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
{{newreview
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|title=Lover Birds
|author=Julianna Baggott
 
|title=Pure
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=A Hiroshima-like event called ''the Detonations'' has transformed life on earth.  Shortly after the Detonations, when the survivors were still hoping for some form of help to arrive, a cloud of leaflets were released all bearing the same message:
 
 
'We know you are here, our brothers and sisters. We will, one day, emerge from the Dome to join you in peace.  For now, we watch from afar, benevolently.'
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755385489</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Edward Hogan
 
|title=Daylight Saving
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=The Leisure World Holiday Complex, with so many sports and games available, might be the holiday of a lifetime for some teens – but Daniel Lever certainly isn’t one of them. Dragged there by his dad, and feeling guilty over his role in his parents’ separation, Daniel’s expecting he’ll hate it, and his early experiences seem to suggest he’s right. Then he meets a mysterious girl who he’d like to know better – but why do her bruises keep getting worse, and does her watch really tick backwards? More worryingly, why can’t anyone else see her?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140633717X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Edited by Kelly Milner Halls
 
|title=Girl Meets Boy
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Have you ever been in a relationship where you couldn’t understand what the other person was thinking? Perhaps that’s a dumb question… have you ever been in a relationship where you COULD understand what the other person was thinking? In a unique collection, twelve authors team up to write eleven stories telling things the same tales from both the boy's point of view and the girl's. It consists of five pairs of stories, each looking at the same events from a different angle, and a final collaboration which switches back and forth between the two viewpoints throughout the story.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1452102643</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jess Rothenberg
 
|title=The Catastrophic History of You and Me
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=When her boyfriend breaks up with her - ''I don't love you'' - Brie Eagen literally dies of a broken heart. Truly. Unable to believe the x-rays, her cardiologist father insists on a complete postmortem and it's true - Brie's heart was broken in two and she died. Brie finds herself in an afterlife limbo with other lost souls and meets a boy called Patrick who tells her she must process the five stages of grief before she can hope to move on. But of course, Brie is at the first stage - denial - and doesn't want to move on at all. She wants to stay close to the family and friends she left behind but more than anything, she wants revenge on Jacob, who broke her heart...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141334479</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sophie McKenzie
 
|title=Falling Fast
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=River is desperate to get the lead role in the inter-school performance of ''Romeo and Juliet'', because she wants to be Juliet in real life. To know romantic love, and true passion. When she first sets eye on Flynn, who’s been cast as Romeo, she thinks this could be it. But would a boy as intense and as talented as Flynn even look twice at someone like her? As all fans of the Bard know, the path of true love never did run smooth…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857070991</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Danielle Joseph
 
|title=Indigo Blues
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=High school senior Indigo briefly dated an older boy called Adam. He took the relationship more seriously than she did, and she broke it off. He moved away... and that's the end of that, yes? Except... the reason Adam moved away was to become a rock star. Suddenly, he's top of the charts with a song about the girl who broke his heart. Indigo just wants to forget their relationship, but how can she do that when half her school, and several journalists, want to hear all the gory details about the pair of them?
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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>0738720593</amazonuk>
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|isbn=000862657X
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|author=S B Hayes
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|title=Wild East
|title=Poison Heart
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=
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|summary=Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school.  The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble. He listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapper.  But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words.
When Katy first sees a girl staring at her from the window of a bus, she shouldn't think anything of it. Something makes her look back, though, and in that moment everything changes. For some reason Katy doesn't know, the girl - Genevieve - starts to follow her around, insinuating herself into Katy's college, her friendship group, and even her relationship with the wonderful Merlin. Can Katy, with the help of journalist Luke, find out what's going on before it's too late?
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|isbn=0241645441
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857385704</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jenny Valentine
|author=Phil Earle
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|title=Us in the Before and After
|title=Saving Daisy
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Ever since finding a report which said she was responsible for the death of her mother, Daisy has felt unable to cope. Her dad, despite the good relationship they have, refuses to talk about her mum's passing, so she takes refuge firstly in her beloved films, but then in self-harm. As her life spirals more and more out of control, can Daisy be saved?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141331364</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sarah Crossan
 
|title=The Weight of Water
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Kasienka's Dad is gone, leaving only a brief note to say he'd gone to England. Its two years after his departure, and Kasienka and her mother are moving to England to find him. With nothing but a suitcase and an old laundry bag, they leave Poland and their lives behind. But England isn't what Kasienka imagined, living in a single room, and sharing a bed with her mum, she longs to return to Poland. At home her mother throws herself into finding Kasienka's Dad, heartbroken that he left them; at school Kasienka finds herself a target of bullying.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408823004</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Michelle Hodkin
 
|title=The Unbecoming Of Mara Dyer
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Mara has just started her whole life over - new city, new school, new start. It's just what the doctor ordered, and her family - though still treating her like she might fall apart at any moment - are tentatively hopeful that it's just what she needs to get back on her feet. Mara just hopes her memories return. She needs to know what happened the night her two best friends and her boyfriend died in an accident she somehow managed to escape unscathed.
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|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time.  But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable.   Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085707363X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Max Boucherat
|author=Melvin Burgess
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|title=Burning Issy
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=It's the early 17th century and Issy is living in Lancashire with her foster father Nat and foster brother Ghyll. Nat is a cunning man - a herbalist and healer - and Issy keeps house while Nat plies his trade and teaches Ghyll how to follow in his footsteps. It's a hard life and there is little to spare. And the family live on the edge of suspicion. Convinced he's being plotted against by Scottish witches, the King has unleashed witch-hunts on a deeply superstitious and fearful country. Healers like Nat are working in the grey areas of persecution and are only ever an accusation away from torture and trial, while time is running out for self-professed witches like Demdyke and her family.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393974</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=R J Anderson
 
|title=Swift
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Ivy lives in an abandoned Cornish tin mine with the rest of her piskie clan. The piskies live in fear of kidnapping spriggans and so it's a closed life, with the females of the clan rarely going above ground. It's just too dangerous. This weighs heavily on Ivy, who has an independent spirit and sense of wanderlust. And Ivy has other sadnesses: her mother disappeared years ago, taken by spriggans, and she was born without wings so cannot fly like the others.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408312638</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Tony Ross
 
|title=A Fairy Tale
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=In Balaclava Street Bessie was bored.  Even her book wasn't helping.  It was about fairies and she didn't believe in them, ''obviously''And even if they did exist they'd have more sense than to live in the gloomy streets around the mill, wouldn't they? Playing with her ball in the back yard she encountered her next-door neighbour, Mrs Leaf and a strange friendship developed between the old woman and the young girlIt was difficult for Bessie to work out if Mrs Leaf actually believed in fairies, but it seemed strange that as Bessie got older, Mrs Leaf seemed to get younger.  And who ''exactly'' was Mrs Leaf?
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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 lonesomeWhat 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>1849393559</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|author=Charlie Price
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|title=Compass and Blade
|title=Desert Angel
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Angel is alone in an open desert. The man who killed her mother is relentlessly tracking her, and determined to see her buried. Just as she resigns herself to death, the local community suddenly take her in and give her a new identity and an opportunity to hide with a normal family. They believe that she'll be safe, but Angel knows better. She knows Scotty, and she knows that he won't give up so easily. Her constant paranoia threatens to drive a wedge between her and the family who have taken her in, but she is convinced that it is the only thing keeping her alive, and she might just be right.
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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>0552563366</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=Celia Rees
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|isbn=0008664730
|title=This Is Not Forgiveness
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Jamie falls hook, line and sinker for Caro the moment he runs into her at the Rendez. He knows she's bad news. Everyone knows she's bad news. But he just can't help himself. Caro is strong, vital, secretive and beautiful and Jamie is a moth to her flame. He suspects there's someone else in her life but it doesn't make a difference. No matter what everyone else thinks, what his sister Martha says, Caro is not like any other girl Jamie knows. She's worth any risk, despite the disappearances, despite the odd tattoos and scars from self-harm. And there's also Rob. Back from Afghanistan with a shattered leg, Jamie's older brother is descending into a world of drink and drugs. He just can't fit back into small town life. Jamie wants to help him, but Rob is too unpredictable and unstable to reach.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408817691</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Harry Allen
|author=Margo Lanagan
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|title=Children of the Sun
|title=The Brides of Rollrock Island
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=On Rollrock Island, the fishermen find their brides from the sea through the usurial offices of the witch Miskaella. They're selkies; seal women who shed their skins to become human. Their husbands are obsessed by them and the men without a selkie will risk anything to become part of the enchantment, even their human wives and children and half their lifetime earnings. Soon there are no human women left on Rollrock - the adults to the mainland and the female selkie babies to the ocean. There are just dads and mams and little boys.  
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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>0857560336</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1805140493
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Alexia Casale
|author=Don Calame
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|title=Beat The Band
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=It's a welcome return for the trio of Matt, Sean and Cooper from the [[Swim the Fly by Don Calame|earlier book]], but there's a significant difference, as Cooper - something of a zany sidekick in the original - takes centre stage here. Moving on from wanting to see a naked girl last year, this time his goal is to go all the way with a girl. Things are looking bad for him, though, when he's paired up for a health project on safe sex with social pariah Hot Dog Helen. Deciding the only way to overcome the humiliation of association with her is to give the school something else to remember him for, Coop persuades the other two members of the trio to enter the Battle of the Bands competition. Can any of them play an instrument? Oh, come on, what do you think?  
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|summary=It's hard enough to navigate your teenage years without suddenly finding that you're having to navigate a life-changing disability too, but that's what Ven is dealing with after collapsing on stage in the middle of a dance performance that was going to change her life. But she comes back fighting, desperate to avoid the pity stares, and desperate to get back to a life that's as normal as she can possibly manage. Meanwhile there's a new (cute!) boy in school, her music A Level performance piece to try to sort out, and just the day to day traumas of all the challenges her body continues to throw at her to navigate. So even though she can't dance anymore, might she be able to sing her way through instead?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184877057X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Simon Fox
|author=Robin Wasserman
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|title=Deadlock
|title=The Book of Blood and Shadow
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Nora is an unusual heroine. She is sharp, snarky and funny, and her wry tone and contemporary references will resonate with her readers. But she is also uncompromisingly geeky, and she opts to complete her independent study assignment by joining her three friends at the local university in a research project on the Voynich Manuscript by Edward Kelley (This manuscript actually exists, and has taxed the abilities of some of the greatest code-breakers in the world in the last hundred years.). However Professor Hoffpauer does not consider Nora mature enough to work on the manuscript itself, despite the fact that her linguistic ability is far superior to that of the others, and instead he gives her the lesser task of translating the letters of Kelley's step-daughter Elizabeth Weston.  
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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>1907411445</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lex Croucher
|author=Katie Dale
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|title=Someone Else's Life
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=
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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?
Rosie's beloved mother Trudie has just died of Huntington's disease and now Rosie has a terrible decision to make: should she get tested and discover whether or not she has inherited the mutated gene that causes this fatal illness? But just as she decides that truth and knowledge is better than fear, Rosie discovers that Trudie wasn't her biological mother. She and a dying baby were swapped at birth. So Rosie sets out to the States to find her real mother, accompanied by Andy, an ex-boyfriend with whom she hopes to rekindle a love that never quite died. They find more than Rosie could ever have expected, and she is faced with an even more agonising choice: live a lie, or tell the truth and destroy lives just as hers has been destroyed...
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|isbn=1526651793
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857071416</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Curtis Jobling
 
|title=Wereworld: Shadow of the Hawk
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=At the start of Shadow of the Hawk, our heroes are in disarray. Drew, having bitten off his hand to escape Vanmorten and the undead, is in captivity, about to be forced to fight as a gladiator. The Staglord Manfred and the Wereshark Vega, two of the three remaining members of the Wolf's Council, are on the run, spiriting Drew's mother to safety. And Hector, the third of the Council... oh, Hector!
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141340495</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Christoph Marzi
 
|title=Heaven
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=''The night that Heaven lost her heart was cold and moonless. But the blade that sliced it out was warm with her dark blood.''
 
 
 
David Pettyfer stumbles into this explosive first scene as he takes his usual shortcut over the rooftops of night-time London on his way to deliver a book to one of Miss Trodwood's most valued customers. David hates closed-in spaces and in particular the Tube, but loves the open air and the freedom he feels on the roofs. And so, it turns out, does this beautiful, enigmatic girl who claims that evil men have cut out her heart. David can feel the danger but he is lost right from his first glimpse of Heaven. He couldn't walk away from this girl even if he tried.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408314665</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Julie Cross
 
|title=Tempest
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Jackson has a secret – he can travel through time. Sadly, it’s not as cool as it seems. He can just pop back a few hours, observe things, and not change anything. His friend Adam, who he’s trusted with this, is trying to get him to record every time he does this so they can find out more about the mysterious ability he developed eight months or so ago, but Jackson looks on it as little more than something fun. And then everything changes… armed men burst into his girlfriend’s room, and attack the pair, leaving her dying. Panicking, he jumps back in time 2 years, far further than he’s ever gone before. This time, he can’t get back to 2009. Somehow, Jackson needs to try and find a way to get back to his own time and save Holly, but it’s quickly apparent that there is an awful lot that he needs to learn about himself before he can get to grips with this.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230756263</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Nick Brooks
|author=Jennifer E Smith
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|title=Promise Boys
|title=The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=The story takes place over the course of only twenty four hours but so much happens during that small amount of time. It starts when the reader meets Hadley having missed her flight to London by a mere four minutes. As it turns out, those four minutes are some of the most significant of her life, as they result in her booking a later flight and consequently meeting Oliver with whom she is seated throughout the journey across the Atlantic.
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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>0755392175</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jenny Han
 
|title=The Summer I Turned Pretty
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=For as long as she can remember, Belly and her brother Stephen have holidayed in Cousins Beach with her mother, her mother’s friend Susannah, and Susannah’s two sons Conrad and Jeremiah. Belly lives for these summers – even if Conrad and Jeremiah only ever seem to see her as the young tag-along. This summer, though, she knows that’s going to change…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141330538</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1919635017
|author=Megan Miranda
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|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
|title=Fracture
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|author=Kitt Townsend
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Delaney Maxwell just died. Except, she didn't. After 11 minutes under the ice, she was declared officially dead, only to make a full recovery. As far as the doctors are concerned, it's a medical miracle. As far as Delaney's concerned, it's traumatic - not just for the obvious reasons, but because she came back changed. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to people who are about to die, and unable to make sense of why her life was spared. Can the mysterious Troy, who has the same ability, explain what's going on, or does he have a different reason for wanting to get close to her?
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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>140881739X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Brodi Ashton
 
|title=Everneath
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=When I got this book I was dubious and it took me a while to work myself up to starting it. Once I did I devoured it. Wow. This book blew me away – original, suspenseful and captivating. It follows Nikki Beckett, who six months ago followed an Immortal called Cole into the Underworld, Everneath, where for a century she was his battery, feeding him life. Most humans after a century of having their lives sucked away are nothing but shells of their former selves, but not Nikki. After waking from the feed she decides to leave the Everneath to go back to the surface, to her family and to Jack, her boyfriend.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857074571</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Paige Harbison
 
|title=New Girl
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=There’s a new girl at the exclusive Manderley Academy. Everyone knows, though, that she’s only there because Becca Normandy… isn’t. Becca disappeared mysteriously at the end of the previous school year, and the new girl is taking her place. Both in school, and with Becca’s friends – and perhaps even the boys in Becca’s life. Perhaps she shouldn’t get too comfortable, though… because the rumour keeps going around that Becca’s coming back.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0373210426</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|author=Dave Cousins
+
|title=Different for Boys
|title=15 Days Without a Head
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Teens  
|summary=
+
|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.
Laurence is fifteen years old. Ever since the day his father died in a car crash, his mum has sunk into depression and alcoholism. But now she has disappeared, and he has no idea where she is, or even if she is still alive. He has a mischievous six-year-old brother to look after, no money for food, and a home that is barely fit for living. He could just call social services, but there is no guarantee that they'll keep him and his brother together, and he can't let go of the hope that his mother will return. But even if she does return, just how much longer can he keep their dysfunctional family together?
+
|isbn=1529509491
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192732560</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1800901232
|author=Sam Hawksmoor
+
|title=Stitched Up
|title=The Repossession
+
|author=Steve Cole
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|summary=Genie Magee hasn’t seen her boyfriend Rian all summer. In fact, she hasn’t seen anyone all summer – apart from the creepy worshippers of the Church of Free Spirits, whose leader Reverend Schneider has persuaded her mother she’s possessed, due to her strange mystical gift. Rian hasn’t stopped thinking of her, though, and has hatched a daring plan to rescue the love of his life and escape the town of Spurlake – but their escape will lead them into a situation more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.
+
|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>0340997087</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Patrice Lawrence
|author=Mark Lowery
+
|title=Needle
|title=Socks Are Not Enough
+
|rating=3
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Michael seems to run from one disaster to the next. Not even his mother would call him good-looking, he feels he is a failure at everything he tries, and his desperate attempts to introduce some order and control to his life verge on OCD. He only has one friend, although even there the title is debatable: Michael feels either irritated or frustrated with Paul's behaviour most of the time, with good reason—generally speaking it is Paul who lands him in the worst scrapes.
+
|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>1407130021</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Ann Sei Lin
|author=Tim Willocks
+
|title= Rebel Skies
|title=Doglands
+
|rating= 5
|rating=4.5
+
|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=
+
|isbn=1406399590
Furgal is the son of Argal, a near-legendary wolfhound who runs free and wild. But our hero and his sisters are not so fortunate: they were born in the dreaded greyhound prison they call Dedbone's Hole, and their mixed heritage is beginning to show. It cannot be long until their brutal keeper notices, and takes them away to kill them.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393982</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|author=Gillian Philip
+
|title=Wrath
|title=Frost Child
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Fans of Gillian Philip's Firebrand novels will be thrilled to get their hands on this stunning prequel, set when Seth's mother Lilith met his father, the Sithe captain Griogair, for the first time. Starting with Griogair rescuing the youngster from the Lammyr, who have kept her captive for years, it follows Lilith trying to settle into the way of life of the Sithe as Griogair keeps an uneasy eye on her... and those of us who've read [[Firebrand (Rebel Angels) by Gillian Philip|Firebrand]] and [[Rebel Angels: Bloodstone by Gillian Philip|Bloodstone]] realise that he's right to be worried. When a young Sithe boy starts to bully Lilith, he's clearly taking a massive risk...  
+
|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>B006NXYEBE</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|author=Helena Close
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
|title=The Clever One
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=
+
|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.
Sixteen year old Maeve is the clever one in her family. So clever that she can't believe how stupid the others can be - especially her slightly older sister Fiona, a 'pramface' now after falling pregnant to her no good boyfriend Big. After the news broke of Fiona's pregnancy, Maeve told her best friend Mark that she wanted nothing to do with the baby. But she didn't count on loving baby Harvey so much that she'd do anything to protect him - so she sets a plan in motion to rid their family of Big and the rest of the scumbags he associates with.
+
|isbn=1789098130
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340920203</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|author=Marissa Meyer
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|title=The Lunar Chronicles: Cinder
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=This Cinderella does not have to sweep the grate and clean the dishes - she has to mend maglev vehicle tracks.  This Cinders does not leave her shoe behind when invited to the ball, she has her entire foot fall off.  This Cinder does not live in a realm of fairy queens and pumpkin carriages, but New Beijing, a massive city of just two and a half million, due to the Fourth World War.  She's a cyborg - hence the foot, but she's still owned by a crotchety bigot of a step-mother, with two step-sisters.  And this is a very different world, where a global plague is going to be brought too close to home...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141340134</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
 
|title=The Future of Us
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=It's 1996 and Emma has just got a brand new computer and when her friend Josh gives her a free AOL CD he got in the mail, she looks forward to having an internet connection. However, she gets a lot more than she bargained for when the CD inexplicably gives her access to a website that appears to show her snippets of what is going on in her life, and that of her friends and family fifteen years into the future. The website's name? You guessed it: Facebook.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857076078</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Nick Lake
 
|title=In Darkness
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Shorty is lying in the rubble of the great Haitian earthquake of 2010. If he's not rescued soon, he will die. Shorty is from Site Soley, the sprawling slum of Port-au-Prince. After the murder of his father and abduction of his twin sister, Shorty has allowed himself to fall further and further into the slum's gang culture. But Route 9 isn't all about drug-dealing and gun-running - it's also about feeding the poor and educating the children. And Shorty has a great deal to teach his readers, as he recounts his life while waiting to die.  
+
|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>1408824183</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|author=Michael Northrop
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|title=Trapped
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=When school closes early because of the snow coming down, Scott and his friends decide to take advantage of the extra time to work on a go-kart they've been building in shop class. But with nearly everyone else having left the school, and the snow coming down faster and faster, they realise they may have made a terrible mistake. So begins a chilling (sorry!) tale, which sees seven students struggle to hold on as the weather gets ever worse.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907411364</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Alan Gibbons
 
|title=Street of Tall People
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It's the East End of London, and it's 1936, and it's a time of fightingJewish lad Benny, and Jimmy, who's rather more C-of-E, are going to become firm friends through having a boxing bout against each otherBenny is fighting against the more extreme anti-Goyim sentiments of his neighbour Yaro.  Jimmy has to fight, it seems, against life, what with his father dieing and his mother having found a new boyfriend, putting a sense of social outcast on the lad.  And all through this is the fight to come, around the corner, against Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts.
+
|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 islandsHere be Vikings, that kind of Scottish islandDad is going to be automating the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt the elusive Greenland shark.  And Julia, well, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one night.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907869239</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|author=Brenna Yovanoff
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|title=Smoulder
+
|rating= 4
|rating=4.5
+
|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=Daphne is a quiet teenage girl who is half-demon and half-fallen angel. She's the daughter of Lucifer and Lilith and her sisters are seductive soul-sucking succubi (sibilance!). However, Daphne is more like her brother, Obie, whose gentle nature and genuine kindness make him an oddity in Pandemonium. When her brother leaves to make a life for himself on Earth, Daphne finds herself alone, confused and unsure of her future; but when she learns that her brother has been kidnapped by a psychopathic archangel she realises that she will stop at nothing to save him, even if that means going to Earth alone and facing the risk of being hunted and destroyed by Azrael.
+
|isbn=1406394815
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857070789</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ally Kennen
 
|title=Bullet Boys
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=''Alex is a crack shot. His gamekeeper father trained him well.''<br>
 
''Levi would rather pull a girl than a trigger.''<br>
 
''Max is a bomb about to go off.''
 
 
 
These are three unlikely friends. Alex doesn't really want to do his A levels. He'd rather join his father in estate management. But his father feels he needs to connect with the world more, especially since his mother died, and so Alex goes along with his wishes with as glad a heart as he can manage. Max doesn't have much choice either. Expelled from his posh private school and a severe disappointment to his military family, Hammerton is his last chance to salvage some chance of a future. Levi provides the link between these two wildly different boys. He's an easygoing, happy-go-lucky lad whose dreams are much more about being a lover than a fighter.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407129902</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Frank Cottrell Boyce
 
|title=The Unforgotten Coat
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Julie lives in Bootle and is in her last year of primary school. She's like every little girl, hoping to be invited to her friends' houses for tea and just beginning to think about boys. She's never thought much about the world outside Bootle but the arrival of Chingis and his younger brother Nergui is about to change all that. The two boys are nomads from Mongolia and they arrive at school on a hot summer's day, wearing traditional Mongolian furry coats and hats. Taking a shine to Julie, Chingis appoints her his Good Guide to the UK. And in return he tells her stories of horsemen and eagles and shows her Polaroid photos of a land far away.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406333859</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|author=Carrie Jones and Steven E Wedel
 
|title=After Obsession
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Aimee Avery isn't a normal teenage girl. She has supernatural abilities – Aimee is a healer. But something evil is calling to her to the River, like her mother who drowned in the River. Aimee's mum had supernatural abilities too, and was branded insane by those around her. But was she? Or is there something really out there killing people in the river? Was Aimee's mum's suicide a suicide at all?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408818272</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

0241645441.jpg

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

1839944420.jpg

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

1529509491.jpg

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

1800901232.jpg

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

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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

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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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