Newest Teens Reviews
Teens
Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow by James Rollins
The prologue to this splendid book recounts a terrifying chase, the discovery of fabulous Mayan artifacts, and a shadowy enemy. And that gripping scene sets the tone for the rest of the book. After the strange disappearance of their parents, who were on an archeological dig on the Mountain of Bones, Jake Ransom and his sister Kady are sent a parcel containing two halves of a Mayan coin, their mother's sketchbook and their father's notebook. There is no indication what these things mean or what to do with them. Full review...
Montacute House by Lucy Jago
Cess is the poultry girl at Montacute House. She and her mother live alone - Cess has never met her father. In fact, she doesn't even know who he is. Shunned by the other villagers because of her illegitimacy, Cess has only two friends, both also social outcasts. There's William, who has a club foot - thought of as a curse in Elizabethan England, and Edith, who's been chased out of the village for witchery by the woman-hating local priest. Full review...
Unhooking the Moon by Gregory Hughes
The Rat and Bob are prairie children. Winnipeg is a land so flat you can watch your dog run away for three days. When their father dies and they're orphaned, they are determined to avoid a children's home at all costs and embark upon a road trip to New York City, in search of their long-lost uncle. Bob is pretty much the hanger-on - he knows that the Rat is a special kid who would never make it in an institution and so he puts his fears aside to follow his singular sister. Full review...
White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick
Rebecca is not happy to be leaving London. She's not happy with her dad, she's not happy with her boyfriend, and she just generally an unhappy person. Having to move to a dead-end place like Winterfold doesn't help at all. Her only friend there is a strange girl named Ferelith who one hot summer's day shows her an abandoned mansion where two hundred years ago a priest performed horrible experiments on human corpses. He wanted to learn something from the dead. But what was it? And what does Ferelith really want from Rebecca? Full review...
Blood Ninja by Nick Lake
"It makes perfect sense that ninjas should be vampires". So Taro is told early on in this book, and on the evidence here that statement is correct. With a gutsy, bloody opening to the adventure we see Taro being attacked by ninjas, and rescued by a friendly vampire among them - having doubted the existence of both from his corner of sixteenth century rural Japan. The attack nearly leaves Taro an orphan, but opens himself up to a whole unexpected destiny, as people seek to kidnap him - or worse, and beyond that, an entirely unforseen existence as a teenage vampire when his saviour turns him. Full review...
The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence and imagination. To succeed is to convince the reader of events at two levels – the child's world within the adult world surrounding her. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', also reflect a wider cultural truth. In 'The Earth Hums in B Flat', a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle to cope with their family secrets. If that sounds a bit tacky, fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenni, is all whippet and sharp corners. Full review...
I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girls) by Ally Carter
If ever there were a new series chock full of characters to make Harry, Ron, Hermione et al look like wimps, then this is it. Virginia might not be the most exciting of States, and sleepy Roseville may not be the most thrilling of towns, but for our purposes that's good. Boring and ordinary is good. Flying under the radar is good. To the town's residents, the Gallagher Academy is just your typical all girls private school. They don't know much about it, but then who would want to when it's clearly housing a group of snooty, snobby rich kids? Except...it's not. The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is not the place it makes out it is – this is an elite institution with a difference, for all its boarders are spies in training, with a curriculum in lethal weapons and covert operations as well as exquisite twists on the usual subjects: foreign languages here mean dedicated days where the whole school converses in any one of the FOURTEEN languages the girls have to master. Full review...
Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani
It definitely wasn't Viola's choice to go to boarding school and she really would have preferred not to have to share a room with three other girls she'd never met before, but her parents – both film makers - were going to be abroad for a year and single rooms were in short supply. And that was how, at the beginning of the school year, Viola came to be at the Prefect Academy in South Bend, Indiana rather than in her native New York. She'd left behind her best friend, Andrew (no – he's not her boyfriend, he's a best friend who happens to be a boy) and is sharing a room with Marisol Carreras, Romy Dixon and Suzanne Santry. Full review...
Johnny Swanson by Eleanor Updale
'Strength in What Remains' is the inspirational account of Deogratias, a man who has fled from the genocide and civil war in Burundi (just south of the equator in East Central Africa, bordering Rwanda). He escapes to New York, out of fear and want of a safer life; only his new found American life isn't quite what it promised. Full review...
The Fool's Girl by Celia Rees
When Illyria is sacked, the fool Feste spirits the Duke's daughter, Violetta, to London, to chase the evil Malvolio and reclaim an ancient relic. There they meet William Shakespeare, who they persuade to help them in an exciting quest which builds to a climax in the Forest of Arden. Full review...
April (Conspiracy 365) by Gabrielle Lord
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. Full review...
Lottie Biggs is (Not) Desperate by Hayley Long
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. Full review...
Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
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. Full review...
Evernight by Claudia Gray
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! Full review...
Inside My Head by Jim Carrington
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. Full review...
Rich and Mad by William Nicholson
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. Full review...
Koh Tabu by Ann Kelley
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. Full review...
The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner
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. Full review...
The Island by Sarah Singleton
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. Full review...
The Chamber of Shadows by Justin Richards
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? Full review...
Crashed by Robin Wasserman
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. Full review...
The Truth About Leo by David Yelland
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. Full review...
Tomorrow's Guardian by Richard Denning
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. Full review...
Blade: Cutting Loose by Tim Bowler
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. Full review...
My Worst Best Friend by Dyan Sheldon
Gracie Mooney and Savanna Zindle are, unlikely as it may seem, best friends. Savanna is popular, beautiful, loud, confident and, well, a little bit stupid. Gracie 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... Full review...
Paper Towns by John Green
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. Full review...
Jake Highfield: Chaos Unleashed by Alec Sillifant
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? Full review...
The Suicide Club by Rhys Thomas
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. Full review...
Dark Life by Kat Falls
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. Full review...
Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles
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. Full review...
Tapas and Tears by Chris Higgins
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? Full review...
Where I Belong by Gillian Cross
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. Full review...
Tripwire by Steve Cole and Chris Hunter
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... Full review...
Extras by Scott Westerfeld
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. Full review...
Dreaming of Amelia by Jaclyn Moriarty
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. Full review...
Fish in the Sky by Fridrik Erlings
'I've got a dad in a shoe box and a mum who's struggling for her life against a famished cannibalistic sewing machine.'
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. Full review...
Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz
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. Full review...
Specials by Scott Westerfeld
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. Full review...
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
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. Full review...
Guilt Trip by Anne Cassidy
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. Full review...
Dark Secrets: Legacy of Lies and Don't Tell by Elizabeth Chandler
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... Full review...
Crawlers by Sam Enthoven
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. Full review...
Pretties by Scott Westerfeld
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. Full review...
