Difference between revisions of "Newest Teens Reviews"

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[[Category:Teens|*]]
 
[[Category:Teens|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Teens]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|Teens]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
==Teens==
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Leanne Egan
 
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|title=Lover Birds
{{newreview
 
|author=Michael Grant
 
|title=Hunger
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=The kids of Perdido Beach are still within the FAYZ, a barrier erected by Little Pete - no-one knows how - when the nuclear plant went into meltdown. An uneasy truce between Sam's tribe of Perdido Beach kids and Caine's Coates Academy kids is beginning to waver. The food is running out and the Darkness has its claws in all those it's encountered. Caine himself is reduced to delirium by the voice of the Darkness in his head and Lana the healer knows it's inevitable that she too will answer its call. Sam is struggling to keep any form of order. As more and more kids begin to develop special powers and the hunger bites deeper into everyone's bellies, it's inevitable that conflict will break out. And it does, in some very unpleasant ways.
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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>1405251522</amazonuk>
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|isbn=000862657X
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|author=Rachel Caine
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|title=Wild East
|title=Carpe Corpus (Morganville Vampires)
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|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=If you haven't already, meet Claire.  She is beholden to Mr Bishop, the horrid evil vampire that is ruling the town of Morganville, even more so than the other human, and vampire, inhabitants are, now that he has taken over things from Claire's former ruler Amelie.  She is caught in a struggle between the two warring vampire factions, especially over an unusual form of disease among the undead - Amelie's side definitely trying to cure it, Bishop somehow trying to provoke it and profit from itNot only that, her boyfriend is imprisoned, along with his father, one of the world's least subtle vampire hunters.  Can she have enough quality time with him?  Can she and her captured-and-turned ex-housemate Michael survive the horrid things asked of them?  And who is Ada?
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|summary=Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white schoolThe move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of troubleHe listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapperBut now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>074900777X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0241645441
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Joanne Dahme
 
|title=Tombstone Tea
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Having recently moved to a new school, in a new town, Jessie is struggling to make friends and fit inShe is afraid to show these new people who she really is - in her old school she often found she had 'blank' moments, when she could hear voices and 'see' people who weren't really there. In desperation to become part of a 'group' she accepts the dare of a group of girls to spend the night in the Cemetery and collect some gravestone rubbings to prove she was thereOnce there she bumps into Paul, the handsome caretaker, and finds herself in the middle of a strange evening when, Paul claims, local actors get together to rehearse for something called the 'Tombstone Tea', a play in which they portray those buried in the graveyard...there's something strange though about these actors and Jessie soon finds herself caught up in a chilling drama.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0762437189</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jenny Valentine
|author=K M Grant
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|title=Us in the Before and After
|title=Paradise Red (Perfect Fire Trilogy)
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=We are back in the south of France for the third and final timeIn one corner, the 'French', with King Louis and his henchmen rampaging through, warring in the name of peaceIn another corner, the local people, struggling in the harsh environment and none too pleased to see their corner of the world the location for religious wars, with the Cathar ''heretics'' also present.  The lines are drawn, in a realistically convoluted way, and this book will see one of our heroes cross one such line, just as other people make their own momentous decisions.  It will take all the narrative skills of the land itself to get the story across to us.
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|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connectionThey 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>1847247075</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1471196585
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mary Naylus
 
|title=The Dresskeeper
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Things are pretty grim for Picky.  She is thirteen years old, being bullied at school, and has to spend her weekends helping her single, working mum to take care of her little brother and her senile grandmother.  One evening, at her Gran's house, she goes up into the attic and tries on an old dress that she finds inside an old chest.  The dress turns out to be magic, and she suddenly finds herself back in 17th Century London, struggling with a strange man who is calling her 'Amelia' and is trying to kill her.  Picky ends up embroiled in Amelia's 17th century life as she tries to find out the truth of who is attempting to murder her, at the same time as trying to avoid arousing suspicion with her strange behaviour whenever she returns to the present day.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956122280</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Max Boucherat
|author=Rick Yancey
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|title=The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=In late 19th century America, young Will Henry has been the apprentice of the stern, forbidding Dr Warthrop since the death of his parents, who were also employed by the doctor. The twelve year old boy has seen many things in his service to the monstrumologist - a specialist in monsters - but nothing can prepare him for the fateful day when an elderly grave robber brings the doctor the twin corpses of a young girl and the headless creature with fangs in his chest who had tried to feast on her.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184738546X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Joseph Delaney
 
|title=The Spook's Stories: Witches
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary='Warning: Not to be read after dark,' are the only words on the back of ''The Spook's Stories'', and on the inside flap, 'The Times' warns us that this book is 'seriously scary'...
 
 
 
The whole thing kicks-off relatively tamely, though, with a story about a young Spook (a sort of monster-hunter) who falls in love with a witch and is forced to bear the consequences when the witch's sister comes to stay and exhibits a taste for the neighbor-children.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0370329961</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lisa McMann
 
|title=Wake
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Janie is seventeen and studying hard for college. She's also working lots of hours at a local nursing home to earn money for college as it's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going to provide much in the way of resources. College is Janie's only chance at a life better than the one she's lived so far and so you can't blame her for being so single-minded in the pursuit of her goal. Only one thing stands in her way...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385036</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jaclyn Moriarty
 
|title=The Spell Book of Listen Taylor
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Listen Taylor's father has just moved in with his girlfriend and they are adopted into the Zing family, with all of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night for dinner and then disappear into the garden shed to work on the 'Zing Family Secret'. Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong and losing Nathaniel and Listen. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her home life, and her daughter's year two teacher is coming to terms with a break up. The stories of these people come together to create a tale of life, love, and ultimately, what being part of a family means.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330446363</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jon Berkeley
 
|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=I shall start with a word of advice.  When you're being hounded by a circus master, and a magician, for the soul of a tiger that's contained in a tiger's egg that's contained in the brain of your teddy bear, and your best friend - a fallen angel - is trying her best to make sure the other angels do not turn on you in a big way - then you're probably living the third book in a fantasy trilogy.  Still - never mind, the angel's efforts will involve you entering a dream world of flight and cloud cities, the chase after your enemies will take you across the world to desert oases and back, and friends new and old will be on board to help.
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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 tamperingWhen 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>1847384447</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lauren Kate
 
|title=Fallen
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=A 17 year old girl at a new school meets a mysterious and impossibly good-looking boy, who she's immediately drawn to. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude to her, until he saves her life, and the two of them end up drawn together. This isn't Stephenie Meyer's ''Twilight'', but it certainly has striking similarities.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gareth Hinds
 
|title=King Lear
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=Hound me out of town in a most appropriate manner, but I do not like King Lear.  For me, even as a trained actor, the language is too dense and rich, the set-up too archly unfeasible to create the great tragedy it's thought to beTo my mind the acclaim and esteem in which it's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blustering.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|author=Sarah Beth Durst
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|title=Compass and Blade
|title=Ice
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Cassie lives on an Arctic research station in Alaska. She loves the ice and the wilderness of her remote home and she'd definitely prefer to spend her time on tracking polar bears and fending off frostbite rather than on mixing with her peers and enjoying college and home comforts back in Fairbanks. However, things aren't all rosy. Cassie's mother died when she was just a baby and she can't help feeling a huge hole in her heart. Her scientist father is remote and unloving and her grandmother left the station after an argument with him when Cassie was still very young.
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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>1847386571</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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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.
|author=A J Healy
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|isbn=0008664730
|title=Tommy Storm and the Galactic Knights
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Meet Tommy Storm.  He's one of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe to be a gang of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destruction. Not just the planet, or the solar system, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHING.  Nobody seems to know what's going to cause this destruction, or when, but he and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day.  So it's a pity that they start this book strung up by a nasty loony who's about to kill them.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Harry Allen
|author=Jeanette Winterson
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|title=Children of the Sun
|title=The Battle of the Sun
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=London 1601. Elizabeth I is getting on in years. Her capital city is a busy, bustling place. Boats fill the river and people fill the streets. Jack is happy because it's his birthday and his present is his heart's desire: an excitable black puppy named Max, who's a ''licking and a running and a leaping and a jumping and a tummy in the air and a tail wagging and a barking, racing, braking, spinning energy dog of delight''.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Abby McDonald
 
|title=The Popularity Rules
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=This book is labelled as Abby McDonald's first adult novel, but a brief browse at the juvenile title, cover and formatted content bowls it straight down the teen read alley.  The Americanised language, music scene setting and media heroine are aspirational stuff when you're stuck in the pre-scene years.  So, despite its label, I've given it four and a half stars based on its appeal as a girlie book.  That said, I'm well over eighteen, read the story avidly, and enjoyed the irony.  So well done, Abby McDonald, for an entertaining story, cleverly told.  
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|summary= Ra Eun Seo lives in a North Korean town and she is a talented singer. Life is hard and food is difficult to come by, so Seo and her friends Nari and Min go foraging every evening, looking for tree bark and edible grasses to supplement the meagre rations of rice and kimchi at home.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099533898</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1805140493
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Alexia Casale
|author=Alexander Gordon Smith
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|title=Furnace: Death Sentence
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|rating=5
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Meet Alex Sawyer.  Framed for a murder he certainly didn't do, the lad is given life (of a kind) in the Furnace, a literal hellhole of a private prison, buried a mile under EnglandIt's a vicious existence, with tribal gangs among the inmates, and worse on the staff - the warden is helped by his malevolent blacksuits, nasty medical aides called wheezers, and there are mutated, feral creatures of all kinds collectively called ratsAfter two previous books of failed break-outs, Alex is under the knife of the warden, who has a new tactic.  He does not want to break Alex - he aims to remake him, with medicine, surgery and Clockwork Orange-style brainwashing, as one of his own.
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|summary=It's hard enough to navigate your teenage years without suddenly finding that you're having to navigate a life-changing disability too, but that's what Ven is dealing with after collapsing on stage in the middle of a dance performance that was going to change her life.  But she comes back fighting, desperate to avoid the pity stares, and desperate to get back to a life that's as normal as she can possibly manageMeanwhile 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 navigateSo even though she can't dance anymore, might she be able to sing her way through instead?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571245617</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Simon Fox
|author=Chris Priestley
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|title=Deadlock
|title=Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Young Robert is put on a train back to school by his stepmother. It's the first journey he's made on his own. It turns out to be more of a challenge than he could ever have imagined. The train stalls at the mouth of a tunnel and while the other passengers sleep through the wait, a mysterious woman in white tells him a series of stories - stories with a difference.
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|summary=Late one night Graham Blake is late back from his shift on the force, and then suddenly rings Archie, demanding he fetch something from a secret place, and join him on the run. They get together, but barely begin to smell the whiff of Southern trains when the father is arrested, leaving Archie on the late express to Brighton, toting a tin his father was determined to keep away from his colleagues, and the bearer of a whole heap of questions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408800144</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Edgar Allan Poe and Gris Grimly
 
|title=Tales of Death and Dementia
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=Wow! What a wonderful combination: Edgar Allan Poe, master of the gothic horror short story, and Gris Grimly, outstanding illustrator, known for his [[The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman and Gris Grimly|work with Neil Gaiman]]. Poe's ''Tales of Death and Dementia'' are shown off at their very best in this edition.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847386474</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lex Croucher
|author=Jessica Verday
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|title=The Hollow
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=When Abbey's best friend, Kristen, disappears and is assumed dead, Abbey feels as though she has no-one left to talk to. Refusing to believe that Kristen is really gone, while struggling to come to terms with life on her own, Abbey meets the mysterious Caspian, a young man who appears to be the perfect gentleman, showering her with hand-crafted gifts and words of wisdom within weeks of meeting her. But beneath those piercing green eyes and soft-spoken manner, Caspian has secrets of his own. Hoping to uncover those, and determined to find out what really happened to her best friend, Abbey begins to question her sanity, as the truth proves more frightening than she thought.
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|summary=Who knew that what I really needed to read right now was a gay Arthurian RomCom?  But honestly, it lifted my spirits in a most delightful way.  In this story, Gwen and Arthur have been betrothed since they were tiny, much to their mutual disgust!  Gwen, you see, is in love with Bridget (the kingdom's only female knight) - something that Art discovers from her private diaries. And then when Gwen then catches Art kissing a boy they find themselves becoming reluctant allies, creating the subterfuge of falling in love with each other, when really they are enabling their own other romantic attachments. But as their impending wedding draws ever closer, will they find a way in which they can both truly be themselves, or are they destined to live a lie their whole lives?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847384986</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1526651793
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Nick Brooks
|author=Michael P. Spradlin
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|title=Promise Boys
|title=The Youngest Templar: Trail of Fate
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=After his ship is lost in a storm as he is returning to England, Tristan is washed up on some foreign shore, completely lost and with no sign of his companions. When he wakes, he's surrounded by four men and two women, all pointing swords at him. As soon as they talk, he realises he's in France. He explains his situation to Celia, one of the young women, and though cautious of him at first – believing he might possibly be a spy, she ignores his pleas for directions to the nearest port and offers (almost insists) to take him with them.
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|summary=When the principal (headmaster) of Urban Promise Prep school is murdered, three boys find themselves called into the police station as suspects.  Each, seemingly, has a grudge of some description against Principal Moore, and each could have been there at the time of his murder. But who killed him, and why, and if any of the boys are innocent, will they be able to clear their names?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0399247645</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1919635017
|author=Marilyn Kaye
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|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
|title=Gifted: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
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|author=Kitt Townsend
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Emily has a gift – she can predict the future. But her visions aren't always clear and she sometimes gets them wrong. She is one of nine students from the Gifted class, though at the moment she feels like the weakest person there. But now her classmates need her, they are starting to disappear and Emily is their only hope. Will she learn how to interpret her blurry visions in time? And be able to use her gift to save her friends?
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|summary= Solomon Klyne isn't a bad lad, so why is he running around London committing a series of robberies? And how did he learn to crack safes? You'll have to wait to get an answer to the second question because I avoid spoilers. But I'll answer the first one: for his grandmother...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510061</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|author=Andrew Klavan
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|title=Different for Boys
|title=The Last Thing I Remember (Homelander)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
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|genre=Teens
|summary=Charlie West - US Air Force hopeful and karate expert - remembers when his main concern was whether schoolmate Beth would go out with him. So why is he strapped to a chair in a windowless cell?
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|summary=Ant is in Year Eleven at quite a standard school, and is surprised to find his geography class (within which it seems absolutely nothing about geography is ever learnt) has been restructured, so his desk is one of four with both his best buddy from the football team, and two other old muckers – in fact they all go back to primary school days together.  As they're all fired up, straining at the leash only a single-sex school can form, the talk in class and out often turns to sex. Which is confusing for Ant, as he doesn't know what his score is, where his achievements in that regard 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>0755352998</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1529509491
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1800901232
|author=Ian Beck
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|title=Stitched Up
|title=Pastworld
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|author=Steve Cole
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|summary=In the future, London has been restored to its Victorian state and turned into a theme park. Pastworld prides itself on its authenticity and indeed many of its full time residents don't even realise that they're living in a fantasy recreation of an old reality. Eve is one such. Cossetted and over-protected by her guardian, Jack, she feels a desperate need for freedom and runs away to join a travelling circus. Here she discovers not only the truth about Pastworld, but some remarkable, almost supernatural, talents.  
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747581738</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrice Lawrence
|author=Alyson Noel
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|title=Needle
|title=The Immortals: Evermore
 
 
|rating=3
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Sixteen-year-old Ever used to be normal, popular even. She had a best friend, a cute boyfriend, and her whole future ahead of her. Then a tragic car accident claimed the lives of her family – her parents and her little sister Riley. Ever survived, but not unscathed.
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|summary=Brave. Charlene, the 'heroine' of this piece is extremely hard for some people to like, characters and readers both. Kicked out of multiple homes and schools, she's fostering with a pleasant yoga tutor, Annie, and has taken up residence in her son Blake's old room while he's at uni. Such a tempestuous personality may be in need of a comfort blanket, you might perhaps think, and the creation of one such item is part of the plot here, as Charlene is a wonder knitter, and is making something full of love for her younger sister – a younger sister she's allowed contact with no more. We see Charlene prove her belligerence with a store detective, and then force people to give her two days off school, when she shouts someone down as expletively ignorant. And then... well, what exactly happens is not for me to say, only to remark how sharp and pointy those knitting needles can be...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330512854</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800901011
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Walter Moers
 
|title=The Alchemaster's Apprentice
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Meet Echo the Crat.  He is a rare example of his species, which is a cat that can speak every language known.  His life among the miserable, permanently ill citizens of Malaisea is not great, which is why, when the strange scientist from the castle that looms over everyone and everything offers him a month of entertaining gluttony before he kills Echo, as opposed to three days' starving penury on the streets, the offer is accepted.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552222</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=L J Smith
 
|title=Dark Visions: The Strange Power, The Possessed, The Passion
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Kaitlyn Fairchild has always known she was different. She's able to draw things that haven't happened yet - although the drawings are never specific enough to be of any use. Worse, they scare people, as do her weird eyes. So, when she's given the opportunity to go away to an Institute where she, and four other teens with other powers, will be trained to control their abilities, she jumps at the chance. After meeting charismatic healer Rob, psychokinetic Lewis, and Anna, who can talk to the animals, she already feels at home. Even the addition of the fifth teen, convicted murderer Gabriel, can't dull her happiness.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847386822</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Ann Sei Lin
|author=Joanne Dahme 
+
|title= Rebel Skies
|title=The Plague
+
|rating= 5
|rating=2.5
+
|genre= Teens
|genre=Teens
+
|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…
|summary=The story begins in 1348, the year in which the Black Death first reached England.  Nell and her younger brother George lose their parents to the plague, and as orphans their future looks bleak. But a chance meeting leads to Nell's lookalike similarity to the Princess Joan transforming their fate.  She is taken into the royal household to act as a double for the Princess in times of danger. Two years later she and her brother accompany the Princess on her voyage to marry the Prince of Castile. Nothing goes as planned, and Nell finds herself being passed off as the Princess against her will.
+
|isbn=1406399590
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0762433442</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|author=Mary Hogan
+
|title=Wrath
|title=Perfect Girl
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Homework. Drinking your milk. Coming home on time. Keeping your mouth shut. These are the sort of rules you would associate with 14 year old Ruthie's mother. Her mother's glamorous sister, Aunt Marty (aka the Goddess of Love at a swish NYC-based magazine), on the other hand, is a different story. And when she swoops into town and sweeps Ruthie away in a whirlwind of silk underwear, virgin Cosmopolitans and a whole career's worth of advice on all things boy related, Ruthie has a feeling things will never be quite the same again.
+
|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>1847382290</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|author=Cathy Brett
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
|title=Ember Fury
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Ember Morton-Fury is the daughter of rock super-star Lyndon Fury and artist Amica Morton, who died when Em was a small child. It's the beginning of the school holidays and she's on her way to Los Angeles to see her father (well, his entourage, actually as he doesn't do ''the dad thing'') and his new wife ''the'' actress Charity Lane. I say that it's the beginning of the school holidays, but that's a moot point as Em has been expelled from yet another school because of the small matter of a major fire which she started. You just know that things are not going to be any better in LA.
+
|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>0755347889</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|author=Trisha Telep (Editor)
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|title=The Eternal Kiss
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Do you love vampires but aren't sure where to go from here? Perhaps you've just read the [[Twilight by Stephenie Meyer|Twilight]] series everyone's talking about but don't know what else is out there. Maybe you've always been a die-hard vampire fan and aren't sure which of the contemporary fantasy authors fit your taste.
+
|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>0762437170</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=G P Taylor
 
|title=Mariah Mundi and the Ship of Fools
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Mariah Mundi is leaving the famed Prince Regent Hotel of his past adventures and going out into the wider world. This time, his friend and mentor, Captain Charity, is bringing him along on board a luxury liner called the ''Triton'', as it races another liner, the ''Ketos'', across the Atlantic. Charity's mission is to protect the prize money that the ''Triton'' carries in its hold. But someone doesn't want the ''Triton'' to win. In fact, they don't even want to give it a chance. What they want is the prize money, preferably before they sink the ''Triton'' to the bottom of the sea.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571227007</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|author=Ann Turnbull
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|title=Alice in Love and War
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Alice Newcombe is unhappy, and has been since the death of her father five years ago. Living on a farm with an uncle who makes advances on her whenever he can, and an aunt who doesn't believe a word she says, and never really wanted her anyway – Alice dreams of escape, to run away and find something better. Now, with the Civil War on, everything is about to change. Royalist soldiers soon set up camp on the farm and one soldier in particular catches Alice's eye – Robin.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406302449</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gabriella Poole
 
|title=Secret Lives (Darke Academy)
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Cassie Bell knows the value of information. Raised in a care home, she's tough and smart, and when she earns a scholarship to the exclusive Darke Academy, she knows it's her ticket to a new and better life. The snobby, upper class students who bought their way in aren't going to stop her experiencing life at the Academy to its fullest, and taking all the opportunities it offers.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340989246</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Scott Westerfeld
 
|title=Leviathan
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=You have to hand it to Scott Westerfeld. He writes a great page-turner and he has an enviable eye for a good angle on contemporary interests. In Leviathan, he's bringing steampunk to junior readers. If you're not a trainspotterish fan of the maze of sci-fi and fantasy sub-genres, you may not know what steampunk is, let alone whether you or your children will like it. Basically, steampunk fiction is set in a world in which steam is still the main source of power. Often, the world is an alternate history past, but it can be the future too. Westerfeld's chosen an alternate history for Leviathan - we're in 1914, the Archduke Ferdinand has just been assassinated and Europe is on the brink of WWI.
+
|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 sharkAnd Julia, well, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one night.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385192</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Charlie Higson
 
|title=The Enemy
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=HA! ''28 Days Later'' and ''Shaun of the Dead'' meet ''Lord of the Flies'' in Charlie Higson's latest series. A mysterious disease has decimated the population, attacking everyone over fourteen. Most of the adults are dead but the ones that remain are shuffling zombies with just one thought in their addled brains - killing and feasting on children. The narrative focuses on London, where pockets of children are holed up in old supermarkets and tourist attractions. Rumour has it that there's a group in Buckingham Palace who are not only safe, but who are beginning to envisage ways of building a new life. Both the Waitrose and the Morrisons crew know that they can't last forever by scavenging, and so they decide to make the dangerous journey across London to the Palace.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141384646</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Harry Hill
 
|title=Tim The Tiny Horse At Large
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Humour
 
|summary=It's been a while since Tim and Fly's [[Tim the Tiny Horse by Harry Hill|last adventures]], and changes are afoot in Tim's tiny world: Fly is getting married to his girlfriend. Tim's a little worried because they've only known each other for a week. The marriage goes ahead, and Tim finds himself kicking his heels, so he gets a pet. And so the brief episodes in the life of a horse who lives in a matchbox continue.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571244157</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mark Walden
 
|title=Dreadnought (Hive)
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Life goes on at H. I. V. E. (the Higher Institute of Villainous Education), with the pupils heading off to the 93%er - an Arctic training exercise where only 93% of students survive. Things are going less smoothly at the parent organisation, G. L. O. V. E. (the Global League of Villainous Enterprises): Jason Drake has broken away and is planning to overthrow his former colleagues, installing himself as the new head. Why oh why can't villains play nicely with one another?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747594848</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ross Kemp
 
|title=Ganglands: Brazil
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Luiz Alves and his sister Ana were adopted into a good home and escaped the ''favela'' which is now under the control of a vicious gang, the Comando NegroOnly a matter of days ago a young basketball star had been murdered on a bus for no better reason than that he had once made the killer look bad.  Luiz had no intention of getting involved with the gang, or with another shadowy organisation, Trojan Industries, but events dictated otherwise.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141325895</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Steve Augarde
 
|title=X-isle
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=It was a momentous day when the salvage ship sailed up Baz's street.  This is a future England, where an eco-catastrophe has drowned the world, and left just pockets of humanity, with no power, no Internet, little hope.  But this is a momentous day, not because of the boat travelling across Baz's town, not because this is the only powered vehicle anyone knows of, but because today is the day Baz and his best-friend-to-be Ray manage to barter their way on board, and across to a different island, and a land of milk and honey.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385610610</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|author=Meg Rosoff
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|title=The Bride's Farewell
+
|rating= 4
|rating=5
+
|genre= Teens
|genre=Teens
+
|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?
|summary=Pell Ridley runs away from home on the morning she's supposed to get married. She just can't face it. Birdie is a good man, a good friend even, but Pell doesn't want a husband. She doesn't want to end up like her mother - ''worn and shapeless with a leaking bladder, great knotted blue veins, and breasts flat as old wineskins''. And who can blame her? So she saddles up her white pony Jack and, at the last minute, takes her foster brother Bean along for the journey.
+
|isbn=1406394815
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141383933</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|author=Lili St Crow
 
|title=Strange Angels
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Most teenagers think their lives are over when their crush rejects them, they get an ugly zit on their foreheads, or their parents do something unspeakably embarrassing in public. But that's the normal world. Dru lives in The Real World – a world populated by ghosts, suckers, werwulfen and zombies, and when her Dad doesn't come home from a hunt she knows she's got things far worse to worry about than boys and zits.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161259</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie
 
|title=Wicked: Witch and Curse
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Holly Cathers always thought she was a normal teenage girl. Until one day when she's forced to move across the country to live with her aunt, Marie-Claire, and her twin cousins, Amanda and Nicole. Struggling to cope with the loss of her parents and trying to settle into her new environment, Holly can't help but notice strange incidents surrounding her new family. Plagued with visions from her mysterious ancestors and struck with an immediate enchantment to a boy she hardly knows, Holly is thrown into the world of magic and witchcraft with her cousins and drawn into a voracious war against a warlock clan that has been spanning generations.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847386628</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

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Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Compass and Blade by Rachel Greenlaw

3.5star.jpg Teens

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

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

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Review of

Children of the Sun by Harry Allen

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Sing if you Can't Dance by Alexia Casale

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Stitched Up by Steve Cole

5star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

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

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Review of

Needle by Patrice Lawrence

3star.jpg Teens

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

1406399590.jpg

Review of

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin

5star.jpg Teens

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

1800900899.jpg

Review of

Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1789098130.jpg

Review of

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1788452372.jpg

Review of

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1510107789.jpg

Review of

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

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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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

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