Some thoughts on YA...

An article was recently published in The Guardian written by a young reader, Hawwa, titled Falling Out of Love with YA, in which Hawwa talks about how she feels that new YA being published is failing where it should excel: in challenging its readers. Is this true? Here are some of my thoughts…

It is terrible that Hawwa is feeling disappointed in YA fiction today, that she is being let down. As a children’s and YA bookseller, reading her article really made me sit up and think – and, mostly, disagree. She raises a number of relevant points about the hype surrounding some YA novels, and the fact that there are a good number of fantasy/dystopian books being written and published that jump off the back of this hype. BUT. But, but, but: if this is all that teenage readers can see on the YA shelves then I honestly believe they are only skimming the surface of a hugely rich and varied selection of books that are available and just begging to be read. Perhaps the question is: why and how are these books being missed?

It’s true that there are YA books that are driven purely by a romance plot. It’s true that there are dystopian genres conforming to popular film ideals (though many of these ideals, I think, have themselves been driven by the books that the first films of this genre were inspired by). It’s true that there are books that skimp on their language. And it’s true that there are books being driven by hype.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a book that is just pure romance – fortunately, there are plenty that aren’t just this, for those times when that’s not what you want. Sometimes it’s nice to have a book that emulates a bestselling novel you’ve enjoyed – fortunately, again, there are plenty that aren’t just this, especially as they’re not always as good as the original. And some of the books that skimp on their language tend to be written for younger teens or ‘tweens’, those eleven and twelve year olds who want to upgrade to the YA section – the teen section, after all, by definition should cater for those aged 13 to 19, and all the different levels of interest and capabilities that a gap this large entails.

As for the books whose sales are driven by hype: in my ten years’ experience as a bookseller, where YA is concerned, this hype is generated by the readers themselves, and by the movies that the popularity of the book subsequently generates – it’s a word of mouth thing, not a publisher pushing the book thing. The flip side of this is, of course, that not everyone likes the same things (thank goodness – wouldn’t it be boring if we did?), so on occasion, just because five million other people have loved the book isn’t a guarantee that you or I will do too – I really didn’t get on with Michael Grant’s Gone series, for instance, but most readers absolutely rave about it.

Perhaps Hawwa’s argument is that those books that are just jumping on the bandwagon shouldn’t be getting published. And in many ways I’d be inclined to agree with her: books should push boundaries, especially those that are specifically aimed at the new and upcoming generation. They should push all sorts of boundaries: language, plotting, content, characters, diversity, style, approach, the whole shebang. Fortunately, there are plenty of authors writing YA that do just this – and there are plenty of YA books that have been around for a few years that are still doing this. The other side of the coin, though, is that there are readers who want nice, safe, and secure books where they know what to expect – i.e. the bandwagon books. The key to getting it right in any bookshop or library is to have a healthy balance of the two options.

Perhaps where the real problem lies is that some bookshops and/or libraries aren’t making it easy for readers to find those interesting, boundary-pushing books. Perhaps the bookshop where Hawwa likes to browse has only the latest Hunger Games derivative stacked up on their tables. This is where booksellers and librarians need to step in, where they need to create interesting and varied displays, be open and approachable to the teens (and adults) who are visiting their house of words, and recommend, recommend, recommend.

Susan Cooper’s Ghost Hawk, Julie Berry’s All the Truth That’s in Me, anything by David Levithan, Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle, E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks, Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours, Ryan Graudin’s The Walled City, Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity, anything by Patrick Ness, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Alice Oseman’s Solitaire, Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Eagle of the Ninth, Marcus Sedgewick’s She Is Not Invisible, Ruta Sepetys’s Out of the Easy, Meg Rosoff’s Picture Me Gone, Louis Sachar’s Holes, Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, Sally Gardner’s Maggot Moon, Garth Nix’s Sabriel, Laura Dockrill's Lorali. Look at any Carnegie Medal shortlist and you will find something that challenges and surprises you.

And one final thought: teens absolutely should peruse the adult section. ‘YA’ is simply a label, a categorisation. What goes in it and what doesn’t is largely determined by publishers – talk to any ‘YA’ author and eighty per cent of them will tell you they write the book they want to write, the story they want to tell; that they don’t set out to write YA or adult, sci-fi or romance, that those categorisations are applied afterwards – the publisher reads the book and says, yes, I reckon I can best sell this to such-and-such a group of people.

If The Catcher in the Rye was published for the first time today it would probably be called YA, and there are plenty of books in the adult sections that could easily be displayed in YA and not feel out of place: The Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps this comes back to booksellers and librarians: that is up to them to make sure these books also make it into YA sections. Or perhaps I am making your point for you: that publishers chose to call books with more sophisticated language adult and less sophisticated ones YA – but while that might be true in some cases, I really don’t believe it is a hard and fast rule and it certainly isn’t true in the majority of cases – there is more to determining what is and isn’t YA than just the language, after all. Otherwise how would a book like I’ll Give You the Sun have made it into the YA section?

To any reader who feels they’re not being represented in the books they’re reading, speak up, like Hawwa has done. Only this way will we – authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians – know what is missing, what you want and what you need. But don’t forget to look a little deeper on the shelves as well, to ask the bookseller, to ask family and friends – or even the internet – because there are all sorts of gems hiding behind the hype.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here, by Patrick Ness

Have you ever wondered how or why it is that the crazy stuff in books and films always happens to the main character? How “coincidental” it is that the person who’s telling the story is the one person in all the world that has the special ability to overthrow the evil despot, or is the mythical hero prophesied about in the ancient texts? I guess it’s because that is the story – but does it have to be? What if the story isn’t the “hero” but someone normal who’s just trying to figure out their own life while all the world-ending stuff is going on in the background?

Because let’s face it, not everyone can be the chosen one. In fact, most of us probably wouldn’t even want to be the chosen one. Even if you’ve got super healing powers, there’s usually quite a lot of blood involved, and that’s before you factor in the weirdness and the monsters. Mikey, for one, is perfectly content not being one of the indie kids. The end of senior year is in sight and his focus is basically on getting there without the school blowing up (again) and whether or not he has the courage to tell Henna he loves her. But: there are many ways in which a world can implode. The question is, can he and his friends avoid the blast radius?

Although it’s really nothing like it, The Rest of Just Live Here strangely reminded me of nineties TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There’s an episode in which Buffy is busy saving the world as usual, but where the story follows Xander, who has been temporarily ousted from proceedings because he keeps getting in the way. Ironically enough he winds up running around town to stop a formerly dead kid from blowing the place up, while in the background Buffy and the rest of the Scooby gang fend of giant hell monsters.

Likewise, there is some fairly odd stuff going down where Mikey lives – strange lights, creepy cops, stampeding deer, the indie kids dying left, right, and centre whilst also encountering the most absolutely true and earth-shattering love of their lives – but this is all background. We get tongue-in-cheek snippets of it at the opening of each chapter, but otherwise only see events as they interfere with Mikey’s entirely normal, everyday existence. Except Mikey is fighting in his own way: an anxiety problem that exhibits in a form of OCD and self-doubt that as graduation rapidly approaches – and all the potential changes that that hails – begins to spiral.

If I was forced to compile a list of my top five authors, Patrick Ness would undoubtedly be in there. The whole premise of this book is fairly brilliant and he absolutely, one hundred and ten percent pulls it off. The world-catastrophe aspect is witty and full of humour – he clearly takes the piss out of several bestselling YA books, but never in a mean way; it’s like an insider joke, a clever ‘wink wink’ to the reader that makes you think, yes, this author gets me.

What he does really, really well, though, is understand Mikey’s anxiety. The way this is presented – especially during a particularly candid discussion Mikey has in the last quarter of the book – makes me feel like Patrick Ness really knows the incipient, needling ways that anxiety works on the mind: that you fear you’re making a fuss over nothing, and how fear of the fear takes over, to the point where the thing you were afraid of in the first place is almost lost amidst the bigger fear of yourself and your perceived failure. This is massive, and massively important. I’ve read plenty of books that talk about anxiety, but none that really get it like Patrick Ness has got it here.

What this all means is that while Mikey might not be fighting to save the world in the same context as the indie kids are, he is trying to save his own particular world. As fissures open around the town, letting the all-powerful Immortals slip through, so the fissures begin to appear in Mikey’s friendships. New guy Nathan is getting in the way – and what is his deal anyway? – Mikey’s feelings for Henna are getting ever more confusing, and his fear that he is the least wanted and least needed of the group looks like it’s about to be proven. How much control does anyone ever have over their own stories? Can Mikey claim – or reclaim – his destiny?

Some authors are very good at writing particular kinds of story; Patrick Ness is very good at writing all sorts of stories: The Rest of Us Just Live Here is as different to More Than This as A Monster Calls was to The Knife of Never Letting Go. It is equal parts insightful and fun. Exactly how he came up with the brilliantly ridiculous names for the various indie kids is anyone’s guess (um, ‘Satchel’?). And did I mention how Mikey’s best friend Jared also happens to be the god of cats? There is plenty of opportunity for metaphor, but as Jared says, “Why does everything have to mean something, though?” Not everyone can be the chosen one and not every book has to say something amazing – although, ironically, by the very act of Patrick Ness saying this, he makes it mean something.

I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

This is the kind of book that brings all the walls down. From the way thirteen year old Noah sees the world, uncontained, art literally spilling out of him, to the way Jude breaks down the barriers she and her family have put up to try and protect themselves, not to mention the magical writing, the way that it is about everything, not just one thing, and the way that Jandy Nelson and her characters bring you in, tip you upside down, and turn you around, remade, at the end.

Twins Noah and Jude have been dividing up the world since they were little: one of them would take the sun and the flowers, the other the moon and the stars. But it’s not so easy to divide their parents – Noah’s relatively okay for Jude to have their dad, but Jude’s not so happy for Noah to have their mum. And that’s probably where it all starts to go wrong: when they decide to apply for exclusive high school, California School of Arts (CSA), Noah’s work pours off the page, creating an extra bond between him and their mom, while Jude keeps her art close to her chest. And it’s when Noah and new neighbor Brian become inseparable friends and Jude starts to hang out with the surf dudes; when their mother starts to step outside of herself; when love and possession make it impossible to share anything anymore.

Cut to three years ahead and everything is different. But not only different: reversed. Noah seems to have taken on Jude’s former role in the world, and Jude Noah’s. Things are breaking left, right and centre. But what happened? How did things get to be like this? In a last ditch attempt to keep her place at CSA and try to rid herself of her ghosts (yes, literal ghosts, not metaphorical ones) Jude sets out to convince the renowned but reclusive sculptor, Guillermo Garcia, to mentor her and teach her to carve stone. Her mother interviewed him once: “He was the kind of man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down,” she said – and Jude’s about to find out how true this sentiment is.

But the thing about what happens after the walls fall down? You get a chance to remake the world.

This is one of those books where I just know I’m going to feel the urge to collect as many different editions of it as possible – the proof copy Walker kindly sent me, the hardback, the paperback. Some books just demand to be read and treasured and this is one of them. All the things I want to say about it are spinning around in my mind all at once and defy being turned into words. I love the way Noah looks at and sees the world, the way he and Jude think magically, the way he is – mostly – not afraid to love, how he wears his emotions on his sleeve and, conversely, how afraid Jude is to let one drop of hers out into the world. It makes me want to go out and see the world the way Noah sees it.

I also really like that, although I’ll Give You the Sun is told in alternating parts by Noah and Jude, unlike a lot of novels that take this approach, the two viewpoints jump across time. Noah’s words come from his thirteen/fourteen year old self – where things are coming apart – while Jude’s words come from her sixteen year old self – looking at what’s fallen apart and how it can be fixed. I thought this was quite an unusual approach and it works really well. The effect is to highlight the differences between the old Jude and the new Jude, the old Noah and the new Noah – or, at least, that’s how I interpreted it as a reader. But the trick is that when they’re thirteen you pretty much only see Jude through Noah’s eyes, and when they’re sixteen you only see Noah through Jude’s eyes. So who’s to say they really are that different from when they were both thirteen? Because, even though they’re twins, perhaps they don’t show each other everything about themselves, no matter how much they might like to believe that they do. Perhaps the young Noah is still hiding inside older Noah? And perhaps the young Jude that Noah sees isn’t really who she is either. We’re all good at putting up shells for people to see, after all.

This is a book about secrets, the things we say and do to try and protect both ourselves and those around us from getting hurt – except this act usually winds up doing the hurting, constraining our lives and our hearts. This is a book about how love takes many forms and how art takes many forms, and how souls can touch one another but still need to have their own space to grow. Noah and Jude and the other characters that take our hearts in this story – Guillermo, Dianna, Ben, Oscar, Brian – are all living in a form of suspended animation, and each of their intertwining relationships plays a crucial role in the story and the stories they have told one another: Noah and Jude, Noah and Brian, Jude and Brian, Noah and Dianna, Noah and Ben, Jude and Dianna, Dianna and Guillermo, Noah and Guillermo, Jude and Guillermo, Jude and Oscar, Oscar and Guillermo. Which gives just a taster of how many different things are going on in the story.

Wonderful.

Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan

Enter stage left: Craig and Harry. Ex-boyfriends, current best friends. Their friend Tariq follows.

Stage right: established couple Peter and Neil; new friends Avery and Ryan; lone wolf Cooper.

Eight teenaged boys; 48 hours. 48 hours in which worlds will be made and worlds will be torn apart.

Following the lives of this handful of young men over the course of just one weekend, the centre of Two Boys Kissing revolves around Craig and Harry, who are attempting to break the world record for the longest kiss, and creating quite a storm in the process. Some people are outraged that these two boys should be allowed to do such a thing in public, in front of the high school, but soon enough, they’ve also generated millions of followers on the internet and drawn supporters from all around the world.

Are Craig and Harry the centre? Or is the centre actually the narrator – or narrators? This story is not being told by the boys themselves, but by a group of watchers: the ghosts of the past. They tell the boys’ stories while telling us, quietly and poignantly, their own. At first I found this a bit strange – it took me a few chapters to get used to the juxtaposition of voices and characters, but once I did it made so much sense. Because this way, as the ghostly chorus places their pain against the relative freedoms of LGBT people today, David Levithan reminds me that the rights the LGBT community has today are absolutely brand new.

Things are a long way from being plain sailing, though. Harry’s parents are the ideal: supportive, loving, there. Craig’s parents don’t know anything – what will happen when they find out that he’s kissing a boy in front of everyone? Avery’s parents are true to him, and Peter’s too; Neil’s pretty sure his parents know he’s gay, but they can’t bring themselves to say it out loud, while Tariq is recovering from a brutal, homophobic, physical attack, and Cooper is alone, so alone and lost and ashamed.

These different boys, they are not shaped or controlled or defined by their sexual orientation; each of them is an individual, each has their own temperament and cares and concerns and interests and responses to the world and the people about them. But the way that some people respond to them shuts all of these other things out – Cooper’s father, yahoos on the street, even the radio broadcaster who launches a call-in about Craig and Harry’s record attempt. Is this really the 21st century? I don’t want to believe that there are people who still think like that, and yet I can believe it.

The chorus of voices past enables Levithan to cut away from the individual stories of our eight characters, to look upon the world from a distance, to sum up the pain and the love, to glance at the boys in love, the boys who are alone, the boys are just meeting, the boys whose parents care, and the boys whose parents hate – and then zoom in, down onto the earth and look closely, look inside our selected characters. It’s odd to think of a time when it wasn’t perfectly normal for people to be openly gay. I had forgotten (shamefully) about AIDS and about the terrible struggle that it took to get the disease recognized. And it seems completely crazy to me that it is basically only within my lifetime that any form of gay rights has been acknowledged and – even more crazy – that it’s only within the last couple of years that gay marriage has become legal.

A good friend introduced me to a technique for determining whether I was being sexually discriminated against: ask myself, would this thing have happened, or would this thing have been said if I was a guy? I think the same principal can be applied to all forms of bigotry, LGBT rights included. There is a certain amount of disgust voiced at Craig and Harry as they make their attempt for the longest kiss record – but if it was a man and woman doing it, would the response be the same? We would say it’s sweet; it’s romantic. Just because it’s two boys who are kissing doesn’t change that.

Two Boys Kissing. Yes, this is a book about being gay. The ghostly chorus, the themes, the events that take place all point toward this. But really – really – this is a book about love. Because love is the same. Love is the same whether it’s between a girl and a boy, two boys, two girls. It still feels the same. It still has the power to create and the power to destroy. Love is love, and it cannot be denied.

The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith

In the days after I finish reading The Alex Crow, my friends begin to get a little annoyed with me. I can’t help sniggering at what are, really, perfectly ordinary, innocent things they are saying. But in The Alex Crow there is a boy, Max, who has an imagination and a way with words that is so extraordinary, he can make practically any sentence into a metaphor for jerking off. It’s really quite astounding. So now, almost anything anyone says to me can be, well, er, "reinterpreted". And it's this, along with all the other remarkable things that take place in this story, that really makes me wonder what might be discovered should author Andrew Smith ever decide to donate his brain to science.

Four stories intertwine to make up The Alex Crow. Ariel and his adopted brother Max are at an all-boys American summer camp designed, ostensibly, as a place “Where boys rediscover the fun of boyhood!” which seems mostly to mean no electricity, cold, leaky cabins, and a series of wilderness inspired activities that Max, Ariel and their new friend Coby do their damndest to subvert as far as possible. Alongside this, Ariel tells us his backstory: a serious and heart-tearing tale of survival in a country torn apart by civil war.

But there is also the melting man: Leonard. His brain has been tampered with, causing a series of auditory and visual hallucinations that are somehow simultaneously terrifying and hilarious to read about. Lenny is driving a hideous U-haul across America looking for the mysterious Beaver King, who he plans to blow up using the atomic bomb he’s built in the back of the van. And there is a series of journal entries from the doctor of The Alex Crow, a failed Arctic expedition in 1880 which has become lodged in ice.

All of this lies against the strange and weird backdrop of the Merrie-Seymour Research Group, which runs the camp the boys are attending, and at which their father works. But what connects them to Leonard and The Alex Crow, and how did Ariel wind up in their midst? Much like Smith’s previous book, Grasshopper Jungle, the jigsaw pieces are gradually and inexorably pulled together into one shocking picture that makes you question, well, everything that Smith has told you up to that point: is Ariel really who he thinks he is? Are all of the melting man’s hallucinations really hallucinations? And is the summer camp really just a summer camp?

There are some pretty crazy things and some extremely serious things in this book, but I think what probably stands out strongest are the characters and their trueness – well, the adults are all exceedingly messed up, but the three boys are the ones on whom all of our emotions go. Andrew Smith surely writes about teenage boys in the truest way possible, from Ariel and his quiet, internal struggles to Max, who lives as loudly as he can. It’s a fucked up world that Smith’s characters are growing up in, but somehow, scarily, the crazy science that supports it feels like it could perfectly easily and unsurprisingly be real - the fucked up part are the people who chose to make these things a reality.

And then there's the part where Smith narrates with such detail and close attention it’s impossible to miss a thing – all intentions are laid out for the reader and yet the story remains intriguing, surprising, and clever. Themes of language and reality, manipulation and control, survival and extinction pulse across the pages and while it is not quite as ‘blow your mind’ as Grasshopper Jungle (how, after all, is one supposed to follow a book like that?), it undoubtedly has that intense, fucked-up feel to it’s world and it’s words. As everything begins to come together, the denouement approaches ever faster in flash of horrible realization.

Just, please, Mr. Smith, if one day you do donate your brain to science, make sure it’s not the Merrie-Seymour Research Group or any of their affiliates…

Angelfall, by Susan Ee

Angelfall is another example of the e-book to print phenomenon: "multi-selling self-published e-book gets snapped up by print publisher". I will admit straight up that I am a book/publishing snob, I'm afraid, so I tend to be rather skeptical about this path through writer-dom and thus I was a little skeptical about reading Angelfall. But a good friend recommended it to me, and lent me her copy, so I decided to give it a try. Of course, I didn’t look back.

The lowdown: Six weeks ago the Angels appeared. They returned to Earth and then began systematically destroying it. Society has fallen apart, millions of people are dead, and those who aren’t are either forming deadly street gangs or trying to avoid them. Into this new world steps Penryn, her little sister Paige, and her not-entirely-there mother. But before they can get out of the city, they stumble onto an Angel battle and Paige is stolen away. Where have the Angels taken her? Why do they want her? What will they do to her? Nothing is more important to Penryn than to find the answers to these questions and to get her little sister back. And the best way of doing this is by befriending the enemy. After she saves the Angel Raffe’s life, she makes him promise to take her to the Angel stronghold so she can get Paige back. Assuming Paige is still alive, of course.

Essentially, Susan Ee has written the same story that most writers who enter this genre write. It is – mostly – predictable, following just the pathway you expect such a story to follow. Yet this is one reason why people read and love this genre; why we read it over and over again in a slightly altered format, and why writers write it over and over. There’s something wonderful and compelling involved in slipping into this other world, essentially a fantasy world, where our characters are surrounded by awful happenstance, yet are strong and fight on. It is pure escapism. It’s ironic because I don’t want to ever have to experience apocalypse like our characters inevitably do, have to fight for my life, scrounge for food, mourn the loss of family, friends, an extinguished life; but to live through those things with the characters, alongside the inevitable falling in love (usually with the one person they really shouldn’t be) is to experience a sort of rush that I, in some ways, dream or yearn for in my real life. I want it, but I wouldn’t really want if I had it. Hence the reading, and the re-reading in a slightly different format, and the re-reading again. It’s actually a little weird.

As to my feelings on self-publishing, I know it’s judgemental, but I just can’t seem to help feeling that self-publication is something people do when they can’t get published-published, and that this somehow reflects on the quality of that person’s writing or storytelling. In truth, I know it doesn't always reflect on a writer’s capability, but the fact is that the (admittedly very small) handful of books I’ve read which were initially self-published do not come up to scratch with traditionally published works. This is not necessarily related to the writer’s ability; essentially, it is because the writing lacks the gloss that a good editor can provide. Most people who self-publish have not had their work read through two dozen times, criticised, adjusted, edited, as it would be if it went to a print publisher. This does not mean the writing is not good; it means the writing is not given the opportunity to be as good as it possibly could be. Thus, when I begin reading, I begin unpicking the things that would have been fixed by an editor, becoming rather distracted from the story and ultimately rather irritated by the whole thing. Yes, judgemental; I’ll admit it.

The first fifteen to twenty pages of Angelfall lived up to my relatively limited expectations. It felt engineered (which of course it is), unreal, labored. I was particularly irritated by the way in which Penryn labeled the different angels she witnesses fighting early on: Snow, Night, Stripes. This is no slur on Susan Ee particularly; I just don’t like the habit of using a description of a person (in this case, the angels’ wing designs) to create a name. It really grates, and I nearly gave up on the book for that reason alone. But my friend lent it to me, so I pledged to myself that I would read at least the first fifty pages and if I still didn’t like it then I would at that point have at least given it a good go. Of course, by the time I got to about page 30, I was hooked. I may have found the beginning slow and labored, but nothing else was. And neither was it badly written nor particularly lacking due to the aforementioned self-publishing effect.

Once she found her feet, Susan Ee performed pretty well. Of course, it’s all a complete fantasy, and quite ridiculous in places, but very enjoyable nonetheless. Why exactly did the Angels attack Earth? Is it God’s plan, or are they acting of their own accord? Why are the Angels creating a Nephilim sub-species? And how, please how, are Raffe and Penryn going to figure things out?  It’s as gripping as it is ridiculous and, ridiculous as it may be on occasion, there are far, far more ridiculous stories out there in the book universe. Ultimately, Angelfall is interesting and intriguing enough for me to be considering book two, World After. After all, who doesn’t need a little fantasy in their life?

A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness

The monster comes calling at Conor’s bedroom window at 12.07am. A giant, a yew tree that has taken on human form, a Green Man, he tells Conor, “I’ve come to get you.”

But Conor isn’t afraid – he knows there are worse things that could happen – and so, while the picture that Patrick Ness builds of this monster could - in virtually any other circumstances - be terrifying, we are not afraid either.

Over the next few nights – weeks, even – in between school and trips to the hospital, between dealing with his uptight grandmother and absentee father, the monster visits Conor and promises to tell him three tales, but in exchange, after the monster’s tales are done, Conor must tell his own tale, his truth.

It seems, at the beginning, as if this truth will be something about his mum’s illness or about Conor’s nightmare. In fact, the chances are high that these two things, and the fact that this new monster has appeared on Conor’s doorstep, are intricately linked. But the tales that the monster tells Conor are not fairytales, they do not seem designed to appease or support, and their endings are the reverse of normal expectations, the morals simultaneously twisted around and yet still true.

And so, after the second tale, I began to question: Why is the monster really here? What is its purpose with Conor? Although the revenge the Green Man wreaks in his tales is monstrous and demonstrative, we don’t feel afraid of him, for his behaviour feels justified. But perhaps we should be afraid, for Conor’s sake? What twist to Conor’s story is the monster going to reveal? What truth does Conor have locked away in his heart, and what will the monster’s response be?

A Monster Calls is a really, truly extraordinary book. It is dark yet cleansing; sad yet revealing; quiet yet full. Based on an idea conceived by Siobhan Dowd, but who died before she could complete it, the baton was passed to Patrick Ness who took Dowd’s idea and ran with it.

Part of me wants to say that the most astounding thing about this book are Jim Kay’s illustrations, which flow across the pages and intermingle with the text, but that wouldn't be accurate. The illustrations on their own are incredible, and the story on it’s own is too, but the pairing of the two together create a work that literally comes to life page by page, almost as if watching an animation rather than reading a book. It makes for a quite extraordinary piece of storytelling, and explains quite wordlessly why it has received the accolades it has, particularly the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal.

This feel of animation is particularly strong when it comes to the four tales: they flow within the text of the rest of the story and yet are somehow something ‘other’, standing outside the rest of the words. More often than not the monster uses his earth magic to place the scene of his tale before Conor’s (and the reader’s) eyes, in a manner that reminds me of the animation used in the penultimate Harry Potter film to tell the tale of the Deathly Hallows. This feeling is no doubt influenced by the full page spreads of black and white images, pictures that in their almost two-tone sketchiness could be dark and creepy – and indeed are, in some ways – yet whose detail and light touches make them endlessly fascinating. I heard David Almond comment that, “People say books without pictures are somehow more grown-up, and I think that’s just mad.” (Desert Island Discs, Radio 4, March 10, 2013) Mad indeed, as Ness and Kay demonstrate here.

Meanwhile, Conor’s mum is getting sicker and sicker and, while the people surrounding Conor flail and struggle, they keep Conor in the dark. It may be obvious to everyone what the likely outcome will be – Conor included – but given the adults’ refusal to say the words to him, the way they shut him out of the proceedings, it’s little wonder that Conor is unable to, or refuses to, acknowledge the direction in which things appear to be headed.

I felt relentlessly angry at how Conor was treated by the adults around him, and as Ness showed me flashes of Conor’s own anger through the story - destroying his grandmother’s sitting room, seeking out the bullies that torment him in the school playground - it tapped into my own childhood memories of that intense, boiling anger that resides deep within the heart and the belly, but is so difficult to explain or to overcome. Conor is angry and hurting, and it’s painful to watch.

The monster’s tales get progressively closer to home, and closer to Conor’s heart, and the ultimate reveal, the purpose to the monster’s call, is simultaneously cataclysmic and cleansing. The monster’s explanation for his tales and his deep understanding of Conor’s pain are incredibly revealing for any human being trying to understand their mixed emotions:

‘Humans are complicated beasts,’ the monster said. ‘How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a person be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?’

This is not a book to be rushed; it’s a reading experience not so much to savor, but that should appreciate the intricacies of the storytelling, of the animation and the illustration that goes along with the words. It’s a true piece of art. And as Patrick Ness says in his introduction, “Stories don’t end with the writers, however many started the race. Here’s what Siobhan and I came up with. So go. Run with it.”

Banished, by Liz de Jager

The Blackhart family are said to be the descendants of Hansel and Gretel, but Kit grew up with her grandmother, away from the rest of her family, knowing nothing of their secrets. Until last year. When her grandmother died, Uncle Jamie took her back to Blackhart Manor, and in the intervening months she’s gained knowledge of everything from the fae kingdoms to Latin to weaponry. She’s still getting used to her magic, though, a rare gift for humans and the only one in her family to possess it in centuries.

Liz de Jager introduces us to Kit and her world in the opening pages with a tense and enjoyable battle between Kit and a banshee who’s taken up residence in a local school. It sucks you straight in to Kit’s story, providing just the right levels of action and intrigue about this world to keep the pages turning. This, however, is only the beginning…

Two days later, left alone in the Manor house when her cousins are sent on a mission to Scotland, Kit awakes in the night to a sense of alarm. The buzz of the air leads her to the woods on the edge of the property and a young fae prince fighting for his life against a gathering of nasty little redcaps. Throwing herself into the fray, Kit is able to save the prince and return with him to the safety of the house. But now what is she supposed to do? The Manor is under attack, no-one in the family is answering their phones, and Prince Thorn brings news of his father’s Citadel being attacked, the King in hiding, the gates between the human and fae worlds slamming shut.

Who is behind the uprising? Is there a traitor in their midst – perhaps more than one? Where have Kit’s family disappeared to and, without them to turn to, what steps can she and Thorn take next?

Banished could be better written – some of de Jager’s sentences are terribly clunky (something I’m surprised wasn’t picked up on in editing) and there are little plot holes here and there - but I really loved the world-building, especially the mythology of the Otherwhere, the Elder Gods and all the supernatural aspects of the story. It has great pace, too; it’s great to have another kick-ass supernatural story set in the UK, and bears well to the comparisons that have been made between Banished and Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series – Clare’s world is different to de Jager’s (and a little slicker), but the feel is similar. Fr anyone who enjoys Banished I would also very strongly recommend they read the completely awesome and un-criticisable Half Bad by Sally Green.

While Kit and Thorn tried figure out what was going on, being pursued by a powerful magic wielder and a myriad of supernatural creatures bent on capturing the prince, I got completely wrapped up in the story and would have happily gone straight on to book two, except it has yet to be published. What, after all, is all this about Thorn being a guardian? They say the seventh son of a seventh son is blessed with impressive magical powers, but Thorn feels like he’s a long way from extraordinary. Is there more to Kit’s powers than meet the eye? And how much faith should you really put into a prophecy?

Ghost Hawk, by Susan Cooper

Ghost Hawk is a beautiful and heartbreaking story, powerful in it’s telling. I didn’t expect to be so swept up by Susan Cooper’s writing, so transported to this lost world, or to become so emotionally involved with the characters and the history. It is tragic and poignant; it made my eyes burn, anger seep to the surface of my skin, and my heart ache.

Little Hawk is nearly eleven when his father takes him deep into the forest and leaves him there with just the clothes on his back, a knife, bow and arrows, and a tomahawk. Hawk must survive, alone, through three hard months of winter, fending for himself against the wild and the weather. When he returns – if he returns - he will be a man.

We see through Little Hawk’s eyes as he looks for shelter, food and his Manitou – his spirit guide. He faces off with wolves and deer, freezes through storms, and nearly drowns in a lake. But this is only the beginning of his story: when he returns from his sojourn, Little Hawk must remain strong and brave in the face of terrible loss; a loss that only scratches the surface of what is to follow in the coming years.

This is an incredible book. Through Little Hawk’s way of life, Susan Cooper makes us feel a strong connection to the world, to the land and the animals, to Hawk’s people and to his past, the echoes of the generations that came before him and the echoes of the generations to come behind. But past and future echoes are quickly silenced by the arrival of the colonists: this is the 1600s, and the whites from across the oceans have arrived in force.

At first, colonists and natives help each other, and it seems as if they will be able to live alongside one another, but soon everything is cut short, the differences between the two populations as stark as the contrast between the beginning of Ghost Hawk and the chapters that follow in part two and beyond.

“In this world, one small thing leads to another small thing, and they twine within time to cause events, both good and terrible,” Hawk tells us.

Early on, Little Hawk is befriended by John Wakeley, a little boy a couple of years Hawk’s junior. John doesn’t think of Hawk as being any different to himself, but he’s surrounded by people who think otherwise: when he tries to challenge those around him, when he tries to highlight their hypocrisy, he’s shunned and shut down. But John is determined and brave and seeks to find a way to live on the terms that he believes are right, to hold to the truth of a memory that haunts him. What does the future hold? Can he make things right?

At times, the history tied up in Little Hawk’s story made me feel almost physically sick: the attitudes of many settlers towards Little Hawk’s people, their assumptions made about them because they don’t conform to the white interpretation of civilization, the uncaring dismissal of their rights and beliefs. It’s disgusting and, from what I can tell, things don’t seem to be much better even today. America is a country built on blood and murder, theft and lies, the native nation brought to its knees, destroyed and gutted by white arrogance. No matter how much trust Little Hawk’s people try to put in the settlers, it is mostly only repaid in distrust.

Wise Little Hawk watches it all as it passes before his eyes:

“This was how they thought of our mother the earth, these white men: as a place full of things, put here by their God for them to use.”

Ghost Hawk is a beautiful rendering of the tragic and heartbreaking effects of colonisation on Native American peoples. I am so happy that it has been shortlisted for the 2014 Carnegie Medal, because otherwise I probably would never have picked it up. It will make you cry and rage at the injustice, at the loss of all that history, of what our ancestors did these people. Susan Cooper’s storytelling is exquisite and powerful, evocative and emotional; I can’t recommend it enough, for teenagers and adults alike.

All the Truth That's in Me, by Julie Berry

All the Truth That’s in Me is a really extraordinary novel. It’s immensely readable yet quietly intense, a story of communication and love and judgement, and with one of the most unusual but remarkable voices I’ve ever come across, written sort of simultaneously in first and second perspective (‘I’ as well as ‘you’).

It is four years since Judith was abducted, two years since she returned. She cannot speak, half her tongue cut out, and so she cannot tell the town, her mother, her younger brother, what happened to her. She can only watch you, Lucas - the man she’s loved since you were a boy - from a distance and silently pour out her thoughts and fears and dreams.

This is Roswell Station, a settler’s town heavily ruled by the laws of God; it’s a tight community, but one that can easily be shattered. And when three Homelander ships are spied on the horizon, the glass looks set to break: since the fire, there isn’t enough arsenal to properly defend against these raiders. But as the men and boys are summoned to war, Judith remembers: the hut hidden in the hills, the basement where she was kept, the explosives stacked like a wall. And so she does the one thing she never thought she’d do: she returns and makes a bargain: her life for yours.

But this is only the beginning. Because when Judith’s kidnapper reveals himself to the town, a set of events is begun that she could never have predicted, events that dig up the past and shed new light on things people thought they understood. Gradually, in more ways than one, Judith regains her voice. And as Lucas begins to notice, so the town notices him. Conclusions are drawn, traps are set and just as a happy ending seems to be within reach it is snatched away again. Or is it? Can Judith find a way to turn the town’s judgment around?

I really can’t even begin to do justice to this book. It’s a romance and a mystery, the story of a town and of a girl, it’s empowering and tense. It’s written in a timeless sort of way that suggests 17th or 18th century, but reminded me most strongly of the M. Night Shyamalan film, The Village, I think because of the level of purity expected by Roswell Station’s citizens, because the worship, although it runs through the town’s veins like blood, is mostly unspecified.

Julie Berry’s technique of writing in both first and second perspective is something I've never come across before; it's both extremely daring and extremely effective. Additionally, her style of breaking up the four ‘books’ into multiple small chapters makes it exceedingly readable, especially as you just have to find out what will happen next; and the language, the plot building, the characterisation - the everything - is exquisite.

Of all the excellent books on this year's Carnegie Medal shortlist (I’ve currently read five of the eight), this is, so far, the standout title for me. It’s quiet yet has great intent, an amazing voice, every page and twist of the plot explosive; I had no idea how it was going to end, whether things would work or whether the town’s judgments and assumptions would override their humanity. For anyone who thinks that young adult books are all trash, all they need to do is pick up All the Truth That’s in Me.

Will Lucas see Judith? Why does her mother hate her so? What nasty game is teacher Rupert Gillis playing? Who is following Judith, prowling around her house at night? And, perhaps most importantly of all, what really happened to the other missing girl, Lottie? Judith must reclaim her voice, and reclaim what was lost to her and what was lost to you. Truly excellent.

We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart

Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family. A family of privilege and pride, of wealth and beauty. Cadence has grown up in a sort of idyll, a grand house in Vermont during the school year and then a summer of freedom on the family’s private island, running with her band of cousins, swimming and sunbathing and eating ice-cream. Pretty perfect. Pretty much the kind of lifestyle every girl dreams of.

But since two summers ago, Summer Fifteen, Cadence has suffered from crippling migraines, her family seems to have drawn away from her, and she has trouble concentrating. She remembers Summer Fifteen with the same idyll as all the rest, except perhaps even more so, because Summer Fifteen was the summer she fell in love with Gat, her cousin Johnny’s friend who’d been coming with them to the island since they were eight. It was a summer of stolen kisses and secrets.

The biggest secret of all, though, is the accident. Cadence doesn’t remember anything at all about the accident. She only knows what she’s been told by her mother. She only knows that something terrible must have been done to her, something terrible enough to leave her with these terrible headaches and stifling memory loss. Now, two years on, she’s desperate to return to the island for Summer Seventeen, to see her cousins and Gat, to reclaim the sunshine and hopefully reclaim her memory.

Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family. Privileged? Proud? Beautiful? Perhaps all is not as it seems. Perhaps this is a family of secrets and denial. Why has Granddad completely remodeled the family home, tossing out the years of memories? Why does Aunt Carrie wander the island at night and little Will have such nightmares that Cadence can hear him crying half way across the island? Why do her cousins lie about what they’ve been doing? And why won’t anyone tell her what happened that summer?

Gradually, piece by tiny piece, things start to come back to Cadence…

Read E. Lockhart's We Were Liars if you want to be shocked, if you want a story that’ll take your breath away, a story that will draw you in and reassure you then rip the carpet away from under your feet. It’s completely brilliant and wonderfully told, Cadence’s voice is truthful and intriguing, making you turn the page and then the next page, and then the next page. With rave reviews from the likes of John Green and Maureen Johnson, We Were Liars is surely going to be ‘the’ book of the summer. Read it! And then turn back to page one and read it again…

Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell

Ok, so I’m a little late to the Rainbow Rowell love-a-thon. I’ve had an unread copy of Eleanor and Park sitting on my shelf for at least six months now, but I’ve decided this is a good thing because it’s meant that I get to read Fangirl first. For me, reading Fangirl was like diving head first into a particularly addictive coming-of-age TV show. Think Gilmore Girls. I could not get enough, and once I’d finished I couldn’t quite believe I had finished – “surely,” my brain said, “there must be another episode you can watch/read tonight?”

Cather and Wren are identical twins. They’re two very individual people: while Wren is wild and outgoing, Cath is shy, anxious and a homebody, yet they’ve pretty much always gone everywhere and done everything together. Until now. They’re starting university, and Wren has decided it’s her chance to be a person away from being a twin – much to Cath’s consternation Wren has deliberately chosen to live in a different dorm and with a roommate that isn’t Cath.

Left on her own, worrying about her father left at home on his own, and with a strange roommate who doesn’t really speak to her, Cath is too shy even to find out where the dining hall is. She goes to class, meets Wren occasionally for lunch, and then holes up in her room writing fanfiction. Yup, Cath is a Simon Snow fan. A Simon Snow obsessive. Simon Snow being the lead character in an eight-part series of books that at first glance bear a resemblance to Harry Potter, but where the equivalent Ron character is evil. Cath is not only a great fanfic writer, she’s got a fan-base of her own that numbers in the tens of thousands.

As someone whose anxiety levels often hit the roof, I related pretty strongly to Cather, her shyness, and her fear of doing new things. Rainbow Rowell plays this out to the nth degree, though, which at times felt a little too extreme, particularly as the love interest storyline developed with the delicious but incredibly patient Levi. Do boys like him really exist? If so, can one walk into my life please? It didn’t bother me too much though and it didn’t take anything away from the storyline; it may seem unrealistic to someone who doesn’t get bothered by situations like Cath does, but anyone who gets shy and hyper self-conscious around boys or new stuff will know exactly where Cath is coming from. And as the storylines gradually reveal themselves – why Cath is so worried about her dad all the time, and why Wren’s sudden distance cuts so deeply – we begin to understand why Cath is how she is, and the motivation for her Simon Snow obsession, even if inside we’re yelling at her to “just get on with it!”

I loved Cath’s roommate Reagan and I wanted to rage at Cath’s sort-of writing partner for his behavior toward her – especially after the fiction-writing professor gallingly calls Cath’s fanfiction plagiarism. I couldn’t understand how Wren could suddenly cut herself so far out of Cath’s life, and be so mean to her, but with hindsight I can see that perhaps it wasn’t as sudden as it might have felt, that she had to try her own path. Fortunately it’s a path that eventually leads her back to the people who care about her the most. Well, with a little help.

Rowell intersperses the chapters with scenes from Simon Snow books and from Cath’s Simon Snow fiction, and even uses Cath to read aloud one of her stories during the book. I wasn’t completely sure about this approach at first – I was more interested in Cath’s real relationships than the ones she was imagining in her fiction – but the end result is that I kind of feel like Simon Snow actually exists as well. Well, in the sense that Harry Potter actually exists, at least – as in, I’d quite like to go and read the Simon Snow books now please.

All in all, I loved Fangirl. Aside from the great characters and from being completely engaging, it has some brilliant one-liners; if it was a TV show, I’d want to go right back to the beginning and start watching it all over again; it even made me want to go to university again. If I’d known then what I know now, maybe I’d have had a much better experience instead of – ahem – holing myself away watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer re-runs. It’s a lesson for anyone just starting out at university – and it’s a lesson for me, now, too, to not be afraid of grabbing life by the horns. Because few people are really going to care how pink you go when they look at you, and you’re only doing yourself harm by shutting out opportunities. Cath is much happier once she opens herself and her life up to new experiences and new people. Of course, it’s much easier said than done. Step one, though: read Fangirl.

Amy & Matthew, by Cammie McGovern

Amy & Matthew was a bit of a surprise. I hadn’t intended to read it when I did, but when it arrived (care of Macmillan books), I picked it up to just read the back and peek at the first page. Three hours later I was still reading.

This is a love story. In many ways it’s a conventional love story, but in many ways it’s very unconventional. And it’s not just a love story: this is a book about being different, about not letting others define who you are or who they think you should be; its about allowing yourself to be challenged in a positive way, and it’s about doing things your own way, even if that includes making mistakes.

Amy has cerebral palsy, which essentially means her body is not hers to do with as she will. She needs help with her fine motor skills, has difficulty walking and difficulty speaking. She’s always had adult aides to help her at school, but now, the year before she’s going to start college, she’s realized something crucial: she has no friends and limited social skills. If she wants to be able to go to college, to live an independent life, that needs to change, and so she persuades her (unwilling) mother to hire other students to help her out during her senior year.

When Matthew finds out he’s been accepted as one of Amy’s aides, he starts to balk. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. What will he say to her? What if he does something wrong? He’s supposed to introduce her to new people, but he doesn’t really know anyone either. But he sticks it out and finds that spending time with Amy is better and easier than anything he’d ever imagined. And as Amy gets to know Matthew, she discovers he has a different kind of disability - one that is (currently) as restrictive as her own – can she help him?

Amy and Matthew’s relationship is by nature a complicated one; as the months go by they bounce off one another as they challenge each other and are challenged by each other. Matthew is just about the only person who’ll tell it to Amy like it is, while Amy is always aiming for the stars, a distance too far for Matthew to comprehend. I really like that Cammie McGovern writes the story this way: she doesn’t force these characters together; doesn’t seem to write a situation for them that’ll create the perfect happily ever after scenario. Rather, they bounce away and come back, bounce away and come back in the most natural and realistic way possible.

This is a wonderful book. It’s a very engaging read as well as thought provoking. It is not about people with disabilities, it is about people who just happen to have disabilities. Those disabilities do, naturally, have an influence on some parts of the story, but it was mostly an important reminder for me that the mind and the body are separate entities and that we shouldn’t judge a person’s central being based on their physical abilities. Everyone has the same thoughts and fears and dreams and it’s not up to someone else to decide how far another person should be able to go in pursuing them, or in what direction. We can only decide for ourselves.

As far as Amy and Matthew are concerned, I just wanted them to work out how to be happy, whether that was together or apart. Which they did – but I’m not telling you how… Amy & Matthew has everything a good love story needs, but with a double plus because it doesn’t define how we should love, only that we should.


(NB. Amy & Matthew is published under the title Say What You Will in the US)

Panic, by Lauren Oliver

What are your greatest fears? What makes your stomach drop, your legs turn to jelly, your brain shut down? What makes you panic?

For the teenagers of small, run-down Carp, Panic is a game. It’s a game of nerve, a game with a big payoff: $50,000. Only graduating seniors can enter, and you have to be made of steel to win. The players will be pushed to their limits, and forced to discover what will drive them to overcome their fears, to go that extra mile.

Panic, Lauren Oliver’s new book, is a departure from her Delirium series – more thriller, less love story – yet conforms to her signature style, touching on themes and ideas as equally relevant to teens as to adults. Despite being 400 pages long, it feels like I read it in a flash, the adrenaline from the characters seeping off the page, making my palms sweat and my heart race.

Contestants declare their intention to play by jumping off a twenty-foot high rock in the middle of lake at the start of summer, and then they’re gradually whittled down to two or three players over the following weeks through a series of challenges – often with deadly consequences. There’s walking across a plank suspended between two water towers, stealing from the most feared man in town, Russian Roulette, holding out in a burning building. The judges are anonymous, the game a challenge against the poor background of Carp’s inhabitants, a challenge against boredom.

Heather hadn’t been planning to play Panic, but changed her mind at the last minute after seeing her boyfriend making out with another girl. But will this be enough motivation to see her through the death-defying challenges ahead? Dodge, by contrast, has plenty to fuel him: revenge. And he’s willing to go to any length to get what he wants. This is a game with no rules, no holds barred, but plenty of consequences.

Oliver alternates between Dodge and Heather’s viewpoints as the summer ticks by and Panic takes hold of their lives. I related much more to Heather’s story than Dodge’s – as the game progresses, Heather’s life goes under several stages of turmoil, from her freezing lack of self-esteem, losing one job and starting another, dealing with her difficult mother, caretaking her little sister, and the ups and down in her friendships as the tremours from Panic ripple outwards. Dodge is a different cup of tea – an unreliable narrator, I was never entirely sure whose side he was on or which way he was going to turn. This was a brilliant choice of Oliver’s: instead of using Dodge as a love interest (my assumption before I opened the book), by making his loyalties so difficult to predict, Oliver brings an extra level of tension and fear to the story, and plenty of opportunities for betrayal.

In fact, everyone seems to betray everyone else at some point. How will any of them remain friends with each other by the end? It’s interesting how prevalent betrayal is in a story that started life as an exploration of fear – perhaps because, aside from any immediate threat to life and limb, being left alone or abandoned by one’s friends and family is the next biggest fear in most people’s lives. That, or having somebody discover you’re not who you want them to think you are: Heather’s greatest fear is not ever being loved. Dodge’s? Well, the same, essentially, I think – for his disabled sister to not need him anymore. Ironically, Heather, who initially joins Panic on a whim, knows her fear right from the beginning; it’s Dodge who only comes to terms with his fear during the game, despite having a stronger motivation to play to begin with. And as the tables turn, Heather’s motivation to win grows: to win means the chance to hold onto those she loves and those who love her – whilst Dodge’s motivation peters away down the drain as everything he thought he was playing for unravels in front of eyes.

Whist reading, I couldn’t help but wonder: would I play Panic? If it was me, how would I cope with each of the challenges of the game? And not just the game, but the other challenges our characters must face as well. Probably not very well! But then, with those dollar signs before your eyes, who wouldn’t be tempted to try? Panic is and edge-of-the-seat race for the end. And as only one person can win, who will you be putting your money on?

Cinder, by Marissa Meyer

Cinder both is and isn’t what it appears to be: a clever retelling of the Cinderella fairytale. We all know the basics: orphaned girl in indentured servitude to wicked stepmother who, after a visit from her fairy godmother, sneaks out to the Royal Ball, at which the handsome prince falls in love with her. Cinder has all of these essential elements, but also has a lot more: bigger enemies than just the wicked stepmother, wolves in sheeps’ clothing, political upheaval, a deadly plague, and no guarantee of a happily ever after.

This is New Beijing and Cinder is not your average girl. Part human, part android, master mechanic. She doesn’t remember anything from before she was eleven years old, but has been told her parents died in the same crash that caused Cinder herself such extensive injuries that only with the installation of android parts was she able to survive. This makes her a second class citizen though, and at any moment she could be called upon to become a test subject for the doctors working to find a cure for the deadly plague that’s ravaging New Beijing. So she’s just trying to get through each day as easily as possible, running her mech shop, and staying out of her stepmother’s way.

Inevitably, though, it’s not long before events take over. First, the Prince strolls into her mech shop with a robot he needs fixing – a robot that could contain vital information for the survival of the kingdom – and then Cinder’s little sister contracts the plague and Cinder is shipped off to become what she fears most: a test subject. Yet this is just the beginning: Cinder’s body is hiding secret information too. Who is she really? And can she stop the evil Lunar queen from getting her claws into Prince Kai, New Beijing, and the rest of earth? Kai’s robot holds the key, but how will she get the information to him in time?

Immensely readable, in Cinder Marissa Meyer has created a dystopian fairytale that keeps the reader on their toes. The characters are a nice mix of moralistically black, white and everything in between, while the action, intrigue, and emotions are perfectly spread through the story, making it a remarkably hard book to put down even at those times when you can see what’s going to happen. Meyer did keep me guessing as to how it would all end though; how much information would be revealed both to the reader and to the characters? – which, as this is just the first book of four, is enough to keep me wanting more.

Why We Took the Car, by Wolfgang Herrndorf

“I was overcome with a strange feeling. It was a feeling of bliss, a feeling of invincibility. No accident, no authority, no law of nature could stop us. We were on the road and we would always be on the road.”

When Mike Klingenberg decides to abandon his boring, shy, embarrassed life and take to the open road in a stolen Lada with his new friend, Tschick, a slightly odd kid from the wrong side of the tracks, he embarks upon the best and weirdest two weeks of his fourteen long years of life.

“ ‘I have to tell you a secret.’ I said. ‘I’m the biggest coward in the world. The most boring person on the planet and the biggest coward.’
    ‘Why would you possibly say you were boring?’ asked Tschick.”

Why We Took the Car is a perfect road trip story that ticks all the boxes and has plenty of ‘Oh My God’ moments. Mike has no friends and his parents have basically abandoned him for the summer; he’s bored and lonely. So when Tschick waltzes into his life and starts challenging him, it’s hard – no, impossible -  for Mike to say no. From the moment Tschick first joins Mike’s school class – clearly drunk – to when he turns up on Mike’s doorstep driving a stolen Lada, their meandering, rambling drive across East Germany and the disastrous end to their fun, this is the story not only of their road trip, but also their friendship and of two young people’s awakening to the world around them.

It's easy to draw comparisons between Wolfgang Herrndorf and the masterful John Green: both writers achieve similar things with their stories, seeing life through the eyes of teenaged boys, weaving in all sorts of references to external things, adventure and intrigue. Referencing John Green may be what everybody seems to do these days, but I don't choose to make this comparison lightly, it's simply the clearest way to indicate the quality and substance of this book. Herrndorf is not “the next John Green”; rather, he’s Wolfgang Herrndorf, another great author doing a thing a bit like what John Green does and doing it equally well. So if you like John Green, you will like Why We Took the Car.

Perhaps the most interesting for me, as a British reader, is the fact that Why We Took the Car is set in Germany – winner of the German Teen Literature Prize, it’s been translated from the German by Tim Mohr. So many of the books I read today are set in America, so it’s not only refreshing to read about people in a different country, especially when they’re people living in a area of the world with a contrasting political historical background, but interesting and extremely thought provoking. I found myself googling maps of Germany’s post war separation and asking my mum for a history lesson.

Essentially Mike and Tschick are exactly the same kind of teenage boys as you’d find in an American young adult novel, but they’re living in a country with a huge immigrant population, studying texts at school that I’ve never heard of, and driving through a landscape which just twenty-five years ago was a communist regime. Thus it’s inevitable that they, on occasion, find the strangest things: a village with signposts in an unknown language, a moonscape, roads that peter out into cornfields, an abandoned village with a sole occupant that at first shoots at them, then invites them in for tea.

They get themselves in all kinds of situations, often with hilarious consequences. Although Tschick is sure no-one will miss the Lada he’s stolen, they both get a little on edge about whether the police are looking for them. They change the plates at one point, paint it black at another. One of the more bizarre events, though, is their attempt to refuel. Stopping at the petrol station they suddenly realize how odd it’ll look for two fourteen year old boys to try and buy fuel, which leads to some crazy strategizing on how to get the fuel they need, which leads to a five kilometre hike along the side of the autobahn (motorway) to reach a dump where they can look for a piece of hose which they can then use to siphon petrol out of another car and into theirs. For an adult, it’s all kinds of ridiculous, but the whole trek makes total sense for these two boys.

We know right from the beginning, though, that at some point their journey is going to come to a rather unceremonious end. The question is how, exactly? Why is Mike covered in blood at the beginning of the story? Are the police really after them? And what will the consequences be?

Why is Mike friendless? Because he’s self-absorbed? Or is he just shy? And who exactly is Tschick? Is he for real? There are probably a few German cultural references that went over my head, but I didn’t really notice them so as far as I’m concerned it certainly didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story. Sadly, Wolfgang Herrndorf died last year, but he wrote two other novels which perhaps might make it into an English translation at some point – I hope.

While some might deem the road trip as a failure – they don’t, after all, make it to their intended destination of Wallachia – it’s nonetheless a transformative experience. Mike returns empowered, with some cards to play at school, more than one friend to call his own, and no longer lets his father’s bullying tactics control his actions. Because, like his says, driving down a country road at a hundred kilometres an hour gives you a certain feeling of invincibility. Like you can do anything.

Reality Boy, by A. S. King

Reality Boy is the story of Gerald. When Gerald was five, his mum wrote to a TV company inviting the Network Nanny to come and work her nanny magic on Gerald and his two sisters.  Five year old Gerald did not respond well to this home invasion. Five year old Gerald’s behaviour took a nose dive, creating a name for himself that would follow him around for at least the rest of his formative years. ‘Formative years’ being the important part of that sentence. It is a not a nickname that should follow any person, particularly not through their formative years.

Today, Gerald spends a lot of time feeling angry. Everyone says he’ll wind up in prison. Everyone expects the worst from him. Problem is, when everyone expects the worst of you, it’s very hard to not fulfill their expectations. And if they only ever see the bad in your actions, what’s the point in even trying to be good? Fortunately Gerald is intelligent enough – much more intelligent than most people he’s surrounded by give him credit for – to see that he is better than other people think he is. The struggle is in trying to get everyone else to acknowledge that. Which is nigh-on impossible when you have a family like Gerald has. His oldest sister Tasha is psychopathic, but everyone (except Gerald, who knows better) pretends that’s she perfectly normal. His other sister got out as soon as she could and hasn’t called since. His mum is in a particular sort of denial that is essentially child abuse, while his dad buries his head in the sand. Oh wait, that would be alcohol-infused sand.

Gerald needs to find a way out and a way out now if has any hope of becoming a normally functioning adult. Can he move out? Can he run away? Can he wait and apply for college? In the meantime, the only means of escape that Gerald has is into his head. When things get tricky he takes a quick vacation to Gersday. Here the roads are made of candy, he gets to go to Disney World, eat ice cream whenever he wants and – most importantly – not only is there no Tasha, but everyone respects him. But just as the Network Nanny show was not real, neither is Gersday. The Network Nanny show showed only the parts of Gerald’s household that could create a TV sensation, not what was really going on. Gerald wants everyone to realize that five-year-old Gerald, the Gerald that spawned that nickname, isn’t real, but as he spirals his way through the next few weeks, who is the real Gerald? And what, for Gerald, is the real world? Is his reality the one where his sister repeatedly tries to drown him while his mother laughs from the sidelines, the one where the roads are made of candy, the one where he can run away and join the circus?

A. S. King is an exemplary writer and has built in Gerald a painfully sad and frustrated character predominantly surrounded by people who are blinded to the realities of his world. But perhaps Gerald is so wrapped up in his anger and frustration that he’s unable to see the realities of other people’s worlds? King has taken one idea, one concept – the destructiveness and unreality of reality TV – and entwined them into a multi-stranded, multi-conceptual gift of a novel that had me screaming inside over the willful ignorance of Gerald’s family. She effortlessly slips between realities, from Gerald’s ‘now’, to the Network Nanny days, to Gersday, taking us with her and with Gerald one hundred percent of the time. Can he, will he, find a way out? What will the consequences be?

A. S. King is as good as John Green and David Levithan - two writers whose fame in the UK has grown exponentially in the last year - and I really hope her UK sales will grow as fast as theirs have. This will hopefully be helped by the excellent gender-neutral cover that her publishers (Little, Brown and Company) have designed for Reality Boy, a book that is so readable you may forget to eat or sleep. Set your alarm clock to remind you to surface for a taste of your own reality on the odd occasion. But only on the odd occasion.

After Eden, by Helen Douglas

Eden is your average teenage girl: worrying about impending exams, planning parties, hanging out with her friends, balancing study and play. She’s not terribly interested in any of the boys at her school, and when new boy Ryan appears she’s determined not to fall into the same trap all the other girls do: falling head over heels to try and get noticed by him. But Eden soon suspects something’s a little off about Ryan – does he really not know pizza when he sees it, has he really never heard of Hitler? Or is he just teasing her? His accent is a weird mish-mash and he names her best friend Connor as his hero – despite having only met him about two days ago.

The main reason I picked up After Eden was because it is set in Cornwall (my home county), but I was quickly swept up by the mysteries of the storyline as Eden and Ryan were inexorably drawn together. And when Eden uncovers Ryan’s secret, she finds herself caught up in a mission to both change and protect the future. Will they succeed, or is their timeline written in the stars, unchangeable? To say more would be to give away the twist, to reveal Ryan’s secret, but rest assured it’s something a little different to most young adult storylines: no vampires, fairies or werewolves here, only humans and human folly.

Helen Douglas has written a classic YA romance with a nice twist that perfectly straddled the line between predictability and surprise. I could see where some parts of the story were going, but I was completely unable to predict the ultimate outcomes, which was not only refreshing, but meant that it kept my pulse elevated and made me want to keep turning the pages, as Douglas maintained a good pace to the storyline, throwing in a couple of shocks and ‘Aha!’ or ‘Oh no!’ moments here and there.

There are a couple of things I’d like to quibble – such as why Ryan wouldn’t have been better prepared for visiting Eden’s town, or the fact that his very visit could surely have risked delivering to Cornwall the very thing that he was sent there to prevent happening, never mind Eden’s occasional stupidity and thoughtlessness in the things she says just after she’s been outright told the dangers of revealing what she knows – but then, two of these issues help move the story forward to where Douglas needed it to go. If Ryan had been better prepared, would Eden have questioned his story in the first place? Probably not.

Overall though, After Eden ticks all the boxes for a an enjoyable YA read that is both recognizable as typical YA read whilst simultaneously being something a little different from the norm. And apparently there’s going to be an explosive sequel, which I am definitely interested to learn more about and see what is in store for Eden next. Can she and Ryan hide what they know? Will Ryan’s elders come after him for what he has done? Will Eden and Connor ever manage to mend their friendship?