Newest Teens Reviews
Doctor Who: 11 Doctors, 11 Stories by Eoin Colfer, Michael Scott and others
It's basic knowledge that Doctor Who has changed a lot since first being seen fifty years ago – and I don't mean the title character, but the nature of the programme. It has gone from black and white, and cheaply produced, and declared disposable, to being an essential part of the BBC, full-gloss digital, and accessed in all manner of ways. So with the celebratory programme still ringing in our ears, and leaving people pressing a red button to see a programme about three Doctors, er, pressing a red button, we turn to other aspects of the birthday bonanza. Such as this book, which has also mutated in its much shorter lifespan, from being a loose collection of eleven short e-book novellas written by the blazing lights of YA writing, to a huge and brilliant paperback collecting everything within one set of covers. Full review...
Emily of New Moon: A Virago Modern Classic (Emily Trilogy) by L M Montgomery
I think I should confess, before I write this review, that I am a true Lucy Maud Montgomery geek! I have loved her books since I was a little girl, and I have read them so many times that the covers are worn and faded and her stories live inside of me, at least in part making me who I am. I wrote my masters dissertation on her books. I went to Prince Edward Island, Canada, for a conference about her works. I came back with a bottle of red sand and a heart full of memories. If anyone ever mentions Anne of Green Gables in my presence my eyes get very large and I get very excited (and my husband rolls his eyes...) So it is with trepidation that I sit down to review one of her books. Bear with me, I will try not to geek out too much, and I will do my best to be fair! Full review...
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
Warm Bodies is told in an alternating first person point of view, switching back and forth between R a zombie who has retained a bit more of the power of thought than most, and Julie, a feisty and courageous heroine, who has been through horrible hardships, but retained an ability to truly care about others. In short, R has far more humanity than the average zombie, but Julie also held on to more of the traits that I feel truly make us human in a world where kindness and unselfish love have become even more endangered than the human race itself. Two other characters are important to this storyline, M, R's best friend and Nora, Julie's closest friend and confidant. I especially liked Nora, who has suffered far more than Julie, and yet still is willing to put aside past hurt, but M has his redeeming points as well. Full review...
The New Hunger: The Prequel to Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
I normally review a book within a day or two of finishing it. I couldn't with this one. I loved this book, but I did feel dissatisfied with the ending, and I thought perhaps I was missing something - and I was. This book was written as a prequel, and most of the readers will have already read Warm Bodies. I found something so unique in Isaac Marion's writing style, and something about this book so compelling that I couldn't quite bear to rate it down, but neither was I happy with a 5 star rating with such as lacklustre ending. It felt like half a book to me. So - in order to review this fairly - I felt I had to read the author's first book. After reading it I am no longer disappointed in the ending. It isn't after all the end - it is just the beginning of one of the best books I have ever read. Full review...
Sky on Fire (Monument 14) by Emmy Laybourne
We left our supermarket kids when they split up at the end of Monument 14. Niko, Alex and six others were taking the school bus to try to save Brayden who had been shot and to find the US military evacuation team. Dean, Astrid and three of the little ones had stayed behind - it was too risky to take pregnant Astrid into the poisoned outside. And when we say poisoned, we mean it. A bioweapons accident had left the air toxic in different ways to different people, depending on their blood group. Nobody knows where Jake is. Full review...
Skulk by Rosie Best
All Meg wanted to do was go out and create a real work of graffiti art. Then she sees a dying fox transform into a man, and pass onto her a mysterious gem, and all of a sudden she's inherited a whole new world of problems. Skulk sees its heroine plunged into a secret London, where raggedy groups of people transform into animals. The shapechangers have never got on with each other, but with a mysterious stranger trying to claim the strange gemstone Meg's forced to try to unite this ragtag bunch. Full review...
Time Trap by Richard Smith
Who was Hector Lightfoot? And why did this 19th century soldier and engineer disappear in such mysterious circumstances? And who are the two ghosts inhabiting his house in 21st century London?
Jamie and Todd are thrown into the mystery when they spend a weekend in London with Jamie's Uncle Simon who lives in the house that once belonged to Hector Lightfoot. Simon takes the two boys to see Hector's recently-discovered underground lab at the British Museum. When the building is struck by lightning, the two boys are sent back in time to the year 1862. They know that their only chance of returning home is to find Hector. But where is he? And can they avoid being sucked into a life of crime while they search for him? Full review...
Endless Knight by Kresley Cole
Evie has survived in the post Flash apocalyptic world in part because of the help of her Cajun boyfriend, Jack, and the other companions they've picked up along the way. But it's also because of Evie's impressive abilities. Full review...
Tinder by Sally Gardner
Sally Gardner has followed her wonderful and haunting Maggot Moon with another story about a world at war, but although death and violence abound once again, the atmosphere here is very different. This time we are not in some alternate nineteen fifties Britain where the bad guys have won, but instead in the eerie, mist-filled world of the fairy tale. In this place wonders and magic lead the hero to his destiny, and love, power and greed are the catalysts for both joy and despair. Full review...
Curtsies and Conspiracies by Gail Carriger
With the end of her first year at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality fast approaching, Sophronia is caught up in a conspiracy involving a mysterious trip to London, a prototype that everyone wants to get their hands on, and a potential threat to a friend. Can she save the day? Full review...
The Boy on the Porch by Sharon Creech
When Marta and John wake up one morning, there's a surprise in store. A little boy is asleep on their porch. He has an unsigned note asking the couple to care for him. And so they do. And they soon come to love him, even though he cannot talk. But they can't help but worry. Who is Jacob? Will his parents return for him? And if they do, how will Marta and John bear to give him up - this little boy who paints blue trees, rides cows and can make music from anything? Full review...
The Ransom of Dond by Siobhan Dowd
Siobhan Dowd wrote just four novels before she died from breast cancer in 2007. All four novels were wonderful and yet they weren't Siobhan's sole legacy to us. Patrick Ness took an idea of hers and, together with artist Jim Kay, turned it into A Monster Calls, which won both the Carnegie and Greenaway prizes. And now we have The Ransom of Dond, Siobhan's last story. Full review...
Alan Turing (Real Lives) by Jim Eldridge
Alan Turing was one of Britain's greatest thinkers of the last century. He did pioneering work on computing and artificial intelligence. He was also a hero of World War II, working in the famous code-breaking community at Bletchley Park, cracking German naval codes used to lethal effect organising U-boat attacks. Turing was the man who beat the Enigma machine. Full review...
Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle
On Christmas Eve, the night of the worst storm in 50 years, Jubilee Dougal's parents are arrested after a riot over decorative houses. Sent to stay with her grandparents, her train gets stuck. She ditches the train, and ends up in a waffle house with fourteen cheerleaders and various teen boys. Three best-selling authors team up to tell the story of this Christmas in a trio of interlinked novellas. Full review...
The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt
It's midsummer night, and Tiuri is one of five young men locked up in a chapel with one more night of silent penance between them and the ceremony that makes them knights of the realm, when a stranger lures him outside. The elderly man gives Tiuri the task of delivering a secret letter, and the chivalry and espionage is too much for the sixteen year old to ignore. The bad news begins, however, when he finds the very experienced knight he was to deliver the letter to dying alone on a forest floor, meaning Tiuri must accept the mantle unofficially, and deliver the missive to its ultimate audience – the king of the neighbouring country. The journey will bring the young man right to the cusp of danger, international intrigue and more. Full review...
Haze by Paula Weston
Gaby Winter's life used to be pretty ordinary. Apart the horrific nightmares she sometimes had about a guy and a nightclub and the death of her brother, Jude, things were going okay. Until the mysterious Rafa showed up and told her she was actually one of the Rephaim - a child of a fallen angel - and that she lived a whole other life that she can't remember, where she and Jude were warriors against demons, but on two opposite sides. The other Rephaim thought she was dead. And now they think there's a chance Jude might be alive somewhere too. Full review...
Butterfly Grave (Murder Notebooks) by Anne Cassidy
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. Full review...
Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls
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… Full review...
Conquest by John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard
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. Full review...
Saving Silence by Gina Blaxill
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. Full review...
The Trap by Andrew Fukuda
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? Full review...
Shadowlark by Meagan Spooner
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. Full review...
Debutantes: In Love by Cora Harrison
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? Full review...
The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
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. Full review...
ZOM-B Baby by Darren Shan
WARNING! If you haven't read the first book in this series, STOP READING NOW! NOW! Spoilers ahoy!
Gone? Good.
The story so far Full review...
How to Love by Katie Cotugno
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. Full review...
The Killing Woods by Lucy Christopher
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? Full review...
She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
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. Full review...
The Twistrose Key by Tone Almhjell
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. Full review...
Young Sherlock Holmes: Knife Edge by Andrew Lane
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? Full review...
The Box of Red Brocade (Chronoptika) by Catherine Fisher
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. Full review...
Fire With Fire by Siobhan Vivian and Jenny Han
With Reeve hospitalised after the terrible events at the end of 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? Full review...
Wereworld: War of the Werelords by Curtis Jobling
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. Full review...
The Company of Ghosts by Berlie Doherty
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.
Abandoned, Ellie begins to see shadows. Hear footsteps. Feel icy kisses on her cheek each time she falls asleep... Full review...
Model Misfit (Geek Girl 2) by Holly Smale
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... Full review...
In Bloom by Matthew Crow
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. Full review...
