Ella Minnow Pea, by Mark Dunn

Ella Minnow Pea has one of the best subtitles I think I’ve ever come across: ‘A novel without letters’. It’s ironic, clever, amusing, the truth and a lie all in one go. This is a book in which certain letters from the alphabet gradually become outlawed – ultimately leaving just five (four consonants and a single vowel) for the author and characters to work with – yet is a story told purely though the medium of letters and notes, making it simultaneously a novel without letters and a novel full of them!

Ella Minnow Pea is a teenaged girl who lives with her parents on a small, independently governed island just off the coast of the United States. The island – Nollop – takes it’s name from a now deceased citizen of its nation, Nevin Nollop, who famously (or perhaps not so famously) created the sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” This pangram, a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet, is held by the islanders in highest elevation, representative, they believe, of a greatness of language to which all of its citizens should aspire.

Eschewing modern technology as far as possible, letter writing appears to be the dominant form of communication on Nollop, and so the story begins with Ella writing to her cousin Tassie, who lives in a village in a far corner of the island. There is a great deal of hubbub in the capital of Nollopton, we learn, where an alphabetical tile has fallen from the classic sentence that adorns Nevin Nollop’s statue in the town centre: the letter Z, to be exact. While most people begin by assuming it is simply an act of nature precipitated by weakened glue on said tile, the High Council soon pronounces that there is a much higher purpose to be gleaned from the event: namely, that the tumbling of the letter Z is “a terrestrial manifestation of Mr. Nollop’s wishes.” And Mr. Nollop’s wishes are? That ‘Z’ be expunged from the alphabet forever more.

As of midnight on August 7th, no citizen is allowed to speak, write, or be in possession of the letter Z. At the outset, Ella isn’t terribly concerned by the pronouncement: Z, after all, is a fairly little-used letter. The outlaw of its use shouldn’t provide too great a challenge, and the challenge that it does represent is one that she is happy and eager to embrace. But Tassie sees things differently… And when August 8th comes around and Z is no more, it becomes startlingly clear how widespread an effect the removal of even this small alphabetical letter can have.

Mark Dunn is a supreme master of the English language, and as Ella Minnow Pea (or L-M-N-O-P) unfolds it soon becomes clear what a fascinating construct it is. As missives go back and forth, between Ella and Tassie initially, and then between other characters as they are gradually brought in to the story, adding new shades of light and dark, we are quietly led to realize that, despite it’s hearty subtitle, there is much more to this tale that just letters. First, a rather strict series of punishments is put into place by the High Council for any alphabetical transgressors and then, as more letters begin to fall, utopia rapidly descends into classic dystopian territory, all notion of human rights and morality deserting the island leaders as their obsession with Nollop takes over.

Can Ella and her fellows find a way to stop the madness before it is too late?

The characters, the politics and their relationships are all wonderfully and intriguingly developed, but it is the structure of this novel that’s left the greatest mark on my thoughts. What result does losing just one or two letters have? Books, names, and foods are all lost, while neighbor turns upon neighbor, the close-knit community quickly imploding. The Nollopian desire to elevate language is met, though, in a sense, as the characters strive to talk around the words they would otherwise say or bring into employ less common usage words for the same meaning.

As letters fall in ever greater numbers, though, language starts to falter. First things are renamed (with the loss of D, for instance, days of the week become Sunshine, Monty, Toes, Wetty, Thurby, Fribs, and Satto-gatto). Then, instead of the flowery and well-considered manner of speaking and writing from before, sentences become stark and grammarless. Spellings are changed to make words that sound the same but which avoid the illegal lettering and ultimately, language loses all essential meaning, becoming a base form, impossible to write or speak, while most of the community is torn asunder and spread to the four winds.

The only way out is if they can find a new sentence that supersedes Nollop’s 35 piece sentence: a pangram of 32 letters or less. Then, the Council, promises, they will accept that Nollop is not, perhaps, the be-all and end-all of language that they currently believe. But is it possible? Can Ella find the magic sentence before the deadline the Council has set? Is there even a sentence to find?

By turns funny and disturbing, tender and thought-provoking, Ella Minnow Pea is wonderful and brilliant, letter-less and letter-full and which takes language to a whole new level.

The Wall, by William Sutcliffe

Hands up if you like dystopia books. Hands up if you think dystopia books are important, fictional methods of pointing out inconsistencies in social order and social thinking. Or if you think they are a way of extrapolating a political idea into a worst-case scenario.

Hands up if you think dystopias don’t exist today. Right now, right here, in our modern world.

The Wall, in its basic form, is a literary dystopia. Joshua lives on one side of the Wall, relatively privileged, plenty of food on the table, nice clothes, a room full of books and games. Joshua’s world is under constant threat, though, from The Enemy. They want to bomb Joshua, his people, his town Amarias. They want to steal Amarias’s land. They want to shoot and kill. This is why the Wall is there: to protect Amarias, to keep the Enemy at bay, controlled.

To Joshua, the Enemy are a faceless people, a people to be kept at arm's length. But when he discovers a hidden tunnel that runs underneath the Wall and through to the other side, his inquisitiveness gets the better of him. And what happens when he emerges on the other side will not only re-align his world, but set into motion a series of terrible consequences.

After he goes through the tunnel and gets a glimpse of the other side – even though it’s a terrifying experience for him – his perfect, newly built town, with it’s identical houses and clean streets, seems unreal to him, like a dream, after the vibrancy and dirt and muddle and emotional tensions of the other side. He starts to wonder: why are they the enemy? Why do they hate his side of the wall? And he makes a friend, to whom he feels a debt of gratitude, though every attempt to repay it seems to make things progressively worse, both within his own life and within theirs. How can he fix it? How can he escape it?

The truth behind this dystopia is that it is not entirely fictional. William Sutcliffe has based his story – a fictional town, a fictional boy, a fictional series of events – on the real life, present day happenings in the West Bank. Although it is never explicitly written in The Wall, Joshua is Jewish, an Israeli, those on the other side of the Wall, Palestinian. Sutcliffe (who describes himself as a Jewish atheist)  has drawn on elements of various settlements on the West Bank to create this emotional and thought-provoking portrayal of the situation in Israel in which the Jewish settlers of the Occupied Zone are not-so-quietly condemned by his pen.

It’s an excellent book that, for someone who knows very little about the history and political situation of Israel, was extremely thought-provoking. It would have been useful if Sutcliffe had written a factual summary of the situation at the end of the book to give readers a little extra insight, though he does provide some suggested further reading.

Joshua is a well-rounded character who it’s impossible not to feel for. He makes mistakes – some of which have huge consequences – though the decisions he takes have only good intentions behind them, and it’s kind of excruciating and frustrating to watch events unfold yet be powerless to stop or change them. The willful ignorance of his mother as his stepfather Liev physically abuses Joshua is not unusual in young adult fiction yet is a poignant metaphor, perhaps, for the way in which the western world seems to stand idly by while a whole people is forced into a similar position and held there against their will.

The unerring belief of Liev (and, presumably, the majority of those living in Amarias) in their right to this piece of land reminded me strongly of the book I read just before this one: Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper, which covers the settling of America and practical genocide of the native people there. If I understand correctly, there is a historical precedent for Jewish people belonging to the land which is now called Israel? Which obviously isn’t the case for the whites going in and taking over America, yet surely today the Palestinians have as much connection to the land of the country Israel as perhaps the Israelis do, after farming it and living on it for generations.

Sutcliffe creates this feeling of history through Joshua’s own newly-discovered connection to the land after he begins caretaking an olive grove on the outskirts of Amarias:

“I sometimes think of all the people who might have drunk here. For the last few months it was perhaps only me and Leila’s father, but a hundred years, a thousand years, five thousand years, is the blink of an eye to a leaky rock. Drinking from this spring I feel myself joining a thread of people, linked together through unimaginable chasms of time, who have all knelt here, drunk here, tasted this taste, enjoyed it, been kept alive by it. If the bulldozers ever get here, that will be it. The rock will shift, the trickle will stop, the thread will snap.”

It is irrelevant to Joshua who those people were who have drunk from this spring, tended these olive trees, this soil – irrelevant whether they are Jewish or Christian or Muslim – the land connects us all together if we respect it and it will treat us well if we treat it well. The land doesn’t care who we are, and there is something beautiful in this idea. Why can’t we share it and live on it equally? Why do we have to own it and war over it and diminish others for it?

This is a very complicated history which engenders very complicated feelings. The Wall, though, takes one step towards making us think harder about what we do and how we behave. It’s a very clever idea, to create a dystopian story based on real happenings, though there is a precedent with books such as George Orwell's Animal Farm. Joshua’s actions will change him forever; what he learns, once he learns it, will be forevermore un-learnable:

“This place no longer seems how it was before we left for the Occupied Zone, because back then I barely even knew what The Zone was, and once you know something, you can never unknow it.  

“I have left Amarias, but now I realize Amarias will never leave me. I hated that place because it felt like a huge lie, but this place doesn’t feel so different.”

Poignant and sad and thought-provoking. Who is the real enemy? Liev? The world? Himself? And what sacrifices will he make to do the right thing, to help someone who needs help?

Mouse Bird Snake Wolf, by David Almond and Dave McKean

In Mouse Bird Snake Wolf David Almond and Dave McKean bring us a new creation fable told in a graphic novel form. It’s a story about the wonder of imagination, of innocence lost and human nature that is at once wonderful and ominous.

Once, in a world pretty similar to our own, there lived three children: Harry Sue and Ben. It was a pretty good place to live, except for one little problem: the spaces. Because the Gods, after they started making this world, got kind of lazy and tired, and stopped creating things before all the spaces were filled in. They’ve been napping ever since.

But one day, Ben, out walking with Harry and Sue, looks into one of these spaces and pictures within it a creature that could fill the gap. A mouse.

“A mouse?” said Harry. “What on earth is a mouse?”

“I don’t quite know,” said Ben. He wrinkled his nose and scratched his. “It’s kind of a mousy thing, I suppose.”

Thinking hard about what a mouse might be, Ben gathers together some of the natural things around him – wool and petals and nuts – and makes them into a mousy shape, then wills it into being. It’s sweet and mousy, and runs off to do mousy things.

Seeing Ben’s success, Sue and Harry each look into a space and see what they could fill it with, while the Gods stir restlessly above them. And then they imagine a wolf. Ben really isn’t too sure about the wolf, but the older children are wrapped up in their newfound power over the world and determine to continue with their creation… What will happen when the wolf is willed into being? How will it change the world? And how will it change Harry and Sue?

Each time I read Mouse Bird Snake Wolf, I seem to get a little extra something from it. It’s beautifully produced, colorful and edgy; it’s something more than a picture book, something more than a story book. The layout of each page is different, using panels or full colour images, or a mix of the two. ‘Stylised’ is the word that comes to mind to describe Dave McKean’s drawings, many of the images being quite angular and sharp. I like how the Gods are all in black and white, making them somehow ‘other’, and I like how we are shown the imagined images of the world and the new creatures running through the children’s minds, developing from a blur into something with form that they then express in the physical world with leaves and twigs, sticks and stones.

What starts off as a shining and innocent world – I think the image on the first double page is my favourite, showing Harry, Sue and Ben balancing on the world, the plants growing around them, their roots extending down beneath their feet – becomes a little darker, page by page, as the children tamper with it. This is shown not only in the types of creature they create – from the essentially harmless mouse, to a bird, to the cunning snake and then the wolf – but also in the tools they use to bring these creatures to life. To make his mouse, Ben gathers together wool, petals and nuts, and then whispers it to life. The bird involves sticks, leaves, grass and a little more coaxing; the snake needs clay and stones, and actions to bring it into being.

The wolf takes all of these things, and two people howling and drumming their feet. The very act of bringing the wolf into life requires Harry and Sue to change their behavior and once it is done, once the wolf has been imagined once, it will be there forever within them:

“Now their wolf was inside them, like a dream. They felt it, running through them. They heard it, howling and snarling deep inside them.” 

This is not a light and fluffy fairytale. In fact, the night after I read Mouse Bird Snake Wolf for the first time, I dreamt about being chased by wolves; I had to barricade myself indoors to try and escape them. The drawings of the wolf once he comes to life are really quite scary – and this is a thirty-plus-year-old talking. What starts off as a seemingly innocent creation tale soon becomes something darker: the wolf is waiting in the wings.

Masterful, thought provoking, a book that is a little bit special.

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.

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?

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.

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?

Let It Snow, by John Green, Maureen Johnson & Lauren Myracle

I saved Let It Snow for Christmas Day reading as I figured it would be the perfect Christmas Day treat. And it was! How great is it when something like that works out perfectly? Of course, it’d be great reading for any time of the year, but especially for a snow day or a holiday day. In fact, the only thing that would have made it better when I started reading on Christmas Day would have been if it had started snowing too. But hey, we can’t always have everything we wish for.

Let It Snow is composed of three short stories or novellas (what exactly is the difference? Is it just word count?): The Jubilee Express by Maureen Johnson, A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle by John Green, and The Patron Saint of Pigs by Lauren Myracle. All three of them are set in one small U.S. town in the middle of a massive snowstorm, and while each story features different characters, the people and events within them overlap. Oh, and it’s Christmas. Yay!

It’s Christmas Eve and Jubilee has the next twenty-four hours all planned out, but when her parents get arrested at a shopping stampede she’s somewhat unceremoniously shoved onto a train off to her grandparents’ house. But then the storm comes in and the train breaks down and instead of sitting in the cold like a martyr (surrounded by an incredibly irritating group of cheerleaders who are, yes, practicing) she decides to pursue other options and makes for the diner she can see over the way. Here she meets Stuart, and a small-town adventure ensues that includes getting very wet feet, breaking up with her boyfriend, and losing her phone in a snow drift. It’s great: Maureen Johnson at her typical Maureen Johnson best.

Cut to… Tobin and his friends JP and the Duke. Tobin’s parents are out of town and can’t get back in time for Christmas thanks to the storm. Tobin doesn’t really have a problem with this: he, JP and the Duke are just gonna sit and watch Bond movies. At least, that’s the plan until they get a call from their friend who works at the diner: the diner has been taken over by cheerleaders. This makes JP very excited indeed, and he persuades Tobin and the Duke that they should drive over there and witness the cheerleading miracle. This, given the raging storm outside, is easier said than done. Cue road-trip style adventure, albeit on a very small and snowy scale, but with just as many disasters along the way, like sliding backwards down a hill, abandoning the car in a snow drift and, er, getting very wet feet. Ditto the above: John Green at his typical John Green best.

Lastly we meet Addie, who is feeling extremely sorry for herself because she hasn’t heard from her boyfriend Jeb at all across Christmas. They sorta broke up last week, but she asked him to meet her at Starbucks on Christmas Eve so they could figure stuff out. But he didn’t show. Come Boxing Day, she still hasn’t heard from him, but has the early shift at work and has promised to collect a ‘parcel’ from the local pet store for her friend. Addie is a bit scatterbrained, especially when all she can really think about is Jeb, but collecting the parcel goes rather wrong and it’s really not her fault (though her friend blames her) – can she fix it? And can she get over Jeb?

I’ve never read anything by Lauren Myracle before, and her style is similar to her two co-authors, but I’m afraid I was a bit disappointed by The Patron Saint of Pigs, especially after reading the other two brilliant stories. Addie was very hard to like, even when some of the things that went wrong weren’t really her fault (although some of them were), but I also felt that the threads of the story didn’t completely add up. We know from the first stories that Jeb is actually on his way to meet Addie, but got held up by the storm. My question is this: Jeb tries to phone Addie multiple times, but for some unknown reason never gets through to her: why not? And, seeing as everyone else manages to plough their way through the snowstorm, if he is supposedly so desperate to get in touch with her, why doesn’t he venture out as well?

Of course, it all works out in the end – there’s a reason why the subtitle of Let It Snow is Three Holiday Romances. I can see that Lauren Myracle perhaps had the trickier job: to tie up all three storylines and bring all the characters together. She does succeed, it’s just that I wasn’t that bothered about Addie and her whining. I was bothered about the other protagonists, though, Tobin and the Duke (who is, by the way, a girl with an unusual nickname), and Stewart and Jubilee. And although I wasn’t swept away by the third romance, it’s a book worth reading for the first two. So next time the sky turns black, the temperature falls, and you need a little romance in your life, Let It Snow will surely meet all your criteria for a cosy afternoon read in front of the fire.

Grasshopper Jungle, by Andrew Smith

On the front cover of my copy of Grasshopper Jungle, there’s a quote from Michael Grant, which calls it: “A cool/passionate, gay/straight, male/female, absurd/real, funny/moving, past/present, breezy/profound masterpiece of a book.” This sums up Andrew Smith’s work of genius absolutely perfectly.

Grasshopper Jungle is everything Michael Grant says it is, which might sound like a pretty tough thing to achieve, yet Andrew Smith does this without seeming to break into a sweat. Our protagonist Austin, however, probably sweats quite a lot. What with the unleashing of the end of the world and the running for his life, not to mention the heartache of being in love with two people at once.

It all begins in the small American town of Ealing, Iowa. One question is whether it began fifty years ago, or whether it began four days ago. Either way, an army of six foot tall praying mantises have been accidentally unleashed into the town. Right now, though, nobody really knows anything about it. But the grasshoppers don't care; they only want to do two things: they’re hungry and they’re horny. Which is, when you think about it, maybe kinda like the average teenage boy?

Grasshopper Jungle is not so much an apocalypse book as a coming-of-age story, because it’s Austin’s story - his and Robby’s and Shann’s – so even while the shit is hitting the fan around them, Austin is still, you know, a person. With personal stuff going on. More precisely, he’s wondering how he can be in love with both Robby and Shann at the same time. He doesn’t want to hurt either of them, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is an unstoppable dynamo of a horny sixteen year old boy, slave to his instincts, and this makes him selfish. So it’s kind of inevitable that he’ll hurt someone, and probably himself too, as he tries to figure it all out. Oh, and try to save the world.

I spent about 90% of the book debating how literally I should take Austin’s account of “the end of the world”. Is it really the end of the world as in The End Of The World, or is it (a) just the end of the world in Ealing, Iowa, (b) what could have been the beginning of the end of the world but fortunately turns out not to be, or (c) maybe simply, given his heartache, just the end of Austin’s world? In many ways Austin’s account of what could be the more terrifying aspects of this story are almost blasé and almost (almost) so taken-for-granted that it’s difficult to divine how serious it all is. Is this because by the time he comes to write this account, he’s pretty much inured to the whole thing? Or because, at the time it’s all happening, it’s overshadowed by the bigger question in his life: how can he be in love with two people? Plus, you know, giant grasshoppers.

Is Austin to blame? The Hoover boys? Dr. Grady McKeon? The world’s need for unstoppable corn? Told not as a diary, but as a personal historical account, Austin likes details and he likes connections, and his history includes both of these, linking together what could be considered unrelated events into a big spider’s web of a retelling. Ultimately, of course, all the connections become clear, but can there be a happy ending. What, after all, is a happy ending? It’s immense and tiny, intense and careful, pacey and thoughtful, funny and sad, and it’s impossible not to root for Austin to get everything he wants, even when all of those things are seemingly contradictory to one another.

I loved every part of this book, from Austin’s complete confusion over his two best friends to the frankly rather bizarre apocalypse he’s caught up in the middle of, the brilliant antics of these three kids in their small hometown and the eclectic way that Smith/Austin goes about writing the story, sliding from personal account to family history to multiple viewpoints as the praying mantises take over. I want to tell you it’s one of the most interesting and unusual novels I’ve ever read. I want to tell you it’s genre busting, and gender busting too. I want to tell you it will appeal to fans of John Green, Patrick Ness, Michael Grant, Suzanne Collins, Stephen King. Mostly, though, I just want to tell you it’s so completely brilliant you have to read it for yourself.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender tells the story of three women: Ava herself, a young girl who was born with a pair of softly feathered wings; her mother Viviane, heartbroken and shy of the world; her grandmother Emilienne, haunted by the sorrows of her lost brother and sisters. When Ava was born they called her The Living Angel, but where did this magic come from? As Ava traces her family’s history, the lives of her mother and grandmother, their choices and their fates, she spies a thread of magic that runs through them all – but what love, magic and tragedy awaits Ava herself?

I love the cover on this book, the beautifully engraved feather design. And the title is apt too: the story is one of strange and beautiful sorrows. But, while quiet tragedy does run through the pages, it is not all sorrowful. And it is not just Ava’s story either. Much of the first half of the book is taken up with Emilienne’s story, and then Viviane’s, and I have mixed feeling about this. Their histories are relevant and they have a part to play in the events that follow, but it meant the story took a long time to really get going, especially for a title that’s billed as Ava’s story. Although, of course, their story is a part of Ava’s story – but Ava is a much more engaging character than either her mother or grandmother, each of whom feels the toll of lost love heavily and whose choices I found slightly irritating and naïve in places. But perhaps Ava can break the cycle?

Once Ava herself came to the foreground of the story I was much more interested – a young girl like any other, she just wants to be accepted for who she is inside. But when she ventures beyond her garden gate will people see her for who she is or will they see only her wings? Will they be afraid? Or awed? As she gradually begins to expand her world it’s inevitable that someone out there will react badly. Will it destroy her? Or give her new beginning?

Leslye Walton writes with a style that reminded me strongly of Alice Hoffman, one of my favourite authors, whom I read a lot of in my early twenties, as she weaves in natural magics and gives her characters a quiet sort of sensitivity to the world. Just here and there, though, she lets it get a little out of control – one and half pages on the smell of rain, for instance, felt a little overcooked.

This is a book being marketed for teens/young adults, yet it doesn’t feel like a young adult book. Maybe this is a good thing: teens, after all, are more than capable of reading and engaging with ‘adult’ books, and why should teen books have a certain ‘feel’ about them anyway? The genre should definitely not be restricted in this way. However, I would only recommend it to older readers because of the sweeping sexual references and because, honestly, a younger reader is likely to get bored pretty quickly by the heavy beginning – this is not an action adventure book, it is not a romance or a dystopian thriller. I do love the magical realism aspect, though, and perhaps it’s time the young adult section had something a little different added to its shelves.

While I wasn’t completely overwhelmed, I did enjoy reading The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender; it was satisfyingly predictable in places and nicely unpredictable in others, and as the story built towards it’s conclusion I was most certainly gripped. And it has a slightly ambiguous ending, with a little surprise tucked inside it, as well as giving the feeling that all is right with the world as each of the three women overcome their sorrows and look to the future.

Half Bad, by Sally Green

This book, Half Bad by Sally Green, is absolutely brilliant.

Nathan is a witch. A Half Code, to be exact. His father was a Black witch, his mother a White witch. In a country ruled by Whites, where Blacks are not just outsiders, but hunted down and exterminated, to be a Half Code is to be under constant suspicion. Nathan has lived with it all his life: the notifications from the Council of White Witches that arrive throughout his adolescence, progressively restricting his freedoms; the annual assessments to determine the extent of his "Blackness"; the contempt of his oldest half sister.

And now his seventeenth birthday is nearing. It’s imperative that he track down the Black witch Mercury and persuade her to give him three gifts in order that he can receive his Gift. Because without his Gift not only will he never be a fully fledged witch, but in all probability he will die. The problem? The Council have him under lock and key, he doesn’t know where Mercury is, and if he does escape and if he does find her, she may not even help him. The rumour is she eats boys.

Sally Green’s prose is straightforward and gripping, and she adeptly gives us Nathan’s backstory, filling in any questions, building this world and Nathan’s plight, then launching us forward and into his journey. As Nathan learns witch history, we see how the lines between black and white are always blurred; the ones who have the power are the ones who write history, and of course they’ll write it biased towards themselves. ‘White’ persecutes ‘Black’, and they’re persecuting Nathan for being half Black because they fear who he may become – ‘different’ is always feared and the Whites clearly don’t seem to understand the Blacks’ affinity for and connection to nature. Supposedly, the Black are evil, but White seem pretty cruel to me, especially as they gleefully go about committing genocide against the Blacks. Sound familiar?

Half Bad ticks all the boxes whilst being something different. Firstly, it’s a book about witches that, whilst being set in present day England, somehow manages to wrap inside it a bunch of what are traditionally more dystopian themes. And secondly, it’s British – a British author and a British setting – but with the slick feel of an American approach. I don’t mean to disparage British authors, but sometimes British YA books just feel terribly English somehow – I can’t quite put my finger on what the difference is, but here Sally Green makes the best of both worlds by writing a story that doesn’t have that edge of uptightness about it.

I like all the characters, Nathan is really easy to engage with and to get behind and the various relationships Green portrays throughout the book – with his family, his ‘teacher’, the people who help him along the path to finding Mercury, the girl he’s in love with – all felt true. While there is a touch of romance by no means does it dominate the storyline, which is refreshing in this supernatural-type post-Twilight genre. I also particularly liked the importance of blood that Green works into the text. Blood determines whether you are Black or White, blood is a key part of the coming of age ‘Gift’ ritual; blood is power. This is neatly reflected in the clever cover design: swirls of red that resemble blood that take the form of a boy's profile. Nice; this is a book that should appeal equally to boys and girls and the last thing that should happen is for it to be given a girly cover that immediately turns the boys away.

I basically have nothing bad to say about this book. Nathan works out his history, squeezes along the lines of prejudice, tries to find a way to defy the Council. Of one thing he is sure: he will not kill his Black father, and he will not let the Council manipulate him into doing so. But can he stick to this plan when it comes down to it?

Half Bad is going to get a lot of press in the coming months and all of it well deserved: Sally Green is the one to watch in 2014.

The 5th Wave, by Rick Yancey

For anyone looking for a great adventure/thriller – perhaps to replace that hole left by The Hunger Games – then look no further than The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. It seems a bit cliché to describe it as gripping or edge-of-the-seat, but that is exactly what this book delivers. It’s a little bit sci-fi, a little bit horror, a little bit post-apocalyptic, but mostly it’s just about a family trying to survive, trying to figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

Cassie’s world has been destroyed. Four waves of terror spread across the world when the aliens came. First the lights went out. Then tsunamis spread across the land. The third wave was pestilence, the fourth the silencers. What will the fifth wave be and when will it come? Separated from her family, Cassie is living day by day, living by the principal of trust no-one. Which seems pretty sensible, except that sometimes you have to decide to put your faith in someone, sometimes you need that someone to help you survive. But is Evan the right someone for Cassie to trust? He saved her life, but is he telling her everything? Can he help her find her little brother?

Rick Yancey’s telling of The 5th Wave is done in such a way to make you 95% certain that you know what’s going on, who to trust, who to doubt, and right from the very beginning we know what the 5th wave will be, even if Cassie doesn't. And yet that 5% somehow takes on a disproportionate weight, making us question what we believe to be true, to want to shout out at Cassie and warn her whilst also making us want to believe the opposite. And thus, tension abounds, the heart races, and you just have to simply keep turning the page, and the next page and the next page and the next page.

Ironically, Cassie has never met an alien; as far as she knows they’ve never set foot on the planet, never shown their faces. Instead they wreak their havoc from above, watching, waiting, playing. This makes it seem so much more about humanity, about how we respond to apocalyptic situations, how we choose to treat each other, how we find safety or how we gang up against one another; what we’re willing to sacrifice. This is a story that has been told time and time again, yet Yancey imbues it with a fresh sense of adventure and trauma and tension. And, given as this is a concept that has been told time and time again, what does that say about our enduring fascination with the real subject matter: ourselves?

Whether you’re a fan of The Walking Dead, The Passage, I Am Number Four, The Host, or none of the above, read The 5th Wave. Whether you’re young or old, or even older, read The 5th Wave. It’s brilliant.

Split Second, by Sophie McKenzie

Split Second is an excellent young adult thriller set in a near-future London, where austerity measures have been extended to the nth degree and where extremist groups are popping up on every street corner.

When a devastating bomb goes off in a Saturday market Nat and Charlie’s lives are changed forever: Charlie’s mum is killed, Nat’s brother thrown into a coma. Nat, though, has an added worry: he’s sure that his brother, instead of being an innocent bystander, was actually the bomber, working for the group that claims responsibility: The League of Iron. Charlie is hell-bent on revenge for her mum’s death, Nat is desperate for answers to his brother’s betrayal, and soon they are each drawn into the dark underworld of London, of terrorism, and the blurred lines of justice.

With short, action packed chapters told from Nat and Charlie’s alternating points-of-view, it’s almost impossible not to feel like you’re racing the same clock our two protagonists are. Recruited by the mysterious EFA – English Freedom Army - a group purportedly trying to stop the violence being spread by terrorists such as the League of Iron, will they question what they’re being taught to do, what they’re being shown, or will their hate for the League spur them each on, blindly?

I got on well with both of the characters, my only niggle being Charlie’s complete refusal to be even slightly considerate toward her cousin – obviously I can see why the two of them grated and why Charlie responded the way she did, but I’d like to think if it was me in Charlie’s position I’d be a little more tolerant! But then, I’m not Charlie and haven’t experienced what Charlie does.

Sophie McKenzie also does a great job of keeping us guessing about the right and wrong sides – if there even is such a clear delineation as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ – and about who is or isn’t trustworthy. And, of course, there is a mother of a twist at the end, which I kind of did and kind of didn’t see coming: she took my expectations for a dramatic ending and multiplied them. Expect twists, turns, a strong dose of betrayal, and a great British setting.

More Than This, by Patrick Ness

Is it a part of the human condition that we all feel, somehow, that there has to be ‘More Than This’? More than what we have, more than what we know, right now? But if there is more, what is it? Where is it? And what if it’s not at all what we’re expecting?

A boy is dying. He’s drowning, spluttering, gasping; it’s not an easy death. He dies. And then he wakes up. Is this heaven? Hell? Or somewhere else? He’s all alone. Or is he? Everything he thought he knew about the world, about himself, his parents, is about to be brought into focus and questioned. Everything you thought YOU knew about the world, yourself, your parents, is about to be questioned. What if what we think is real, isn’t? What if a choice was made, years ago, that you can’t undo?

When Seth dies, he wakes up in a place both familiar and fathomless. Just when he thinks he is beginning to understand it, a new layer and then a new layer and then a new layer is revealed. Even when you think you know - when Seth thinks he knows - what is going on, you are still left wondering whether it’s the whole truth or just another layer. Patrick Ness plays with this and bends our perception of reality in a multitude of ways, blurring the boundaries of time, of life and death, of the virtual and the real. Although packed with action, he writes in a way that is kind of slow and steady, but instead of drawing away the intensity, it makes it feel as if we’re viewing the story through a glass, darkly, adding texture and another subtle layer of the surreal to Seth’s experiences.

In More Than This, Ness has created a world that is at once explained and unexplained. Is it the future, or is it the now? He simultaneously answers all the questions his writing raises - almost as they pop into my mind – yet without actually really answering them; it’s a book that could be filled with holes, but by the end, none remain. And it’s a book that at first glance is something entirely different from his most popular previous work – The Chaos Walking trilogy – but which quietly nudges its way close to the ideas and techniques used and interpreted in that previous world.

More Than This is surely the most extraordinary book of the year. It is mind boggling, it will strip all speech from your brain. It will make you want to grab hold of Patrick Ness and shake him and ask ‘Why?’ over and over again. But it’s a book that cannot be explained without ruining it - I cannot précis the plot any further, or give you a run-down of the settings or the characters because in order to appreciate its sheer wonder and brilliance you have to experience the unfolding story for yourself. The most important thing that I can tell you about More Than This is that you simply have to read it.