The Fault in Our Stars
by John Green
Teenagers are going mad for John Green, and having read this book, I can see why.
Hazel has cancer of the lungs. She must carry an oxygen tank on a cart everywhere she goes, and her parents know each day could be her last. She attends a cancer support group and is friends with Isaac who becomes blind with his cancer. One day Isaac brings along his friend, Augustus, whose cancer lost him a leg, and Hazel is smitten. So begins a beautiful relationship - but heartbreakingly short.
John Green brings his characters to life, he gives them humour to cope with their situation, but at the same time you will find yourself with a lump in your throat as the end closes in.
Also try Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher, and Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler.
The Bunker Diary
by Kevin Brooks
A rather disturbing story with a none-too-happy ending. A homeless teenager busking in London is chloroformed and bundled into a van by a man pretending to be blind. On waking, he finds himself in a damp basement of some sort with six bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a lift. We as the reader are left realising at the same time as him what has happened and what is happening - and very probably what will happen to him. Over the course of the next couple of days, five other people are abandoned in the bunker, and it is the start of psychological games by their abductor to see who will last the longest - if any. Have something happy to hand to read when you've finished this!
Waiting for Gonzo
by Dave Cousins
Marcus Osbourne (Oz) has moved to a new town, a new house, a new school. On his first day he manages to do the worst thing possible - draw a moustache on a photo of 'Psycho Skinner' (Isobel, daughter of local pub owner and also local crook), thus setting off a cycle of events which he hadn't bargained for. Add to this a surprise event within his family (referenced in the title as 'Gonzo') courtesy of Oz's sister, Meg, and we have one rollercoaster of misunderstandings, upsets, friendships broken then repaired, and family dramas. But with enough humour added to make it a comedy drama.
Rated teen for moderate language and teen pregnancy issue.
Colin Fischer
by Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz
Colin has Asperger's and as such doesn't have many friends in school as they see him as some sort of freak to taunt. Because of his inability to detect emotion in other people's faces, he carries around a cheat sheet with drawings of faces with different expressions with the emotion written underneath. However, Colin has a great aptitude for maths and deduction of facts. When a gun goes off in the school cafeteria, he immediately becomes like one of his ultimate superheroes, Sherlock Holmes, and processes the evidence and facts to deduce who the real culprit is.
A great story of acceptance, family and friendship. If you like this, you may also like Wonder by R.J. Palacio and The Case of the Deadly Desperados by Caroline Lawrence.
Struck by Lightning
by Chris Colfer
A very funny story about Carson Phillips, a student at Clover High School, who is desperate to become a journalist, and needs to get some literary work together from the other students as part of his application to his favoured university, Northwestern. Unfortunately, all the other students hate him, so he has to resort to blackmail to get any work out of them. Lots of bad language.
Chris Colfer began his career as an actor, starring as teen Kurt Hummel in the hit series Glee.
Hostage Three
by Nick Lake
Amy is 17, fast approaching her 18th birthday, is a rich kid in a private school, has just finished her exams at school, but immediately fails them (she smokes a cigarette during her final exam). She lost her mother a while back, her dad has since remarried but spends all his time at work, and Amy doesn't get on with her stepmother. When her dad announces they are going on a round-the-world yachting trip, Amy doesn't really want to go. But dad hires a captain, a cook and a third staff member and off they go. The captain prepares the route taking care to avoid the Somali coast, as pirates have been known to linger there to board ships, take hostages, then demand ransom money from the rich yacht owners. Unfortunately, this does then happen. During the terror of the events which unfold, Amy starts to fall in love with Farouz, one of the pirates. How will things fare for the pair? Will Amy and her family survive the hostage situation? Will the ransom get paid? An original story about love and family.
Dash And Lily's Book Of Dares
by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
What a great teen novel! (definitely teen - swear words here and there). Lily leaves a red moleskine notebook on a bookshelf in the town's main bookshop. In it is a dare for anyone who reads it. Dash finds the book and decides to follow it up with his own dare in return. So begins a relationship of words, secret messages and dares between two people who have never met each other. The temptation to meet is strong, but will their own versions of each other match up to the real thing?
A must-read for fans of John Green! Also try Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher, and Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson.
The Last Minute
by Eleanor Updale
The story starts 11 minutes after an explosion in an English town, and the next 59 chapters countdown the final 59 seconds before that explosion. It details the last movements of many inhabitants of the town. Several of these characters draw your suspicions, but it's only at the end that you find out if your suspicions may have been correct.
As soon as I started to read it, I thought of Mortal Chaos, how one event sparks off another until it creates a catastrophe. But in this book, you are ticking off a second in all the people's lives. That's a lot of movements of a lot of people, and you need a constant reminder of who all these people are. Because of the short chapters, you are able to whizz through the book, but you also find yourself skimming through most of it because there is too much detail.
Metawars - Fight for the Future
by Jeff Norton
It's unfortunate that I read this one after Insignia because so many of the details are the same. Jonah lives in the real world but, like all the other people, he plugs himself into a virtual world where everything is nice and pleasant. That is, until a war starts brewing between the Guardians and the Millenials. The latter want to take over the virtual world and rule it with one governor, whereas the Guardians would rather have a notion of 'free rule' where everybody governs. Both Jonah's parents have been killed as a consequence of the war, so he teams up with his dad's best friend from RAF days, Axel, and his daughter, Sam, to help save the virtual world - the Metasphere - from the clutches of Matthew Granger and his cronies.
This is the first in a four-part Metawars saga.
Insignia
by S.J. Kincaid
This has the makings of a good story, but it takes ages for anything of substance to actually happen, and the book was far too long - 400 pages. The blurb on the back of the book says it is about virtual reality wars in the sky, so I was expecting a lot of war action, but it was rather lacking. It basically follows the story of a teenager who is picked because of his skills on virtual reality games (he even attends a virtual reality school because he moves around so much with his dad), and he is recruited into a school where the pupils are trained to become fighters in the virtual war that is taking place. They all have implants put into their brains so they can be hooked up and programs downloaded into them to speed up the learning process. It seems this young boy has a very rare talent for accessing high security programs using his mind and brain, and can bypass firewalls to get to information. A lot of technical and computer speak abounds! Shame the book wasn't halved!
This is the first in a trilogy. The second, Vortex, is out July 2nd 2013.
Summertime of the Dead
by Gregory Hughes
Very violent - at times gruesomely so - the story is set in Japan. Yukio's best friends - the twins Miko and Hiroshi - have committed suicide because they have brought dishonour upon their family by becoming involved (unwillingly) in a Mafia gang. Yukio vows to get revenge and trains hard in his Samurai sword fighting. What starts out as revenge turns into a mad frenzy of cold-blooded murder - of both goodies and baddies. Yukio is slowly being consumed by evil. His young cousin, who he calls the Lump, sees beauty in everything and can sense the badness building in him. She manages to calm him with her simplistic views of the world, and for a while he desists in his evil attacks. Soon the Lump has to return home though, and the evil returns to Yukio. Needless to say, he is soon caught and arrested and committed to a prison hospital for the insane.
I started out not liking the writing - the author has an annoying love of exclamation marks. But it is obvious he loves Japan, its people and its culture (especially Samurai sword fighting!) The last couple of chapters are very moving - everyone that Yukio has known in his life has died and he wonders whether if he had not done some things, they would still be alive now.
Gregory Hughes is also the author of Unhooking the Moon, which won the Booktrust Teenage Prize in 2010.
A World Between Us
by Lydia Syson
This felt more like an easy-read adult novel than a teenage one. I'm not sure this would be a commercial success in the teenage market. (The cover is very old-fashioned and rather awful which may not help.) That said, I quite enjoyed the story. It is London 1936, and Felix is a trainee nurse living with her mum and brother Neville, whose best friend George is in love with Felix, of which she is at first totally unaware. Felix gets caught up in a march of supporters of the Spanish Republicans - it is the start of the Spanish Civil War. She bumps into Nat, who is off to Spain as a Brigader, planning to help fight against the Spanish rebels. They instantly fall for each other, and once he has left she decides to do the same, and escapes to Spain to help in the army hospitals. However, George finds out where she has gone, and he too follows her out there to serve. Felix has to decide whether to follow her head or her heart, and one near-death experience almost helps her decide.
At Yellow Lake
by Jane McLoughlin
A good suspense thriller which peters out and disappoints slightly at the end.
Etta, Jonah and Peter are all brought together at Yellow Lake cabin via various means and ways. Etta has been kidnapped by her mum's drug-dealing boyfriend. She escapes from the car after nearly colliding with Peter, a British boy who's hitchhiking to Yellow Lake to bury a lock of his mother's hair who has died from cancer, and who actually owned the cabin he's headed for. They come across Jonah, a young lad who's trying to 'find' his Red Indian heritage, and who has built himself a wigwam, forages for food and for healing plants, dresses in a loin cloth, and prays to his American Indian predecessors. He is camping out in woods next to the cabin. The three find themselves barricaded in the cabin, with murderous drug dealers trying to get in. Will they get out alive?
Ketchup Clouds
by Annabel Pitcher
From the author of the very sad but great My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, this is another tear-jerker - I loved it. It was moving, and true to life when describing teenage relationships. I just loved Aaron's character and, with everyone else who reads this, wished that 'Zoe'/Alice would confess her mistake and be with him from the beginning.
'Zoe' is telling her story in the format of letters to a prisoner on Death Row in Texas, partly because she feels the same guilt as him - he has murdered his wife and a neighbour in a fit of jealous rage, and she has caused a terrible accident due to her feelings for two brothers. It's about letting go of your guilt and moving on with your life.
Definitely teenage for bad language.
If you like this, you'll also like The Fault in our Stars by John Green, Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, and Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.
This book has recently won the Waterstones Childrens Book Prize 2013, and deservedly so!
Trash
by Andy Mulligan
Raphael lives in a slum and works on a rubbish tip, rifling through daily trash to find anything worth keeping or selling. One day he and his friend Gardo find a bag, inside which is money, ID, a key, and a letter and map. The letter is addressed to someone in prison, and when googled, the photo ID belongs to a man who the police are after. The boys find themselves mixed up in a case of government fraud, murder and police pay-offs. Will they discover the truth before they are killed?
A great book detailing not just the adventure but also life for the boys living in boxes or underground with rats, and the inescapable work of rubbish rifling for the rest of their life. Makes you feel so lucky to be living in a civilised western society.
Andy Mulligan is also the author of the great Ribblestrop series for 9-12, set in a school for a colourful bunch of characters!
Why We Broke Up
by Daniel Handler
Probably better known as his pseudonym Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler turns his hand to something more emotional and teenagey. I loved this book - I wanted to read it again once I'd finished it. Min Green starts dating Ed Slatterton, the very popular basketball player at school, infamous for his dating of girls. However, their relationship comes to a hurtful end and Min boxes up all her mementos of their time together ready to give them back to him. This book is a series of letters to Ed explaining each memento and why they now mean nothing to her, and it is in this way that we the reader find out how their relationship had progressed but then come to its sudden painful end. Brilliant. One for fans of John Green (see my review of one of Green's books - The Fault in our Stars). Also, if you like this try Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, and Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4
by Sue Townsend
I first read this at about age 13, and re-reading it now I realise a) how much of the story I'd forgotten, and b)how much I'd probably not understood at the time!
Adrian's mother has an affair and leaves his dad, whose world falls apart - not helped when he loses his job and has to sign on. All this is happening to a pubescent 13 year old, who is keen on literature, poetry and love. In other words, an angst-ridden teenage intellectual. The book was originally written for adults and you can see why - both subtly funny and dark.
VIII
by H.M. Castor
A superb book about Henry VIII, from childhood to death. We learn about his father's disappointment with him, and of how his father favoured Henry's older brother Arthur. However, Arthur died and Henry became King. We learn of his love of jousting, of yearning to go into battle, but also of his inner demons, his ghostly visions, his insecurities and suspicions of everyone close - including his wives and his closest mentor. He was never to have a surviving son that he constantly yearned, yet saw a strength in his daughter Elizabeth that was not in his other daughter Mary.
I did not want this book to end! I'm very excited to read on the author's website www.hmcastor.com that she is writing a sequel to VIII about his two daughters Elizabeth and Mary. Can't wait!
Second Chance Summer
by Morgan Matson
By the author of Amy and Roger's Epic Detour (fantastic book), this story follows Taylor and her family as they travel to their summer house in Lake Phoenix, Pennysylvania. It's a summer of high emotions - Taylor's father has cancer and he knows this is the last summer they'll be spending together. Also, the last time the family were at the summer house (5 years ago), Taylor had fallen for Henry but it had ended badly, and she'd fallen out with her best friend there, Lucy. So she comes ready to face the past, and to face the future without her dad.
A great easy read - recommended.
The Night Sky in my Head
by Sarah Hammond
Mikey is 14 and due to an accident which we are not at first told about has a learning difficulty and behavioural problems. The only friend he has is his dog, Timmer, who is constantly by his side. His dad is in prison. Mikey has the ability of being in a particular location and seeing into the past to see what happened there. In this way he slowly pieces together what happened to his dad, why he ended up in prison, why he has escaped now, what happened to a tramp found dead in the river and what happened to himself - why does he have a scar down the back of his head, and why does he keep having headaches?
As the back of the book says, a cross between Skellig and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, but definitely not as good as either - a bit darker and more depressing!
What I Saw and How I Lied
by Judy Blundell
A post war American romance novel, full of first love, jealousy and a mysterious accidental death. I read it in one sitting and loved it.
