When a publisher chooses to distinguish a book from others by bragging on the front cover about how many awards it has (nearly) won I am always a tad sceptical. I can’t help but feel that a good book should sell itself, although I acknowledge the commercial realities publishers face. Longlisted for this award and […]
Running a book group for teens means that I read a fair amount of teen fiction: some good, some bad, some indifferent. While I probably wouldn’t have selected ‘The Death Defying Pepper Roux’ to read without this prompt, I was anticipating an entertaining read since the cover design made the tale appear to be a […]
What would you do to protect your child? An overly dramatic title, a grim cover picture and the fact that this was a seriously hefty hardback (536 pages) were overlooked as I read the intriguing blurb for my crime reading group’s latest pick. What’s it about? As a shocking story grips the newspapers in Brighton, […]
Dowd’s first novel, ‘A Swift Pure Cry’, was published in 2006 and received an extremely positive reception. It won the 2007 Branford Boase Award and the Eilis Dillon Award, and it was short listed for the Carnegie Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Prize. Her second novel was also very well received, so when I tentatively […]
Nominated for a Carnegie Medal, shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize and marketed as a novel ‘written by the winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize’, I was in danger of writing this off as a very ‘worthy’ book. However, as soon as I began reading I was drawn […]
I have been waiting to read this for almost a year since I first read the blurb, and I was certainly vindicated: it is superb. What’s it about? The story unfolds via two narratives set a week apart in which a race against time develops. In the first chapter, new mum Alice Fancourt describes the […]
Billed as a crime thriller, the emphasis needs to be on the ‘thriller’ aspect. Although this is definitely a novel about terrible crimes, the action is more suited to an espionage story and could easily be made into an action movie. In fact, much of the time that’s what I felt like I was reading, […]
From the opening sentences this is a very dramatic novel. ‘I could see him waiting for me outside the steel school gates. ‘Roy.’ What’s it about? Theo Glassman has a bodyguard – though he has no idea why – who he constantly tries to outwit in order to live a ‘normal’ life. Operation “Liberate Theo” […]