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=Brenna Yovanoff
 
|title=Paper Valentine
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Hannah's best friend Lillian starved herself to death six months ago. And now she's haunting her. Hannah wants life to resume as normal, but even if she wasn't constantly in the presence of Lillian's ghost, that wouldn't be possible. How can she carry on when her best friend is dead?   
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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 themSo 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?
To add to her problems, girls in her hometown are dying, beaten brutally then arranged in a ritualistic sort of way. Soon Hannah's being haunted by more than just Lillian, each vision more ghastly than the last.
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|isbn=000862657X
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857078143</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|author=A G Howard
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|title=Wild East
|title=Splintered
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|rating=4.5
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Alyssa Gardner has secrets. She can't tell anyone that bugs and flowers talk to her, or she'll end up in a mental hospital like her mother. All of the women in her family have struggled with mental health problems, ever since her ancestor Alice Liddell inspired Lewis Carroll to write 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. When she's dragged into Wonderland herself, can she break the family curse?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1419706276</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Penelope Bush
 
|title=Me Myself Milly
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Like so many twins, Milly and Lily might look identical but have very different personalities. Lily had always been the unruly extrovert, while timid Milly was content to be her twin's cautious shadow. But ever since 'The Incident', Milly has been forced into the forefront. When this is combined with a decision to change school and the arrival of new tenants to her house, including an unfriendly and enigmatic American boy her own age, Milly finds her life changing faster than she can keep up with it. Embracing her new life will mean letting go of the bottled up memory of The Incident, but will she ever be strong enough to do so?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848122527</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Rosanne Licata
 
|title=Blood Bonds: The Caravan
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Raj is part Arab, part Roman. She's independent and strong-willed - too independent and strong-willed to fit well into a society where women belong in the home and only men can bring change to the world. So she runs away. Disguised as a boy, she is roaming the streets of Antioch when she encounters Bjornolf, a Danish king. Drawn to him in a way she can't explain, Raj stows away on the caravan he is guarding. As the journey continues, Raj must decide whether the terrible dangers to both Bjornolf and herself are worth risking if she reveals her true nature to him...
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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>1770975667</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=Paula Weston
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|title=Us in the Before and After
|title=Shadows
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=It's been a year since Gaby's twin brother, Jude, died in a horrific car accident. The sun, sea and sand of Pan Beach have done a lot to heal her body, but her mind is still raw with grief. Grief that manifests itself as terrifying nightmares of hunting and killing demons with a mysterious boy. So when Gaby meets Rafa, the boy of her dreams, literally, it raises a lot of questions about who she thought she and her brother were. Because Rafa claims to be Jude's best friend, and has the pictures on his phone to prove it. So why can't Gaby remember who he is?
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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>1780621582</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Max Boucherat
|author=Hayley Long
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|title=What's Up With Jody Barton?
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jody and Jolene are very alike. They have brown hair and dimples, they're both left-handed and they have feet which makes them look, according to Jody, like long-toed mutants. But in lots of ways they are very, very distinct. In fact, despite the fact that they're twins, they were born on different days and are different ages (because of the leap year thing. Read the book if you don't believe it). And as for their taste in music, school subjects and pretty well everything else . . . poles apart. Useful, though, as they divvy up their homework according to preference!
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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>0330523023</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|author=Laura Lam
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|title=Compass and Blade
|title=Pantomime
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|rating=3.5
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Pantomime is almost certainly the best fantasy of the year. That's virtually all I can say about it without getting deep into spoiler territory, which as regular readers will know, I hate. (Oh, actually, I can probably just about tell you that there's a circus in there as well without completely ruining it for you.) I'm not sure whether to praise LR Lam for writing such a phenomenal book or curse her for writing one that's almost completely unreviewable. There's such a big twist early on (which, admittedly, I guessed), that I can't even really say much about the start.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908844361</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=C J Harper
 
|title=The Disappeared
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Jackson is self-confident, motivated and happy. After all, he attends one of the top Learning Communities and has an AEP score of 98.5. He is destined to become an important part of the Leadership some day. You and I might see Jackson as an insufferable, pompous ass but, since he is surrounded by people like him, Jackson doesn't see it like that.
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|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
  
But then a seemingly random violent attack leaves Jackson battered and bloody and his best friend Wilson dead. When police return him to the Learning Community, Jackson finds his teachers claim not to recognise him and all his records wiped. Dumped in an Academy - a school purportedly for those with lower AEP scores - Jackson's life becomes a hell. Academy students are known as Specials. They're disciplined by electric shocks distributed by teachers in cages. They're fed slop through nozzles in slots. They're encouraged to fight. And they're kept in line by Reds - nominated Specials who get extra food and pride of place in the violent Academy pecking order.  
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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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857076981</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008664730
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Harry Allen
|author=Tim Bowler
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|title=Children of the Sun
|title=Sea of Whispers
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Hetty has grown up on the remote island of Mora. Communication with the outside world is limited and the island relies on its boat, ''The Pride of Mora''. But Hetty herself communicates in another way. She sees visions in the pieces of sea glass washed up on Mora's beaches. Sometimes, too, she hears whispers from the sea. Hetty's visions aren't universally popular with all the islanders but Grandy and Tam and Mackie and her other close friends at least try to understand them.
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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>0192728393</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1805140493
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Alexia Casale
|author=Amy McNamara
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|title=Lovely, Dark and Deep
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|rating=5
|rating=2
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=After the death of her boyfriend in a car accident which she survives, Wren Wells retreats to live with her artist father in his studio in the woods of Maine. While she wants to be alone, she doesn't bargain for meeting Cal Owen, also damaged, and falling for him.
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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>1471116182</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Simon Fox
|author=Sangu Mandanna
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|title=Deadlock
|title=The Lost Girl
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Eva is an echo. Woven at the Loom, she is a carbon copy of Amarra, a girl loved by her parents so much that they can't bear the thought of losing her. Should anything ever happen to Amarra, Eva will take her place - live in her home, go to her school, even kiss her boyfriend. So Eva's young life is all about Amarra. She eats the same foods, studies the same subjects, reads the same books, watches the same films. When Amarra gets a tattoo, so must Eva. The Weavers impose many rules and if Eva breaks even one of them, her life is forfeit.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849416176</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Graham McNamee
 
|title=Beyond
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Teenager Jane's life so far has been plagued by near-fatal accidents. The last one left a nail embedded in her brain and the doctors say surgery is too dangerous. And she sleepwalks at night, walking alone in a daze up the highway. As you can imagine, Jane's parents are beyond worried about her. But they don't know the worst of it. Only Lexi, Jane's best friend and fellow Creep Sister, does. The truth is that Jane's shadow is trying to kill her. Literally. She has no control over it but it has control of her.
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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>144491278X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lex Croucher
|author=Sally Prue
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|title=Song Hunter
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|rating=4
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=A new Ice Age is coming. Winters are getting colder. There are fewer mammoths to hunt and no trees from which to fashion spears to kill them. A small group of Neanderthals is facing starvation this winter. One of them, Mica, is full of ideas to avert the impending doom, but the others simply won't listen to her. If something has never been before then it is ''nothing'' and simply not worth thinking about. Even Bear, who loves Mica, won't hear her. One night, Mica hears strange voices calling in the darkness. They fill her with a deep sense of longing. But to whom do these siren voices belong? And do they hold the key to Mica's future?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192757113</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gayle Forman
 
|title=Where She Went
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Three years after Mia lost her parents and brother, and nearly died herself, in a tragic accident in ''If I Stay'', she's a rising star of classical music. Adam is a rock star. They haven't spoken for a long time. Until Mia plays a concert in New York, Adam attends, and she sends word for him to go backstage. Can Adam finally find out what went wrong with their relationship?
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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>1849414289</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1526651793
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Nick Brooks
|author=Emily Hainsworth
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|title=Promise Boys
|title=Through To You
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Camden Pike is devastated by the death of his girlfriend Viv in a car accident, and blames himself for it. Then he meets Nina, a girl from a parallel universe. In her world, Viv is still alive, and he realises he doesn't have to let her go and he can be with this other her forever. Will he choose to give up everything he's ever known to be with the person he thought he'd lost, or let go of his girlfriend for good and stay in his own world?
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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>1471116158</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1919635017
|author=HM Castor
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|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
|title=VIII
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|author=Kitt Townsend
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Hal is a young boy who believes he is destined for greatness. Despite his father's disdain for him, and preference for his older brother Arthur, Hal believe that he is the subject of a prophecy. He thinks that his 'glory will live down the ages'. Is he right?
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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>1848775008</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|author=Harlan Coben
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|title=Different for Boys
|title=Seconds Away
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Teens  
|summary=Mickey Bolitar has had enough excitement to last him a lifetime. Helping the Abeona Shelter to rescue his girlfriend Ashley almost saw his best friend Ema killed, but it seems Mickey and his friends aren't out of the woods yetA shooting has left Rachel - gorgeous, popular Rachel, whose smile makes Mickey's stomach flip - in hospital, her mother dead. The Chief of Police - also Rachel's boyfriend's father - is acting shady, and Rachel herself is sending Mickey cryptic text messages, begging him not to tell anyone else she's speaking to him.
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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 lieHe'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>1409124487</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1529509491
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1800901232
|author=Annabel Pitcher
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|title=Stitched Up
|title=Ketchup Clouds
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|author=Steve Cole
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
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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.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Patrice Lawrence
 +
|title=Needle
 +
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary="Zoe" has a terrible secret. She feels responsible for the death of a boy. It burns and burns and she has a huge need to confess but has no-one to confess to. And so she decides to become the pen pal of a prisoner on death row in Texas. Her letters to Stuart tell both her story and his. Zoe is a pseudonym - as is her address in "Fiction Road" - but the tale she tells in midnight writing sessions in the garden shed, is true. It's the story of family tension, of a love triangle, and of a grief and guilt almost too big to bear...  
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|summary=Brave. Charlene, the 'heroine' of this piece is extremely hard for some people to like, characters and readers both. Kicked out of multiple homes and schools, she's fostering with a pleasant yoga tutor, Annie, and has taken up residence in her son Blake's old room while he's at uni. Such a tempestuous personality may be in need of a comfort blanket, you might perhaps think, and the creation of one such item is part of the plot here, as Charlene is a wonder knitter, and is making something full of love for her younger sister – a younger sister she's allowed contact with no more. We see Charlene prove her belligerence with a store detective, and then force people to give her two days off school, when she shouts someone down as expletively ignorant. And then... well, what exactly happens is not for me to say, only to remark how sharp and pointy those knitting needles can be...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780620152</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author= Ann Sei Lin
|author=Becca Fitzpatrick
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|title= Rebel Skies
|title=Finale (Hush Hush)
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|rating= 5
|rating=3
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|genre= Teens
|genre=Paranormal
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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=We left Patch and Nora were finally happily together and in love but with a big problem: Nora's vow to her dead father, Hank. Nora must lead the Nephilim in the upcoming war against the fallen angels who possess their bodies each year. If she doesn't, both she ''and'' her mother will die. She won't be accepted as leader by the Nephilim if her own boyfriend is a fallen angel, so once again their relationship has to go underground. Nora agrees to a fake relationship with Dante, the second-in-command Nephilim. The scam is easy enough to pull off - they need to spend a lot of time together anyway, as Dante trains Nora's newly Nephilim body for war.
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|isbn=1406399590
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857072919</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|author=Laini Taylor
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|title=Wrath
|title=Days of Blood and Starlight
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Karou and Akiva once dreamt of a peaceful world, but their dreams look further away from reality than ever. Is there any way that either of them can gain redemption?
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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...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444722670</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Tori Bovalino
|author=Kresley Cole
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|title=The Devil Makes Three
|title=Poison Princess
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Evie has always been plagued by horrific hallucinations and nightmares. After a stint in a psych clinic, Evie's desperate to get back to life as normal. Unfortunately, returning to her hometown triggers the hallucinations again and Evie starts to realise she is never going to be able to pass for normal. Adding to her problems, a new boy at school is destroying Evie's idea of the perfect relationship with her ideal boyfriend. Jackson is crass and a well known player - so why does Evie find him so tempting?
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|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>0857079182</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Philip Reeve
|author=Andrew Lane
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|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|title=Young Sherlock Holmes: Snake Bite
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It can't be easy, imagining Sherlock Holmes as a boy. So many of his most notable characteristics — for example, his capricious behaviour, his detailed knowledge of so many subjects, and his analytical, sometimes even cold approach to problems — are clearly the result of many years of experiences and studies. Any author brave enough to tackle this challenge must of necessity create a person who is as yet untested in many of the fields for which he will later become famous.
+
|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>023075886X</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|author=Robin Bennett
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|title=Angel of Mons
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Ben Bartops is surprised and horrified about what he sees in the trenches of Belgium in August 1914.  So is Sam Lyle, but at least he has the experience of being a career soldier – Ben is a schoolkid from the 21st Century, and shouldn't by rights be in the warzone at all.  But ''something'' is putting, or taking, or sending, him to the front, and somehow the two lives will intertwine, in very dramatic ways…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956868444</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jeremy de Quidt
 
|title=The Feathered Man
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Klaus is a street kid who has been taken in by Kusselman, the tooth-puller. Kusselman is a hard taskmaster, fond of using a belt to discipline and control his young apprentice, and he isn't fussy where he finds teeth to sell to the rich of the town. So there's nothing unusual in a trip to Frau Drecht's miserable boarding house, home to those with no money and no other place to go. When her residents die off, as they tend to do with depressing regularity, Frau Drecht sells their teeth to Kusselman and their poor, wasted bodies to the School of Anatomy for dissection. Frau Drecht has also taken a street child for a servant. But to keep Liesel in line, Frau Drecht uses a hot iron, not a belt.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385613598</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jeff Norton
 
|title=The Dead are Rising (MetaWars)
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jonah's father died in the battle for control of the Metasphere. He was a Guardian - a terrorist or freedom fighter, depending how you see things - and he had infiltrated himself into a position of trust with the Millenials, the group supporting the billionaire inventor who created and controlled an online world in which people living in a post peak-oil and devasted Earth spend most of their time. But before he died, Jason Delacroix's memories had been uploaded to the Metasphere as an avatar.
+
|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>1408314606</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|author=Rachel van Kooj and Siobhan Parkinson (translator)
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|title=Bartolome: the Infanta's Pet
+
|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=In 17th century Spain, life is run by a strict code of conduct and appearances dictated by the Royal House. It is not a place of kindness or understanding, especially for a dwarf like Bartolome Carrasco. When his father, coachman to the Infanta Margarita, moves his family to Madrid for a better life; Bartolome is kept hidden from the world in a back room. But Bartolome is clever. He hears that a dwarf, just like him, has a position in the Royal household, he begins to educate himself in order to follow his dream and make his family proud. A sudden coach accident brings Bartolome to the attention of the young Infanta, and she demands that he be brought into the court as her pet. Forced to dress and behave as a dog, it seems life is destined to be one humiliation after another. Then, Bartolome meets the artist, Diego Velazquez, court painter who is working on Las Meninas, a portrait of the Royal family centring on the Infanta. A plan is hatched that may free Bartolome from his life of servitude and fear forever.
+
|isbn=1406394815
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908195266</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stephen Chbosky
 
|title=The Perks of Being a Wallflower
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Charlie is very bright but also very shy, introspective and socially awkward. He has a loving and close family who, by and large, support him and give him good advice. But this life lark is a tricky thing. High school is particularly tricky. Having been told to try to participate more, Charlie approaches Patrick and Sam at a football match. They're a couple of school years above him, but they take to him nevertheless and introduce him to their group. He writes about his experiences with his new friends, his family, his favourite teacher and his therapist in letters to a person he's heard about but never met.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147111614X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gina Blaxill
 
|title=Forget Me Never
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Sophie's cousin Dani has never been particularly stable, but Sophie never expected her to commit suicide. When she finds a memory stick in Dani's jeans which suggests that there may have been rather more to her death than there seemed, she does the sensible thing and goes to the police. The police don't seem particularly bothered, though, so Sophie and her friend Reece decide to investigate for themselves - only to find they may be in over their heads. Can they expose the people who caused Dani's death, or will they have enough trouble avoiding becoming victims themselves?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447208064</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jonathan Maberry
 
|title=Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin)
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Having escaped the horrors of Gameland at the dreadful cost of losing Tom, Benny, Nix, Lilah and Chong must journey through the Rot & Ruin without his warrior smarts. They're in search of the jet they saw in the sky months ago. They hope to find hope, some remains of a civilisation lost after First Night, when the zombie virus spread through the population like wildfire. When life as it was ceased to be. When the undead started to walk...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857079719</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|author=Kat Zhang
 
|title=What's Left Of Me
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Addie and Eva are 15 year olds living somewhere in America. They have a mother, a father and a younger brother. But Addie and Eva are not sisters, or twins, in the usual sense. They are two minds who share one body, and they are in trouble.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007476817</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jeyn Roberts
 
|title=Rage Within (Dark Inside)
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=
 
We left Aries, Michael, Clementine and Mason in a world they can barely recognise. After a series of devastating earthquakes many people changed. They became murderous monsters that the normal survivors called Baggers. There are few normal people left and they must hide in ruined cities, avoiding death at the hands of the Baggers. And in ''Rage Within'', the battle for survival is about to get even tougher. The Baggers are organising themselves, clearing the streets of bodies and setting up worker camps for captured survivors.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144721790X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Melissa Marr
 
|title=Carnival of Souls
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=In the City of daimons, the fighting is raging. Not war - this is much more organised. The Carnival of Souls is a once in a generation opportunity to change your future. Lower caste Kaleb and Aya, fighting the prejudice agaist women, aim to do just that. Meanwhile, in our world, Mallory knows of the City's existence but not she and her father need to run away so much. These three are about to be drawn together, and the consequences for everyone could be huge.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0061659282</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sarah Crossan
 
|title=Breathe
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=When the trees were all felled to make crop land to feed an exploding population, oxygen levels on Earth fell. Eventually, the air became unbreathable. A government lottery decided who would live inside the life-saving Pod created by Breathe. Those left on the outside died. Years later, Pod society is divided into Premiums, who have easy lives, plenty of air and positions of power, and Auxiliaries, who labour at endless shifts and pay through the nose for enough oxygen to get by. A resistance group is trying to replant the Earth and reduce dependence on the Pod, but Breathe and the Pod Minister will stop at nothing to crush them.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408827190</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sally Gardner
 
|title=Maggot Moon
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=There are certain books that you know, right from the first pages, are destined to be classics. There is something about the phrasing, about the concept and about the main character which chime so perfectly together that they cannot fail to move you, to open a window in your world and show you another, deeper truth. Such a book is 'Maggot Moon'.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471400042</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Holly Black
 
|title=Red Glove (Curse Workers 2)
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Cassel lives in a world where magic is frowned upon. Practice is banned and everyone wears gloves to prevent being worked. Cassel himself is a transformation worker - the rarest type. And he is the most powerful transformation worker in living memory. This makes him extremely valuable to the crime families who use curses to support and maintain their empires. It also makes him extremely dangerous as far as the authorities are concerned. And that's why Cassel tries to keep his status to himself, since he discovered it in the [[The White Cat (Curse Workers, Book 1) by Holly Black|first book]] in this ''Curse Workers'' sequence.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0575096764</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ilsa Bick
 
|title=Ashes
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Beware: it's impossible to review ''Shadows'' without giving spoilers for [[Ashes by Ilsa Bick|Ashes]], the first book in this dystopian trilogy, which ended on a huge cliffhanger.
 
 
 
The world has been devastated by a catastrophic electromagnetic pulse. Many of the young have become ''Changed'' - cannabilistic monsters with a penchant for violence. Alex was hiking in the wilderness when it all happened and although she isn't Changed, her senses have heightened and it seems the progression of her terminal brain tumour may have halted.
 
 
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857382640</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Neal Shusterman
 
|title=Unwholly
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=
 
At last! It's been five years since ''Unwind'', Neal Shusterman's first book set in a dystopian future where teenage children are ''unwound'' - retroactively aborted to provide organs and limbs for transplant surgery. If you're an adult reader, the world of ''Unwind'' is very much like ''Never Let Me Go'' by Kazuo Ishiguro. ''Unwind'' had a profound effect on me - as the best books for children do - it was exciting, touching, shocking and, above all, fearless. But there were flashes of humour that made it all bearable.
 
 
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857078623</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Libba Bray
 
|title=The Diviners
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=1920's New York City. Jazz and gin mix with murder and mystery. For Evie O'Neill - fresh in from Ohio to the city of her dreams after her demonstration of a strange power caused a scandal in society - this is what she's always dreamed of. But dreams can become nightmares, and when Evie, her uncle Will and their friends find themselves trying to stop a serial killer, she'll have to use all of her wits, as well as her power, to stay alive.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907410392</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stefan Bachmann
 
|title=The Peculiar
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=
 
''Don't get yourself noticed and you won't get yourself hanged.''
 
 
 
Such is life for peculiars like Bartholomew Kettle and his sister Hettie. Their mother is human but their - absent - father is a Sidhe, a high fairy. Fairies are contemptuous of the half-breed peculiars and humans distrust and suspect them. Hapless peculiar children are often hanged by humans. And, even more worryingly, bodies of peculiars have been turning up recently, quite dead, covered in ancient faerie script and as empty of bone and organ as they are of life.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0062195182</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kate Cann
 
|title=Witch Crag
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Kita lives in a hill fort as part of the sheepmen community. Life since the Great Havoc has been hard and brutish. There are few survivors from the time of technology and nature is gradually retaking the land. There are often droughts and both food and water are often in short supply. For the sheepmen, it's all about survivial. Food, what there is of it, is bland. Days are filled with grinding hard work. Relationships are frowned on. Women are treated like chattels. Although they have an alliance with the horsemen, other groups are avoided and disliked - the farmers, those who live in the ruins of the Old City.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140710702X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 09:54, 8 July 2024

000862657X.jpg

Review of

Lover Birds by Leanne Egan

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Wild East by Ashley Hickson-Lovence

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Us in the Before and After by Jenny Valentine

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Compass and Blade by Rachel Greenlaw

3.5star.jpg Teens

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

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

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Review of

Children of the Sun by Harry Allen

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Sing if you Can't Dance by Alexia Casale

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Stitched Up by Steve Cole

5star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

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

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Review of

Needle by Patrice Lawrence

3star.jpg Teens

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

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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

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Review of

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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