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
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|author=Max Boucherat
 
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
 
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|rating=4.5
{{newreview
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|genre=Confident Readers
|author=Gabrielle Lord
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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?
|title=April (Conspiracy 365)
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|isbn=0008666482
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=It's April and Cal has survived three months of his year on the run. Will the fourth bring him any closer to answers about the Ormond Singularity? And can he trust Winter Frey?
 
 
 
You guys last saw Cal in January, feeling rather shell-shocked after his father's death from a mysterious disease and his brush with a crazed lunatic who told him that his father was murdered and he'd be next unless he could hold out until next New Year's Eve. Within days, Cal found himself on the run, accused of battering his own sister, and in search of something called the Ormond Singularity.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340996471</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|author=Hayley Long
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|title=Compass and Blade
|title=Lottie Biggs is (Not) Desperate
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|rating=3.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lottie Biggs, who's in her mid-teens is recovering from what's described as a 'mental disorder of a reasonably significant nature'.  She's having counselling from Blake (from New Zealand) who has some rather unusual turns of phrase and looks like Johnny Depp, but without the pirate make-up. All in all she's doing quite well.  Gareth Stingecombe is still the love of her life and to seal the bond even tighter she gets a Saturday job in his mother's hairdressing salon.  This might, or might not, turn out to be a mistake given what the mother-in-law-to-be thinks constitutes a trendy hairstyle.
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|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>033047975X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Rachel Hawkins
 
|title=Hex Hall
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Sophie Mercer has been sent to a boarding school for monsters after a little love spell goes horribly wrong. Hecate Hall has been set up 'to protect and instruct shapeshifter, witch and fae children who have risked exposure of their abilities'.
 
  
As in any good school story, she soon makes new friends and enemies. Her room mate is a 15 year old vampire with an obsession with everything pink, and Sophie must struggle to hide her disgust at Jenna’s blood consumption, as they quickly become good friends. She faces more difficulty with a trio of glamorous witches. Anna, Chaston and Elodie hate Jenna and they are frequently sarcastic and nasty at Sophie’s expense. At the same time though, they approach her to join their coven, and her reluctance to get involved makes her more unpopular.
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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>1847387225</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008664730
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Harry Allen
|author=Claudia Gray
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|title=Children of the Sun
|title=Evernight
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=I'm at a complete loss how to review this book. I'm very tempted to take a tip from my favourite movie critic Roger Ebert who, on occasion, has been known to suggest that you should watch a film '''then''' read his review if it's full of twists and hard to describe without spoilers. I'm actually thinking that's not a bad idea here – but will try my best to provide a review with as few clues as possible to the twists and turns, just in case two sentences aren't enough to convince you. This may not be easy, so bear with me!
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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>0007355319</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1805140493
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jim Carrington
 
|title=Inside My Head
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Zoe has moved from London to rural Norfolk - her parents are expecting a late baby and they want to downsize, get out of the city, and live in a more sustainable way. Unsurprisingly, Zoe isn't big on this plan. Wrenched from her school and friends, and the vibrancy of the capital, she's convinced that her life has just taken a socking great turn for the worse.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408802716</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Alexia Casale
|author=William Nicholson
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|title=Rich and Mad
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=When Maddy Fisher goes for something, she goes all out. She has decided to fall in love, but not just any kind of love – it has to be the can't-eat-can't-sleep, crazy kind. But then once you get to know Maddy, you'd expect nothing less, for this is a girl who lives with a camel and thinks nothing of choosing her parents' shop over her own well equipped room when she wants to find a bed to curl up in for a think.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405247398</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ann Kelley
 
|title=Koh Tabu
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Bonnie MacDonald is thrilled to be going to a beautiful tropical island with the rest of the Amelia Earhart Cadets, especially as the only adult present will be the incredibly glamorous Layla Campbell, nicknamed the Duchess, who treats them all like adults. But the dream holiday becomes a nightmare - after landing on the wrong island despite dire warnings from the boatman who took them there, a storm kills him and one of Bonnie's friends and wrecks the boat, leaving them trapped with no-one knowing where they are. With the Duchess shining rather less brightly as she’s revealed to be practically useless in the face of danger, it's left to Bonnie and her friend Jas to try and keep the remaining girls alive and find a way to be rescued.
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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>0192756044</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Simon Fox
|author=Sally Gardner
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|title=Deadlock
|title=The Red Necklace
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Paris's streets are already humming with talk of revolution, when the young gypsy Yann Margoza is summoned to perform his magic at the chateau of a selfish, debt-ridden marquise. He is to tell the assembled aristocracy their future. But what he hoped would be the ticket to a better life turns into a nightmare when he has a vision of the richly-dressed crowd drowning in a sea of blood.
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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>1842556347</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sarah Singleton
 
|title=The Island
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Otto has arrived in Goa a couple of days ahead of Charlotte and Jen, his gap year companions. It's typical of Otto to steal what should be shared thunder. He's a lovely lad, but he's a tad selfish and he does like to be first for everything. Each of the three has a different reason for the trip: Otto wants to get some experience for a hoped-for career in photo-journalism; Charlie wants to volunteer and beef up her environmental credentials; Jen has dreamed of journeying to India for as long as she can remember.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847382967</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Justin Richards
 
|title=The Chamber of Shadows
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=It's London, 1886.  A company building those new underground train tunnels finds a hidden vault at impossible depth - and seems to release into the world The Lord of Flies.  A mysterious masked stage magician does the obviously impossible.  A robotic killer stalks the streets, and a street gang of ruffians-on-the-up decides to solve the mystery.  A man in charge of Fortean artefacts at the British Museum has a new employer, asking something much more evil from him.  Surely all of that cannot be connected in some way?  Surely one book can not have all those dark and mysterious elements we can probably all recognise, and put them into one period thriller without coming over as a horrendous porridge of parody?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571237991</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Robin Wasserman
 
|title=Crashed
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Lia lives in a future where minds can be saved even if bodies can't. After a fatal car crash, her brain has been scanned, mapped, saved, and transferred into a machine designed to look and feel human. She'll live forever. We last saw her with her new mech "life" in tatters after Auden's terrible accident and her family's rejection. She can't see a future for herself amongst the orgs any more and so she rejoins Jude and his group of adrenaline junkie mechs at Quinn's mansion. It's a life of extreme thrill-seeking, backed up by Quinn's unlimited credit and Jude's shady contact at Bio Max, who supplies them with dangerous and untested, but exciting and cutting edge mods and updates.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847387659</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lex Croucher
|author=David Yelland
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
|title=The Truth About Leo
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Leo lives inside his own head for much of the time. You can't really blame him. He's always tired for a start. That's because he's often up early, tidying up the house after one of his father's rampages. His father drinks too much, you see, and sometimes he smashes up the house. Leo can't risk this being discovered because his father's the only person he's got since his mother died of cancer. He misses her like crazy, and he's afraid he'll be taken into care if anyone finds out about his dad's drinking.
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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>0141330031</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1526651793
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Nick Brooks
|author=Richard Denning
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|title=Promise Boys
|title=Tomorrow's Guardian
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Eleven year old Tom Oakley thinks he's going mad when he seems to relive short periods of his life, and dreams about other people from different times. The reality is far stranger – he's a Walker, with the power to rescue those he dreamed about. Travelling to the battle of Isandlwana, the Great Fire of London, and a German U-Boat, guided by the mysterious Professor, Tom saves the lives of soldier Edward, servant Mary, and Able Seaman Charlie, who also have powers. There are others, however, with similar powers, who aren't as pleasant as Tom's new friends – and the four of them, allied with the Professor and his roguish helper Septimus, are pitched into a battle to save the worlds. That's intentionally plural – there are two parallel universes at stake here.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445251388</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Tim Bowler
 
|title=Blade: Cutting Loose
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=''Cutting Loose'' is the seventh book about Blade, the fourteen-year-old anti-hero who has unerring skill with a knife and a past that won't let him go. Blade is coming to the edge of his resources and he can't go on for much longer. He has done all he can to expose uber-villain Hawk - rescued Jaz, talked to the police, given up his carefully-hidden evidence, set a gang war in motion in the Beast. It's not enough, but it's the best he could do and now he just wants out.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192756001</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Dyan Sheldon
 
|title=My Worst Best Friend
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Gracie Mooney and Savanna Zindle are, unlikely as it may seem, best friendsSavanna is popular, beautiful, loud, confident and, well, a little bit stupidGracie is short, plain, quiet, and an intelligent lizard-loving environmentalist.  Their friendship really shouldn't work, but somehow it does, and they spend hours and hours together, then when they're not together spend hours discussing everything on the phone with each other.  You can tell already what's going to happen, can't you? Yes, it's a friendship bust-up just waiting to happen...
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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 suspectsEach, seemingly, has a grudge of some description against Principal Moore, and each could have been there at the time of his murderBut who killed him, and why, and if any of the boys are innocent, will they be able to clear their names?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406304204</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1919635017
|author=John Green
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|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
|title=Paper Towns
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|author=Kitt Townsend
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=17-year-old Quentin Jacobsen has been in love with Margo Roth Spiegelmen ever since he can remember. It's an unrequited love though - neighbours and childhood friends they may be, but their respective places in the High School pecking order are miles apart. Margo is one of the beautiful ones. She's cool, clever and a trendsetter. Q languishes in the middle ranks with his band member mates, Radar, who's an obsessive editor of Omnictionary (read Wikipedia), and Ben, who wants a girlfriend more than anything, but lacks the status to get one.
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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>1408806592</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Alec Sillifant
 
|title=Jake Highfield: Chaos Unleashed
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=What's this that Jake is doing - breaking into a building? Vandalising it with graffiti, having ruined someone's privacy and infiltrated something he shouldn't have done?  Three years ago he would have been doing this as a yobbish kick, but now he's a teenage agent of a shadowy organisation called the Academy, and people want him to succeed in his mission. But do they all want that?  Who are his taskmasters after all?  And what does the Void have in store for his future?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845393481</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|author=Rhys Thomas
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|title=Different for Boys
|title=The Suicide Club
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Teens  
|summary=Craig Bartlett-Taylor's third attempt at killing himself is nearly successful except when he announces in class that he's taken a whole bottle of pills, new boy Frederick Spaulding-Carter steps in and saves his life. Freddy attains instant celebrity as a hero, and our narrator Richard Harper is as impressed as anyone else.
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|summary=Ant is in Year Eleven at quite a standard school, and is surprised to find his geography class (within which it seems absolutely nothing about geography is ever learnt) has been restructured, so his desk is one of four with both his best buddy from the football team, and two other old muckers – in fact they all go back to primary school days together.  As they're all fired up, straining at the leash only a single-sex school can form, the talk in class and out often turns to sex.  Which is confusing for Ant, as he doesn't know what his score is, where his achievements in that regard lie. He's had a casual relationship, a secret one, for several months now, and so has effectively progressed up the ladder headed by 'experienced', but whether that's set in stone, he can't be sure.  And that's mostly because of who he's been having the relationship and the sex with.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552774979</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1529509491
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1800901232
|author=Kat Falls
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|title=Stitched Up
|title=Dark Life
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|author=Steve Cole
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|summary=Climate change came. The oceans rose. Half the land mass disappeared uner the water. Some of what was left simply crumbled away. Now, Topsiders live in giant tower blocks in a society under an authoritarian regime with emergency powers. Time outside is limited because the sun is so strong it causes third degree burns. Status brings space, not money. Using space to which you aren't entitled brings severe punishment crashing down upon you. It's no wonder Gemma wants to find her brother, who is living as Dark Life on the ocean floor.  
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|summary=Twelve-year-old Hanh wanted to be a fashion designer. Life in the rural village where she lived with her family was happy, if not prosperous, so when the smartly-dressed man and woman came to the village to offer Hahn a job in Hanoi it was an opportunity not to be missed. Some money changed hands and Hanh was on the mini-bus to Hanoi. Only, Hanh and the other girls were not going to work in a shop, they were to work in virtual slavery in an illegal garment factory.  You know those jeans you really wanted: the ones with intricate embroidery and beading on the legs?  The ones with the artfully-placed rips and distressed seams that felt so soft when you touched them?  It's quite possible that Hanh and her co-workers made them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847387616</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patrice Lawrence
|author=Simone Elkeles
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|title=Needle
|title=Perfect Chemistry
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|rating=3
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=On the outside, Brittany is the flawless high-school girl. She has the perfect hair, the perfect outfit, and the perfect boyfriend. Any girl should be jealous of her, right? Wrong. Underneath the immaculately applied mascara lies a multitude of family problems, her despair at the thought of her severely disabled sister being bundled off to a nursing home never leaving her mind. She has to keep her hurt hidden to save her image, but surely enough this mask starts to crack as more and more of her life refuses to live up to the expectations she has forced upon herself.
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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>1847388051</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author= Ann Sei Lin
|author=Chris Higgins
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|title= Rebel Skies
|title=Tapas and Tears
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|rating= 5
|rating=4.5
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|genre= Teens
|genre=Teens
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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=It's tough being fourteen. You're old enough to be getting to grips with who you are and what you like, but other people – parents, friends, teachers – often seem to think they know better than you do about what's best. Jaime is on the shy side. She's not a huge fan of meeting new people, and she's never strayed far from her mum's side before, so a fortnight alone in Spain is the last thing she wants. But, a school exchange is exactly what she finds herself signing up for and before she knows it, she's bundled off for two long weeks – but will it all be fun in the sun, or, as the book's title seems to hint at, are ''Tapas and Tears'' on the horizon?
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|isbn=1406399590
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340970774</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gillian Cross
 
|title=Where I Belong
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Khadija - although this is not her real name - is a young Somali girl, sent to Britain by her father. She's supposed to get an education and earn some money and then return, equipped to help bring prosperity to both her family and her impoverished country. She's an illegal immigrant, posing as a sister to Abdi. Abdi is a second generation Somali immigrant. He was born in the Netherlands and came to Britain when he was very young. He feels a connection to the land of his parents, but struggles to make sense of it as he has never been to Somalia. Freya is the daughter of a world-famous fashion designer, Sandy Dexter. She's aware of her privileged status, but she feels lonely and unloved. Her mother's passion for design doesn't leave much room for a daughter, and her father's abiding love for the woman he married makes Freya feel like everyone's second choice.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192755544</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Steve Cole and Chris Hunter
 
|title=Tripwire
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Felix's father was a bomb disposal expert. He died on Day Zero - the day global terrorism united and destroyed Heathrow Airport, killing countless thousands of innocent people. It changed everything. Bent on avenging his father, Felix has signed up to a training program for the Minos Chapter - a shadowy counter-terrorist unit of underage operatives. He knows the risks if he's successful, but what he doesn't know is that another, even more devasting, Orpheus attack is imminent...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552560839</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|author=Scott Westerfeld
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|title=Wrath
|title=Extras
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=In the future city of this book, many people live with what is called a reputation economy. With everybody practically a cyborg, they're online permanently, using optical and brain implants to see everybody's status, output and more.  Many people have hovercam companions, to make their own documentaries and film their own lives. They rely on metablogs to interact and keep their popularity up. They continuously spread their opinions and interests in order to become more well-known.  A girl called Aya is struggling to get any renown, but things change, when she meets other people doing incredibly notorious things, but in complete secrecy and anonymity.
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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>1847389228</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Tori Bovalino
|author=Jaclyn Moriarty
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|title=The Devil Makes Three
|title=Dreaming of Amelia
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=New scholarship students Riley and Amelia are so mysterious that everyone at Ashbury High School is talking about them. Add to that the creepy happenings around school, and Lydia Jaackson-Oberman's PC actually typing its own messages to her, and it seems pretty appropriate that the Higher School Certificate question these teens are answering for much of the book is on Gothic Fiction.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330512889</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Fridrik Erlings
 
|title=Fish in the Sky
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary='I've got a dad in a shoe box and a mum who's struggling for her life against a famished cannibalistic sewing machine.'
+
|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
Oh dear! Josh Stephenson is just thirteen. His father is separated from his mother and works away on a ship and so he's a much-missed presence in Josh's life (the shoe box). Money is tight with only one parent at home, so his mother works multiple jobs, some of them at home (the sewing machine). Josh occupies a middle position at school: neither clever nor stupid; neither jock nor geek. He and his best friend Peter are natural history fanatics and they spend a great deal of time watching documentaries on television, or planning their own.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845393422</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Melissa de la Cruz
 
|title=Blue Bloods
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=''Blue Bloods'' is the first book in a series aimed at teenagers and it's about vampires, currently a popular theme in young adult novels.  However Melissa De La Cruz offers an original twist on this topic: the Vampires are known as 'Blue Bloods' and they're part of the New York elite. They're rich, young, beautiful and popular.  Thought to be immortal, their world is shattered as one of them is found murdered.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190565474X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Scott Westerfeld
 
|title=Specials
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=In the un-named city of the future, all the adults are living in the delusion that their city is right.  After a teenage life as an ugly, they all undergo a welter of medical procedures, to make their minds and bodies conform to the bland, but gorgeous, society norm.  But one young woman is not like that.  She is going to a party, looking ugly, and she knows it is not what we look like, but how special we feel inside, that is of most importance.  The good news is that this woman is our returning heroine, Tally.  The bad news is that her ugliness is a temporary disguise, and worse than that - she knows how to feel special inside, because she IS A Special.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847389082</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lauren Oliver
 
|title=Before I Fall
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Women's Fiction
 
|summary=Samantha 'Sam' Kingston is, in many ways, your typical American high schooler whose concerns are pretty predictable: boys, friends, fashion, weird parents, annoying little sisters. Today it's Cupid Day, a chance to show off just how ''In'' you are at school, as measured by the number of roses you're sent, but Sam's not too worried about that. She knows she's part of a group who, by most definitions, would be called popular, and though sometimes inside she might feel on the inside a little like an imposter, on the outside, well, she's the definition of ''in''.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980893</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Anne Cassidy
 
|title=Guilt Trip
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Two years ago, Ali and her friends saved Daniel Feeny from committing suicide. They became local heroes and were looked up to as good examples of modern day teenagers. Ali was on her way to Cambridge, Stephen about to start his own business, Jackson getting ready to be reunited with his brother in Brighton where he'd also study history, and Hannah joining her mother's hairdressing business.
 
 
 
Then something dreadful happened. Five weeks later, Daniel was dead, and the gang of friends who had been adjusting to life as heroes were responsible.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407110705</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|author=Elizabeth Chandler
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
|title=Dark Secrets: Legacy of Lies and Don't Tell
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=After years without seeing her grandmother, Megan receives an invitation - or perhaps a summons - to visit the old lady at her house in the town of Wisteria. Reluctantly, she goes there to please her mother, but finds out that despite the invitation, her grandmother doesn't seem happy to see her, and neither does her cute but sullen cousin Matt, who's currently living there. More worryingly, the house seems strangely familiar, because she's seen it many times in her dreams...
+
|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>1847388728</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|author=Sam Enthoven
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|title=Crawlers
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Why are the men that want to take over the world using evil alien beings always so stupid? Steadman is stupid. Ever since the Great Fire of London trapped her in an underground dungeon in 1666, the Queen has been neutralised. Even then, the great and the powerful couldn't quite bring themselves to kill her. She had too much potential. But they did have the sense to keep her safely locked away. But now Steadman thinks he knows better. He thinks he can rule the world through the Queen and he's set her a test. If she passes, he will set her free.  
+
|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>0552558702</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|author=Scott Westerfeld
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|title=Pretties
+
|rating= 4
|rating=4.5
+
|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=In the unnamed city of the future, all the adults are pretty.  They've had mental and physical surgery to make them calm, placid and perfectly aesthetic human beings. If they have any trouble as young adults it is the problem of what to wear at parties, or how to get rid of their hangovers when they wake up at 5pm. Unfortunately, one of these bright young things is our heroine, Tally, one of the few people in the world to have learnt how damnably horrid and sapping the life of Riley can be.
+
|isbn=1406394815
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847389074</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Mercedes Helnwein
|author=Scott Westerfeld
+
|title=Slingshot
|title=Uglies
+
|rating=3
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary="This city is a paradise, Tally.  It feeds you, educates you, keeps you safe.  It makes you pretty."  And that's meant literally.  As soon as they're sixteen years old, ugly people like Tally are completely rebuilt - no more freckles, dull eyes, rough skin, or ideas about biting their fingernails, and made a pretty.  It's scientific, and obviously of benefit, considering the parties, status and love afforded to pretties.  But is it essential?  When her best friend is prettified Tally finds a new friend, Shay, who has secrets to share in the few weeks before the operation they're due to have on the same day.  Secrets of another place, another way, and of people staying forever ugly - through choice.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847389066</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Nicole Dryburgh
 
|title=Talk to the Hand
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=We first met Nicole Dryburgh in her book ''The Way I See It'', which she wrote at eighteen, and which detailed her battles with cancer and the loss of her sight. We loved the warts-and-all picture of her life that she gave us then, and so we were really pleased to see that she's written a second book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340996978</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=William Hussey
 
|title=Witchfinder: Dawn of the Demontide
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Jake is a rather solitary person. He's bright but bored by school and he's obsessed with horror comics. He owns an amazing collection and he knows all the stories and myths and folklores off by heart. Little does he realise that everything he reads about is real, and the Demontide is almost upon him.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192731904</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Laura Powell
 
|title=The Master of Misrule
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=In the Arcanum, fortunes could be won and lost.  The bizarre otherworld, just the slightest shift away from our own, had been home to a life-altering game of chance, power and intelligence, based on the tarot.  Four teenaged Londoners had been witness to this, then players.  But they'd found it wanting, and to level the playing field, had thrown out the rulebook.  With that, however, the referee is no more, and the Lord of Misrule is in charge.  Free, too, to smother all of Britain with his unique brand of scratch-card lottery.  Soon all humanity might be out of luck.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408302373</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Pauline Fisk
 
|title=In the Trees
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Since his mother died, Kid has been staying with Nadine and flipping burgers in a fast food joint after school. It's not an exciting life, but he isn't unhappy. And then Nadine gets a boyfriend and the flat gets rather cramped. And then a box of his mother's possessions arrives. Inside, he finds a photo of the father he's never met and a copy of his birth certificate, which tells him that his father comes from Belize. And suddenly, Kid makes a decision. He's going nowhere fast in London, so he's going to head out to Belize and find the man in the photo. He's on a plane within days.  
+
|summary=Gracie Welles has resigned herself to being lonely. As a secret illegitimate daughter of a man with a "real" family, she is used to not being a priority in people's lives. But when she defends a random boy in her class with her slingshot, her simple existence is changed for good. No longer can she spend her time writing novels in solitude, for her life now has a boy in it that she never asked for: Wade Scholfield.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571236200</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=152905818X
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= T L Huchu
|author=Gene Kemp
+
|title= The Library of the Dead
|title=No Way Out
+
|rating= 4.5
|rating=4
+
|genre= Teens
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|summary= Ropa Moyo is a ghostalker, using Zimbabwean magic (and a bit of Scottish pragmatism) to take messages from the dead of Edinburgh for their living relatives. Ever since she dropped out of school, she's been using it to support not only herself, but her younger sister and her aging grandmother. However, there's an evil stalking the ruined streets of Edinburgh, targeting the city's children. Soon, Ropa is pulled into the search for a missing boy at the request of his dead mother. She will end up discovering an occult library and realise that the world of magic is far bigger and more dangerous than she ever could've imagined. Will she find the missing children and bring an end to this evil, or will it claim her too?
|summary=Alex and Adam are twins, and they're telepathic to boot. They're very close, but are also like chalk and cheese: Adam's looking forward to their holiday on Uncle Ben and Aunt Sadie's farm, but Alex can't think of anything worse. Adam is always happy to read to their little sister Emmy, but Alex resents the attention she gets (she's disabled, y'see). By and large, they're just ordinary kids, with ordinary grumbles. When the car they're in goes through thick fog and crashes, they find themselves in a town from times past, with inhabitants who don't want to let them leave, and who have an eye on Emmy.
+
|isbn= 1529039452
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571244556</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Kristen O'Neal
|author=Delphine de Vigan
+
|title=Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses
|title=No and Me
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lou is a clever, clever child with an IQ approaching 160. She's thirteen, but she's been moved up two years at school and she compares her flat chested, nervous self somewhat unfavourably with her fifteen-year-old peer group. Funnily enough, her only real friend at school is Lucas, who's seventeen and such a rebel that he's been moved down  two years. Things at home aren't great for Lou. Her baby sister died a few years ago and her mother has been severely depressed ever since. She barely talks, seldom gets dressed. Her father is worn down to the bone with worry and Lou doesn't get a great deal of attention from him either, so distracted is he.  
+
|summary= Having recently been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, Priya has to come to terms with the fact that she may be in constant pain for the rest of her life. She joins ''Oof Ouch My Bones'', an online support group where she talks to a bunch of other teens living with chronic illnesses. They talk about their troubles and help each other out, while also providing an escape to just joke and mess around. When Brigid—one of her closest friends—doesn't respond to the chat for a while, Priya becomes concerned. She decides to steal her parents' car and drive to Brigid's house to check up on her. But what she doesn't expect to find there is a werewolf in the basement – and for that werewolf to be the girl she has been talking to online for the past few months.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807513</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1683692349
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|author=Paul Magrs
 
|title=The Diary of a Dr Who Addict
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Davey, in his first term at secondary school, is horrified.  Not only is his best friend trying to grow up through the use of a home gym, and standing him up on the first morning of term, he also seems to be becoming dismissive of The Show.  Still, he is trying to be esoteric - just like his sister, painting her face to look like Bowie album sleeves of all things - and Davey knows better.  He knows everyone should be enthralled with the spectacle of Tom Baker falling off a building and becoming Peter Davison.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847384129</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=James A Owen
 
|title=Shadow Dragons (Imaginarium Geographica)
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=If you want to know where Tolkein, C S Lewis and their ilk got their ideas from, you might consider their jobs.  No - not their work in Oxbridge universities.  In this book, at least, John, Charles and Jack are guardians of a very important book, the Imaginarium Geographica, within which lives a lot of secret, vital information, and almost the soul of the land.  They might not get a surname so we know immediately who is whom.  They might be from a different world - there is certainly enough talk of those in these pages.  But we'll see them meet a vanishing Cheshire cat, a certain Spanish knight we might have thought fictional, and more, en route to a quest of Arthurian proportions.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847386512</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jon Mayhew
 
|title=Mortlock
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Abyssinia, 1820. Three Englishment search for the Amarant, a mythical flower with the power over life and death, in a strange desert oasis. On finding the flower surrounded by decaying faces, they realize that it is cursed, and take a blood oath never to remove it.
 
 
 
London, 1854. 13 year old knife thrower Josie performs with her guardian the Great Cardamom, an especially gifted magician who we quickly learn is Chrimes, the coward of the original three Englishmen. Their relatively peaceful existence is shattered when three macabre Aunts (note the capital letter, never a good sign…) descend on them, and Cardamom instructs Josie, with his dying breath, to find the twin brother he'd never told her about and destroy the Amarant.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408803925</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Revision as of 09:13, 8 April 2024

0008666482.jpg

Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Compass and Blade by Rachel Greenlaw

3.5star.jpg Teens

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

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

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Review of

Children of the Sun by Harry Allen

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Sing if you Can't Dance by Alexia Casale

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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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

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

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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

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Review of

Slingshot by Mercedes Helnwein

3star.jpg Teens

Gracie Welles has resigned herself to being lonely. As a secret illegitimate daughter of a man with a "real" family, she is used to not being a priority in people's lives. But when she defends a random boy in her class with her slingshot, her simple existence is changed for good. No longer can she spend her time writing novels in solitude, for her life now has a boy in it that she never asked for: Wade Scholfield. Full Review

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Review of

The Library of the Dead by T L Huchu

4.5star.jpg Teens

Ropa Moyo is a ghostalker, using Zimbabwean magic (and a bit of Scottish pragmatism) to take messages from the dead of Edinburgh for their living relatives. Ever since she dropped out of school, she's been using it to support not only herself, but her younger sister and her aging grandmother. However, there's an evil stalking the ruined streets of Edinburgh, targeting the city's children. Soon, Ropa is pulled into the search for a missing boy at the request of his dead mother. She will end up discovering an occult library and realise that the world of magic is far bigger and more dangerous than she ever could've imagined. Will she find the missing children and bring an end to this evil, or will it claim her too? Full Review

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Review of

Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O'Neal

5star.jpg Teens

Having recently been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, Priya has to come to terms with the fact that she may be in constant pain for the rest of her life. She joins Oof Ouch My Bones, an online support group where she talks to a bunch of other teens living with chronic illnesses. They talk about their troubles and help each other out, while also providing an escape to just joke and mess around. When Brigid—one of her closest friends—doesn't respond to the chat for a while, Priya becomes concerned. She decides to steal her parents' car and drive to Brigid's house to check up on her. But what she doesn't expect to find there is a werewolf in the basement – and for that werewolf to be the girl she has been talking to online for the past few months. Full Review

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