have never heard of him. It sounds like the beginning of a scary murder-mystery, or a cat-and-mouse chase in the style of James Bond or Dan Brown, but what actually lies behind this event is far stranger and more confusing. Later that night Kay hears voices at her window and embarks on a quest to rescue both her father and her younger sister from ruthless beings who are decidedly not human. [[Twelve Nights by Andrew Zurcher|Full Review]]
 
<br>
 
 
 
<!-- Ingemundsen -->
 
*[[image:Ingemundsen_Human.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1474940633?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1474940633]]
 
 
 
===[[The Unpredictability of Being Human by Linni Ingemundsen]]===
 
 
 
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
 
 
 
I came to this book expecting only a typical teenage coming of age story, yet somehow, within only a matter of pages, I was utterly engrossed by the wonderful character of Malin. I read this book faster than any other I've read this year! Malin is a fourteen year old girl, who is very naive and innocent, and she struggles with social interaction. It is never stated within the book (a fact that I liked) but I suspect that she's somewhere on the autistic spectrum. But that isn't really what the book is about. It's about Malin growing up, struggling at school, having a first date, and dealing with family difficulties, all at the same time. [[The Unpredictability of Being Human by Linni Ingemundsen|Full Review]]
 
<br>
 
 
 
<!-- Norris -->
 
[[image:Norris_Mike.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1788450094?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1788450094]]
 
 
 
===[[Mike by Andrew Norriss]]===
 
 
 
*[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
 
 
 
Floyd is a rising teen tennis sensation. At only fifteen, he is set to become the youngest ever champion of the national under 18s, his tennis career is written in the stars. Until Mike shows up. At first, Floyd thinks Mike is just a weird kid following him around. Why else would he be at tennis practice in the school so early? But when he appears on the tennis court in the middle of the match, Floyd can't understand why everyone is acting so calm … until Floyd realises he is the only one who can see him. Floyd is referred to a specialist and together they unpick the mystery of Mike. [[Mike by Andrew Norriss|Full Review]]
 
<br>
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Phyllida Shrimpton
 
|title=Sunflowers in February
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= When Lily wakes up on the side of the road, she knows immediately that something is wrong. Then she sees her body lying in the mud. Her dead body. Wrong doesn't even begin to describe it. A disembodied ghost, Lily finds herself helplessly spectating the horrid aftermath of her own death, as her friends and family struggle to deal with the fallout from the hit-and-run that killed her. With no idea how to move on, Lily starts to despair, until one night she finally manages to make her presence known. She's always had a strong bond with her brother Ben - a twin thing. Now that bond allows him to see her when no-one else can, and gives her the chance to return to the living world. Lily has a lot of unfinished business. And top on that list is making her killer pay.
+
|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>1471406881</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1526651793
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Marissa Meyer
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|author=Nick Brooks
|title= Renegades
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|title=Promise Boys
|rating= 3.5
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|rating=4
|genre= Teens
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|genre=Teens
|summary= ''So long as there are heroes in this world, there's hope that tomorrow might be better''
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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?
Once the minority in a world of chaos and disorder, the Renegades fought for freedom and justice. Victorious in driving their opponents, the leaderless Anarchists underground, those specially gifted with an extraordinary range of abilities are now the lawmakers and leaders of the future, governing a new peaceful and prosperous society. They are the heroes of society; the role models young children look up to, the officers people look to for justice and strength. All except the fraction of Anarchists that hide in the darkness, plotting and planning until they are able to get back what was stolen from them.
+
|isbn=1035003155
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509876448</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Vikki Wakefield
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|isbn=1919635017
|title=Ballad for a Mad Girl
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|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
|rating=3.5
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|author=Kitt Townsend
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=In ''Ballad for a Mad Girl'', Grace becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of Hannah Holt, a local girl who disappeared twenty-three years ago, after becoming convinced she has encountered Hannah's ghost. The more she investigates, the more she is convinced Hannah's case is in some way linked to her own Mother's death, a former classmate of Hannah's who died in a strange accident two years ago.
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|summary= Solomon Klyne isn't a bad lad, so why is he running around London committing a series of robberies? And how did he learn to crack safes? You'll have to wait to get an answer to the second question because I avoid spoilers. But I'll answer the first one: for his grandmother...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925355292</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
<!-- Wilson -->
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
*[[image:Wilson_Extinction.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1474927343?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1474927343]]
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|title=Different for Boys
 
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|rating=4.5
===[[The Extinction Trials by SM Wilson]]===
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|genre=Teens
 
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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 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 lieHe's had a casual relationship, a secret one, for several months now, and so has effectively progressed up the ladder headed by 'experienced', but whether that's set in stone, he can't be sureAnd that's mostly because of who he's been having the relationship and the sex with.
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
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|isbn=1529509491
 
 
Storm and Lincoln live on Earthasia, a continent ruined by overpopulation. Space is scarce and energy and food are rationed. Education is minimal and mostly focused around searching for new, efficient food sources. Storm's mother has died and she never knew her father, so she lives in one of Earthasia's overcrowded ''shelters'', goes to school for one day per week and wrestles hay bales for a job. Lincoln's sister is dying from the blistering disease and he has no access to the healthcare that could save her. It's a mean, desperate existence for them both and so they are first to volunteer for the Stipulators' trials for a new mission to the neighbouring continent of Piloria. The aim is to retrieve dinosaur eggs so that a virus to kill them can be engineered and the citizens of Earthasia will have access to the space and abundant food sources Piloria offers... [[The Extinction Trials by SM Wilson|Full Review]]
 
<br>
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jose Mauro de Vasconcelos and Alison Entrekin (translator)
 
|title=My Sweet Orange Tree
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=''It's just that sometimes, Zeze, you're too naughty.'' And that's almost the entire truth about our narrator, Zeze – he's a young tyke, and everyone in his large, half-Indian family – heck, everyone who recognises his blonde and pale looks in the neighbourhood – knows he's skilled at being up to no good, that perhaps he was born with a little of the devil in him where Jesus should reside.  Instantly adept at being able to read, even when he's only five, the precocious brat is forced to face something that might be the changing of him, once and for all – schoolThis time of change is also featuring a move of home, as the family cannot afford the rent arrears on their current place, although having downsized the garden comes to feature the titular tree, which almost works as a confessional cum best friend.  Whether either the new home or the school will get to change Zeze, or neither, is the plot of this vintage Brazilian junior read.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782691537</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Sheena Wilkinson
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|isbn=1800901232
|title= Star by Star
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|title=Stitched Up
|rating= 3.5
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|author=Steve Cole
|genre= Teens
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|rating=5
|summary=15 year old Stella was brought up in Ireland by her suffragette mother. When her mother dies from the flu pandemic sweeping across Europe in November 1918, Stella is sent to live with her estranged aunt who runs a boarding house. This coincides with a time of great change for the country as women are allowed to vote for the first timeStella is determined to follow in her mother's footsteps to help make history, and whilst her age denies her the ability to vote herself, she goes to great lengths to ensure that former suffragette hunger-striker and former childhood friend of her mother is able to cast hers.
+
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910411531</amazonuk>
+
|summary=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 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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
<!-- Dawson -->
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|author=Patrice Lawrence
*[[image:Dawson_Grave.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1781126046?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1781126046]]
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|title=Needle
 
+
|rating=3
===[[Grave Matter by Juno Dawson and Alex T Smith]]===
+
|genre=Teens
 
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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...
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Dyslexia Friendly|Dyslexia Friendly]]
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|isbn=1800901011
 
 
Since Eliza died, since the night of the car crash that took her life, Sam is a broken soul. He is lost without the girl he loves, feeling as though a part of him died that night too. But he is desperate and he cannot live without Eliza. He remembers his estranged Aunt Marie and her peculiar healing powers and wonders if she might be able to help him. However, finding his Aunt Marie leads him to discover the Milk Man, which causes Sam in his grieving state to make a pact with forces he doesn't understand. Things soon turn complicated as supernatural powers start to change Sam's life in more ways than he bargained for. [[Grave Matter by Juno Dawson and Alex T Smith|Full Review]]
 
<br>
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Emily Suvada
 
|title= This Mortal Coil
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= A life threatening virus is spreading through the United States, an already broken country with a Government that many do not trust. The top scientists are frantically trying to produce a vaccine to save humanity, but it seems a hopeless race against time as the virus mutates into new and stronger strains at a frightening pace. Catarina has lived alone and in hiding for the past two years, since her brilliant father was rounded up by the State and taken by force to work in the national laboratories. His last message to her was to hide from the State and not to trust them an inch. Set in America, but not an America we would recognise, most of the citizens are incarcerated in underground bunkers, protected by air lock doors and bug free conditions. Others, less trusting of the State, remain in hiding on the surface, hoping the virus will not reach them and avoiding anyone who is infected.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141379278</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Nicholas Bowling
+
|author= Ann Sei Lin
|title= Witchborn
+
|title= Rebel Skies
|rating= 4.5
+
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|genre= Teens
|summary=''There are yet more unholy discoveries within, too foul for your eyes to look upon''
+
|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…
 
+
|isbn=1406399590
Enter the Elizabethan world of 1577. A world of intrigue, terror and suspicion. A world of witchcraft and witch-hunting.
 
 
 
Alyce is a young girl forced to flee from her home after the devastating death of her Mother, the only person she had ever loved. Tried and deemed a witch, her Mother was sentenced to being burnt at the stake by the notorious witchfinder John Hopkins who seems hell-bent on finding Alyce.
 
Haunted by the past she can't leave behind, Alyce escapes to London but she's not alone. Endangered and being followed, Alyce is determined to keep her freedom, but as Alyce discovers her own dark magic she will find that she is more dangerous than she ever thought possible.  
 
 
 
And Alyce, although she doesn't yet realise it, is caught between two strong and powerful Queens, one desperate to steal the throne and the other determined to keep it…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911077252</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Moira Young
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title= The Road to Ever After
+
|title=Wrath
|rating= 5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre= Confident Readers
+
|genre=Teens
|summary= A grumpy old lady who can no longer drive requires a chauffeur, and we watch as she gradually softens towards him and they become friends. So far, so ''Driving Miss Daisy'', an apt comparison in a book which references several well-loved classic films. But the obvious similarity ends there. Davy, hired to take Miss Flint on her final road trip, is thirteen years old and has not the foggiest idea how to drive a car.  
+
|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>1509832564</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Benny Lindelauf, Ludwig Volbeda and Laura Watkinson (translator)
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|title=Tortot, the Cold Fish Who Lost His World and Found His Heart
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Meet Tortot.  He's a camp chef for an army, with a cold heart – he sheds no tears, or at least as much as does a fish – and a brilliant way of gauging the warfare going on around him.  The book even starts with him crossing the battlefield to start work for the enemy the night before they turn the tables on his previous employers and defeat them, leaving Tortot on the winning side once more. But now he's not alone – for he has managed to also inherit an assistant, who lives in a barrel of the Emperors' favourite and most important gherkins…
+
|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>1782691545</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Amanda Foody
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|title= Daughter of the Burning City
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Confident Readers
 +
|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.
 +
|isbn=1788452372
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
 +
|title=Julia and the Shark
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=Confident Readers
 +
|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.
 +
|isbn=1510107789
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author= Jonathan Stroud
 +
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
 
|rating= 4
 
|rating= 4
|genre= Confident Readers
+
|genre= Teens
|summary=Gomorrah, a travelling circus as big as a city, tours the land, entertaining the crowds with fantastic shows of magic, illusion and sleight of hand. But the proprietor of Gomorrah, Villiam, believes he has a far more important role than merely organising the acts in the circus. He has political ambition, which he keeps a secret from his adopted daughter. Growing up in the circus, Sorina knows that she will one day become the Proprietor and take over from her father. At sixteen, she is keen to start learning everything she can from Villiam.
+
|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>1848455445</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1406394815
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
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

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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

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