Category: Young Adult

‘Starsight’ – Brandon Sanderson

Having been so invested in Spensa’s life after book one it felt a little strange to plunge into a much broader scale for this instalment.

After a relatively swift update on what our team have been doing, we are disrupted by the events taking place on a much larger scale. We learn of the dangers facing Detritus and the determination Spensa has to learn more about why the Krell keep attacking them.

Events conspire to send Spensa and M-Bot on a risky mission…to infiltrate Starsight and learn about their technology, with the aim of eventually stealing the secret of hyper travel.

This was a more ambitious scale of world-building. We’re introduced to different groups and learn a little more of their past and their interactions. It’s necessary, and was well done, but it meant we lacked the pace of book one.

Without giving away details, we quickly learn that Spensa is a pawn in someone else’s game. She has to challenge her own prejudices and decide to what extent she will use the teachings of her grandmother.

There’s more flying. There’s a lot of information about the characters and the way their historical beliefs have shaped their current behaviour. There’s some intriguing developments regarding Doomslug and M-Bot, and a rather momentous end-scene that has me curious to see what comes next.

 

‘The Unadjusteds’ – Marisa Noelle

Now that’s what I call an exciting YA fantasy…full of action from start to finish, and with a great cast of characters.

In this world people are used to adjusting their appearance through the taking of nanites, an advanced technology that alters a person’s physical appearance and capabilities. Silver Melody’s parents invented the technology, but she has always been vehemently anti-nanite. Having watched close friends die, she is understandably nervous about the implications.

From the opening drama, which succinctly outlines Melody’s perspective, we’re plunged into a nightmare scenario. There are plans to force anyone ‘unadjusted’ to take nanites, so Melody and her father are forced to flee.

Unfortunately, there are people in power who are very keen to get their hands on Melody and her father.

What follows is a fraught battle. Melody is forced to develop skills she never knew she had, and rely on a very mixed group to help her.

While I enjoyed the ending, it left me with an awful lot of questions. I can’t help but wonder whether we haven’t heard the last of Melody Silver…

 

‘Chosen’ – Kiersten White

 

Back to the world of the Slayer, and since Nina got her powers returned nothing has felt quite right. She’s reluctant to tell anyone about it and also has to keep quiet about her sister Artemis’s actions.

For reasons that we do, eventually, learn we are kept rather in the dark here. There are all manner of odd events taking place, and Nina is feeling the strain. She fears the final prophecy, knows she has to keep people safe but doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes made by others.

There’s some tongue-in-cheek humorous moments, enough fear of the hell-mouth to satisfy the toughest reader and demons aplenty. We learn a little more about certain characters, and just when we think it’s going one way we have the proverbial rug pulled from under our feet.

It’s good to be back…

 

‘Scared little Rabbits’ – A.V. Gieger

Nora has yearned for her opportunity to get involved in the Winthrop Academy summer program. She has the opportunity to show her coding knowledge, but little does she know that this is going to be the kind of experience nobody could predict.

In spite of her lack of social presence, Nora finds herself caught up in new relationships. She develops a huge crush on a fellow student called Maddox and thinks the feeling might be mutual, but Maddox seems to have a complicated relationship with Eleanor Winthrop.

We immediately work out that something odd is happening, but characters throw us off-track with alarming regularity. There’s hints of problems between a number of characters and there are always going to be problems with keeping tabs on people who are skilled at finding their way round security protocol.

It’s hard to imagine someone so capable would find themselves caught up in such a mess. However, it’s not completely implausible. The resolution did throw things up in the air a little, though in light of the whole story you are given some clues.

‘A Curse so Dark and Lonely’ – Brigid Kemmerer

With the release of book two I decided it was high time I got round to this Beauty and the Beast retelling.

This time round our Beast is Prince Rhen, cursed to relive his eighteenth year time and time again. The only thing that will save him is to have someone fall in love with him. Unfortunately, over the three hundred plus seasons Rhen has tried this it has failed. When he turns into a monster Rhen has killed his family and is, slowly, destroying his people.

Our Beauty is Harper, a young girl from DC. We first meet her as she’s looking out for her brother, desperately hoping they can do what is needed to pay off their father’s debts and keep their mother safe. When Harper sees a man attack a young girl in the street she pursues him…and before we know it Harper is spirited away to Emberfall.

Not off to a good start the two characters are prickly towards each other from the start. Each has their own situation to try and resolve, and in our minds there’s a focus on the curse. However, their characters certainly play a huge part in the choices they make and how this impacts on them.

Rhen’s commander, Grey, is a great character from the start. Spirited but strangely loyal, he also develops a close friendship with Harper. At one point I wondered if this would be a cliched love triangle, but the role Grey plays is a much more interesting one.

Over the course of the book we see Harper and Rhen develop their relationship, but also develop as individual characters. We have the manipulative Lilith, the enchantress who has cursed Rhen, and political machinations as those around Rhen try to take advantage of the circumstances.

While the latter stages of the story are, in some ways, quite predictable I was struck by the developments around certain characters that suggest where this might go. I’m looking forward to reading book two soon.

 

‘One of Us is Next’ – Karen McManus

Much as I’d enjoyed One of Is is Lying I was a little unsure of the idea of a sequel. What else was there to tell us? When the book opened with an introduction to our new characters I started to think this was just going to be a derivative of its predecessor, and prepared to be less than keen. It’s testimony to McManus’s writing skill that what I feared would be a hurdle didn’t end up an issue at all.

The story opens by introducing our key characters: Maeve, her friend Knox and Phoebe. While we got to know a little more about our cast this time round, I liked the fact that McManus also filled us in on what had happened to the original Bayview Four and shown us some of the effects of Simon’s scheme.

Very early on we get told of a new game…Truth or Dare. For a school so rocked by the events described in book one I was surprised at how easily this caught the imagination. Our first date is a seemingly innocuous prank involving adding something extra to the roof decoration of a local diner. Relatively good-humoured, not seeming to hurt anyone and offering a chance for people to gossip. When our next ‘victim’, Phoebe, refuses to play it’s like Simon has returned…scurrilous gossip starts to do the rounds and people desperate to keep their secrets take on the dare. The dares become increasingly humiliating and, all too soon, we’re left with a dead student.

The game served as a handy backdrop to show a little more of the social background of Bayview. It was the mystery of who was behind it and their motives for starting things in the first place that formed the real focus…and this is where Maeve came into her own.

While the scenario itself might, ultimately, be more than implausible I was keen to read on and find out the truth of what was going on. Unearthing the secrets and establishing the links between odd snippets of information was definitely the high point of the novel for me. It quickly built up to a suspenseful sequence of events with a rather explosive conclusion, and I was left with the feeling that we haven’t heard the last of some of these characters.

 

‘The Familiar Dark’ – Amy Engel

 

Eve is no stranger to a tough life. Brought up by a mother renowned for her hard words and tough love, Eve has tried hard to move on. However, sometimes – as Eve points out – you need to pick your poison and when misfortune strikes Eve has to decide whether to let her mum back in.

When she fell pregnant at school Eve was determined to do a better job for her child. She couldn’t give Junie a room of her own, but she had love and the knowledge that her mum was on her side. Was it enough?

Quite early on in the story Eve is horrified to learn that her twelve year old daughter, along with her best friend Izzy, has been murdered.

Nobody seems to have any idea who was responsible. But it’s apparent that it’s someone known to those in the area. Eve can not wait for the law to take its course so she does her own digging. She tries every contact, past and present, and along the way uncovers a lot of unpleasant secrets.

A brief story that packs a lot in. There were some wholly unexpected revelations, and I may not like what Eve did but it’s completely understandable.

Thanks to NetGalley for granting me access to read this prior to publication in exchange for my honest thoughts.

‘Are You Watching?’ – Vincent Ralph

A fast-paced thriller for the social media age. Like Nerve, it has its flaws but it hooks you in, draws you in, twists and turns until spitting you out at the end.

Jess has lived for years defined by the events that happened when she was seven. Her mother was brutally murdered in an alleyway less than a minute from her home. She was the first victim of the killer who has been dubbed The Magpie Man. A solitary magpie has always been seen as bad luck, but this moniker stemmed from her father’s attempts to protect his daughter and make sense of something brutal – he told Jess his mum was taken because she was beautiful and magpies like to collect shiny things.

Now, Jess is determined to step out from the shadows. She wants to find the killer…he has thirteen victims to his name so far, and Jess believes it’s only a matter of months until he tries to find another victim.

So Jess signs up to take part in a reality TV show streamed on You Tube. Each person chosen is filmed one day a week for a month. Whoever gets the highest views will then be watched for a further three months. Jess is determined to take her chance to catch her mother’s killer.

What follows is highly improbable. Jess does some very stupid things. People who should know better allow stupid things to happen. But it all adds up to a jumpy tension-filled story. Highly enjoyable.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for my review.

 

‘That Asian Kid’ – Savita Kalhan

 

I felt slightly uncomfortable reading this in public, because I felt the title was definitely contentious, though it makes perfect sense in light of the story. This wasn’t a book that I would probably have picked up, but it’s made its way onto the long-list for the 2020 Carnegie Awards and I always try to read as many of these as I can in advance.

Our main character is fifteen-year-old Jeevan, a third-generation Asian boy who is predicted to perform well in his upcoming GCSEs – apart from in English Literature. No matter what he does, he doesn’t seem to do more than scrape by in this subject – and Jeevan is convinced that it is because his teacher is prejudiced against him because of his ethnicity.

We follow Jeevan one day as he takes a shortcut home through the woods. He is indulging in his one act of rebellion – a sneaky cigarette – when he hears noises. Most people would make their presence known, or leave, but Jeevan hides and what he sees then puts things in a very different position. What he sees is his much-disliked English teacher having sex with his History teacher. I’m not sure how credible this is, but Jeevan records the illicit encounter, then spends days feeling worried about what to do with it.

While Jeevan is sitting on this time-bomb, things go from bad to worse in school. This particular English teacher seems to look for opportunities to get Jeevan into trouble. She criticises him and punishes him but not others; she ‘loses’ his mock-exam paper and claims he threatens her. Jeevan ends up feeling increasingly alienated in school, and when he records the same teacher clearly making racist comments about him and other students he decides it’s time to get his own back. Jeevan is excluded, and reluctantly gets his parents involved in the battle to clear his name.

I’d love to think that behaviours described in this book don’t happen, and it’s very obvious that there is a breakdown in the relationship between these two that quickly escalates into something more serious.

What I found most infuriating in this book is that Jeevan and his friends are described as clever students, but they get themselves into an easily avoidable situation. While Jeevan’s behaviour is, at times, reprehensible we never really see him do anything other than find ways to try and justify his actions. Few of his friends try to do anything other than a token attempt to offer alternative actions, and the behaviour of the teacher herself was so unpleasant that it was difficult to find much sympathy for her.

Perhaps this won’t make it onto the short-list for Carnegie, but it’s certainly a book I’d encourage students to read and ask them to consider the portrayal of not just Jeevan but the issues raised.

‘Regretting You’ – Colleen Hoover

One of those books in which you can pretty accurately predict what’s going to happen, but it’s still quite good fun to read.

We first meet Morgan at seventeen, when she is essentially acting as mum to her younger sister, Jenny. She has dreams for the future, but when she learns she’s pregnant things head in a slightly different direction.

Sixteen years later we see Morgan still with her teenage boyfriend, now her husband, and their daughter is almost an adult. Everything seems pretty cosy. Her younger sister is back together with her boyfriend, Jonah, and they have a young son together. All seems great…which is why it’s no surprise to have a tragic accident that uncovers some very dark secrets.

What follows is a bit of a car-crash and all completely avoidable if people had just spoken to each other. There’s a number of episodes that could go into a ‘how not to deal with grief’ book and the rather inevitable issues that arise from Megan trying not to hurt her daughter are uncomfortable.

Naturally, there’s a series of issues but, deep down, it’s obvious that things are going to be resolved. They are, exactly as we expect. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, there was a part of me that was hoping for something less obvious.