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=Jenny T Colgan, Jacqueline Rayner, Steve Lyons, Guy Adams and Andrew Lane
+
|author=Leanne Egan
|title=Doctor Who: The Legends of River Song
+
|title=Lover Birds
|rating=3
 
|genre=Science Fiction
 
|summary=''Hello, sweetie.''  And with those words we know where we are – in the company of River Song, one of modern TV's more infuriating characters.  Now she's likeable enough, it was just the timey wimey stuff she was lumbered with that made her hard to live with.  I would say this was a return to her side, but have we had that pleasure yet – isn't it in our future, which is her past, and vice versa at the same, er, time?  Either way, five tales here bring a selection of her escapades to a YA audience.  The results can be bordering on the written ''Who'' as seen elsewhere, but can certainly frustrate as usual.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785940880</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Morgan Matson
 
|title= The Unexpected Everything
 
|rating=3
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= The Unexpected Everything follows Andie, the daughter of a prominent US politician, who has led a careful life as a result. Incredibly organised, her plans of attending the John Hopkins medical program all summer long are set. Until they're not. A political scandal implicating her dad causes all her neatly arranged plans to evaporate. So instead, to make sure her summer isn't wasted and there's no gap in her resume, she gets a dog-walking job.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471146146</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stewart Foster
 
|title=Bubble Boy
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary= Eleven year old Joe was born with a rare condition that means he has no immune system and, therefore, no resistance to the germs that surround us in our daily lives. The result is he's spent his whole life trapped in a bubble – a small room in the hospital where the air is filtered and temperature and air purity is constantly monitored. His only escape is through his dreams of being a superhero and, unless something changes, it looks like he'll never get to see the outside world for himself.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471145409</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Changers, Book Two: Oryon
 
|author=Allison Glock-Cooper and T Cooper
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Ethan is a Changer. Changers are an ancient race of humans who change identities four times during adolescence before choosing a permanent persona to inhabit for the rest of their lives. Because of this, Changers gain insight into other people's lives and become better people because of it. They literally walk in another man's shoes, if you will.
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|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>0349002444</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=000862657X
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jennifer Donnelly
 
|title=These Shallow Graves
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Crime (Historical)
 
|summary=Jennifer Donnelly wrote one of my all-time favourite books, ''A Gathering Light'', so I was very excited to read her latest novel and see how it compared. Like ''A Gathering Light'', ''These Shallow Graves'' is a historical novel with a murder mystery at its heart and a feisty heroine who challenges the standards of the day.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471405176</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Anthony Horowitz
+
|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|title=Trigger Mortis
+
|title=Wild East
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Bond is back, this time authored by international best-selling author Anthony Horowitz. It all begins with a seemingly simple mission (at least for Bond). After a few days training, James heads to Germany to race in the European championship at Nürburgring where he plans to stop the Russians using dirty tricks to secure victory. However, we're not surprised that Bond soon uncovers a much bigger and more serious plot: a scheme by Korean Sin Jai-Seong (otherwise known as Jason Sin) and SMERSH (a top-secret department of the Russian government) to undermine the American space programme whilst simultaneously murdering millions of New Yorkers and toppling the Empire State Building. As the clock ticks down, only Bond and CIA field-agent, Jeopardy Lane, can stop it. But are they already too late?
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409159140</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0241645441
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Goldy Moldavsky
+
|author=Jenny Valentine
|title=Kill the Boy Band
+
|title=Us in the Before and After
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Rupert Pierpont has put his head above the parapet and taken his juggling act onto a ''Britain's Got Talent''-styled TV show, as you doBizarrely there were three other Ruperts contesting, and all four got lumped into the same boy band – The Ruperts, as you do.  Several massive albums and hugely successful tours later, the four lads are globally known, and have entered the world of true fandom – the realms where girls know to wear incontinence pads and live with it rather than forsake their front-row concert position, and where girl fans (with their own inclusive, tribal nickname, of course) send online death threats to anyone sexually linked to the stars. The band has got a showcase Thanksgiving TV special to perform in New York, and is in town at a hipsterish swanky hotel.  And here is Rupert P waking up surrounded by four huge Ruperts fans, and hardly seeing anything other than girls' tights – as you do.  But this is through no intent of his own – for he has been kidnapped by four of the very same fans he soon attests to hate…
+
|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 timeBut 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>150980451X</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Jeff Zentner
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=The Serpent King
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|rating= 5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= I'm hardly the first person to comment on the saturation of the young-adult fiction market in recent years. I've several friends who love YA so much they seem to exclusively read this genre, and here's the thing – I really want to like it, too. I know there's good stuff out there, but it seems like the more I look the less I find. I've slogged my way through dozens maybe even hundreds, who knows – of formulaic, samey and often downright repetitive books which didn't inspire any of that passion in me.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783443812</amazonuk>
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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?
 +
|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Paul Bird
+
|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=The Hunt
+
|title=Compass and Blade
|rating=4
+
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=This is Britain after the Very Big Crash. Life is very different, especially if you live in one of the lower suburbs under the Local Government's authority. Cush lives in one such suburb. He works as a detective in the floating Krawczyk building and, though he thinks it himself, is pretty good at his job. His wife Samir doesn't work, even though she'd like to, and spends her days at home reading those most antiquated of things: books. Their son Nim is sixteen and is obsessed with a video game called The Hunt. Cush and Samir fall out constantly over their differing approaches to Nim's obsession.
+
|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786106655</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Rob Keeley
 
|title= The Sword of the Spirit (Spirits 3)
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Confident Readers
 
|summary=
 
''There are truths which must be revealed before the battle may commence. You do not yet know the meaning of the sword.''
 
  
Ooh! Events are moving apace in Rob Keeley's ''Childish Spirits'' series. Let me explain...
+
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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785892533</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0008664730
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Nick Lake
+
|author=Harry Allen
|title= Whisper to Me
+
|title=Children of the Sun
|rating= 5
+
|rating=5
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= Cassie lives with her father in a New Jersey beach town. Dad spends most of his time closeted away with his insect collection. He's an ex-Navy SEAL who suffers from PTSD and its concomitant anger issues. Frankly, Cassie finds him best avoided. Cassie herself is doing ok, despite a recent tragedy. Until, that is, she finds a dismembered foot on the beach, thought to be from a victim of a serial killer stalking the locality.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408853868</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Anne Cassidy
 
|title=Moth Girls
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=The first seven weeks of secondary school changed Mandy Crystal's life. It was in those seven weeks that she became friends with Petra Armstrong and Tina Pointer. And it was at the end of those seven weeks that she refused to join them when they impulsively decided to explore the house on Princess Street. That was the last time anyone saw either of them – Petra and Tina disappeared, never to be seen again. Labelled the 'Moth Girls' by the media, the two girls have haunted Mandy ever since. For five years she has had to live with the guilt that for many hours she didn't admit where she'd last seen her friends. Were those hours crucial? Would they have been found it she'd told the police where they'd gone sooner? When the house is knocked down, Mandy can't resist visiting. It is during this visit that a chance encounter changes everything.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471405117</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1805140493
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Sue Wallman
+
|author=Alexia Casale
|title=Lying About Last Summer
+
|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Skye's sister, Luisa, died in a tragic accident last summer and Skye is still struggling to come to terms with both the events she witnessed and the loss of her sister. It's, therefore, not surprising that she welcomes the opportunity to escape – even if it is on a holiday for bereaved teens. She's up for anything that will stop her thinking about the past so she's totally unprepared when she starts receiving text messages from an account only Luisa had access to. Rather than erasing all thoughts of the past, Skye finds herself having to confront her worst fears.
+
|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>1407165364</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Alice Oseman
+
|author=Simon Fox
|title=Radio Silence
+
|title=Deadlock
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= ''School'' Frances is a single-minded study machine, with just one purpose: get into Cambridge. She's responsible, studious, and furiously focused on ticking all the boxes needed for a perfect application, boxes with no place for friends and hobbies. And this is the Frances that pretty much everyone sees. Only her mum knows there is more to her than meets the eye, from her distinctive, geeky fashion sense and serious artistic talent, to her fangirl love for the wonderful podcast show, Universe City. When a chance encounter leads to her meeting the creator of University City, Aled Last, she finally has a friend with whom she can genuinely be comfortable around, and celebrate all her weird and wonderful quirks. However, when complications and secrets threaten to shatter this powerful friendship, Francis finds herself at a crossroads, caught between her old secure path of least resistance, and the much scarier option of putting her true self out there and risking it all to discover what she truly wants.  
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007559240</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1839944420
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Brian Conaghan
+
|author=Lex Croucher
|title=The Bombs That Brought Us Together
+
|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|rating=5
+
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Charlie Law is fourteen. He has always lived in Little Town and he has seen its descent into a difficult place to be. There's no drinking. No littering. No complaining. No being out after dark. Medicine is hard to get, which is a problem when your mum, like Charlie's mum, has trouble breathing. But even breathing is less important than keeping out of the way of the Rascals, the Regime's enforcers. And Charlie is a sensible boy. He has the rules of Little Town down pat and he never, never breaks them.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408855747</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sheila O'Flanagan
 
|title=The Crystal Run
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Running away from a couple of bullies, Joe Hunter suddenly finds himself in the strange world of the Carcassian people. Suspected as a terrorist, traitor or spy, he's attached to Kaia and sent to join her on the 'Crystal Run' – a dangerous journey through enemy Kanabian territory to replace the precious crystals that power the protective Carcassian shield. He really wants to return to Earth but he soon finds himself fighting for survival and forming a close friendship with Kaia. Now he has another goal – Kaia will die when she completes her mission and Joe's determined to find a way to keep her alive.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444927051</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Nova Ren Suma
 
|title=The Walls Around Us
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Amber is an inmate at Aurora Hills, a juvenile detention centre reserved for the most serious young criminals. She was convicted of murdering her stepfather but maintains her innocence. Amber speaks to us from the past and she details life at Aurora Hills and the relationships and hierarchies that exist between the inmates and the guards. One night, there is a storm. The prison's electrical system fails and the girls spend a glorious and dangerous night out of their cells. During this night, Amber has a paranormal experience, during which she "meets" Orianna.
+
|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>1616205903</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1526651793
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=S E Durrant
 
|title=Little Bits of Sky
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=''I've put this story together from the diaries I kept when Zac and I were children. I wrote them in the hope that life would get better for the small unloved girl that was me, and my even smaller unloved brother. And if life didn't get better or at least more interesting I was going to make it up - to put witches and castles and rides in fast cars. But I didn't need to. Life got exciting all by itself...''
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857633996</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Sophia Bennett
+
|author=Nick Brooks
|title=Love Song
+
|title=Promise Boys
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= The Point is the ''hottest'' rock band in the world, in every sense of the word. While Nina has always enjoyed their music, she isn't one of the millions of fan-girls utterly obsessed with the four 19 year-old boys. She prides herself on being more than just a ''girl'' girl. So when a chance encounter ends up with her being offered the job of assistant to the lead singer's diva fiancée, touring with the band, she takes it simply as an opportunity to travel the globe as part of the entourage, and inject a little bit of excitement into her life. Little does she realise the craziness that she is getting herself into, as she finds herself unwittingly drawn into the lives of the boys and all their messy drama.
+
|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>1910002720</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1035003155
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Malorie Blackman
+
|isbn=1919635017
|title=Chasing the Stars
+
|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
 +
|author=Kitt Townsend
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Olivia - Vee - and her brother Aidan are trying to get back to Earth after a mystery virus killed everyone, including their parents, on their ship. It's been a lonely three years and a dangerous one, too, as they've tried to avoid the dangerous and xenophobic Mazons. But sometimes the Mazons can't be avoided and this is one of them: when dozens of human beings are being attacked and only Vee and Aidan close enough to launch a rescue mission.
+
|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>0857531417</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Kim Slater
+
|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|title=A Seven-Letter Word
+
|title=Different for Boys
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Teens
|summary=Finlay has got more than one PROBLEMHe lives alone with his father, who chain-smokes in between trips out to do odd jobs for people, and seems to have reduced his worth to just one recipe since his wife, Finlay's mother, vanished two years agoThings are still bitter with him – he says she might as well be dead – but the issue manifests itself badly with Finlay, and he has grown into suffering quite a severe STUTTER, which leads to no end of TEASING at schoolHis one way out, it seems, is for a change an eight-letter word, SCRABBLE – he can hide away from the mismanagement of words that his speaking implies he has over a set of tiles and can play a decent gameBut what happens when he is contacted online by a mysterious Alex – is this possibly a way to combine his love of the word game with his quest for the truth about his mother's ABSENCE?
+
|summary=Ant is in Year Eleven at quite a standard school, and is surprised to find his geography class (within which it seems absolutely nothing about geography is ever learnt) has been restructured, so his desk is one of four with both his best buddy from the football team, and two other old muckers – in fact they all go back to primary school days togetherAs they're all fired up, straining at the leash only a single-sex school can form, the talk in class and out often turns to sex.  Which is confusing for Ant, as he doesn't know what his score is, where his achievements in that regard lie.  He's had a casual relationship, a secret one, for several months now, and so has effectively progressed up the ladder headed by 'experienced', but whether that's set in stone, he can't be sureAnd that's mostly because of who he's been having the relationship and the sex with.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>150980112X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1529509491
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1800901232
 +
|title=Stitched Up
 +
|author=Steve Cole
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
 +
|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 missedSome 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 factoryYou know those jeans you really wanted: the ones with intricate embroidery and beading on the legs?  The ones with the artfully-placed rips and distressed seams that felt so soft when you touched them?  It's quite possible that Hanh and her co-workers made them.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Emery Lord
+
|author=Patrice Lawrence
|title=When We Collided
+
|title=Needle
|rating=4
+
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Jonah's father died. His mother has locked herself away in grief, leaving Jonah and his two older siblings to not only run their own lives but also take care of their three younger siblings. It's a lot and Jonah is grieving, too. Unsurprisingly, he has fallen into the fog of depression. And then Vivi comes along. Vivi and her artist mother are spending the summer in Jonah's town. And Vivi is bright and beautiful and vivid and amazing and ever-so-slightly eccentric. She bursts into Jonah's life like a shower of meteors and changes everything. But Vivi has her own problems...
+
|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>1408870088</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Darren Shan
+
|author= Ann Sei Lin
|title= Zom-B Goddess (Zom B 12)
+
|title= Rebel Skies
|rating= 4
+
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|genre= Teens
|summary=REPEATING STANDARD WARNING!
+
|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
 
 
If you haven't read the first book in this series, STOP READING NOW! NOW! Spoilers ahoy!
 
 
 
 
 
Go on. Run along
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857077961</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Marisa Reichardt
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title=Underwater
+
|title=Wrath
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Morgan has a post-it note in her apartment:
+
|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...
 
+
|isbn=1800900899
''1. Breathe''<br>
 
''2. You are okay''<br>
 
''3. You are not dying''
 
 
 
And if you had escaped a school shooting alive, you might need a note like this too, right?
 
 
 
People died. Kids died. Friends died. And afterwards, Morgan's school closed for a while. Morgan started attending a new school but it was just too much for her. She retreated to her apartment, enrolled at an online high school and didn't leave. Morgan hasn't crossed the threshold for months. If she only stays inside then she's safe. And a shut-in's life has a rhythm. Morgan's day is predictable: daytime TV, online school, grilled cheese and soup for lunch, visits from her therapist. And Mom and little brother Ben to liven up the evenings.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447287363</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Fallout (Lois Lane)
 
|author=Gwenda Bond
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Lois Lane is an army brat with a history of, shall we say, oppositional behaviour. Or at least, that's how her army general father sees it. Lois doesn't see it at all like that. Lois just hates injustice, that's all. And if something unjust is happening, she can't let it slide. But this time, her nth time in a new town and a new school, Lois has vowed to herself that things will be different. She'll be good. She'll keep her mouth shut. She'll fly under the radar. Heck, she might even make a friend or two.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782023682</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|title=Crush
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|author=Eve Ainsworth
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Anna's mother has left her father - and her brother, and Anna herself. That's how Anna sees it and although her mother wants contact, Anna is refusing it. It's not as though Anna sees this as some heroic defence of father and brother either: she's fed up with them, too. Her father is always distracted and he isdefinitely favouring little brother Eddie, who, as Anna sees it, is a spoiled brat. School has picked up on the fact that all is not right with Anna and has signed her up for counselling sessions...
+
|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>1407146904</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|title=The Secret Life of Daisy Fitzjohn
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|author=Tania Unsworth
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Daisy Fitzjohn lives with her mother in the crumbling but grand Brightwood Hall. The house is full of antiques and treasures and hoardings - because Daisy's mother does like to hoard - and Daisy is rarely at a loss for something to look at or investigate. Which is just as well, because Daisy has never gone outside the house and its grounds. We understand why Daisy's mother keeps her secluded - she's terrified of loss because of a family tragedy in her own childhood. Despite this, Daisy has a loving relationship with her mum and makes up for the isolation by developing friendships: with her pet rat, with the peacocks and rabbits in the gardens, and also with paintings and topiary and other creatures of her imagination, all in the knowledge that she's being kept safe from The Crazy that once ran in her family.
+
|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>1444010263</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|title=Eliza Rose
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|author=Lucy Worsley
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Eliza's family isn't as wealthy as it once was. And she is well aware that her duty is to marry well in order to repair the Camperdowne fortunes. To this end, Eliza is sent from her family home at Stoneton Castle to Trumpton Hall, to be educated in the ways of noble ladies. Here, she meets the infamous Katherine Howard while she too is still a young girl. And from there, it's on to the Tudor court of Henry VIII, who is currently married to Anne of Cleves.
+
|summary=Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers for a summer, in the far NE of the Scottish islands. Here be Vikings, that kind of Scottish island.  Dad is going to be automating the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt the elusive Greenland shark. And Julia, well, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one night.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408869438</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Nick Ostler and Mark Huckerby
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|title= Defender of the Realm
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary=Alfie does not feel like he's the right person to be heir to the throne. He's awkward, bullied and always in the front page of the news for his latest mishap. His brother Richard, as the papers love to remind him, would be much better suited to the part. But when their father the King suddenly dies, ready or not, suitable or not, Alfie is no longer the heir, he is the king and with that defender of the realm. Together with an unlikely ally in the anti- royalist Hayley, Alfie learns his true heritage, protecting the kingdom from all the monsters no one knows exist... Suddenly all the royal duties he'd been expecting don't seem so onerous in comparison. Alfie must quickly grow into the King the country needs, or who knows what will be left of the country?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407164236</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Susin Nielsen
 
|title= The Reluctant Journal of Henry K Larsen
 
 
|rating= 4
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Teens
 
|genre= Teens
|summary= Susin Nielsen is adept at conveying how you shouldn't judge someone on a first impression and how it's who you are that matters not what you look like. When we first meet Henry he is in counselling and dealing with an emotional trauma by speaking in a monotonous robot voice. His family has been fragmented by the cataclysmic 'IT' which he refuses to talk about. Ripped away from his comfortable life in Port Salish, Henry is struggling to readjust whilst living with his dad in a cramped apartment in Kitsilano, Vancouver, Canada. Gradually he starts to come out of his shell as he discovers new friends and interests but the road to recovery is not straightforward. Luckily he has his journal, albeit reluctantly.
+
|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>1783443669</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

1471196585.jpg

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

0008664730.jpg

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

1035003155.jpg

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

1919635017.jpg

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

1800901011.jpg

Review of

Needle by Patrice Lawrence

3star.jpg Teens

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

1406399590.jpg

Review of

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin

5star.jpg Teens

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

1800900899.jpg

Review of

Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1789098130.jpg

Review of

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1788452372.jpg

Review of

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1510107789.jpg

Review of

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

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1406394815.jpg

Review of

The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud

4star.jpg Teens

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

Move on to Newest Thrillers Reviews