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‘What Not To Do If You Turn Invisible’ – Ross Welford

Having loved Time Travelling With A Hamster I was looking forward to this one.

Ethel lives with her grandmother as her mother is dead, and she knows nothing of her father. She has such severe acne that she resorts to purchasing a herbal remedy online. This ointment, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to do much to cure her acne…but taking it before she goes on a sun-bed has an unexpected side-effect. She becomes invisible!

There’s some lovely comic scenes where Ethel attempts to help her friend Elliot out. There’s an endearing quality to Ethel that shines off the page, and it was good to a genuine friendship between a boy and a girl.

Family, just as in Welford’s debut, is central to the book and there’s many links to it here. There are some unexpected developments in the course of the story, and this is a novel about finding yourself that will entertain and move you.

‘Twelve Minutes to Midnight’ – Christopher Edge

Orphaned Penelope Tredwell has taken on the mantle of publishing the magazine, The Penny Dreadful, after the death of her father. It’s 1899 so, as a young girl, she is expected to act with a certain decorum – which is at odds with her fascination with the macabre. Though she has raised circulation of the periodical by writing under the pseudonym of Montgomery Filch it is a time where nobody could believe a young girl would be capable of such writing, so Penelope is forced to pay a jobbing actor to pretend to be the writer in a bid to boost publicity.

A letter is sent to Mr Filch by a doctor at the notorious Bedlam asylum. Upon investigation Penelope learns that at precisely twelve minutes to midnight the inmates of Bedlam rise out of their beds and start feverishly scribbling what seem like nonsensical words and ideas on anything they can lay their hands on. Caught up in this real-life adventure, Penelope learns that these scribblings are being engineered, as someone is determined to use these visions as a way of predicting the future.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and we are plunged into a crazy world. Edge creates an authentic setting, and his style of writing is entertaining. I loved the range of vocabulary and literary skill evident here. Though this is targeted at upper primary/lower secondary age students, it is definitely one for more confident readers – but if you like Lemony Snicket then this should be right up your street.

‘Orbiting Jupiter’ – Gary Schmidt

This story is told through the eyes of our young narrator, Jack, and focus on how he copes when his family get fourteen year old Joseph – a young father who has been in detention after attacking a teacher – come to live with them.

Joseph is the kind of boy that many are quite happy to regard as trouble. He is mercilessly bullied by a trio of boys in his new school, and many of the teachers are convinced that he is bringing down the better students. He is, in many ways, a boy more sinned against than sinning – we never get all the details (thankfully) but what we are told about his behaviour suggests strongly that he has been abused while in care and that he does not come from a supportive family background.

However, Jack’s family judge a person’s character on how their animals react to them. Joseph is able to calm down the family cow, so he’s okay. A rathe simple approach, but it allows Joseph to bloom. As he relaxes in this new environment, he starts to share some of the details of his past. Unsurprisingly, things are not as we were led to believe at the start.

Just when there was a hint of something positive happening, we’re sideswiped by a move so shocking I wasn’t sure I’d read it correctly. Abrupt, certainly, but it did get me emotionally.

This is a very quick read, and I think I’d have liked to have had details fleshed out a little more or spent a bit more time with these characters. However, I really did feel an awful lot of stuff was packed into these pages…perhaps I couldn’t have coped with more.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in advance.

‘The Secret’ – Katerina Diamond

You don’t have to have read The Teacher before you read this, but it would definitely help – if only to understand a little the rather odd dynamic in the relationship of Miles and Grey, and the very graphic violence featured unrelentingly.

The blurb for the book tells us…

Bridget Reid has a secret, one that could get her killed… If she can escape the man who is keeping her locked in a basement bedroom.

DS Imogen Grey is good at keeping secrets – truths she’d never reveal to her colleagues at Exeter Police. She worked hard to get where she is – she nearly died for it. Now her past is catching up with her…

As DS Grey and her partner DS Adrian Miles search for Bridget, they uncover a terrifying web of abuse, betrayal and murder. And they realise that some secrets are better left buried…

An undercover cop (Bridget) escapes when the other prostitutes in her house are killed. Someone is onto her…Imogen Grey becomes entangled in this case, and it quickly becomes apparent that there’s links to what happened to Grey a couple of years ago.

We jump timeframes a lot – and, on occasion, I found myself having to check where we were – but this was, for me, one of the most compelling parts of the book. As we slowly come to work out the links between the characters, and see that sometimes the bad guy can be right under your nose, I was desperate to work out just how things would connect.

The end, which suggests we could be in for another story following Adrian’s attempt to bring down his ex-wife’s new partner, both frustrated and excited me.

A departure from my normal reading, and not a genre I’m totally at ease with because of the seemingly increasing need to torture characters in increasingly violent ways. However, here it is evident that the details do shed light on the characters and the set-up we are being asked to witness. Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for my review.

‘Release’ – Patrick Ness

I don’t know if I dare confess to not knowing ‘Mrs Dalloway’, but I loved ‘Forever’ as a teenager and was in awe of a writer who could be so open and frank about discovering sex as Judy Blume was. This latest release by Patrick Ness may well be inspired by these books, but this was really a book of mixed responses for me.

The story focuses, in the main, on a day in the life of Adam Thorn. He is the younger son of an evangelical preacher, gay but not able to share this with his family (though there are clues that they know this) and about to spend the night at a going-away party for his first love, Enzo. We follow Adam through his day – so mundane in many ways, but also packed with exquisite moments.

Alongside Adam’s story is this rather odd tale of the spirit of a recently deceased girl (murdered by her boyfriend) hell-bent on getting revenge. She is accompanied on her journey by a 7ft faun and, on occasion, people in the real world see her. I confess to not really being sure what was going on here. It felt like some kind of symbolic representation of Adam’s life but it did feel like it was getting in the way of the story I wanted to know more about.

I found myself frustrated at the start by Adam’s family – the chrysanthemum scene was symptomatic of their inability to talk together – but I thought there might be hope when Adam’s brother, Marty, reveals he has got a girl pregnant. Sadly, we follow Adam on his day and there’s always a sense of someone not quite getting it.

The scene with Adam’s sleazy boss, Wade, angered me. I felt rather sorry for Enzo, in spite of the hurtful way in which he behaved towards Adam. However, that moment when Adam realises what has been going on, and gets his release from this toxic relationship was to be applauded. The moment that choked me, where I really wasn’t sure I wanted to read on, was the moment when Adam finally confronts his father with the reality of his life. A rather unconventional approach to outing yourself, but when his dad turns round and says “You’ll never know how hard I have to work to love you” I thought my heart would break!

I can see some readers might be uncomfortable with the level of detail given to describing Adam’s sex-life. Yes, it’s graphic but not really much more than we might get from many writers describing a heterosexual relationship, and I certainly didn’t get the feeling it was gratuitous. What I do think is worth noting is the positivity shown in the relationship between Linus and Adam. There was a real tenderness to their interactions and an emotional intimacy that anyone should be honoured to share.

All in all this was a read that I found absorbing. In turns drawn to and repelled by Adam and his family, I felt Adam’s story was Ness at his best. The other parts were, sadly, detracting and I felt they were Ness trying too hard to be clever.

‘Hunted’ – Meagan Spooner

Having been raised in a cabin in the woods and accompanying her father on his hunting trips, Yeva (our Beauty) is clearly struggling with the demands of life in town. She is restless, and intensely dislikes the expectation that she will make herself a good match and do what society dictates she will. There is an inherent restlessness in Yeva that many will recognise.

Luckily – though it doesn’t seem that way – their father loses all his money on a business venture and the family are forced to leave town and return to their cabin. Yeva takes to honing her skills and goes hunting to help her sisters survive the cold winter. Only it’s clear that she is not the only thing in the woods.

Yeva is not an obvious heroine, and she is not without her flaws. Initially acting out of a desire for revenge, it is only when she learns to listen that she comes to see the truth of the Beast holding her captive.

The sections where Beauty is with the Beast are probably my favourite. I loved the atmospheric writing, and there was a real sense of loneliness that came through in the story.

‘Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore’ – Matthew Sullivan

Scheduled for publication in June 2017, this is a book that I only saw how clever it was after I’d finished it.

If you want to hide something, often the easiest place to hide it is in the open. It’s a much-repeated phrase in Literature, and it certainly rings true here. Everything is very much apparent – once we have it all laid out for us, and can see just how the various bits of the puzzle inter-connect.

Lydia, our main character, works in the Bright Ideas bookstore. When one of the regular customers kills himself there, it kickstarts a deeply unnerving set of events. For Joey, the young victim, is found with a picture of Lydia as a child in his pocket.

At the point that Lydia starts to try to establish why Joey had this picture, and why he felt compelled to leave all his possessions to her, we get introduced to Lydia’s horrific past. The stuff of prime-time TV drama, we get to learn all about a night in Lydia’s past that she had tried hard to bury.

Slowly, and with an ominous sense of inevitability, we learn how Lydia and Joey are linked, and we get the full details of that night. Claustrophobic in mood, but I was desperate to know exactly what happened.

Unsettling, desperately sad but very very readable. Thank you to publishers Scribner and NetGalley for allowing me to read a copy in advance in exchange for my thoughts.

‘The Afterlife of Holly Chase’ – Cynthia Hand

There’s very few people that will not be familiar with the story of Scrooge and his shot at redemption. With untold students having to study ‘A Christmas Carol for GCSE I can see this being an interesting companion piece.

Our focus is on seventeen year old Holly Chase, a fashion-obsessed teenager who’s been struggling to come to terms with the death of her mother from cancer. She is, quite frankly, an unpleasant character: rude, self-obsessed, selfish, mean…you get the idea. In true Dickensian style she is visited one Christmas Eve by three spirits, keen to give her a chance to change. Holly ignores the warnings, and dies on Christmas Day.

Only she isn’t actually dead.

Holly is, instead, taken to work on Project Scrooge – a secretive set-up where once a year the crew attempt to save the life of one Scrooge (or the modern equivalent). For the last five years we are told Holly has been acting as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Her afterlife is pretty dull. She goes to work, has no friends and does little in her spare time. This year, though, things are different.

This year the target is, for the first time since Holly, a young boy. From the off we can see Holly has a lot more invested in Ethan’s case than others she’s worked on. Though things aren’t done conventionally here, we root for Holly as she tries to change someone’s future.

As the book progresses there’s hints that things are not quite as we were led to believe. However, it all ties together nicely.

This must be the only book I’ve read where I’m actually happy that the romance I was hoping for all along didn’t quite go to plan. When you read it, you’ll know why. This is not a straightforward retelling, but it was instantly recognisable. Aside from the modern setting and the easily identifiable characters, I loved the way Hand updates the source for a modern reader. And the geeky English teacher in me loved all the Dickens references and quotes.

What’s not to love?

Thank you to edelweiss and publishers Harper Teen for allowing me to read this in advance.

‘Contagion’ – Teri Terry

The first in a new Terry trilogy, ‘Contagion’ is a book that packs a punch.

Our story focuses firstly on a young girl, Callie, who went missing a year ago. She isn’t clear where she is – or even what she is – but she knows she is in an underground bunker, and that the people within its confines are experimenting with something.

Alongside Callie we are introduced to Shay, a teenage girl, who is struggling to fit into her new home in Scotland. She recognises a picture on a missing poster, and realises that she might well have been the last person to see this young girl alive. Of course, the girl she saw was Callie (it always helps for the stories to merge somewhere) and it helps that the brother desperately searching for Callie is not unattractive.

‘Contagion’ was a curious mix of genres – romance, thriller, dystopian – but I really liked the telling of the story through the two different viewpoints. It allowed us to do a little joining of the dots, and to get under the skin of the characters a little better.

As it becomes clear that there’s some form of contagion spreading through the country we join Shay and Callie in their attempts to work out who’s responsible, and how the country can fight back. I couldn’t have predicted some of the details that get dropped on us, but the writing about the fall-out of this spreading menace was horribly realistic.

My only real gripe with the novel was the fact that it ends with us still none the wiser about what has been happening. We have a couple of hints, but everything is left quite open. Frustrating, perhaps, but it has definitely left me desperate to get my hands on part two as soon as I can.

A huge thank-you to Teri Terry, publishers Hachette and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this prior to publication in mid-May 2017.

‘Goodbye Days’ – Jeff Zentner

Can a text message destroy your life?

Carver Briggs never thought a simple text would cause a fatal crash, killing his three best friends, Mars, Eli, and Blake. Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident and even worse, there could be a criminal investigation into the deaths.

Then Blake’s grandmother asks Carver to remember her grandson with a ‘goodbye day’ together. Carver has his misgivings, but he starts to help the families of his lost friends grieve with their own memorial days, along with Eli’s bereaved girlfriend Jesmyn. But not everyone is willing to forgive. Carver’s own despair and guilt threatens to pull him under into panic and anxiety as he faces punishment for his terrible mistake. Can the goodbye days really help?

An absorbing read, which will certainly get readers thinking about the extent to which our actions influence events. Will we blame Carver? Perhaps a little, but no more than we might blame the boy who started to reply while driving or any of the other characters involved in the story.

This could have been a very earnest story, but the question of responsibility goes hand-in-hand with showing us Carver and the families of those left behind coming-to-terms with their grief.
For me, it was this element of the story that really made this novel what it was.

I felt we really got under Carver’s skin as he goes through therapy to try to learn to live through the panic attacks that have set in since the funerals. We see his memories of the boys and get to know all of them through the ‘goodbye days’ that are set up with each of the grieving families. From Blake’s grandmother, through Eli’s parents and, finally, Mars’s father – the Judge who asked the police to consider pressing charges – these were emotionally-charged moments. Zentner gives us a slice of what these families are living through, and also helps us understand a little why they act as they do.

A cathartic, thought-provoking read that I will recommend heartily to colleagues and students alike.

A huge thank-you to NetGalley for the ARC.