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=David Belbin
 
|title=Student
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=When Allison secured her place in Nottingham University, she thought of it as a way to escape a miserable home life, with an absent father, drunk mother and un-committing boyfriend. She thought university would be a place for intellectual debate, and the creation of loyal friendships and love. However, she quickly realises that student life isn't like those rosy pictures you get on prospectuses. In ''Student'', we see a university experience defined by a trinity of drugs, lust and study, one that changes Allison and everyone around her.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907869530</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Katie McGarry
 
|title=Pushing the Limits
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Echo used to be popular. Until a particular night when something happened, leaving her with scars on her arms and a blank space where her memory of that night should be. As if having a stepmother who used to be her babysitter and a brother who died in Afghanistan wasn't already making life hard enough, she's trying to work out if she'll ever recall what she went through. Then she meets Noah, who shares a therapist with her and is nearly as damaged as she is. Torn away from his beloved younger brothers after their parents died, he's desperate to become their legal guardian when he turns eighteen – but with a hot temper and a dubious academic record over the past couple of years, is there any way a judge would choose him over the foster parents they're currently living with? Could these two broken teenagers help each other to heal?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184845077X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=William Richter
 
|title=Dark Eyes
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Born in Russia but brought up in New York by wealthy adoptive parents, before rejecting them to live on the streets with her friends, Wallis Stoneman has never known too much about her past. This lack of knowledge might turn out to be deadly, though, when a chance encounter leads to her being given a letter from her birth mother. As Wally tries to track her down, she and her friends enter a murky world where the stakes are high, the truth is hidden, and every move they make could be their last.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014134234X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lisa Stasse
 
|title=The Forsaken
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Alenna Shawcross has grown up in a newly-formed super country controlled by the military dictatorship that stole her parents from her as a child. Alenna has grown up in a state-run orphanage, in anticipation of the Test, a government-administered initiative designed to identify those teens most likely to become criminals. As you'd expect in a dystopian thriller, Alenna fails the test and ends up on an isolated island with other potential criminals. However, she soon finds that the island isn't all that she had been led to believe.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408318806</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Andy Mulligan
 
|title=Ribblestrop Forever!
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=It's a new term for Ribblestrop, the weirdest boarding school in the world of fiction. The pupils, who of course include a bus-load of orphaned Himalayan circus stars, are so used to the extraordinary that when three returning children arrive by landing the plane they're travelling in - '''onto''' the said bus - nobody bats an eyelid. But problems begin when they stray onto a rival school's ground, and practically rescue a historian living in a stolen mobile library, who is tracing the ghosts of an ancient tribe across the local region. Soon things conspire to put the whole faculty on the same path...
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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>0857078003</amazonuk>
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|isbn=000862657X
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|author=S J Kincaid
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|title=Wild East
|title=Insignia
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Tom is awkward, wary and self-reliant. He has spent his life on the road, moving from casino to casino with his dad and catching a little online education whenever the opportunity presents itself, but frankly he is far more concerned with finding his next meal than any more distant future. A poor diet and a life spent in gaming rooms has left him scrawny, small, and with a serious case of acne. He feels he is nothing and no one, and cannot imagine ever living any other life.
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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>147140000X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0241645441
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jenny Valentine
|author=Tom Easton
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|title=Us in the Before and After
|title=HAV3N
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|rating=5
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Initially, people thought it was just another media scare. Unfortunately, HAV3N is real and it is apocalyptic. Incredibly virulent, it is a strain of bird flu to which no one has any natural immunity. It spreads through global populations with the speed and ferocity of a forest fire, killing its victims within hours of infection, making them literally cough out their lungs. The small village of Great Sheen put up barricades isolating them from the infected, in a desperate bid for survival, but it does little to stop HAV3N. It is only the timely arrival of scientist Michael Pirbright with an experimental vaccine and antivirals that saves the village from eradication. However, when the villagers are finally able to freely venture outside of the village, they discover the horrible truth. Pirbright's discovery of the vaccine was an incalculable stroke of luck, one that hasn't been repeated, and by making the choice to save his family and the village Pirbright was too late to save anyone else. The rest of the population appears to have been entirely eradicated by the disease. They might be the only humans left alive…
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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>1849394180</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Max Boucherat
|author=Cora Harrison
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|title=Debutantes
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The year is 1923. Everyone who is anyone is enjoying themselves in London, coming out as a debutante and eagerly anticipating the royal wedding. But the Derringtons aren’t really anyone – they’re stuck in their run-down house in the country with their father and their great-aunt, without the money or fashionable dresses for eldest sister Violet to have the season she desperately wants. Can these four young ladies make their way in the world?
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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>1447205944</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|author=Bethany Griffin
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|title=Compass and Blade
|title=The Masque of the Red Death
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=In a society devastated by an illness which is killing off the poor as the rich are kept safe by wearing special porcelain masks, Araby is seeking oblivion. She is trying to get over the death of her brother, Finn, who even her scientist father - the inventor of the masks - wasn't able to save. Feeling she has nothing left to live for, she's resigned herself to drug-fuelled nights in the Debauchery Club along with April, niece of the city's ruler Prince Prospero. When she meets two different, but enchanting, boys there, and becomes involved in events which will shape the destiny of the city, will she find something worth fighting for?
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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>1780621191</amazonuk>
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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.
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|isbn=0008664730
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Harry Allen
|author=Cath Crowley
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|title=Children of the Sun
|title=Graffiti Moon
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lucy wants to celebrate the end of school by finding the mysterious graffiti artist Shadow, whose work she's becoming obsessed with. The last thing she wants is to be stuck with Ed, a boy she briefly dated a couple of years ago, especially since that date ended with her breaking his nose after he put his hands in an inappropriate place. Ed, though, is supposed to be able to help her find Shadow, so she puts up with him. During the night, we see the story from both Lucy and Ed's sides as they gradually grow closer to each other.
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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>1444907875</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1805140493
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Alexia Casale
|author=John Marsden
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|title=The Dead of the Night (The Tomorrow Series)
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Months after the invasion chronicled in the first book in this series, Ellie and her friends are still fighting against the enemy. Their latest plan - to rescue Kevin, who's imprisoned, and Callie, who's in a coma, after the ending of the first novel. Can they succeed?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857388738</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Melvin Burgess
 
|title=The Baby And Fly Pie
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Fly Pie, his sister Jane and his friend Sham live in an alternate London, one full of brutality and ghettos. They are rubbish kids, employed by Mother Shelley (an alternate Fagin) to pick through rich people's rubbish for profit. Their lives are hard and brutal and, often, hungry. But they still have their dreams. Fly Pie longs to become a baker. He has cold hands; perfect for pastry. Sham wants to become one of Mother Shelley's Big Boys - and, eventually, to rise as possible through the criminal ranks to become an important person in a big gang. Jane, she's a bit different. She wants more. Not more money. More integrity. Jane wants to live a life where lying and cheating aren't necessities.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849394555</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=John Boyne
 
|title=The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Whereas some children's authors make their young heroes and heroines out to be as regular human beings, [[:Category:John Boyne|John Boyne]] does things differently.  After the [[The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne|boy]] whose dad had the strangest job in this world, came [[Noah Barleywater Runs Away by John Boyne|Noah Barleycorn]] and his unusual parentage, and now Barnaby Brocket.  He shouldn't have turned out extraordinary in any way - both his parents are Mr and Mrs Average Australian, and his dad certainly keeps both feet on the ground - it's just Barnaby cannot.  From the moment he was born, gravity has had the wrong effect on him, and he's spent his life bumping into the ceiling.  Until one fateful day, when he is forced to both go and grow up, and finds out just what a rarity being normal is.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857531468</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lil Chase
 
|title=Secrets, Lies and Locker 62
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Ever since popular, bright, sporty Hillary Randle vanished from Mount Selwyn High 13 years ago her locker - locker 62 - hasn't been used. At least not in the normal sense. Instead, people have posted their deepest, darkest secrets into it, knowing that no-one will find them out. Until a new girl, Maya, comes to school and is given the combination to the locker - and to a generation of people's mysteries. Will she use them to become popular, or to help people?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085738483X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Elizabeth Miles
 
|title=Envy (Fury Trilogy)
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Spring is coming to Ascension and, despite everything that happened in [[Fury (Fury Trilogy) by Elizabeth Miles|Fury]], Em knows that the Furies will be back. With Drea's help, she fully intends to defeat them - only then will she be able to tell JD how she really feels about him. But the Furies are stronger than Em has realised. She's finding it hard to fit back in with Gabby and her old friends and she carries a dark feeling that she can't quite shake. JD isn't speaking to her and Crow, an Ascension high school dropout, seems to show up wherever she goes.
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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>085707203X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Simon Fox
|author=Daniel Handler
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|title=Deadlock
|title=Why We Broke Up
 
|rating=2.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Minerva and Ed were in a relationship. For various reasons, that relationship has come to an end. Minerva decides to help herself to move on from her ex-boyfriend by packing up everything she connects with him into a box and leaving it on his doorstep, along with a long letter explaining why they broke up. A long, long letter.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405261358</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Susie Day
 
|title=The Twice-Lived Summer of Bluebell Jones
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Bluebell Jones is worried about turning thirteen. How is she meant to become a cool, glamorous teenager without some help? When a wish summons Red, her confident, vibrant fourteen-year-old future self to join her on holiday, she thinks that she’s found the answer to her prayers. But Red has secrets of her own – and there’s some things that Blue needs to find out for herself.
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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>1407120840</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lex Croucher
|author=Bali Rai
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|title=Fire City
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Martha lives with other Unwanted in Fire City, a factory zone which supplies the Wanted and their demon masters. Nobody knows how the Wanted - a shadowy group of the rich and powerful from the world as it used to be - managed to summon the Demons, but all the Unwanted know what it's like to live under their rule - nasty, brutish and short. But Martha isn't the type to give up and she has joined the Resistance, fighting to save the old and infirm from the demons' regular cullings. It's a hopeless task though, and Resistance numbers are shrinking by the day...
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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>0552556025</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1526651793
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Nick Brooks
|author=Sarah Silverwood
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|title=Promise Boys
|title=The London Stone: The Nowhere Chronicles Book Three
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Looking back at ''The Double-Edged Sword'', when Fin set out on an adventure with his friends Christopher and Joe, everything seemed so much simpler and optimistic. Mysteries represented exciting revelations to be discovered rather than powerful secrets with dangerous implications, and the words of the Prophecy were just a warning for future times. Now the Prophecy, and the chaos it promises, has come to pass and Arnold Mather has seized control of power in Nowhere, becoming its dark king.
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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>1780620675</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kenneth Oppel
 
|title=Such Wicked Intent (Victor Frankenstein)
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=''Such Wicked Intent'' takes us to a few months after the shocking conclusion to Victor Frankenstein's alchemical attempt to save his brother's life in [[This Dark Endeavour by Kenneth Oppel|This Dark Endeavour]]. The Dark Library has been burned and the entire family is trying to move on. Elizabeth is secretly considering joining a convent. Henry is making plans to travel abroad with his merchant father. Victor's parents are trying to come to terms with everything but his mother is finding it particularly difficult.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857560166</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1919635017
|author=Tonya Hurley
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|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
|title=The Blessed
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|author=Kitt Townsend
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Three girls all find themselves in the emergency room at Perpetual Help Hospital on Halloween. Agnes - the hopeless romantic -- has just tried to take her own life. Cecilia -- the runaway rocker -- found drowned, face down in a puddle. Finally, Lucy -- spoilt rich party girl -- overdose. These three girls have never met each other before, and have nothing in common, until they all meet the mysterious Sebastian. He brings the girls together, and gives each of them what they have been searching for. But in the fight for his heart, will they lose something more important?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444904752</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Andy Briggs
 
|title=Tarzan: The Jungle Warrior
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Rokoff, the world’s most notorious hunter is in Africa, to snatch a baby gorilla from its family. When he does so, it’s left to Tarzan to chase across several countries to rescue the youngster, Karnath. But there may be danger closer to hand – can all of the wild man's friends be trusted?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057127353X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Fiona Foden
 
|title=Cassie's Crush
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Cassie falls head over heels for the new boy at school from the first moment she sets eyes on him. The only problem is, her crush makes her so nervous she can barely even pluck up the courage to say hello, let alone ask him out. With a bit of help from her friends, can she convince Ollie she's the girl for him?
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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>1407120875</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|author=Moira Young
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|title=Different for Boys
|title=Rebel Heart (Dustlands)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Teens  
|summary=
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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.
Saba has retrieved her brother Lugh, kidnapped by the Tonton, but at great cost. She's haunted by dreams of Epona, the friend she killed during the battle so that she wouldn't fall into enemy hands. Lugh is clearly damaged - affected by captivity in ways he just won't discuss. And she misses Jack, who has gone to tell Molly that Ike is dead, with a deep, inconsolable desperation. Travelling through the Waste is difficult, made even more difficult by the ghosts that haunt Saba's dreams. Halting at the camp of a seer, the party is reunited with Maev, who brings terrible news. Not only is there a price on Saba's head, and a terrible new leader for the Tontons, but Jack has changed sides and joined the enemy...
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|isbn=1529509491
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407124366</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1800901232
|author=Michelle Paver
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|title=Stitched Up
|title=Gods and Warriors (1)
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|author=Steve Cole
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|summary=Oh, I'm so glad this series has finally arrived! Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness about Torak and Renn and Wolf is my absolute favourite middle grade sequence of recent years. Michelle has a such a way of writing. Her books are identifiably children's books - there's no diluting attempt at crossover fiction. Her research is impeccable but she uses it to flavour and colour her stories, never to be didactic. She writes from the point of view of animals but is never twee and anthropomorphic. Her characters - human and animal - are truly alive; vital and colourful and, as in all good children's books, called upon to show extraordinary courage. There's a little bit of magic but not enough to get in the way of the story or the characters, and it's all in keeping with prehistoric, superstitious societies.  
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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>0141339268</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrice Lawrence
|author=Pauline Chandler
+
|title=Needle
|title=Dark Thread
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|rating=3
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Kate is an artisan weaver, like her mother. But she is so full of grief and guilt that she can't even think about returning to her craft. Because Kate's mother died in a road accident and Kate thinks it was all her fault. And, all of a sudden, everything gets too much - the kindly-meant but oppressive sympathy - and Kate collapses. She wakes, still at the mill, but in a long-past time. Here, Kate must learn to weave the dark threads of her life into its overall picture. Until she does, she can't return home...  
+
|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>1907869565</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Ann Sei Lin
|author=Cathy Hopkins
+
|title= Rebel Skies
|title=Love at Second Sight
+
|rating= 5
|rating=4
+
|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=Jo is tired of being 'Miss Tag Along' as friends Effy and Tash hang out with their boyfriends. Jo has never had much luck in the love life department. Yes there's Owen, Effy's brother - but though they get on so well, and are so perfect for each other (according to everyone else) Jo's never really felt that special something with him, that spark.
+
|isbn=1406399590
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857075500</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|author=Ruth Warburton
+
|title=Wrath
|title=A Witch in Love
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=
+
|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...
Anna has sworn off magic since she accidentally bewitched Seth into falling in love with her. He's convinced the spell has been lifted and his feelings for her are genuine - but she's not so sure. Anna might want to be finished with magic, though - but it keeps leaking out. When a visit to her old home reveals that someone placed a powerful spell which was the reason she didn't discover her abilities until coming to Winter, she's left wishing she knew more about her family history. As if that wasn't enough, the Ealdwitan are still taking an interest in her and she's also being threatened by a group of 'outwiths' who appear to have found out her secret...
+
|isbn=1800900899
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444904701</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|author=Keith Austin
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
|title=Grymm
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Mina and Jacob are step siblings. Unwilling ones. Mina thinks Jake is a mummy's boy. Jake thinks Mina is weird and witchy. In fact, the only thing these two can agree upon is that they both dislike new baby Bryan even more than they dislike one another. And who could blame them? Not only does Bryan take up all the attention of both parents, but he's also a colicky baby who cries from morning 'til night. And when he's not crying, he's farting and pooing and polluting the air with the foulest of smells. So when Dad takes a three-month contract at a mine on the edge of the Great Desert, neither Mina nor Josh are pleased to learn they'll be spending their summer in the back end beyond. With each other. And Bryan.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849415560</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Oldman Brook
 
|title=The Wizard of Crescent Moon Mountain
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Greybeard is the wizard of Crescent Moon Mountain and when we first meet him he's expecting guests at his home.  The first to arrive are three dwarfs, Wattlespalf, Gendralf and Igralf and whilst they might not be the most becoming of creatures they have expertise with some unusual weaponry. Not long afterwards they're followed by Forrester and Stryker.  The two young men arrive in human form but the reality, as we'll find out, is that they're shape-shifters.  The six thought that the gathering was complete but they're joined by two elves as a result of a dramatic rescue mission.  That the two boys survived the snows which surround the wizard's house is surprising enough, but elves have been extinct for thousands of years and Finn and his younger brother Beezle arrive through an accident in time.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848767617</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Chrissie Keighery
 
|title=Whisper
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Demi is starting a new school. It's a nervous time whenever this happens - but the reason she's moving is because an attack of meningitis 18 months ago left her profoundly deaf. She's learnt to sign, she's learnt how to deal with the problems that crop up every day - but will she ever learn to accept who she is now?
+
|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>1848775466</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|author=Simon Packham
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|title=Silenced
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Soon after the death of his best friend and comedy double-act partner Declan, Chris loses the ability to speak. The rest of his class are initially sympathetic but quickly turn on him – with the exceptions of new boy Will, and Declan’s ex-girlfriend Ariel. Can Chris find his voice – and tell someone what actually happened on the night that Declan died?
+
|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>1848122101</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Russell Hoban
 
|title=Soonchild
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Sixteen-Face John needs all sixteen faces to cope with his many fears. He's an Inuit shaman but all that shaman stuff got a bit too much - especially considering the fear thing - and so these days in the North, he spends more time drinking Coca Cola and watching TV than he does shamanising. It's less anxious that way. But there's a problem. John's wife, No Problem, is pregnant, and their Soonchild is refusing to come out. John must go on a dream journey to rescue the World Songs if Soonchild is ever to be born.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406329916</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|author=Scott Westerfeld
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|title=Goliath
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=This is 1914 and there is a World War going on, but this is not the WWI we know of.  While a lot of it concerns allies and enemies in common with our reality, disagreement also surrounds one's nature and attitude to technology - Clankers have mechanical, industrial inventions, while Darwinists have more natural help, from huge flying whale-type creatures down to lizards taught to personally deliver voice messages that mimic the sender, and fleets of attack bats and birdsOn one such zepellin-type beast is Austro-Hungarian Prince Alek, caught up in the war against his will by his parents' death, and his best friend, about whom he actually knows far too little.  He knows even less of another passenger it picks up - a scientist in electricity and mechanics, who says he is giving his ultimate prize - a machined weapon mighty enough to cease the war for good - to the Darwinists...
+
|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>1847386806</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|author=Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|title=Between The Lines
+
|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=Delilah is a teenager who probably should have moved beyond fairy stories, but there’s one in particular that has her hooked. ''Between the Lines'' – a book within a book – is a classic story of a prince searching for true love and battling all sorts of dragons and demons on the way, and for Delilah it’s the perfect escape. Plus, the handsome hero, Prince Oliver, doesn’t hurt. Like Delilah he’s growing up without a father (though this matters far less to him than it does to her) and like Delilah he can feel something of an outsider, a little bit different from everyone else around. One day, as Delilah is reading the story for the umpteenth time, she gets the odd feeling that Oliver is talking back to her from the pages. But could there really be a whole other world that goes on between the pages when the book is closed, are they all just characters acting out the script of the story but different people when the spotlight is off, and is there a chance that, between the lines, there’s a lot going on that is not for readers to know about?
+
|isbn=1406394815
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444740962</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|author=Theresa Breslin
 
|title=Spy for the Queen of Scots
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Jenny is not only a lady-in-waiting to Mary, Queen of Scots; she's also one of her oldest and closest friends, brought up with her at the French court during Mary's long betrothal to the Dauphin. Jenny is fiercely loyal to Mary and so, when she overhears a whispered conversation about poison, she decides to turn spy for her queen. The French court is full of plotting and spying but, when Mary returns to Scotland after her young husband dies, Jenny discovers the warring clans of Scotland present her mistress with even more danger.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385617054</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Melody James
 
|title=Signs of Love: Stupid Cupid
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Gemma is still stuck writing horoscopes for the school webzine instead of any real journalism – but that may be about to change, as she’s given the chance to work with an older student on an actual article. The only problem is, the older student is the seriously annoying Will – but putting up with him is a small price to pay for the chance to see her name in print. Of course, she’s already the star of the webzine in many ways – but her role as Jessica Jupiter is still top secret, so barely anyone else knows this. Can she use her column to sort out Savannah’s love dilemma in the same way she so successfully helped out Treacle in the last book?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857073249</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 09:54, 8 July 2024

000862657X.jpg

Review of

Lover Birds by Leanne Egan

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Wild East by Ashley Hickson-Lovence

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Us in the Before and After by Jenny Valentine

5star.jpg Teens

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

0008666482.jpg

Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Compass and Blade by Rachel Greenlaw

3.5star.jpg Teens

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

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

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Review of

Children of the Sun by Harry Allen

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Sing if you Can't Dance by Alexia Casale

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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

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Review of

Needle by Patrice Lawrence

3star.jpg Teens

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

1406399590.jpg

Review of

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin

5star.jpg Teens

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

1800900899.jpg

Review of

Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1789098130.jpg

Review of

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1788452372.jpg

Review of

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1510107789.jpg

Review of

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

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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