 We’re off to a strong start to 2020 with a dozen great books, the majority were published in the latter months of 2019. Do get in touch if there are any kids/YA books you would be interested in seeing reviewed. I liked some a lot more than others, but if the push came to the shove, I would be happy to recommend all of these. They are presented in alphabetical order.  KR ALEXANDER – THE FEAR ZONE (BOOK 1 IN THE ‘SCARE ME’ SERIES) The Fear Zone looks like it might be the first book in a series published by Scholastic called ‘Scare Me’ which is most definitely going to remind older readers of the famous RL Stine Point Horror novels. Many have tried and failed to recreate the 1990s nostalgia of those legendary books, with KR Alexander being the latest. Fear Zone recalls many other books and is based around the idea that if you don’t stand up to your fears, they will destroy you, as in Joe Dante’s great film The Hole which this is similar to. In this variation five kids are invited to a cemetery after midnight thinking it is just a prank and could be a laugh. After tricked into digging up a grave an evil force is released which tests them in different ways, such as the fear of being buried alive. It really is not that scary but is still a solid introduction to horror to younger kids. We want more please. AGE 8+ JIMMY CAJOLEAS – MINOR PROPHETS Jimmy Cajoleas impressed me immensely with his debut The Good Demon and his second YA novel Minor Prophets indicates he has arrived in the big time. If you haven’t come across this seriously quirky oddball writer, you need to seriously check him out ASAP. After the mysterious death of their mother two siblings, Lee and Murphy, seek out their long-lost grandmother who lives in deepest darkest Louisiana in this highly original occult thriller. Lee is not a normal teenager and has always had strange visions which often come true and after the death of his mother they begin to escalate. The prospect of being adopted by their mother’s boyfriend is too much and the siblings go on the run as Lee’s visions get wilder. Part of the story revolves around what horrid truths lurk behind Lee's haunting visions. But there is a lot going on in this twisty, and poignant thriller in which family secrets lurk at the centre of its dark beating heart. The vision sequences were outstanding, and Lee is able supported by the brilliant character Murphy who has his back all the way. This will not be everybody’s cup of tea, but for the fan of oddball and highly original horror look no further. It can equally be enjoyed by adults. Jimmy Cajoleas are you genuinely as cool as you write? I bet you are. AGE 13+ ELSIE CHAPMAN – CASTER I was a massive fan of Elsie Chapman’s dystopian Duelled novel so was very interested to see how she would branch out into supernatural fiction. Once again I was mightily impressed with a novel grounded in an incredibly well realised magic system which will really get you thinking about the dynamics behind magic with the emphasis on the costs and consequences of each magical act which can be linked to the caster’s body. The main character is an Asian teenage girl who is a ‘full caster’ meaning she is able to cast ‘full magic’ and as the story develops the girl enters an undergrounding casting competition, where she also hopes to find answers about her sister’s mysteriously death a year earlier. Caster was addictive, fast paced and perfect for fans of magic and the supernatural. It was easy to become lost in the damaged magical society expertly developed by the author. Aza was a complex character with flaws which will make her very engaging to teenage readers and with the difficult decisions she makes. The author smoothly interweaves many themes including loss, family, revenge, love, identity and being true to yourself into the plot which could be open for a sequel. One of my recent favourites, bring on book two. AGE 12+ ERIN CRAIG – HOUSE OF SALT AND SORROWS The House of Salt and Sorrows is a long and slightly meandering retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses fairy tale in which Annaleigh is the oldest surviving sister, determined to break the curse that's slowly taking her sisters. The deaths have left her family distraught as they are forever dressed in black and in mourning, also on edge, forever wondering who might be next. Annaleigh’s father has also remarried and announces his wife is pregnant with a son and the complex family dynamics begin to change. Although I found this book to be slow and slightly long, it did have some creepy scenes and some decent twists in the second half and has got a lot of appeal for teenage girls who like dark fairy-tales. The wind-swept remote castle setting was one of the strongest aspects of the story and the strong romantic aspect of the story point the book towards the female audience ever more so. Annaleigh was an engaging main character with a nice voice and after deaths by plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning and a slippery plunge there is no surprise she tries to break the curse and instead is plagued by a series of ghostly visions whilst her sisters disappear at night, but to where? This was a very assured debut and although it was a chunky read, I’ll be interested to see what the author comes up with next. AGE 13+  AKWZAEKE EMEZI - PET I am a huge fan of strange books and Akwzaeke Emezi’s Pet certainly fits into that category. Ezemi, who also wrote the adult novel Freshwater, has produced a fascinated YA debut which will undoubtedly be read by as many adults as teenagers. Much of the book was very vague and I’ll be interested to see whether it picks up a teen audience or whether it goes over the heads of many. Set in the city of Lucille, the main character Jam is a black trans girl who suffers from selective mutism and talks with hand signs. The location is portrayed to be a type of utopia where evil has been eradicated, but then Jam meets a magical creature which calls itself ‘Pet’ and states that evil does still exist in the town and it plans to destroy it, indicating that the evil is very close to home and that Jam must help Pet uncover the monster and the truth. Pet takes a very refreshing look at gender and expresses how this society has accepted trans children as normal, but also asks difficult questions about secrets in society and how we deal with them. The relationship between Pet (which appears out of one of her mother’s paintings) and Jam was the highlight of the novel, but I also enjoyed the vagueness of the setting and background. All the deserved praise I have come across thus far for Pet have come from adult readers and I hope it does not become one of those YA novels which is just a bit too odd for the average teen. AGE 13+ SARA FANING – THE TENTH GIRL The Tenth Girl is one of those books which is picking up as much love as it is hate, being polarising in all sorts of ways, in particular, because of the outrageous twist ending. Some readers have undoubtedly loved it, others found it to a load of rubbish. I’m not going to comment which way I swing, as this is one of those occasions where you need to make up your own mind. Also, was this a YA novel? Yes and no. To be frank, an adult could read it and never realise it was predominately aimed at teens. This very twisty gothic thriller is mainly set in an Argentinean boarding school of the 1970s, so it is unique for points of references, making it challenging for a YA audience with the oppressive government dictatorship of that decade lurking in the background. It follows a young teacher beginning at a girl’s boarding school in Patagonia, in a house built by colonizers on land that formerly belonged to the Zapuche, an indigenous people in Argentina. The young woman is attempting to escape the Argentinian government, but it seems that she may have gotten herself into an even more dangerous, disturbing situation as very quickly strange things happen at the boarding school and she is told not, under any circumstances, to go out at night. This book will not be for everyone, but when you do get to the end, some of the more abstract sequences make a lot more sense. Whatever you think, you’ll be shaking your head and will never see the ending coming. AGE 14+ APRIL HENRY – THE LONELY DEAD April Henry has many adult and YA thrillers, several of which venture into paranormal areas, The Lonely Dead was the first I have read. This was a very easy and undemanding book to zip through in which a seventeen-year-old girl, Adele, becomes the prime suspect in the murder of her best friend Tori. Told in a first-person narrative we quickly find out that Adele has schizophrenia and has recently stopped taking her medication resulting in her being able to see dead people, or at least see dead people (or animals) in the location they were buried. When walking in the forest Adele bumps into a living and breathing Tori and initially does not realise her friend is dead (nor does Tori). Adele alerts the police to the whereabouts of the body and they begin to dig and although there are a few other suspects everything points to Adele. The story also has various flashbacks to when the girls were younger and provides some explanation on Adele’s supernatural gift, so it never genuinely drifts into unreliable narrator territory. The two main characters (alive and dead) were likable enough kids, but there just were not enough suspects and when the killer is revealed there was little in the way of surprise. If you’ve after an easy, non-threatening read, then The Lonely Dead is fun, if you want horror with bite this is not it. AGE 12+ EMILY LLOYD-JONES - THE BONE HOUSES Can anyone truly stomach yet another zombie novel? If so, The Bone Houses is well worth a look, which also integrated elements of Welsh folklore into its intriguing ‘zombie with a difference’ storyline. Interestingly, the zombies lurk in the background of this story and don’t act like they would in traditional undead novels. Seventeen-year-old gravedigger Ryn is battling to save her family’s graveyard in the remote village of Colbren which is struggling for business since the death of her parents. The village sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae (fairy folk) which legends say cursed the area decades earlier. The curse reanimates the dead, which the locals call ‘bone houses’ and Ryn is an expert at dealing with the reanimated corpses which usually remain in the local forests and don’t trouble the locals, until their activity suddenly changes and they start coming closer to home. An apprentice mapmaker, Ellis, is the second major character, who has his own mysterious past and when he arrives in town the bone houses attack with new ferocity. What is it about Ellis that draws them near? And more importantly, how can they be stopped for good? Together the two embark on a journey that will take them deep into the heart of the mountains, where they will have to face both the curse and the long-hidden truths about themselves. There was very good backward and forward between Ellis and Ryn (and you can see exactly where it is heading) but it was a clever book, with the journey in the second half taking slightly too long. Still, it was nice to see zombies being presented in a slightly different light from the usual and the female character having the Buffy the Vampire Slayer style moves, rather than the wimpier boy in a nice gender reversal. AGE 13+  KATE ALICE MARSHALL – RULES FOR VANISHING
Rules for Vanishing was a very clever, original, and sneaky novel told via transcribes, written testimonies, interviews, exhibits, and video evidence. We know from the beginning that the action kicks off in April 2017 and that the police discussions are conducted in May 2017 with Sara being the suspect under the grill. The story revolves around a local legend; once a year an isolated road is rumoured to magically appear, which leads to the entrance to a supernatural dimension and those who follow the path must follow precise rules or risk being trapped there forever. If Sara’s crazy story is to be believed she was lucky to make it out alive, what we don’t know is which of her friends survived along with her, and so we enjoy a story which is enticingly told out of synch. Why was Sara attempting to enter another dimension you might ask? Exactly a year previously her sister Becca went missing and her parents think that she ran away with her boyfriend, but her sister Sara has another solution to the disappearance and begins to investigate. Did Becca play the game and became lost in another world? Of course, the world is real before long Sara, on the hunt for Becca, and her friends are attempting to get through the seven gates to complete the challenges and be free to leave. I thought this was a great book which was both atmospheric and very cleverly written, almost with a documentary feel to it in which the reader had to solve their own puzzles and conduct their own analysis right to the end. Highly recommended. AGE 12+ HOWARD ODENTZ – BOTTLE TOSS Bottle Toss started well but seemed to lose its way in the middle and I could not help feel that many YA readers will lose interest where not much seemed to happen and where the story spends too much time setting things up for the finish. This was frustrating as Bottle Toss had an outstanding opening; after a bored teenager throws a beer bottle at a passing car, there is a horrible crash and what looks like a fatality after it overturns. The kid who throws the bottle is a nasty piece of work, but the book is seen from the point of view of Denny Ford who is bullied by Brody, with Jen being the final member of the trio. Jen and Denny are stepbrother and sister and Jen is the sometime girlfriend of Brody. Much of the novel is about the relationship between the trio which is nicely handled with Jen and Denny sharing the same foster-mother and a younger disabled stepbrother whom Denny watches out for. After the crash, the car seems to disappear without trace and over the next several days as the three experience increasingly bizarre, frightening, and seemingly unrelated events, such as a big fire at school and hallucinogenic stuff. It was interesting seeing where all this was going, but after a while it lost momentum and my focus in the mystery waned. Denny was an interesting main character and the family dynamics were nicely handled, but some of the others weren’t as developed. AGE 13+ J. ADRIAN RUTH – JOIN OR DIE (HEIR TO THE SCION BOOK 1) Join or Die was a very entertaining YA fantasy novel with elements of horror, which although it does not do anything new, was an engaging read full of believable and quirky characters. Alex is a young teen from Las Vegas who early in the novel realises he is not normal and is whisked off to a boarding school for creatures who are crossbreeds of human and other powerful creatures including vampires. Alex’s new roommate is a vampire, who becomes a friend, and shows him the ropes at school. Although he does not know it, Alex is also very powerful but does not yet know how to harness his power, which is a big part of the novel with a coming of age twang thrown into the mix with the teenager doing his best to adapt in his weird new surroundings. The story cleverly balances the fantasy aspect with the fact that Alex is still a teenager and that is convincingly portrayed in the plot and the misfits he bands himself with. Join or Die sets itself up nicely for a sequel and if you can stand spending more time in yet another magic school is well worth checking out. AGE 12+ REBECCA SCHAEFFER – ONLY ASHES REMAIN (BOOK 2 IN THE MARKET OF MONSTERS SERIES) Not Even Bones was a very clever and original debut which had me hooked from the beginning with an intoxicating blend of fantasy and horror, Only Ashes Remain is a direct sequel, so make sure you do not read book two before the original. In the opening book, Nita is a teenage girl who works as an unofficial mortician for her psychopathic mother and dissects the bodies of supernatural beings she has caught and trapped and sometimes killed. Nita’s mother auctions bits and pieces of her kills on the internet with her daughter helping as they have magical properties. I’m, generally, rereviewing book one and do not want to reveal spoilers for those unfamiliar with the series. However, in the opening stages of the novel the mother brings home a live boy and expects Nita to cut his ear off so she can make some cash from it. After that she intends to sell his eyes and Nita decides to help him escape. All the main characters from book one return and the author cleverly opens out the story and continues with the excellent world building. I hope the series develops into a trilogy. AGE 13+ |
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