Lily was dead. To begin with. Of course, Lily doesn’t realise she’s dead until the police arrive and completely ignore her, focusing instead on something behind her, which turns out to be her dead body. And it’s definitely dead: ‘I said, I’m not sure you’re going to need the defibrillator, Gary…Because her f***ing head is […]
I LOVED this book. ‘The One Memory of Flora Banks’ features an unreliable narrator, a touching coming of age tale and a bit of a mystery. What’s it about? Flora is 17 and has retrograde amnesia as a result of a brain tumour she had removed when she was ten. This means she is unable […]
I’m aware that much of what I read is, let’s say, comfortable. In particular, I read a lot of crime fiction, especially psychological crime, frequently featuring middle class women doing rather middle class things. (I’m even sure ‘rather’ is quite a middle class word, now I come to think about it.) Even when they’re transplanted […]
When your job involves recommending books to young people, it’s a good idea to read at least a few of the more popular YA books, which is why I read Suzanne Collins’ ‘The Hunger Games’. What’s it about? Sometime in a dystopian future, North America has been divided into twelve districts and the Capitol. As […]
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 […]
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 […]
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” […]