Dime quién soy by Julia Navarro

It took me six weeks to read this book. I read for at least 45 minutes a day, more at the weekends and holidays. I am a fast reader. An average-length Dickens’ novel will take me two weeks at this rate. So full marks for this one for keeping me engaged all of the time. But gosh, it must be a hefty volume in hard copy. The sort that makes your wrist ache, particularly near the beginning and the end. Unfortunately I can’t find a translation of this though several of Julia Navarro’s works have been translated into English.

It is the story of Amelia Garoya, reconstructed by her great-grandson who is a journalist. So, we have the story of her life and the story of how he pieces together that life. It is exciting form beginning to end as she takes part in almost every drama of the 20th century: Spanish Civil War, the early days of Communist Russia, World War II, the Cold War and the falling of the Berlin wall. Alongside that she has her own personal journey: she loses her husband and child though her own actions but creates a compensation for this.

I never wanted to put this down but of course I had to: my own writing, my day job and the need to sleep and eat intervened. I was disappointed when I had finished. It’s often hard leaving characters that you have come to know. It was particularly difficult in this case.

This was yet another of those extraordinary books that took me out of my editing head. There are very few of these, even though I do enjoy others where that nagging voice remains. I’ll always give an author five stars if they manage this.             

Slated by Teri Terry

I so thoroughly enjoyed this book that it is going on to my reading list at the University of Salford, on my module Writing Novels for Young People. One of the hardest things to get right, I tell my students often, is maintaining both pace and emotional closeness. Teri Terry does this superbly in Slated.

In this dystopian near-future young adult novel Terry presents us with a world that is believable and disturbing. Kyla is one of the “slated”. Because of her less than satisfactory past – according to someone’s terms if not her own - she has had her memory wiped in this world where young people are no longer allowed mobile phones. Slating is used on youngsters who have rebelled or look as if they might. All is controlled by the sinister Lorders – dressed in grey and sometimes black.

I so thoroughly enjoyed this book that it is going on to my reading list at the University of Salford, on my module Writing Novels for Young People. One of the hardest things to get right, I tell my students often, is maintaining both pace and emotional closeness. Teri Terry does this superbly in Slated.

The characters in this novel are richly drawn and we feel empathy for Amy, Jazz and Ben as well as Kyla.

We are left with a little of a cliff-hanger. One story is complete but another is wide open and about to begin. I was disappointed when I finished the book, in a good way, because the sequel, Fractured is not out until April. Can’t wait.

Finally my confession. Teri is another SCBWI friend, though I don’t know her as well as Sara Grant I mention below. I heard of the book because of SCBWI but bought it because I was below my quota of YA books at the time and it sounded like my kind of book. So this review is without prejudice. 

But it does say something about SCBWI.   

       
  

Dark Parties by Sarah Grant

I have a confession to make. Sara and I used to belong to the same critique group. We used to meet once a month in the wonderful back room of the Sherlock Homes Hotel on Baker Street. I am quite familiar with her work and I saw some parts of this novel in very early drafts. I found them interesting then. As I read them now I am captivated.

Dark Parties is a dystopian near-or-distant future young adult novel. It introduces us to a world that is believable but terrifying. We are close to the protagonist, Neva. The characters are richly drawn. The mystery and suspense are held throughout.  

Grant does something here that I am not sure any other writer has yet done as successfully: she maintains a fast pace and yet allows us to be emotionally close to the protagonist. These are both qualities required in the young adult novel, but it is extremely difficult to get both of those characteristics in at the same time.

She includes a third young adult novel trait: she leaves enough questions unanswered at the end to satisfy the young person’s need to control the story. The reader can decide on the answers. It also leaves the way open for another book. I can’t give any details; that would mean creating some spoilers. A total no-no in reviews. I can tell you, however, that she keeps the mystery and intrigue going in every single sentence.       

Something Invisible by Siobhán Parkinson

At 182 pages this is a respectable length for a teen / late middle grade book. Yet I read it extremely quickly. I started yesterday morning and I it finished this morning. It just carried me along.

Jake is a pleasant enough young man but falters a little when his baby sister arrives. She is the daughter of his biological mother and the man he calls dad. Sally from round the corner and her elderly next-door neighbour befriend him and give him food for thought. Then some other things happen but I won’t tell you what because I don’t want to spoil it for you.  

Why did it hold me so much?

The chapters are just the right length. Some of them are very short. Some of them are longer but none are too long. All, actually, are just exactly as long as they need to be. Jake’s voice is just right. He’s a great character, anyway, as is Sally, and Mrs Kennedy – the old lady-with-arthritis from next-door. Other adults and children hover in the background but they are no less real or rounded. The adults are clumsy, as is often the case in books written for this age group, yet we can’t help but forgive them. Siobhán Parkinson treats them kindly.

A lovely read indeed.       

             

Voices of Angels

I’m doing something a little strange this evening. I’m recommending a book my own publishing company has been involved with. Voices of Angels is edited by Debz Hobbs-Wyatt. I actually had very little to do with this book.  I gave one story a light edit. When I read it again I’d forgotten most of it so it was like reading it for the first time. I wasn’t even involved with the proof read this time. The most I did was give it a quick look through to see that the formatting was right.

And it’s sat on my shelf since it came out at the end of last year.

Last week I got round to reading it.

I was entranced. The stories were engaging, gripping and entertaining. All about angels of one sort or another. I wanted to make some extra comments about some of them but another look through the book has convinced me that I couldn’t choose between them; they are all so good.

I’m also convinced that Bridge House produces good books. Phew! What a relief. I’d just read a book published by one of the Big Six and written by a writer I respect. But I enjoyed Voices more. What a revelation!      

£1 from every paperback and a percentage form every Kindle edition sold goes to the Caron Keating Foundation, the charity Gloira Hunniford set up in her daughter’s memory. Gloria Hunniford has written the foreword.     

That Summer by Sarah Dessen

This isn’t quite what I call “Chicklet-lit”. I define Chicklet-lit as being Chick-lit for the next generation down – the generation that the book-publishing and book-selling industries might define as young adult. Chicklet-lit novels are always a fun, easy read yet are just one stroke more serious than what is written for the more mature Chick-lit reader. Personally, I’m not the greatest fan of them. I usually see them as competently written, following a formula that satisfies and just a little unadventurous. But I’ve read Sarah Dessen before and enjoyed her work. I was already familiar with her This Lullaby – which is in fact on my “further reading” list on one of the modules I teach at the University of Salford, UK. So, although the cover suggests Chicklet-lit That Summer is really something a little different.  

The novel totally absorbed me all the way through. Dessen certainly maintains the setting that so frequently houses Chickletlit – comfortable middle American life, girls interested in boys and young women who laugh and cry a lot and suffer all the normal adolescent anxieties. Yet she uses a more lyrical prose than one would normally find in a Chicklet-lit book. Just into the opening paragraph we read “It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it.”  And we can totally identify with main character Haven whom Dessen draws so well. She is rounded, complex and unusual.

My daughter remarked as we looked at the teen section in Waterstone’s “I wish they’d had books like this when I was a teenager.” She is now 30. And had there been books like That Summer available when she was a teenager, I would have gladly bought it for her.