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
__NOTOC__
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|author=Leanne Egan
{{newreview
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|title=Lover Birds
|author=Claire Merle
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|rating=4.5
|title=The Glimpse
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Ana's Dad helped invent the DNA test that helps to divide Society into two categories: Pures and Crazies. Pures are people who are 'normal', and Crazies are people who carry genes for depression, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Having lived as a Pure all her life, when Ana finds out her test was wrong her world falls apart. Now, marrying Jasper, a Pure-boy, is her only chance of a normal life. But will Jasper still want her now she's a Crazy?
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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>0571280536</amazonuk>
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|isbn=000862657X
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|author=Rachel Hartman
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|title=Wild East
|title=Seraphina
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=The Comonot Treaty is approaching its 40th anniversary but the state of play between humans and dragons is still parlous. The people in Goredd still revile and distrust the dragons who walk among them in human form. For the dragons, humans are like cockroaches - easily crushed individually, but surprisingly resilient when they band together. Humans are impulsive, emotional. Dragons are impassive, logical. It's not an easy fit and the fragile peace is at risk after the murder of a Goreddi prince. Dragons are suspected of the crime.  
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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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857531565</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0241645441
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jenny Valentine
|author=Diana Hendry
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|title=Us in the Before and After
|title=The Seeing
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=It's 1956 when Natalie comes storming into the quiet seaside town of Norton and slap-bang into Lizzie's life. Natalie is from the wrong side of the tracks and reserved, well-to-do Lizzie is immediately drawn to this unconventional girl who wears her poverty and neglect like a badge of courage. As the two girls grow closer over the summer, Natalie reveals a shocking secret - her odd younger brother Philip has the gift of second sight and can see "left over Nazis" lying in wait, ready to start another war when the time is right. Natalie says it's up to the three of them to rid Norton of these LONs.
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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>037033213X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1471196585
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Victoria Lamb
 
|title=Witchstruck
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Meg Lytton comes from a family of witches. Her mother, who died in childbirth, renounced her gift in order to marry. But Meg's Aunt Jane continued to practise and has taught Meg to hone her skills. Sent to serve the Princess Elizabeth - in confinement at Woodstock, suspected of treason against her sister - Meg soon finds that her royal mistress has a strong interest in the occult and encourages her to continue. Elizabeth is beset by danger and must tread a delicate path through intrigues and religion. Meg, too, walks in peril. The ruthless witchfinder Marcus Dent has taken an uncomfortably close interest in her and if he were to discover her secret, he would send her straight to her death.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>055256611X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Max Boucherat
|author=Keris Stainton
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|title=Emma Hearts LA
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Emma's not thrilled to be moving across the Atlantic to LA - unlike her mother and her younger sister Bex. Her mum has a new job and Bex is set to meet with a Hollywood agent. All Emma has to look forward to is a reunion with Oscar, the dorky boy she knew when growing up. When she meets Oscar, though, he's unexpectedly cute... and then TV star Alex Hall appears on the scene as well. With two boys interested, great weather, and locations from movies and TV shows at every turn, maybe LA is actually a pretty good place to live...
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|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong?  Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky.  For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408319527</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|author=Jeri Smith-Ready
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|title=Compass and Blade
|title=Shine
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|rating=3.5
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Age gap relationships - who'd risk them?  Zach is only a brief moment older than Aura, but in that instant the world changed, as Aura and anyone younger can see and speak to ghosts - while Zach might as well be poison to them.  Over two books Aura has accepted being with Zach and not her dead rock-star boyfriend, who has finally, permanently, moved on.  [[Shift by Jeri Smith-Ready|Last time]] they even found out a lot about how and why the Shift, as that moment is called, happened. Now we're to consider the present and the future - what it would mean for Zach and Aura to really get together, and what the Powers That Be (whoever they are) are expecting of them, together and apart. It's the last in the trilogy, so a lot of secrets will be revealed, a lot of threat will be faced - and it'll be emotional.
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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>0857074113</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=Carol Midgley
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|isbn=0008664730
|title=My Family and Other Freaks
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Danielle has an embarrassing family, a dog who's in love with an Ugg boot, and a love rival who she can't possibly live up to – or can she? Determined not to be beaten in her efforts to secure Damien's affections, Danni hits on a plan – only for it to go horribly wrong, landing her with the nickname of 'Dench The Stench'. Surely things can only get better – can't they?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857388940</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Harry Allen
|author=Simone Elkeles
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|title=Children of the Sun
|title=Chain Reaction (Perfect Chemistry)
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|rating=5
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Luis Fuentes is a risk-taker who meets a feisty girl whom he falls in love with. Unfortunately, a gang called the Latino Blood are also interested in him for rather different reasons, and Nikki doesn’t approve of them. Who will win out – the gang, or the girl?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857077473</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kim Harrington
 
|title=Clarity
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=The tourist season at Cape Cod is about to start and for Clarity 'Clare' Fern and her family, this is really important. Clare's family are psychic, not the phoney kind who take your money and give you a false prediction about tall dark strangers - the genuine kind. Clare's mother can read minds, her brother Perry can talk to the dead, and Clare can see memories linked to objects. Their family business is entertaining the tourists, and the summer rush pays the winter bills.
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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>1407130854</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1805140493
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Alexia Casale
|author=Keith Gray
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|title=Next
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=That Keith Gray hangs out with all the cool people, you know. Hot on the heels of one fabulous anthology of short stories all about virginity, [[Losing It by Keith Gray|Losing It]], comes ''Next''. The topic this time is life after death and it's another preoccupation for young people. What's next? What will it be like? How will those left behind manage and cope? Each of the cool people contributes an idea of what death may bring.
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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>1849393001</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Simon Fox
|author=Pete Hautman
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|title=Deadlock
|title=What Boys Really Want
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Adam is a teenage entrepeneur with a keen eye for a get rich quick scheme. His best friend Lita is an aspiring novelist who also writes an anonymous blog. There's definitely no romance between them - Lita may have broken up a couple of Adam's relationships without him realising it, but that's for his own good. In fact, Lita's convinced Adam knows nothing about romance, so when he comes up with the great idea of writing a self-help book which explains what boys are looking for in a girl, she wants nothing to do with it. Of course, if she took more of an interest, she might notice there are a lot of parts with a significant resemblance to a certain blog...
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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>1407132113</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kathleen Peacock
 
|title=Deadly Hemlock
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Mackenzie's best friend Amy was the final victim in a string of werewolf killings in the town of Hemlock. Lupine syndrome is spreading and the government has set up internment camps for all those infected. But Amy's killer was never caught. When the vigilante Trackers turn up in town, determined to hunt down the culprit, Mac is uneasy. The Trackers are extremists and often act outside the law. So Mac sets out on her own investigation of Amy's death. And what she discovers will change her life forever...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857072110</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Francis Bennett
 
|title=The Crabber Stories
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Short Stories
 
|summary=John White was known to everyone as Crabber - a nickname which he once earned and which then stuck - and he grew up on the shores of Long Island in the nineteen-fifties.  It was a close-knit community and a time when children had more freedom than they are likely to be allowed now.  We watch as Crabber grows from being a boy still suffering from the death of his elder brother when we first met him through to a time when he's old enough to go on a hunting trip on the mainland with a local family.  He tells his own stories, as truthfully as he can and with the sort of insight which children have before life injects its cynicism.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00737IKIW</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lex Croucher
|author=Sarra Manning
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|title=Adorkable
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Jeane Smith has her own quirky fashion sense, half a million Twitter followers, and a place on the Guardian's '30 People Under 30 Who Are Changing The World' list. Michael Lee has good looks, designer clothes, and parents who push him to excel at everything. They have nothing in common - so why do they end up kissing so often?
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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>1907411003</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1526651793
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Nick Brooks
|author=Daniela Sacerdoti
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|title=Promise Boys
|title=Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy)
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Seventeen-year-old Sarah Midnight's parents are dead. Everyone else thinks it's an accident - but she knows the truth because her parents were demon hunters and her dreams helped her guide them from the safety of her bed. But they didn't train her for what would happen when they were gone - and if she doesn't master her powers, and learn who she can trust, she might be the next to die. Can she live up to the Midnight motto, Don't Let Them Roam?
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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>1845023706</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1919635017
|author=Garth Nix
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|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
|title=A Confusion of Princes
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|author=Kitt Townsend
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Meet Khemri.  One of the universe's chosen, he has been selected as a Prince, giving him biological enhancements, mental connection to priests to aid his psychic ability, and so much more.  It has also probably led to the death of his parents, and meant he is alone except for a very close bodyguard, but - at least he is in the running to become Emperor, and thus almost godlike. But in a world where you can have everything - including more than one chance at living - it might still be wise to think more about what you wish for...
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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>0007298358</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|author=Catherine Bruton
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|title=Different for Boys
|title=Pop!
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Teens  
|summary=Elfie's mam has done her twelfth - or is it thirteenth? - bunk and things aren't so hot in the Baguley household. No mother, no money, and an ongoing strike plagued by immigrant workers and scabs. Elfie needs a plan. And since plans are what Elfie excels at - if you listen to Elfie and not to anybody else - she soon comes up with a stonker. If she can win TV talent show Pop to the Top, she'll net a cool £25k - enough to get her father out of debt and to fund her friend Jimmy's Olympic swimming dreams. All she needs is a voice, which she finds in Agnes, who sings like an angel.  
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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>1405261331</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1529509491
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1800901232
|author=Paolo Bacigalupi
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|title=Stitched Up
|title=The Drowned Cities
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|author=Steve Cole
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
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|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|summary=The best thing about Paolo Bacigalupi's latest young adult novel is that you almost certainly wouldn't realise it was intended for a younger audience unless someone pointed it out to you. ''The Drowned Cities'' may lack the sex, swearing and amoral protagonists of his award-winning adult novel '[[The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi|The Windup Girl]], but it has all the needle-sharp description, complex world-building and brilliant characters that have rapidly made a name for Bacigalupi as one of this centuries preeminent science-fiction writers.
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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>1907411119</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrice Lawrence
|author=Karen McCombie
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|title=Needle
|title=Life According to... Alice B. Lovely
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|rating=3
|rating=5
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|genre=Teens
|genre=Confident Readers
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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...
|summary=
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|isbn=1800901011
Thirteen-year-old Edie knows that she doesn't need a nanny. She's old enough to look after herself, and her six-year-old brother Stan. Between them, they've managed to scare off nearly everyone who their parents have hired to take care of them. So when a girl of just sixteen starts looking after them after school, Edie is less than impressed. But then the girl, Alice B. Lovely, with her captivating dress sense and strange way of looking at the world, starts to win over Stan... could she be the person to fix Edie's problems?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407131729</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author= Ann Sei Lin
|author=Kendare Blake
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|title= Rebel Skies
|title=Anna Dressed in Blood
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|rating= 5
|rating=4
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|genre= Teens
|genre=Teens
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|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=Cas Lowood is no ordinary high school boy. He lives a peripatetic existence, hunting malevolent ghosts and "killing" them with his father's knife. A tip-off from a trusted informant lets Cas know that Thunder Bay's Anna Dressed In Blood is no urban myth and so he and his white witch mother set off for the Canadian town. Something tells Cas that Anna is no ordinary ghost and he feels sure that once she is despatched - to wherever ghosts go - he will be ready at last to deal with the voodoo spirit that killed and ate his father...
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|isbn=1406399590
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140832072X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|author=Mike Lancaster
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|title=Wrath
|title=1.4
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Peter Vincent lives a privileged life. His father is a world-renowned scientist and fully expects his son to follow in his footsteps. But Peter has other ideas. He wants to study literature. Although he enjoys gaming and social networking, he's uncomfortable about spending too much time on The Link, a system which connects the minds of every individual on the planet. So when he meets Strakerite Alpha, he is immediately attracted to her. Peter's father hates the Strakerites, who believe that human evolution depends on regular upgrades from alien aggressors.
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|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...
 
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|isbn=1800900899
So when Alpha contacts Peter to tell him that people are disappearing, he is more than willing to help. Together, they will uncover a conspiracy to hide the clock ticking down to the next upgrade...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405258187</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Maureen Doyle McQuerry
 
|title=The Peculiars
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Lena's Father left when she was a child, disappearing North to the dangerous and mysterious wilderness called Scree where The Peculiars live - people with unnatural physical features. Lena, herself, has unnaturally long and awkward hands and feet which makes her an easy target for bullies. But Lena wants to know more about herself, why has she got these hands and feet? Is it because she has 'goblin blood' like her bitter Grandmother tells her?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1419701789</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Diane Messidoro
 
|title=How To Keep A Boy As A Pet
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Circe Shaw is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with Daniel Craig, Johnny Depp and Jude Law. Sounds like heaven, right? Sadly, Daniel, Johnny, and Jude are her pets, and the only actual men around are two who are interested in her mum, not her. What’s a girl to do? Circe decides to start a blog to help her reach her goal of becoming a journalist, and to find out the truth about boys.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405258160</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Laura Powell
 
|title=Burn Mark
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Glory comes from a long line of witches. She knows the fae will show itself in her eventually. And when it does, Glory intends to make sure her East End coven regains its former and elevated status. Lucas is the privileged son of the Inquisition's Chief Prosecutor. He holds the prevalent view that witchcraft and witchcrime are all but synonymous and that witchkind generally presents a serious threat to national security. He intends to follow his father into the Inquisition...  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815222</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|author=Philippa Gregory
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
|title=Changeling
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Luca Vero is expelled from his monastery after being accused of heresy. The seventeen-year-old is recruited to map the End of Days, and his first task is to go to a nunnery where a Lady Abbess of his own age has been accused of witchcraft. Will he find Isolde guilty and condemn her to the pyre, or is there more to the case than meets the eye?
+
|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>0857077309</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|author=Mark Walden
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|title=Earthfall
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary='They are coming. If you are caught, you will not escape. If you escape, they will hunt you down. You must not be captured. Everything depends on you. Prepare for Earthfall.'
 
 
 
Life is chugging along pretty much as normal for Sam Riley when his father suddenly turns grey with fear and rushes off to an emergency at work. Within 24 hours, alien spaceships have appeared above every major city across the world and enslaved the entire population with a mind probe. Except Sam. Sam has no idea why he is immune to the alien signal or how he recovered from a terrible injury after a fight with one of their drones. But after a year hiding in London's sewers, he has learned how to survive.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815664</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Michael Williams
 
|title=Now is the Time for Running
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=In a remote village in Zimbabwe, Deo is playing football with his friends while his brother Innocent looks on. Innocent takes a bit of looking after - deprived of oxygen during birth, he's not quite like other children and Deo is fiercely protective of him. Then the soldiers arrive, looking for a delivery of food aid and the traitors who welcome help from the evil Americans, and they destroy the entire village. Now orphans, the two boys have no choice but to flee to South Africa in the hopes of finding their long-lost father. Since their only possessions are Innocent's bix box and Deo's football (stuffed with worthless billion dollar notes), it won't be easy...  
+
|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>1848530838</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|author=Veronica Roth
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|title=Insurgent
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''Insurgent'' (clever title, you'll see) begins right where [[Divergent by Veronica Roth|Divergent]] left off. The social structure of Tris's world is beginning to fall apart. After the Erudite simulation attack on the Abnegation, the factions are in disarray. The Dauntless are split - half providing the military muscle for the Erudite and the other half seeking alliances with the other factions. But Amity insist on remaining neutral in the hopes of avoiding further conflict and the Candor don't have anything to bargain. The few remaining Abnegation are refugees. But there is another group - the factionless - who may hold the key to defeating the Erudite.
+
|summary=Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers for a summer, in the far NE of the Scottish islands. Here be Vikings, that kind of Scottish island. Dad is going to be automating the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt the elusive Greenland shark. And Julia, well, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one night.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007442920</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ellie Phillips
 
|title=Dads, Geeks and Blue Haired Freaks
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Sadie Nathanson is stunned to get a card from her dad on her fifteenth birthday. Not only has she never met her dad, but to all intents and purposes he doesn't even exist. He was a sperm donor, that's all. In view of this, it's fairly obvious that the card is a mean joke, probably played by her ex-best friend Shonna Matthews. But it makes her start to think about her dad a bit more, and she decides to track him down.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405258195</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|author=A C Gaughen
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|title=Scarlet
+
|rating= 4
|rating=4
+
|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=Everyone knows the story of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. But what if they weren't all men? What if Will Scarlet, the violent youngster who can throw a knife with the same accuracy as Robin shoots a bow, was a girl?  
+
|isbn=1406394815
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408819767</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|author=Julia Green
 
|title=Bringing the Summer
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Freya is returning home from a summer spent with her grandparents, ready to start her A levels. The train she is travelling on stops suddenly and Freya is horrified when she realises that a girl has committed suicide on the line. A sense of obligation leads her to attend the girl's funeral. There, she meets Gabes, a gorgeous boy who goes to her college. Freya is instantly attracted, not just by Gabes, but by his whole, slightly bohemian, family, so different to her own. But there's also a more dangerous attraction. Theo, Gabes's older brother, makes his own interest in Freya very apparent. Theo is very different from Gabes - unpredictable, dark, wild.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408819589</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gill Lewis
 
|title=White Dolphin
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Things aren't going too well for Kara. She's mocked at school for her dyslexia. Her father is struggling to find work and they're cooped up living with judgemental Auntie Bev. And, worse of all, Mum is not around. A marine biologist, she disappeared on an expedition along with several of her colleagues and no bodies were ever found. Kara clings on determinedly to her belief that her mother will return some day, much to the frustration of everyone around her, and her only solace is sailing in her father's boat, Moana.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192756222</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=David Lukens
 
|title=Going Too Far
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Adults of a certain age remember a time when kids were respectful when you met them in the street.  They certainly didn't answer you back, skateboard on the pavements and take drugs, so the idea of electing a sheriff - the man in overall charge of the police in a town - who pledged to get tough on these kids appealed to them.  In fact, what's not to like about the idea? It takes crime off the streets, makes the town a safer place and it must be better that kids are taught to obey the law.  Common sense, when you think about, isn't it?  Well, there is another side to the story.  What if these kids are just having a bit of innocent fun in an area that was little more than a traffic island?  What if the drug taking is hardly serious?  What if one of the kids dies?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B007TX65UK</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 09:54, 8 July 2024

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Review of

Lover Birds by Leanne Egan

4.5star.jpg Teens

When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn't she? Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so far, and she's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabel, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she? Full Review

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Review of

Wild East by Ashley Hickson-Lovence

4.5star.jpg Teens

Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble. He listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapper. But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words. Full Review

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Review of

Us in the Before and After by Jenny Valentine

5star.jpg Teens

Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together. Full Review

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Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Compass and Blade by Rachel Greenlaw

3.5star.jpg Teens

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

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

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Review of

Children of the Sun by Harry Allen

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Sing if you Can't Dance by Alexia Casale

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Stitched Up by Steve Cole

5star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

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

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Review of

Needle by Patrice Lawrence

3star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1789098130.jpg

Review of

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1788452372.jpg

Review of

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1510107789.jpg

Review of

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

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1406394815.jpg

Review of

The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud

4star.jpg Teens

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

Move on to Newest Thrillers Reviews