Difference between revisions of "Newest Teens Reviews"

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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Butterfly Grave (Murder Notebooks)
+
|author=Leanne Egan
|author=Anne Cassidy
+
|title=Lover Birds
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=
 
Just before Christmas, Josh's uncle Stuart falls from a cliff in an horrific accident. Determined to help, Josh, Rose and friend Skeggsie head up to Newcastle for the festive season. Things are awkward between the three. Josh is becoming increasingly paranoid and is convinced they are being followed. Rose is becoming more and more withdrawn, fixating on the deaths she has witnessed. And Skeggsie is resentful at being forever embroiled in other people's problems when he has challenges of his own.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815524</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Close Your Pretty Eyes
 
|author=Sally Nicholls
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Olivia is trapped, in a world somewhat of her own making.  She is living a life of endless switching from a set of foster parents, to would-be adoptive parents, to care homes.  Whenever she fetches up with nice adults, she worries too much about making mistakes, being too violent, clumsy, needy, noisy, spiteful – and prefers then to go the whole hog and make them despair of ever liking her, of losing all kind of sympathy with her.  That way she can relax, knowing the truth, knowing the hatred is there – just as it was when her alcoholic mother was abusing and abandoning her and her baby siblings.  Olivia is eleven.  But in this one new house, with Jim, and his children, and the fostered young-mother-of-a-babe-in-arms, something is different.  Something is definitely older than Olivia, and certainly more evil, and most assuredly better at getting its own way…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407124323</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Conquest
 
|author=John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Science Fiction
 
|summary=The Earth has been invaded by the Illyri, a vaguely humanoid race far in advance of humankind, who were able to conquer the planet gently by proving how futile it would be to resist.  They are keen to ensure the human race remains compliant, but are mostly keen to avoid bloodshed.  Humankind, however, is not a race to take conquest lying down.  There is a very active resistance, particularly in Scotland, where the Scots come out of the Highlands to strike on the Illyri garrisons and power bases in cities like Edinburgh.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147220963X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Saving Silence
 
|author=Gina Blaxill
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=
+
|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?
Sam moved to London fairly recently and has struggled to settle in. Imogen has never had problems making friends, she's a former head girl and a school sports star. She's tried to make friends with Sam, however, but he doesn't seem interested - until one night when he approaches her out of the blue, only for someone to speed towards him and try to knock him over. Imogen saves his life - but why would anyone try to kill him? And has she put herself in danger by getting involved? With Sam reluctantly telling Imogen a secret, the pair are left frantically trying to save themselves from some seriously nasty people.
+
|isbn=000862657X
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447208846</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|title=The Trap
+
|title=Wild East
|author=Andrew Fukuda
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=
 
''The Trap'' is the third and final book in this sequence about a world in which vampires rule and humans are hepers, eaten almost to extinction.
 
 
 
We left Gene and Sissy, along with Epap and David, on the train that delivers hepers from the Mission to the City, destined for the Ruler's feast table. Gene now knows that he and Sissy form the Origin, the cure that will return Duskers to humans formulated by Gene's missing scientist father. But is that all there is to it? Where did the Duskers come from? Can Gene and Sissy end their plague? Will they all make it out alive? And what of Ashley June, newly turned to Dusker? What does she know that Gene and Sissy don't?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00BORD2RG</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Shadowlark
 
|author=Meagan Spooner
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Lark escaped the city of her birth after being tortured and stripped of her magic by its architects. Lark's post-apocalyptic world runs on magic and there isn't enough of it about. So Renewables - people whose magic will replenish after it is drained - are in demand - not as people but as a resource. But the architects have made Lark different. She can drain the magic of others and use it herself. We last saw Lark when she escaped the Iron Wood and went in search of her missing brother Basil.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552565571</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Debutantes: In Love
 
|author=Cora Harrison
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Poppy and Daisy Derrington leave Beech Green Manor to launch themselves in London. The pair know they need to marry well as their father is in dire financial straits - but marriage is something of a distraction to their real dreams of films and music. Can they find themselves love and happiness in the Roaring Twenties?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447205952</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Naturals
 
|author=Jennifer Lynn Barnes
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Cassie Hobbes doesn't feel like an average teenager. Average teenagers don't lose their mothers to unsolved murders. Average teenagers can't profile other people within minutes of acquaintance. Average teenagers aren't headhunted by the FBI to train as specifically-talented crimefighters. Cassie Hobbes is special.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780876823</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=ZOM-B Baby
 
|author=Darren Shan
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=
 
WARNING! If you haven't read the [[Zom-B by Darren Shan|first book]] in this series, STOP READING NOW! NOW! Spoilers ahoy!
 
 
 
Gone? Good.
 
 
 
The story so far
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857077686</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=How to Love
 
|author=Katie Cotugno
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Katie Cotugno's debut novel ''How to Love'' is, unsurprisingly, all about love. It has at its centre Reena and Sawyer, a gritty portrayal of first love. But it also has family love, friendship, and all those other kinds of loves.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782060006</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Killing Woods
 
|author=Lucy Christopher
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Popular girl Ashlee is dead. They’re saying the father of her less-popular classmate Emily is responsible. She cannot accept this, cannot accept that her own father could do something like that, but all the evidence points that way. Emily can’t stop thinking about it. She starts investigating what really happened in the woods that night, but the more she uncovers, the more uneasy she feels. Could her father actually be the one who killed Ashlee? And should she stop digging before she unearths something really unpleasant?
+
|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>1906427720</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0241645441
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Jenny Valentine
|title=She Is Not Invisible
+
|title=Us in the Before and After
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Laureth is used to her father's writerly obsessions and enthusiasms. She's accepted the fact that he will hare off across the world in search of some obscure information for a story, and the fact that he rarely asks her about herself and her life at school, preferring to lecture her instead about his latest theory. He even pays her to answer the fan mail on his website for him. And, like it or not, there's nothing she can do about the barely suppressed hostility that has grown in recent years between her parents.
+
|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>1780621094</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1471196585
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Tone Almhjell
 
|title=The Twistrose Key
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=
 
Lin and her family are living in a rented house in the city because Lin's mother has been given her dream job as professor of traditional songs at the university. Lin's novelist father doesn't mind: he can write and play at riddling in the city as well as anywhere. But Lin hates it. She misses the farm where she was brought up and she misses playing at troll-hunting with her friend Niklas. But most of all, she misses her pet vole, Rufus, who is buried under a rosebush.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349001669</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=Young Sherlock Holmes: Knife Edge
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|author=Andrew Lane
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=All Sherlock's deductive powers are called into play as he struggles to find out exactly what is happening in a remote castle on the coast of Galway. How did the servant die, and why did she lose her shoes? Is there really a Dark Beast roaming the local beaches and caves as the villagers claim? And more significantly for world peace, is the self-proclaimed psychic Ambrose Albano a fraud, or can he really find out, and thus reveal, the secrets of international espionage from those beyond the grave?
+
|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>0230758878</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=The Box of Red Brocade (Chronoptika)
+
|title=Compass and Blade
|author=Catherine Fisher
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Ok. Let's catch you up. Jake's father is still lost in time. Venn's wife is still dead. Summer, the Queen of the Shee, still hasn't made Venn her husband. Sarah still hasn't prevented the destruction of the future by Janus. And the Scarred Man still hasn't done, well, whatever it is that he's trying to do. The Chronoptika, a mirror made of black obsidian and a time travel device, connects Jake, Venn, Sarah and the rest, but they all want different things from it. Can they all be satisfied? It doesn't look likely.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444912631</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Fire With Fire
 
|author=Siobhan Vivian and Jenny Han
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=With Reeve hospitalised after the terrible events at the end of [[Burn for Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian|Burn for Burn]], Lillia, Kat and Mary must face the fallout. Mary is desperate for revenge despite the other two starting to have cold feet, but they agree to go through with their plan in order to give her the satisfaction of seeing his heart broken. As Lillia pretends to fall for the boy, though, she sees another side to Reeve and starts to wonder if he's as bad as Mary says he is. Can their friendship hold up under the strain of all the secrets and lies?
+
|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471116905</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
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.
|title=Wereworld: War of the Werelords
+
|isbn=0008664730
|author=Curtis Jobling
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=With the Catlords at each other's throats, there appears to finally be a chance for Drew Ferran and his allies to win the war and bring peace to Lyssia. Stacked against him, though, are still fearsome foes - including the dreadful Wyld Wolves, mockeries of lycanthropes. Meanwhile Drew's adoptive brother Trent, bitten by one of the vile creatures, knows that he is doomed to become one but is determined to gain his revenge before he loses control. As the opposing forces gather, huge armies could decide the fate of the Seven Realms... but in Icegarden, perhaps the most deadly force of them all still has a part to play in this war.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141345039</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Harry Allen
|title=The Company of Ghosts
+
|title=Children of the Sun
|author=Berlie Doherty
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Morag's family has its very own island. Tiny and remote, it is truly wild and wonderful. And the offer to spend some time there with them couldn't have come at a better time for Ellie, whose parents have just divorced. She'll be able to escape Mum and Angus. And she'll be able to paint for her father. But things don't work out quite as planned. To begin with, awkward, diffident Ellie has to spend the first night on the island alone with George, Morag's brusque older brother. And then George returns to the mainland to pick up supplies. He doesn't return.
+
|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.
 
+
|isbn=1805140493
Abandoned, Ellie begins to see shadows. Hear footsteps. Feel icy kisses on her cheek each time she falls asleep...  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849397295</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Alexia Casale
|title=Model Misfit (Geek Girl 2)
+
|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|author=Holly Smale
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Harriet Manners has the opportunity of a lifetime. She's been asked to go and model in Japan, a country she's always wanted to visit. Struggling from a break-up with Nick, best friend Nat being sent abroad for the summer, and her father and Annabel preparing for a new baby, this should be exactly what she needs. Of course, for Harriet, life is never quite that simple...
+
|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>0007489463</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Simon Fox
|title=In Bloom
+
|title=Deadlock
|author=Matthew Crow
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=Confident Readers
 +
|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.
 +
|isbn=1839944420
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Lex Croucher
 +
|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
 +
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Member of a loving but dysfunctional family, life has rarely been straightforward for Francis Wooton, and he is no stranger to heartbreak. Despite this, he's always maintained sensible plans, to get good grades in his GCSEs and A Levels, and get into University, where he'll finally meet his real friends and the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, a whole new world of worry presents itself when he is diagnosed with leukaemia. He knows his mother and brother will do everything and anything they can to support him, but even they can do little to ease the constant nausea, the all-pervasive pain, the horror of imminent baldness and the general bleak agony that cancer brings. But every cloud has a silver lining, and it is at the hospital unit that Francis first sets eyes on Amber, a girl unlike anyone else he has met before. Amber makes Francis feel more alive than ever, and if anything can help cure the despair of cancer, first love might just be it.
+
|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>1472105516</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1526651793
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Nick Brooks
|title=Unbreakable
+
|title=Promise Boys
|author=Kami Garcia
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Set up centuries ago to fight the threat of a malevolent demon, the Legion is a secret society consisting of just five members at any one time, tasked with the responsibility of fighting and exorcising spirits. When all five members are murdered on the same night, their responsibility suddenly falls to five teenagers. Twins Jared and Lukas, Priest and Alara have been trained from a young age in the skills required to track, fight and destroy vengeance spirits. However, for Kennedy, who knows nothing of her mother's role in the Legion, everything is overwhelmingly new and highly dangerous. She will have to learn fast, as she cannot afford to be a liability as the team prepares to take on a mission with the utmost of stakes.
+
|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>1471118533</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1035003155
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1919635017
|title=The Dream Thieves
+
|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
|author=Maggie Stiefvater
+
|author=Kitt Townsend
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=With the ley lines waking, things are changing around Cabeswater. Ronan is getting more and more adept at bringing his dreams to life, Gansey is needed at home, and Adam has made some mysterious new friends. At the centre of it all, Blue has to try to cope with her curse and her feelings for the Raven Boys.
+
|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>1407136623</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|title=Resist (Breathe)
+
|title=Different for Boys
|author=Sarah Crossan
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Teens  
|genre=Teens
+
|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.
|summary=''Resist'' carries on where [[Breathe by Sarah Crossan|Breathe]] left off. To catch you up: deforestation has resulted in environmental catastrophe and the world is a ravaged place in which there isn't enough oxygen to fully sustain human life. A corporation, Breathe, runs the Pod, whose inhabitants are divided into Premiums (plenty of oxygen) and Auxiliaries (barely enough). Outside, drifters struggle to survive. With one alternative to the Pod - The Grove - destroyed by the Pod Ministry, Alina, Bea and Quinn, our three central characters, set out on separate, but equally perilous, journeys to find the other, Sequoia. And back in the Pod, Ronan is rethinking the world he thought he lived in but didn't.  
+
|isbn=1529509491
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408827204</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1800901232
|title=Ninja: First Mission (Ninja Trilogy)
+
|title=Stitched Up
|author=Chris Bradford and Sonia Leong
+
|author=Steve Cole
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
 
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|summary=If you are looking for adventure, '' Ninja First Mission'' will certain come up trumps. This book never has a slow moment. But even as the story races along at breakneck speed, there is plenty to think about as well. This book has as much to offer the deep thinker as the adrenaline junky. Tata, a young Ninja in training, is desperate to prove himself. He has failed the test for his black belt three times, but this was just a simple test. The sacred scrolls of his clan have been stolen, and all of the fully fledged Ninja but one are away on another mission. Tata faces another test, but this time the stakes are life and death, not only for himself, but for his clan. In order to succeed Tata must learn to find victory in failure. Most of all he must learn to believe in himself.
+
|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>1842999397</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Patrice Lawrence
|title=Tiger Lily
+
|title=Needle
|author=Jodi Lynn Anderson
+
|rating=3
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=
+
|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...
''Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy, he belonged to the girl with a feather in her hair...''
+
|isbn=1800901011
 
 
''Tiger Lily'' tells the story of Neverland after Peter Pan arrived but before Wendy came. Our narrator is Tink, the silent, sometimes jealous, fairy. And our heroine is Tiger Lily, the native girl who is strange even to her fellow villagers. Tiger Lily doesn't believe in love stories but when she meets Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of Neverland, her heart burns with a fire she had never expected.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140833044X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Ann Sei Lin
|title=United We Spy (Gallagher Girls)
+
|title= Rebel Skies
|author=Ally Carter
+
|rating= 5
|rating=5
+
|genre= Teens
|genre=Teens
+
|summary= Kurara has spent her entire life as a servant on the Midori, a massive dining hall floating in the sky where soldiers of the Empire come to drink and make merry between their conquests. However, when a man named Himura arrives to tell her that she is a Crafter like him, someone with the power to form paper into whatever she desires – a power sought after all across the Empire. He asks her to come with him, to leave the life of dreary servitude that is all she has known. Well, soon Kurara won't have any say in the matter, because the Midori is destroyed by a monstrous paper spirit known as a shikigami, and she is forced to flee out into the world. She joins Himura aboard the Orihime, a sky-ship whose express purpose is to hunt down shikigami, and a whole world of adventure awaits her…
|summary=The Circle of Cavan are still on the hunt for Cammie Morgan. Their other plans, though, might be even more terrible than their hunt for the young spy. Can Cammie and her friends save themselves, and take down the Circle before they carry out their deadly mission?
+
|isbn=1406399590
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408314754</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title=The Skull in the Woods
+
|title=Wrath
|author=Sandra Greaves
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Dartmoor wasn't exactly Matt's first choice as a place to spend his school holidays. He barely knows his Uncle or cousins, and there was obviously some bad blood between members of the family. But his father was away for the summer, as were most of his friends and he couldn't stand another day in the house with his mother's new boyfriend, especially as their relationship was dashing any hopes Matt might have held of his parents ever reuniting. But whatever the trouble may have been between Matt's mother and his now dead Aunt Rose, his Uncle Jack has welcomed Matt into his home and treated the boy with all the kindness one might expect for a prodigal son. His youngest cousin Kitty seems delighted to have a new member of the family to play with as well, but Tilda, who is near his own age can't stand him and is determined to have this interloping city dweller out of the way as quickly as possible. Matt treats Tilda with same contempt, with the two children carrying on where their feuding parents left off.
+
|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>1908435623</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|title=The Waking World (The Future King)
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
|author=Tom Huddleston
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=''Many tales have been told of the boy who became our greatest king. Very few have spoken of the future...''
+
|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.
 
+
|isbn=1789098130
Aran is the son of one of the Island's wealthiest Laws. He lives in the underground farmstead of Hawk's Cross. He wants for nothing. But Aran is not entirely happy. Rumours are everywhere and the Island is under threat. Bands of fierce men known as Marauders are beginning to attack further and further inland, burning homes and taking slaves. Aran wants to join the fight against them but that task has been given to his older brother. Aran's future lies in overseeing the farmstead and it's not a future he wants.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085756045X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|author=Jonathan Maberry
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|title=Fire & Ash
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=ALERT! Spoilers for early books in the Rot & Ruin series are scattered throughout this review. So if you haven't read the others, get thee over to my words about [[Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry|book one]].  
+
|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>1471117952</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|title=Untold
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|author=Sarah Rees Brennan
+
|rating=4
|rating=4.5
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|genre=Teens
+
|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.
|summary=Kami Glass' hometown is about to become ground zero for a sorcerer fight for supremacy. And the sorcerers aren't bothered about humans becoming collateral  damage - in fact, one faction wants a human sacrifice to increase the power of their magic.
+
|isbn=1510107789
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857078097</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
 
|author=Holly Black
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=In the future, vampires exist, and everyone knows it. To try and deal with the problem of vampirism, cities have been given to the monsters and designated Coldtowns – walled cities where people can enter, but hardly ever leave. With these cities broadcast on TV 24 hours a day, they look glamorous – but those just watching can’t see the deadliness behind the glitz. Seventeen-year-old Tana is about to find out. Along with her ex-boyfriend Aiden, who’s just been infected by a vampire and has to go without drinking blood for eighty eight days or turn into one himself, and a mysterious vampire named Gavriel, she’s headed for the largest Coldtown of them all. Can they get there – and if they do, will any of them survive?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780621299</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|title=Haunted
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|author=William Hussey
+
|rating= 4
|rating=3.5
+
|genre= Teens
|genre=Teens
+
|summary= Scarlett McCain is an outlaw, rejecting the draconian conformity of the Surviving Towns and Faith Houses to wander the wildlands between the Seven Kingdoms of Britain, robbing banks and shooting other outlaws to keep herself alive. But then she meets Albert Browne, a dark boy with dark powers and a darker past. With mysterious militiamen hunting them down, they plan to flee to the mythical Free Isles of the London Lagoon. Together, they must brave man-eating wildlife, the cannibalistic Tainted and all the horrors of post-apocalyptic society to reach the Free Isles, but will they be any more accepted there than they are in the rest of Britain?
|summary=Emma Rhodes is haunted by the memory of her younger brother Richie, whose death has torn apart her family and left Emma plagued by intense guilt. But when the arrival of a mysterious boy, Nick Redway, heralds the arrival of spirits of the dead to Milton Lake, Emma finds herself being haunted by altogether more dangerous entities. The 'unmade' are spirits of people who died violent, unexpected deaths, now corrupt and desperate to possess living flesh. A necromancer is calling the dead back to the world using the fabled Ghost Machine. The more the machine is used, the weaker the gates between life and death grow, until nothing can stop the unmade being unleashed upon the town. Only Nick seems to know how to fight the ghosts, and Emma must help him to find the necromancer operating the Ghost Machine, before all hell breaks loose.
+
|isbn=1406394815
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192732501</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|title=More Than This
 
|author=Patrick Ness
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=''Here is the boy, drowning.''
 
 
 
And Seth does drown. He is alone; taken by the sea, arms and legs flailing and breaking, skull dashed against the rocks whilst the icy water constricts his muscles and breath. Seth is consciously aware of his final moments. His death consumes him with a heavy, confusing blur until… he awakens and finds himself in a desolate, shattered world; naked, alone, starving and alive. This place looks familiar. It looks exactly like the English village where he spent his early childhood before his brother’s accident and his family’s move to America, but it is now overgrown and devoid of human life. It is as if the whole place was simply abandoned one day.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406331155</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 09:54, 8 July 2024

000862657X.jpg

Review of

Lover Birds by Leanne Egan

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Wild East by Ashley Hickson-Lovence

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Us in the Before and After by Jenny Valentine

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Compass and Blade by Rachel Greenlaw

3.5star.jpg Teens

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

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

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Review of

Children of the Sun by Harry Allen

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Sing if you Can't Dance by Alexia Casale

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Stitched Up by Steve Cole

5star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

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

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Review of

Needle by Patrice Lawrence

3star.jpg Teens

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

1406399590.jpg

Review of

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin

5star.jpg Teens

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

1800900899.jpg

Review of

Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1789098130.jpg

Review of

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1788452372.jpg

Review of

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1510107789.jpg

Review of

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

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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