Difference between revisions of "Newest Teens Reviews"

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[[Category:Teens|*]]
 
[[Category:Teens|*]]
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Andy Mulligan
+
|author=Leanne Egan
|title= Liquidator
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|title=Lover Birds
|rating= 5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Ladies and gentlemen, please turn off your phones and suspend your disbelief as you enter the crazy, exciting and thoroughly silly world of the new book by the fantabulous Andy Mulligan. You will encounter ruthless villains, non-stop danger, at least one near-death experience and a rather jolly lorry driver. Where does all this happen, you ask? In the mountain-top fastness of some evil spy? In the secret laboratory of a crazed wizard? Nope – somewhere way, way more dangerous. Work experience.
+
|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>191020014X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=000862657X
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alexander Yates
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|title=The Winter Place
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|title=Wild East
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Axel and Tess live in rural New York state with a father obsessed with mediaeval reconstructions. They have a knight for a father! This eccentricity is both entertaining and a good thing - because Sam is the only parental figure in their lives. Axel and Tess's mother died when Axel was born. Tess is just moving into oppositional adolescence. She and Sam enjoy sparring over the care of Axel, who has inherited a rare form of muscular dystrophy from his late mother. Axel is, well, an individual child, currently haunted by a mischievous wheelchair only he can see. The pesky thing follows him everywhere.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471123839</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Rebecca Stead
 
|title=Goodbye Stranger
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= The book opens with a prologue about an eight year old Bridget Barsamian, who woke up in hospital following a horrific and life threatening traffic accident involving roller skates and New York trafficBridget is told by a nurse that she is lucky to be alive and that she must have survived the accident for a reasonBridget, who has no real memory of the accident, has to miss a year of school and on her return, tells everyone she now wants to be known as Bridge, as, ''I don't feel like Bridget anymore''.
+
|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>1783443197</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0241645441
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah Mussi
+
|author=Jenny Valentine
|title=Here Be Dragons
+
|title=Us in the Before and After
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Few people would be happy living in a remote farmhouse on Mount Snowdon, especially when that means spending Christmas without any electricity – no heating, no way to charge your phone, no telly and no Christmas dinner. But when you’re sixteen, like Ellie Morgan, it can become almost unbearable. All Ellie wants is a regular ‘four-by-four life’ with four walls around her and four wheels under her, all designed to keep her safe. But safe is one thing that Ellie’s not destined to be … not from the moment she glimpses the strange boy through the mist and snow and sets her heart on discovering who (and what) he is.  
+
|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>1910240346</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=John Boyne
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=The Boy at the Top of the Mountain
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Meet Pierrot.  As a very young child in 1930s Paris he is going to have a very awkward journey through his young life.  His father is a violent drunk, reacting badly to what he saw in WWI, and although married to a French woman, is still staunchly German.  That woman, Emilie, is going to die, and leave Pierrot an orphan, which will leave him in a home where he is bullied.  But from the reaches of Europe and from the black corners of his family comes an aunt, Beatrix, who will give him a home, of a kind, at a most unusual mountaintop building.  It's not her home – she just works there and had to ask special permission from someone special.  The place?  The Berghof.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857534521</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Robert L Anderson
 
|title=Dreamland
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=17 year old Dea has been to several schools in several towns, moving with her mother as if pursued.  It's always the same.  She'd make a friend and then the rumours would start about how she and her mum were crazy and the friend wouldn't talk to her.  Dea isn't crazy.  She becomes curiously ill from time to time but she has a cure: walking through people's dreams.  There are rules that keep her safe when she's doing this but when Connor moves in to the neighbourhood the rules become far less important and that's when Dea's life becomes far more dangerous.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473621003</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Spirit of London
 
|author=Rob Keeley
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Ellie, Charlie and Mum have left Inchwood Manor and are headed home to London, where Mum's latest ''Journeyback'' project is renovating an old 18th century house, 47 Foster Square. But it's not quite ''home'' to London. They're not returning to their old house but to another tiny, cramped flat. When asked why, all Mum will say is, "Ask your father."
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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>1784624055</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Gabrielle Balkan and Sol Linero
+
|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=The 50 States: Explore the U.S.A. with 50 fact-filled maps!
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|title=Compass and Blade
|rating=2.5
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|rating=3.5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
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|genre=Teens
|summary= I've often shouted at people on UK quiz programmes for their ignorance of geography about their nation.  People just don't seem to have learnt about or been to other areas of the place they call home. But while they get little sympathy from me when they lose the programme's cash prize, I can imagine that it would be much harder for them if they actually lived in a large country, such as the USA. 50 whole states of different size, all with a rich history of their own, their own famous places and their own noted people – the facts involved in absorbing all that's relevant would take a lot of research – or, paradoxically, this handy child-friendly book.
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|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847807119</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=Annabel Pitcher
+
|author=Harry Allen
|title=Silence is Goldfish
+
|title=Children of the Sun
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=''In which Tessie-T discovers she's a Pluto and her parents wanted a Mercury or Venus, at least.''
+
|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
When Tess is in her father's study, she discovers a blog post he has written which gives away a devastating family secret. Suddenly, for Tess, everything has changed. She decides to run away but chickens out at the last minute. As her life falls apart, Tess retreats into selective mutism and her only conversations are with an imaginary friend: a talking goldfish torch.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780620004</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=C J Skuse
+
|author=Alexia Casale
|title=Monster
+
|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=More than anything else, sixteen year-old Nash wants to be Head Girl of Bathory School. Indeed she's willing to put up with almost anything to get the top job. But, just when she's poised to be awarded the role, everything starts to unravel. Nash and a group of school misfits have to stay at school over the Christmas holidays and, trapped by the worst weather in decades, suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives. Not everyone is going to survive.
+
|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>1848453892</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Joe Sugg
+
|author=Simon Fox
|title=Username: Evie
+
|title=Deadlock
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Evie.  She's surprisingly unwelcome and alienated at school – for a trendy and attractive girl, nobody at all seems to have any time for her, apart from the geeky card-collecting boy with the milk-bottle glasses on the busPerhaps it has something to do with her father's thatched house – after all, she must be a witch to live there.  It's not that she would wish to live there, with nobody else around, and the memory of her deceased mother.  But luckily someone is choosing a place for her –her father is able to put all his work into a cyber-world for her, the E-Scape, which is close to the perfect world.  All that remains is to programme the humans to be her friends, and make the connection Evie has with them and them with her in return to be of mutual, confirming, happy benefit. But someone else has entered the E-Scape, and their influence seems all that much more powerful than Evie's tentative happiness…
+
|summary=Late one night Graham Blake is late back from his shift on the force, and then suddenly rings Archie, demanding he fetch something from a secret place, and join him on the runThey get together, but barely begin to smell the whiff of Southern trains when the father is arrested, leaving Archie on the late express to Brighton, toting a tin his father was determined to keep away from his colleagues, and the bearer of a whole heap of questions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473619130</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Darren Shan
+
|author=Lex Croucher
|title=Zom-B Fugitive (Zom B 11)
+
|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|rating= 4
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=REPEATING STANDARD WARNING!  
+
|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?
 
+
|isbn=1526651793
If you haven't read the [[Zom-B by Darren Shan|first book]] in this series, STOP READING NOW! NOW! Spoilers ahoy!
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857077929</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Sarah Mussi
+
|author=Nick Brooks
|title= Breakdown
+
|title=Promise Boys
|rating= 5
+
|rating=4
|genre= Teens
+
|genre=Teens
|summary= From the start of "Breakdown" Mussi painfully grips the reader by the hand and doesn’t let go. She uses short, sharp, savage sentences to urge them to follow her protagonist Melissa on a terrifying odyssey into a relentlessly brutal world where only the meanest, smartest and toughest survive. It is a horrific vision of a post-apocalyptic, lawless society devastated by nuclear radiation, set 100 years after Orwell’s bleak "1984", driven feral by food shortages, frenzied fear, poverty, corrupt militarisation and anarchy. Ravenous dogs roam the streets and the stench of violence and sexual slavery is never far away. Melissa is blessed with beauty which some might consider a curse. Will she emerge into the light or be trapped in Hades forever?
+
|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>147140191X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Mark Lingane
+
|isbn=1919635017
|title=Fusion: Volume 4 (Tesla Evolution)
+
|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
 +
|author=Kitt Townsend
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=(By the way there are spoilers ahead – this is definitely a series to be read in order, starting from [[Tesla 1 by Mark Lingane|Tesla 1]] ).  Alone again now that Melanie has been killed, Sebastian makes it to North America.  Far from it being the land of promise it used to be, the country is now an apocalyptic ruin, full of people scavenging for their survival and the Infected forging a path of worse-than-death and destruction. Sebastian needs to focus on his ultimate challenge as foreseen in a rather scary way but there's a small matter distracting him: who's firing rockets at him?
+
|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>1515000796</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Kate Scelsa
+
|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|title=Fans of the Impossible Life
+
|title=Different for Boys
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Teens  
|summary= Jeremy, Mira and Sebby are very different people, each with their own complex and difficult issues, who find themselves inexplicably drawn together. Jeremy is an artist, painfully shy and still struggling to get over the horrible incident that ruined his last year of school. Mira is cool and fashionable, but suffers from depression, constantly fighting against a sleep that threatens to overpower her for days on end. Then there's Sebby, flamboyant, irreverent and charming, but with hurt and troubles simmering behind his façade, and no family or support network to lean on. The powerful friendship and love that forms between them could save them from their broken selves, but it could just as easily drag them all down together.  
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509805141</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1529509491
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Courtney Sheinmel
+
|isbn=1800901232
|title= Edgewater
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|title=Stitched Up
|rating= 5
+
|author=Steve Cole
|genre= Teens
+
|rating=5
|summary= Lorrie may run with the big dogs, but right now she's more of a mutt. Her mother is AWOL and her aunt is becoming more eccentric by the day. She's politely asked to leave her sleepaway riding camp when payment fails to arrive, and so she sets off home to sort it all out. Again. It's becoming something of a habit this need to act the grown up while the real grown ups fail to make the grade.
+
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1419716417</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 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.
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Rosemary Hayes
 
|title= The Mark
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary='She's his mark'. Rachel's on the run. Naïve, homeless and emotional, she's easy prey. But for whom?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190999118X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Miriam Moss
+
|author=Patrice Lawrence
|title=Girl on a Plane
+
|title=Needle
|rating=5
+
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= It's September 1970 and 15 year old Anna is on her way back to boarding school in England. Friends of her family joke about the recent hijackings but Anna is far more concerned about leaving her home in Bahrain and their mongrel dog, Woofa. These worries are, however, wiped from her mind when her plane is hijacked by Palestinian guerrillas and diverted to a disused airstrip in the Jordanian desert. Here they are forced to wait for days with almost no food and very little water while their captors issue their demands to the British government. If these demands are not met within three days, they will blow up the plane killing all the hostages.  
+
|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>1783443316</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Claire McFall
+
|author= Ann Sei Lin
|title= Black Cairn Point
+
|title= Rebel Skies
 
|rating= 5
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|genre= Teens
|summary= Heather agrees to a camping holiday with Dougie and his friends because she's desperate to get closer to him. But when they disturb a pagan burial site above the beach, Heather becomes certain that they have woken a malevolent spirit. Something is alive out there in the pitch-black dark, and it is planning deadly revenge.
+
|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>1471404870</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1406399590
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|title=One
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|author=Sarah Crossan
+
|title=Wrath
|rating=5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=It's always been Tippi-and-Grace. Never Tippi and Grace. These twins can't be separated - and we don't mean just socially or emotionally; we mean physically, too. Because Tippi and Grace are conjoined twins. They have two heads, two hearts, two sets of lungs, two pairs of arms. But at the waist, they come together. Life hasn't been easy - their father has lost his job as a college professor and so their mother works ridiculously long hours at the bank to keep up the health insurance payments. Medical bills are crippling and money is tight, so tight that the twins are going to have stop being homeschooled and enroll in a "normal" school for the first time.
+
|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>1408863111</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Clive Gifford and Professor Anil Seth
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|title=Brain Twisters: The Science of Thinking and Feeling
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
+
|genre=Teens
|summary=Meet the brain.  We all have one.  We all use it (and by 'it' I mean a heck of a lot more of it than the 10% of urban myth) every second of the day. We engage with different parts of it for balance, catching a ball, memorising a list of moves in controlling a video game character, or understanding things ranging from written instruction to body language.  It's such a vital part of the body, taking up 20% of our glucose fuel intake as well as of oxygen, that understanding of it cannot come at too young an age. But in this varied and complex book, looking at a varied and complex subject, I do wonder if the right approach has been taken at all times.
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|summary= Working all summer in her boarding school's library is the last thing Tess Matheson wants to do — especially when she gets a request for over a hundred books that she has to deliver herself. What makes it worse is the man who requested the books: Mr Birch. The boarding school's headmaster, and a man Tess hates. As a petty act of revenge for making her find and deliver such a large request, Tess sticks post-it notes on each of the books, scribbled with the ugliest insults she can think of. They're never meant to reach him, of course. Her plan is to get her anger out like this, and then take them all off before delivering them. No harm done… Or it would be, if someone hadn't delivered them for her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782402047</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Rebecca Lim
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|title=The Astrologer's Daughter
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Horary Astrology is an ancient branch of horoscopic astrology in which an astrologer attempts to answer a question asked at an exact time by the construction of a horoscope around it. Clear as mud?  Yes, me too.  Suffice to say, an horary astrologer would have to be a very gifted individual indeed and Avicenna Crowe's mother, Joanne, is such an astrologer. In fact, her predictive powers have been uncannily exact for her whole life and with such a gift comes an assortment of negative aspects; stalkers and maniacally obsessed clients at the bad end of the scale to, well, worse. Sometimes ''much'' worse…
+
|summary=In a word, rich. There is certainly an abundance of riches in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildsea, British but way west, beyond the Scillies. There are troll people on it, and sea-witches, and legends of the Dark family that has to keep watch for magical islands and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sail. The current Darks are the Watcher, Andrewe, who has to keep notes of activity from the Hidden Lands, his brother Will who lives in London with too much science in his head to worry about such local yokel superstitions, and Andrewe's foundling daughter, who washed up out of the sea one day eleven years ago. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himself, both his sullen brother and his curious ward are thrust into the world of protecting their island, like it or not.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182001</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Derek Landy
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|title=Demon Road
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
 
|summary= Amber Lamont was a relatively ordinary 16-year-old, living a pretty quiet, uneventful life; she went to school, had a part-time job, and a decent relationship with her aloof but loving parents. But over the course of just one day everything goes completely to hell. Amber discovers that she can turn into a demon, a genuine, red-skinned, satanic monster, with horns and talons that can rip a human to shreds. Her demon side is the least of her problems, however. For Amber's parents are also demons, and now that her powers have manifested, they are intent on eating her and absorbing her power for themselves. Amber finds herself on the run, travelling the Demon Road across America in a desperate attempt to escape her parents, accompanied by Milo, an enigmatic guardian, who has dark secrets of his own.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0008140812</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jenny Downham
 
|title=Unbecoming
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Three women. Three sets of secrets about to be laid bare.
 
Katie lives with her learning-disable brother Chris and her rather controlling mother. They've recently moved to her mother's childhood town after Katie's father got a girlfriend and a new baby. Katie, a hardworking and dutiful girl, is halfway through her AS levels when everything - and I mean everything - goes wrong. First up, Katie kisses her best friend Esme. Esme rejects her and, worse still, tells all the mean girls at school what happened. They miss no opportunity to mock and name call. And then a phone call one night brings Mary into their lives...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910200646</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ursula Dubosarsky
 
|title=The Red Shoe
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=They may be quite far apart, but three houses in a row in the rural suburbs of 1950s Sydney contain some incredibly unusual people.  In one, a solitary old man of very few words, shuffling to the end of his days, but brandishing a Japanese sword he's purloined after WWII, and with a gun in the corner of his lounge.  In the middle, a family of five, with a father figure suffering from PTSD due to the same war, a mother feeling friendless and alone in the isolated time and location, and their three daughters – one of whom has given up on school after an alleged nervous breakdown, the middle one who barely speaks more than the neighbour, and Matilda, our key interest, who likes the idea of spies, and has an imaginary friend who came out of the radioThe third house however might be where the most interesting people live – after all, it had been empty, but now the luxurious building is home to several shady men in suits, who turned up out of the blue in luxury cars, and with at least one gun of their own…
+
|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 islandDad 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>1406358746</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Libba Bray
 
|title= Lair of Dreams
 
|rating= 4.5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= After a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O'Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. With her uncanny ability to read people's secrets, she's a media darling. It seems like everyone's in love with New York City's latest It Girl their 'Sweetheart Seer'. But while Evie is enjoying the high life, her fellow Diviners Henry DuBois and Ling Chan will fight to keep their powers secret.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907410422</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Maureen White
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|title=Butterfly Shell
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=One of the worst kind of nerve-wracking days has arrived: that first day of Secondary School. As we all remember, that's part scary, part exciting for any girl (or boy too, of course, but this is a girls' school). It's an age when you're anxious about making new friends and fitting in anyway, but at ''her'' new school twelve-year-old Marie falls victim to a group of bullies. They call themselves The Super Six which they think makes them look important. But Marie privately renames them The Stupid Six.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184717678X</amazonuk> 
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Chris Weitz
 
|title= The Young World
 
|rating= 3.5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= After a mysterious sickness wipes out the rest of the population, the young survivors band together in small tribes, desperately trying to rebuild their society of old. In New York City, Jefferson, reluctant leader of the tribe from Washington Square, hears of a potential cure for The Sickness. So, he and a squad of heavily armed teens set out across New York in search of this cure. Along the way they must avoid gangs and cults, and brave the perils of the subway – all in the pursuit of mankind's future.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349001936</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jenn Bennett
 
|title=Night Owls
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary= Beatrix is a serious girl; small and slight, considered and studious with a quiet determination to follow her dream of becoming a medical illustrator.  Pretty and petite, too quirky for jocks and not quirky enough for hipsters, Beatrix knows that Jack is all the kinds of boys she should avoid.  Loose-limbed and slim with a slash of unruly hair that works for him in all those adolescent bad boy ways; Jack is leanly muscled and has cheekbones you can hang from and when Beatrix meets Jack, purely by chance on San Francisco's Night Owl Bus Transit, her world is turned upside down.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471125300</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Rupert Wallis
 
|title=All Sorts of Possible
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=''When the sinkhole opened, there was no time to break or turn the wheel, and the old green Land Rover was snatched off the dirt road over the smoking rim.''
 
 
 
Somehow, Daniel makes it out of the sinkhole and emerges to safety with just a few scratches and bruises. But his father isn't so lucky. While he lies in hospital in an induced coma due to a severe brain injury, Daniel is released into the care of his aunt, a woman he has never met. There had been a family falling out after Daniel's mother died when he was just a baby, and since then it's just been Daniel and his dad. Although his aunt seems nice enough, Daniel finds it difficult to trust her or open up to her...
 
 
 
... and there's a lot to open up about.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147114366X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Ian Johnstone
 
|title= The Mirror Chronicles: Circles of Stone
 
 
|rating= 4
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Teens
 
|genre= Teens
|summary= Sylas Tate has been through a lot, considering he wasn't yet in his teens when his journeys began. His mother is lost, leaving him to the less than tender mercies of his uncle, and after a strange incident in book one of this series he found himself travelling to another world. Even more bizarre, while he was there he encountered Naeo, his other half – not some jokey reference to a future wife, but the true second part of his soul. The two worlds (ours, based on science, and the Other, based on magic) were once one, and it is the dearest wish of the down-trodden inhabitants Sylas meets to unite them again.
+
|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>0007491174</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1406394815
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Katie Everson
 
|title= Drop
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= General Fiction
 
|summary= Katie Everson’s debut novel, ‘Drop,’ is a tale of grief and healing, whirlwind romance and brutal honesty. We follow the story of Carla - straight-A-student, rule-abiding daughter and somewhat uninteresting friend - who is determined to change her predictable life. When her absentee mother is offered a job in London, Carla transfers to yet another school and this time she is desperate to not be overlooked.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406356271</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
 
|title=Fuzzy Mud
 
|author=Louis Sachar
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Tamaya isn't allowed to walk home from school on her own. And Tamaya doesn't like to break any rules. So when walking partner Marshall insists on taking a "shortcut" through the woods one day, she goes with him, even though she isn't really supposed to walk through the woods. Unbeknownst to Tamaya, Marshall has chosen the route in order to avoid school bully Chad, who has threatened him with a reckoning. A reckoning for nothing at all - but you know, that's how school bullies work.
 
  
But lying in the woods is an even greater threat than Chad...
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408864746</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

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

0008666482.jpg

Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Compass and Blade by Rachel Greenlaw

3.5star.jpg Teens

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

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

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Review of

Children of the Sun by Harry Allen

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Sing if you Can't Dance by Alexia Casale

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Stitched Up by Steve Cole

5star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

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

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Review of

Needle by Patrice Lawrence

3star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1789098130.jpg

Review of

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1788452372.jpg

Review of

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1510107789.jpg

Review of

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

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1406394815.jpg

Review of

The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud

4star.jpg Teens

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

Move on to Newest Thrillers Reviews