Many of them have come here because otherwise they’d be dead. Or worse.

Hidden  by Miriam Halahmy

Alix is 14, living on quiet Hayling Island, south England. She’s just getting on with her ordinary life – school and friends, training for a marathon, coping with her demanding mum and the absence of her dad. But everything changes when Alix and her new friend, Samir, rescue a drowning man only to discover he is a badly-injured illegal immigrant who has fled from Iraq. Samir, also a refugee from Iraq, is desperate to hide the man, and together he and Alix face some difficult decisions. They must also deal with the racist attitudes of others in their town.  A novel “dealing with courage, prejudice, judgement, and the difficulty of sorting right from wrong in our complex world”.

This is a quick and easy read, and the subject matter is really relevant.  I enjoyed finding out more about the realities of the lives of refugees who have often left behind family, friends and terrible horrors.  This book would be suitable for intermediate and older readers.

Eleanor … making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough.

Eleanor and Park  by Rainbow Rowell

“Eleanor is a new girl in town, and she feels very alone. Wearing mis-matched clothes, having red hair and a mad home life, she certainly stands out in a crowd. Then she takes a seat on the bus next to Park. Park is a quiet, cautious and, in Eleanor’s eyes, fantastically cool. Park has figured out that flying under the radar is the best way to get by. Gradually with late-night conversations and songs, Eleanor and Park fall in love…”

My second Rainbow Rowell book – loved it!  Achingly real characters in painfully awkward situations.  In my mind I could picture Eleanor with her wild red hair and quirky clothes, and Park with his fine sculptured features and eye-linered eyes, what a wonderfully unlikely couple!

This book would make a great movie if they could just get the right actors to play the crucial lead roles.  And even the secondary characters are so vital: Eleanor’s mean stepdad would have to be played in as menacingly understated way as he is portrayed in the book, and Park’s beautiful Korean mum, with her seemingly ditzy exterior yet quiet intelligence that allows her to comprehend the complexity of E & P’s relationship.

ATM our only copy of this book is in Adult Fiction, but I’ve just ordered a copy for the teen collection.

She thought all you needed to do was to get out. But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.

Panic by Lauren Oliver

Set in small-town America, this is the story of a bunch of teens who take risk-taking behavior to the extreme. The students at the local high school all contribute to a pot of money during the year, at the end of the year all the graduating students can chose to participate in the game – Panic – the winner takes the money.  During the summer various high-risk challenges are set for the participants and slowly the contestants are weeded down to a final two.  Heather and Dodge are the contestants we follow most closely. Dodge is participating purely on a motive of revenge whilst Heather is desperate for the money so she can escape the small town where she grew up.

This is a fast-paced, exciting read with flawed but likeable characters.  I thought this was an interesting and plausible plot-line and particularly liked the character Heather who despite a dreadful upbringing discovers that “there was always a way up, and out, and no need to be afraid.”

Reviewed by Jenny.

 

 

“Carey Breen is MIA”. His tonge weighs each word to cause the most pain.

If I lie  by Corrine Jackson

This is Corrine’s debut novel – and what an amazing read!!  It will be on my “Best Reads” of 2014, for sure.  It has all those appeal factors that I love:  gritty realism, complex characters that have flaws as well as redeeming traits, a central character that I believed in and shared her pain and triumphs.  And, of course, it made me cry lots and had a satisfying ending to boot!

Quinn lives in a small US town, where most of the families have members who are in the military. When her forever boyfriend, Carey, goes off to fight in Afghanistan Quinn is caught making out with another guy. When a compromising photo goes public, her whole town shuns her as a cheater, traitor and slut (just like her mum, who left her Marine Dad and took off with his brother when Quinn was 11).  Even her Dad treats her with a cold anger, and makes sure her after-school hours are filled up by sending her to a war veterans hospital to help out, and keep Quinn out of further trouble.

The trouble is, Quinn did not cheat on Carey, but she can’t reveal the truth about their relationship.  Nor identify the mystery guy she was caught on camera with.  Because to do so will harm Carey, and hurt so many others. When Carey goes MIA, the town’s persecution of Quinn intensifies. Only her warm relationship with George, a war veteran who is teaching her photography and seems to be the only person who believes in Quinn, saves Quinn from tipping over the edge.

This story is about relationships and all the characters are so full and real.  Even Quinn’s dispassionate father has some redeeming features.  At first I thought this was going to be just an average, predictable read, but as the complex relationships develop so much more is revealed that I simply had to keep reading all night to make sure Quinn was going to be OK.  You’ll have to read this book to find out if she was!