'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Ruth Thomson and Chloe Thomson
|title=Have You Started Yet?: You and your period: getting the facts straight
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Every young girl will face her periods starting but it’s the preparation which goes on beforehand which will determine whether or not this is seen as the body developing naturally or a problem. Both are attitudes which are likely to stay through life and it’s obviously better that it’s the firmer rather than the latter. ‘’Have You Started Yet’’ gives factual information in an informative and reassuring manner and in a form which is easily readable to girls of about nine years old and above.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230744907</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=As soon as Georgia Myers turns eighteen, she is going to find her biological parents. And she has lots of questions for them too; like where else might she have lived if she had not been given up and does she have any brothers and sisters? Mostly, however, Georgia just wants to ask ''why?''. Why was she given up for adoption? Why her?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849014124</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tracey Turner
|title=Dreadful Fates
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Imagine the delight you get, as a book reviewer, when you chance upon a title that stands out, by filling a nice handy gap in the market you'd never even noticed, and doing it so well you want to alert as many people as possible. This is such a time, Dreadful Fates is such a book, and as for the gap… This book hits upon the darker corners of all those copious 'highlights of history for the kids' books, touches upon The Darwin Awards compilations of stupid people dying in stupid ways, and merges with those collections of famous last words and epitaphs some of us like flicking through now and again – and does it all for the under-thirteen audience.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408124211</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Hester Browne
|title=The Finishing Touches
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=As the daughter of its owner, and a highly experience management consultant to boot, Betsy is the obvious choice to call for help in turning around a finishing school failing to make the grade in 21st century London. Except... Betsy never attended the school as a student, and she's not so much 'management consultant' as she is 'shop assistant' – a distinction many a proud parent could be forgiven for missing. With the Tallimore Academy facing financial ruin, however, Betsy isn't so much their best hope as she is their only hope.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340937807</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Allie Spencer
|title=The Not-So Secret Diary of a City Girl
|rating=3.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Banking analyst, Laura McGregor has her secret diary accidentally uploaded to the Internet. The diary contains her thoughts about her lacklustre relationship with a
trader, her attraction towards a “dirt-digging journalist” and massive discrepancies in the accounts of her new manager.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755352947</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joseph O'Connor
|title=Ghost Light
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=An unknown voice introduces the reader to actress Molly. She doesn't know it but she will be dead fairly soon. It's almost as if she's talking to herself throughout the introduction pages. The language is Irish vernacular so there's lots of good old Irish put-downs, classic descriptions and call-a-spade-a-shovel language. This richness and unmistakable lilt gives the reader a sense of place. Albeit, old Molly is almost living by her wits (which are varied and considerable) in the poorer areas of London. Her conversations with the local people, whether it's the inn-keeper or the local bobby on the beat are absolutely wonderful. She is one fine actress. I could not keep the smile from my face when reading these conversational gems. For example, Molly is trying to have a polite conversation with the inn-keeper Mr Ballantine when they are rudely interrupted 'Men barrel in and out with their swearing and gruffness ... Why can they never sit easy, must they always emit noises, and must the noises be deafening vowels?' Brilliant. The sheer beauty in all of this is that Molly, in her own private thoughts, in her own head, is giving off the most foul language of the lot of them. These conversations are also bitter-sweet. O'Connor's descriptions - especially of people are superlative. He doesn't try too hard (which is a gift in itself) but gets his message over to the reader.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0436205718</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Bowles
|title=Two Serious Ladies
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=First published in 1943, this is the story of Christina Goering and Frieda Copperfield who are two strained and constrained women who want to break free, although it is not entirely clear what it is they want to break free from. Society? The conventions of heterosexuality? The boredom of their female lives? Anyway, Christina is a wealthy spinster who takes a companion, Miss Gamelon, into her home where they settle into a routine of being catty to each other. Soon Christina's male friend, Arnold, moves in with them too, and later when they all move to a falling-down house on an island they are joined there by Arnold's father who has walked out on his wife. Christina leaves the house, trying to improve herself in some manner perhaps, but becoming a sort of prostitute, falling into relationships as a 'kept woman'. Mrs Copperfield, meanwhile, takes a trip to Panama with her husband. The couple drift apart as Frieda finds herself attracted to the seedy underworld of prostitution, drinking in bars and brothels, falling for a prostitute named Pacifica and leaving her husband to move in with her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956003850</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Ogilvy and Chris Mould
|title=The Funfair of Fear! - A Measle Stubbs Adventure
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There is one thing Measle could really be called afraid of. Not the usual teenage things, like having a bath, no. He's lived through being inches high and stuck in a nightmarish train-set diorama with an evil cockroach and worse for company, and as a result, he's going to be afraid of a wrathmonk – a warlock turned bad – such as the one who put him there. So you'll pity him when it becomes obvious a gathering of wrathmonks are forming, to get their revenge on Measle's newly-found family. But what are wrathmonks in turn afraid of, I hear you ask? That's right – a garden gnome.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729713</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chloe Neill
|title=Firespell: The Dark Elite
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lily Parker is sent to boarding school in Chicago when her parents get the opportunity to do some prestigious research work in Germany. She was expecting bitchy classmates, and she gets them – but she wasn’t prepared for her suitemate, Scout, who stays out late at night and reappears covered in bruises, a school full of secret hiding places, a principal who knows her parents and seems to have an entirely wrong idea about their work – or a mysterious group of supernatural teens called the Dark Elite.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0575095393</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Mould
|title=The Werewolf and the Ibis (Something Wickedly Weird)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The 'Something Wickedly Weird' series is a splendid mix of Gothic horror and cartoon-style fun. The scrawny young hero, young Stanley Buggles, who lives in a 'darkened industrial town', as the first page tells us, is plunged into an adventure from the moment he arrives (all alone, as tradition dictates) at Crampton Rock. He has inherited his great-uncle's mansion, a vast old pile on an island linked to the mainland by a long winding footbridge. The right atmosphere of isolation and claustrophobic unease is created immediately, especially when we learn that letters are only collected from the island once a fortnight. Whatever is on this island, Stanley will have to deal with it alone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340931027</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Katie Fforde
|title=A Perfect Proposal
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=I have read most of Katie Fforde's books and each and every one has proved to be enjoyable and entertaining. A Perfect Proposal comes up to the same high standard and, having just finished reading it, it has left me wanting more! Her style is very relaxed and easy going and she always creates believable characters that you can't help caring about.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846054494</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Najat El-Hachmi
|title=The Last Patriarch
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Najat El-Hachmi's debut novel, The Last Patriarch is a difficult book - both in terms of content and style. It's a story of physical and sexual abuse in a patriarchal Moroccan family, an immigrant story, when first the father and then the family move to Catalonia, and ultimately a story of the narrator, the patriarch's daughter, breaking free of her past as she takes on different cultural values. Narrated entirely from the perspective of the patriarch, Mimoun Driouch's unnamed daughter, the story is also concerned with cultural and imagined histories, and the importance of origin stories.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687179</amazonuk>
}}
