Difference between revisions of "Newest Teens Reviews"

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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Melvin Burgess
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|author=Jenny Valentine
|title=Persist
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|title=Us in the Before and After
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
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|genre=Teens
|summary=When we first meet Marianne she's confusedPeople keep coming and looking at her, but they don't seem to see ''her''.  She wonders if she's something shiny, such as a mirror. Her family are desperate: Marianne has been in a coma for so long that even her mother is beginning to doubt that she can surface from wherever she is.  The doctors are sure that there's no hope for the girl and they're talking about switching off the machines which are keeping her alive, allowing her to fade away painlessly...  It all comes to a head on Marianne's fifteenth birthday.
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|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connectionThey meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the timeBut then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable.   Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781124949</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Paul Dowswell
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|author=Max Boucherat
|title=Bomber
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Harry Friedman is only 17. But WWII is raging all across Europe and Harry felt the call to serve his country and the Allied cause. And that's how he became a gunner on the ''Macey May'', an American Flying Fortress stationed in East Anglia, far away from Harry's New York home.
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|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong?  Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world.  But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky.  For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering.  When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408858495</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Ben Davis
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|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=The Private Blog of Joe Cowley: Return of the Geek
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|title=Compass and Blade
|rating=4
+
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Joe Cowley has got it bad.  Whatever ''it'' is, he's got it bad.  The hots for his girlfriend, Natalie?  Bad.  Living arrangements with his ex-school-bullying-nemesis-turned-step-brother?  Very bad. Some greasy swazz trying to take his girlfriend from him, at the same time as sucking up to her father who is also his business mentor?  Pretty awful.  An attitude that means a devil-may-care voice in his head leads him to support his oddball friends through a dance music competition just to get one over on the swazz?  You can guess, what with that being the main thrust of the plot here, that that too is B A D bad.
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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>0192736965</amazonuk>
+
 
 +
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.
 +
|isbn=0008664730
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Nicole Burstein
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|author=Harry Allen
|title=Othergirl
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|title=Children of the Sun
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Imagine a world where superheroes are real and very much awesome. Imagine a teenage girl who discovers she has amazing powers, that she can fly and toss fire.  And then imagine that you aren’t this girl, but rather her very normal best friend.  The one who patches up her friend's costume and covers for her at school, who worries and frets about her GCSEs while simultaneously planning how to get her friend noticed by the worldwide network of heroes, the Vigils. This isn't the story of Erica the superhero, but rather the story of Louise, loyal friend and sidekick.
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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>1783440619</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1805140493
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Curtis Jobling
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|author=Alexia Casale
|title=Haunt: Dead Wrong
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|title=Sing if you Can't Dance
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Will and Dougie have been friends for ages. They each understand how the other thinks (well, most of the time) and they stick together through thick and thin. Literally, in fact: Will's dead but somehow he's not only unable to move on to whatever comes nexthe actually can't stray more than a few feet away from his best friend. The possibilities for embarrassment are endless.
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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>1471115798</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571373801
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Kate Hendrick
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|author=Simon Fox
|title=The Accident
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|title=Deadlock
|rating=2.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=The Accident alternates between three characters telling their story before, just after and much later than the day of the accident which connects them. Before the car crash, Eliat is a teenage mum knowing she needs to be an adult whilst never feeling more like a kid. Just after the car crash, Will is struggling to hold his dysfunctional family together when his oldest sister moves back home. Later, Sarah is struggling to move on with her life with the injuries and grief the accident has left her with. It’s a story about, whether we realise it or not, how we’re all connected by split-second decisions and we can’t control the impact they have.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1921922850</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jandy Nelson
 
|title=I'll Give You The Sun
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Twins Noah and Jude used to be inseparable until tragedy tore them apart. Now Noah's changed utterly from the boy he used to be, and Jude is reduced to spying on him through his friend as she struggles with her own issues at the exclusive art school Noah was always supposed to go to, but Jude ended up at instead.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406326496</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=M G Harris
 
|title=Gerry Anderson's Gemini Force One, Black Horizon
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Life is changing very fast for Ben Carrington.  He is at the opening of a huge skyscraper hotel his late father founded in Abu Dhabi when disaster strikes – the chap is hardly cold in his grave when Ben's mum and the lad have to prove how adept they are at her old job, of mountain rescue.  She feels like setting up a new rescue agency with her nous and the family fortunes, but someone who can just amble into the opening/memorial ceremony is Jason Truby, a monumentally rich Internet magnate, who actually has a modern-day ''Thunderbirds'' entity already, the top secret Gemini ForceTruby starts to get close to the family of two, but the school-aged Ben isn't going to be allowed to learn just what dramatic escapades the agency has to cover – is he?
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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 runThey 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>1444014064</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839944420
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Katy Cannon
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|author=Lex Croucher
|title=Secrets, Schemes and Sewing Machines
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|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in Love
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Grace is looking forward to being the star in the upcoming school production of Much Ado About Nothing, but after missing the audition, she's relegated to understudy and making costumes in sewing club. Being a costume mistress definitely wasn't the plan, but it may leave her in a position to step into the lead role if needed - and there's a compensation in the form of new boy Connor, who's stage managing and after initially appearing to dislike Grace starts to warm to her. Will Grace get the part and the boy?
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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>1847155146</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1526651793
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Benjamin J Myers
 
|title=The Grindle Witch
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=
 
''Deep in the woods something evil is stirring...''
 
 
 
You can say that again. Jack Jolly's father is a pathologist and neither he nor the armed police with him have ever seen anything like Tom Moore's body. Whoever or whatever killed the old man has carried out the most savage attack anyone has ever seen. And Jack, who has just moved to the remote village of Grindle from the city, had thought it a boring and dull place with unfriendly people, where nothing ever happens. How wrong could he have been?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444011715</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Holly Smale
+
|author=Nick Brooks
|title=Geek Girl: All That Glitters
+
|title=Promise Boys
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=If you're a bright, enthusiastic teen but not top of the popularity polls at school then this series of books by Holly Smale is absolutely made for you. Harriet Manners is, according to your point of view, either beautiful enough to travel the world modelling fabulous clothes, or a girl with a very ordinary face who got very, very lucky. She's clumsy and accident-prone, her dress sense leaves a lot to be desired, and she's far more inclined to research the fine art of making friends in a book (or ten) than go out there and have a go.
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|summary=When the principal (headmaster) of Urban Promise Prep school is murdered, three boys find themselves called into the police station as suspects.  Each, seemingly, has a grudge of some description against Principal Moore, and each could have been there at the time of his murder. But who killed him, and why, and if any of the boys are innocent, will they be able to clear their names?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007574584</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035003155
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Michelle Falkoff
 
|title=Playlist For The Dead
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=This book markets itself as a mystery with a bit of a love story thrown in but it is more than that. It is about loss, anger, confusion, the pain caused by bullying and the desire to fit into a social group by connecting with other people. It addresses how people can change after a tragedy, the dangers of isolating oneself and how teens focus on pursuits such as gaming, science fiction, graphic novels, art, music and popular culture to express themselves and try to make sense of their world.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0008110662</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lance Rubin
+
|isbn=1919635017
|title=Denton Little's Deathdate
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|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
 +
|author=Kitt Townsend
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=
+
|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...
''Tomorrow is the day I'm going to die. I don't mean to get all dramatic about it. I've known that tomorrow is the day I will die since I was born.. Just like almost everyone else in the world knows their deathdate. But do I need to get movie-preview-voice-over-guy intense about it? Probably not.''
 
 
 
Oh! I think I would want to get intense about impending death. Don't you think you would, too? But imagine what it's like to live in a world where everyone knows the day they will die. Rituals and conventions spring up. You get to go to your own funeral. You could even get to make the most of your life if you know when it ends. You won't pass up so many opportunities, perhaps?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471124231</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tommy Wallach
+
|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
|title=We All Looked Up
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|title=Different for Boys
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Teens  
|summary=
+
|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.
Peter, Eliza, Andy and Anita are all about to graduate high school. They all have plans and expectations, even slacker Andy. But those expectations are about to be thrown into disarray. An asteroid is approaching Earth and there's a 66% chance of a collision and an extinction level event. There are just a few weeks before a possible, no a likely, end of the world. What will happen? How will they react? What will they ''do''?
+
|isbn=1529509491
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147112455X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1800901232
|author=Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
+
|title=Stitched Up
|title=This Shattered World
+
|author=Steve Cole
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Dyslexia Friendly
|summary=Stone-faced Captain Jubilee Chase is the best soldier on Avon, a planet in the midst of a rebellion, where the terraforming won’t take, and the mysterious Fury infects soldiers and turns them into mindless killers. Only Lee is immune, and she doesn’t understand why.
+
|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>1423171039</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Elizabeth Wein
+
|author=Patrice Lawrence
|title=Black Dove, White Raven
+
|title=Needle
|rating=5
+
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=The essential role of aviators in the success or failure of modern war is a given, and fiction is full of the derring-do and dog-fight exploits of moustachioed heroes waving their trade-mark silk scarves as they land their frail and battered craft at a friendly airstrip. But what if the enemy planes outnumber those of your country by hundreds, if not thousands, and you, the pilot, are barely out of your childhood?
+
|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>1405271361</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800901011
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Donald Hounam
+
|author= Ann Sei Lin
|title=Gifted
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|title= Rebel Skies
|rating=3.5
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|rating= 5
|genre=Teens
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|genre= Teens
|summary=Fifteen-year-old Frank is a forensic sorcerer, employed to solve murders and other grisly crimes in a world where adults get the blur and lose their eyesight by their mid-twenties, and only the young have enough sorcerous power to summon demons and angels.
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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…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552571873</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1406399590
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Diana Sweeney
 
|title=The Minnow
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Diana Sweeney's ''The Minnow'' is an Australian book aimed at Young Adults that features death, grief, abuse, fear and loneliness. Teenage pregnancy lies at its heart while bereavement, and trying to come to terms with loss, bubbles just under the surface, constantly. But don't be misled. This novel isn't some earnest pedagogical attempt to convey teenage angst and elicit grave pity or understanding from the reader. What rescues it from mawkishness is the beautiful voice of the narrator, Tom (or Holly, if you prefer her real name). Tom doesn't fall prey to self-pity. She simply describes her world as she sees it, matter-of-fact. And the fact that her view is rather unusual (she talks to fish, dead people and her unborn child - and they talk back) doesn't really matter. Nothing can detract from the sheer lyricism of her voice. As a reader, you just have to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>192218201X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lauren St John
 
|title=The Glory
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Alex is what you might call a disruptive teenager. She's always getting into trouble but the latest trouble is the worst yet and her mum and step-dad have had enough. Even her father, far away in Australia with his new family, thinks something must be done. So Alex is sent all the way out to the States to a teenage boot camp. But even naughty teenagers have their plus points, and Alex's is her love of horses. She'll do anything to save the mustang scout from the slaughterhouse.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444012754</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Teresa Toten
+
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title=The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B
+
|title=Wrath
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Fifteen year old Adam has a list. He needs to get better, grow taller and marry the love of his life, Robyn. But while Adam develops a metaphorical tunnel vision so that he can focus only on winning Robyn’s love, everything he is ignoring in the periphery is unravelling. How can Adam help his own overwhelming OCD when he’s so focussed on fixing everyone around him? When is it ok to hang up your own superhero cloak and admit that you might need saving?
+
|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>1406362999</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1800900899
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tim Bowler
+
|author=Tori Bovalino
|title=Game Changer
+
|title=The Devil Makes Three
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Mikey is afraid of open spaces. He would much rather hide in his room - in his wardrobe, actually - than face the world outside. But his family, in particular his sister Meggie, are very supportive. And with Meggie's help, Mikey is gradually beginning to face that world outside. But then something goes horribly, horribly wrong. Mikey sees something he shouldn't have seen. And the gang knows what he saw. The gang knows where he lives. And the gang wants to talk to him...
+
|summary= Working all summer in her boarding school's library is the last thing Tess Matheson wants to do — especially when she gets a request for over a hundred books that she has to deliver herself. What makes it worse is the man who requested the books: Mr Birch. The boarding school's headmaster, and a man Tess hates. As a petty act of revenge for making her find and deliver such a large request, Tess sticks post-it notes on each of the books, scribbled with the ugliest insults she can think of. They're never meant to reach him, of course. Her plan is to get her anger out like this, and then take them all off before delivering them. No harm done… Or it would be, if someone hadn't delivered them for her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192794159</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1789098130
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah Pinborough
+
|author=Philip Reeve
|title=The Death House
+
|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Toby would appear to be lucky, having the run of an isolated country mansion on a small island off the coast of Britain.  But no.  His domain only exists at night, and only then because he sleeps in the day and refuses to take the 'vitamin' pills given him by the staff of an evening.  He is a captive of a mansion that works as a place of exile for teenagers with the Defective gene.  Whatever it would normally lead to, even having it risks becoming suddenly really quite ill, and being the cause of the night-time lift ride on the one way route to the top floor Sanatorium.  But Toby has it good as these things go, the teenaged head boy almost out of the small collection of children in his Dorm, the only one not to have suffered a loss of life.  But things are about to change – new inmates arrive to bulk up the numbers, and one of them, Clara, is the agent of that change.  For when she stumbles on Toby's nocturnal habits she doesn't want to sleep either…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473202329</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Charlie Fletcher
 
|title=Dragon Shield: 02: The London Pride
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=
+
|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.
''Your city is lost. Your city is not yours. Your city is mine.''
+
|isbn=1788452372
 
 
That's what Bast says. The Ancient Egyptian goddess, freed from thousands of years imprisonment, has unleashed her magic. Time has stopped. All the humans are frozen in suspended animation. All the humans except, that is, brother and sister Will and Jo, who are protected by the scarab bracelets they wear. And now, Bast has even succeeded in freezing some of the Spits (good statues) and has sent the bad statues (Taints) to find the two children who are threatening her plans.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444917358</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Melinda Salisbury
+
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
|title=The Sin Eater's Daughter
+
|title=Julia and the Shark
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=In a land of fantasy, Twylla lives in the court, engaged to the prince. But this is no fairytale – he is one of the only people she can touch, made immune to the poison carried in her veins. The embodiment of a goddess, Twylla is the executioner, forced to kill those who commit treason. Nearly everyone around is terrified of her. Until new guard Lief arrives, who could see her as a friend, or even romantically. The question of whether the two could have a future together is an intriguing one, but before long, it’s the least of Twylla’s worries as she’s thrown into danger by the queen’s obsession with destroying her enemies. Can she survive?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407147633</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Teri Terry
 
|title=Mind Games
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Luna is a Refuser. In her world, a Refuser is a kind of cross between a conscientious objector and a Luddite. In this post WW3 Britain, almost everyone has a brain implant which they use to spend most of their lives in a virtual environment. People don't just play in the vast array of games: they work, they learn, they date. Even hacking is encouraged. And those who opt out, like Luna, are shut out of the best careers and viewed with suspicion.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408334259</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jane Elson
 
|title=How to Fly with Broken Wings
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Willem doesn't usually find homework challenging. He's good at schoolwork. But Mrs Hubert has given him an assignment he's going to find difficult. He must make two friends of his own age. That's tricky when you're on the autistic spectrum and you don't communicate well. It's even more difficult when almost all your classmates join in with Finn when he bullies you and makes you jump from increasingly high places. Sasha is torn. She loves Finn to pieces but she can't bear bullying and she hates herself for not standing up for Willem. And Finn has a secret of his own that's driving his rotten behaviour.
+
|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>1444916769</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1510107789
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Megan Miranda
+
|author= Jonathan Stroud
|title=Soulprint
+
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
|rating=4
+
|rating= 4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre= Teens
|summary=Alina Chase lives in a future America obsessed by soulprinting. Scientific advances have enabled the tracking of the soul by markers carried in spinal fluid. Reincarnation is now an established fact and the government maintains a database of all past lives. People without heirs can even make wills leaving their worldly goods to the person in whom their soul is reincarnated. But the discovery has led to problems and the problems have led to Alina's ''containment''.
+
|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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408855402</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1406394815
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Jasmine Warga
+
|author=Mercedes Helnwein
|title=My Heart and Other Black Holes
+
|title=Slingshot
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=3
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Aysel lives in the middle of nowhere. She’s smart but not popular, so high school’s not much fun, and her part-time job, cold calling the town’s residents on behalf of various customers, is far from satisfying. It’s understandable that she’s not a very happy girl. She’s not the preppy cheerleader or the honour roll student who sidelines as class president. She’s nobody, really. But she’s nobody with a dark secret. She wants to take her own life, and she’s making plans to make this happen.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444791532</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Victoria Aveyard
 
|title=Red Queen
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Mare is a Red - a race kept in lives of poverty and servitude by the Silvers, a race with wealth and mutant powers that allow them to live lives of luxury. Learning to survive amongst the slum like conditions that the Reds inhabit, Mare is swiftly thrown into the world of the Silvers - one that proves to be more dangerous than she had ever imagined, with treachery, plots and deadly games lurking round every corner.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409155846</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Darkest Part of the Forest
 
|author=Holly Black
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=The people of Fairfold know not to meddle with the faerie folk, they wear their socks inside out, fill their pockets with oatmeal and they stay out of the forest on the full moon. Tourists don’t know these things. People travel far and wide to see the faerie town and the sleeping boy in the glass coffin but one or two always go missing, never to be seen again. Tourists, the locals say, the folk don’t interfere with locals, if they do, you must be acting like a tourist.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780621736</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Malorie Blackman
 
|title=Love Hurts
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=''Love Hurts'' is all about heartache but it doesn't leave you bereft. Mixed in are enough moments of heartsease (and heart's joy!) to keep you believing in love. And we all want to believe in love, don't we? If you are one of the few who don't, you might as well look away now. The rest of us are in for a treat. This anthology has been gathered together by Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman, one of our favourite YA authors here at Bookbag, and certainly one who understands exactly how to write about the highs and lows of love as it is experienced by young people.
+
|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>0552573973</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=152905818X
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
+
|author= T L Huchu
|title=These Broken Stars
+
|title= The Library of the Dead
|rating=4.5
+
|rating= 4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre= Teens
|summary=Lilac is the untouchable LaRoux princess, daughter of the richest man in the Universe. Tarver is a decorated war hero, allowed to mingle outside his social circles because the upper classes love to celebrate his heroism. After chance meeting aboard the Icarus - the most luxurious ship space travel has to offer - neither Lilac nor Tarver can deny the attraction blossoming. But Tarver knows he isn't good enough for Lilac, and Lilac knows that her father has very strong ideals about who she spends time with. It's over before it's even begun.
+
|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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1423171020</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= 1529039452
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
 
|author=Darren Shan
 
|title=ZOM-B Bride (Zom B Book 10)
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=REPEATING STANDARD WARNING! If you haven't read the [[Zom-B by Darren Shan|first book]] in this series, STOP READING NOW! NOW! Spoilers ahoy!
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857077880</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=I Was Here
 
|author=Gayle Forman
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=
 
''I regret to inform you that I have had to take my own life.''
 
  
Cody finds out that her best friend Meg has committed suicide by email. A flat, formal, email. We follow her over the ensuing months as she searches for answers. How could she not have realised that her friend was in such pain? What had caused that pain? When packing up Meg's belongings, Cody finds emails on her laptop to a boy that has broken her heart. Is Ben McAllister the cause of Meg's suicide? But there's an encrypted file, too. And when Cody finally opens it, she finds information that will take her on a journey, not only through Meg's life, but also her own...
+
Move on to [[Newest Thrillers Reviews]]
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471124398</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sherman Alexie
 
|title=The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Arnold Spirit, or Junior as he is known on the Spokane Indian Reservation where he lives, is about to face the biggest challenge of his life, fourteen years that have already seen their fair share of challenges. He knows the decision to go to the rich all-white school, in the nearby town of Reardan, is a necessary one. It means travelling twenty-two miles every day to a town where he's going to be even more of a target, even more out of place, than he already is on the rez. It means risking the wrath of the other Indians, who will see him as a traitor, a turncoat. And worst of all, it means losing his best friend and partner in crime, Rowdy. However, it is the only way he can possibly break through the vicious cycle of impoverishment, depression and rampant alcoholism that has taken over the lives of so many of the inhabitants of the reservation, and it is a path that he must walk for the sake of not just his future, but that of his tribe.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783442018</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Steve Watkins
 
|title=Juvie
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=With the title ''Juvie'' it’s clear what this book is going to be about, even before you've seen the orange jumpsuited figure on the cover. Sadie and Carla are sisters who are not much alike, but they look out for each other. So when Carla is at a party and finds herself at a situation, Sadie helps her out, against her better judgement. The two girls end up at the wrong place at the wrong time, and before they know it they're in court trying to clear their names. Carla has a history and so her sentence will be stiffer. It will put her away for some time, away from her young daughter in a way that no one wants. There is a way out, though. Sadie is, if not a good girl, then definitely the better sister. If she takes the blame, she'll likely get off with a caution for a first offence, no harm done. She'll be fine, and so will Carla and baby Lulu. It's not ideal, but she can take one for the team. Except things don't go to plan, and Sadie gets sent to, you've guessed it, juvenile detention for her supposed role in the crime.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406358622</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Revision as of 09:47, 22 May 2024

1471196585.jpg

Review of

Us in the Before and After by Jenny Valentine

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Compass and Blade by Rachel Greenlaw

3.5star.jpg Teens

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

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

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Review of

Children of the Sun by Harry Allen

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Sing if you Can't Dance by Alexia Casale

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

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Review of

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

4star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Stitched Up by Steve Cole

5star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

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

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Review of

Needle by Patrice Lawrence

3star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin

5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

1789098130.jpg

Review of

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

4.5star.jpg Teens

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

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Review of

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

5star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1510107789.jpg

Review of

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

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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

1406394815.jpg

Review of

The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud

4star.jpg Teens

Scarlett McCain is an outlaw, rejecting the draconian conformity of the Surviving Towns and Faith Houses to wander the wildlands between the Seven Kingdoms of Britain, robbing banks and shooting other outlaws to keep herself alive. But then she meets Albert Browne, a dark boy with dark powers and a darker past. With mysterious militiamen hunting them down, they plan to flee to the mythical Free Isles of the London Lagoon. Together, they must brave man-eating wildlife, the cannibalistic Tainted and all the horrors of post-apocalyptic society to reach the Free Isles, but will they be any more accepted there than they are in the rest of Britain? Full Review

152905818X.jpg

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

1529039452.jpg

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

Move on to Newest Thrillers Reviews