Free Book!

It’s a year since we published Fighting Back, Book Four in the Battle Ground Series, and we’re celebrating with a giveaway! The award-winning Battle Ground, Book One of the Battle Ground Series, is completely FREE to download this weekend!

Find your free download on your local Amazon store, and discover the series that’s ‘raising the standard for YA dystopian fiction’.

Happy birthday, Fighting Back!

Mid-grade book review: Holes

Title: Holes
Author: Louis Sachar
Edition: Paperback
Rating: 4/5

This is one of those books I’ve been meaning to read forever, and I’m glad I did. It’s a fun book, cleverly written, with an offbeat and playful feel. The story begins with Stanley Yelnats’ arrival at Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention centre in the middle of the Texas wilderness. He’s innocent, but the absurd events that led to his arrest ensure that no one believes him.

Camp Green Lake is supposed to build character by requiring the boys to dig holes in the dry lake bed – one large hole every day – and to report anything interesting they find. But the Warden seems very interested in everything they dig up, and Stanley begins to suspect that his hard labour has less to do with reforming his character, and more to do with finding something the Warden is searching for.

Stanley’s story is told alongside the story of his great-great-grandfather, and the stories of the people who used to live in the vanished town of Green Lake. It’s the details that make the book so much fun to read, and so clever. Some of the historical stories feel like unnecessary, whimsical asides at the start of the book, but as Stanley’s adventure develops, everything starts to drop into place. By the final pages, the reader is left with the wonderful feeling of fitting the last pieces into a jigsaw puzzle, and suddenly seeing the full picture.

It’s a beautiful puzzle of a book, with plenty of tiny moving parts that come together beautifully at the end. It mixes absurdity with engaging, well-drawn characters, a playful style, and a gorgeously detailed plot to create a wonderful reading experience. Very, very well done.

Have you read Holes? What did you think of the story? Did you spot all the connections between the characters? Click through to the full blog to access the comments section, and share your thoughts! No spoilers, though – you can post those on GoodReads!

Review cross-posted to GoodReads.


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YA Review: The Night Country

Title: The Night Country
Author: Melissa Albert
Edition: Paperback
Rating: 4/5

I read The Hazel Wood in 2018, so I’ve been waiting a while to read the sequel. The Hazel Wood is a fascinating urban fantasy, where several of the characters are stories in the fairytale world of the Hinterland, created by the controller of the world, and living out their tales over and over. Alice and Ellery cross into the Hinterland, with the help of a book of fairytales collected by Alice’s grandmother, and their presence disrupts the world, and the stories living there.

The Night Country drops the stories from the Hinterland, with their magical powers and repeated trauma, into present-day New York. Alice finds herself drawn to the other stories as they try to survive in a place without the narrative structure they were created to serve. They find ways to stay hidden, and protect each other – until someone starts murdering stories, and Alice is the most likely suspect. There’s a pattern to the murders, and if Alice can piece together the evidence she might be able to save herself – and everyone else.

I enjoyed The Hazel Wood, but I found it hard to connect with Alice as a character. I found The Night Country much more engaging. The story is much darker, the stakes are higher, and as the plot develops there is real peril and edge-of-the-seat action. In contrast with her dream-like path through The Hazel Wood, Alice has a clear plot to follow in this book, and plenty of opportunities to make the wrong decisions – with disastrous consequences.

This is a very effective sequel to a highly unusual book, and I’m very glad I picked it up.

Have you read The Night Country? What did you think of the story? Click through to the full blog to access the comments section, and share your thoughts! No spoilers, though – you can post those on GoodReads!

Review cross-posted to GoodReads.


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YA Review: Harrow Lake

Title: Harrow Lake
Author: Kat Ellis
Edition: Paperback
Rating: 3/5

I don’t normally read horror, by when I read the first couple of chapters of ‘Harrow Lake’ in the 2019 Penguin Box Set YA sampler, I was hooked. After a brief scene-setting chapter, the story begins with a shocking discovery – the narrator discovers her film-director father stabbed and bleeding in his New York office, hours before they are supposed to be moving to France. Lola is sent to stay with her grandmother in the town of Harrow Lake while her father is in hospital, and finds herself trying to make sense of the setting for his most famous film.

‘Nightjar’ is a film with a cult following. Filmed in Harrow Lake, the production was famous for the mysterious disappearance of a cameraman, and for the local actress – Lola’s mother – who went on to marry the director. Lola’s mother played the lead role in the film, but she’s been missing for years. Lola looks just like her mother, especially when she tries on the costumes from the film that she finds in her grandmother’s house. Soon after her arrival, Lola discovers that the annual ‘Nightjar’ festival is about to begin, and fans of the film will be heading to Harrow Lake for parades and events based on their favourite horror movie.

The narrator’s experiences in Harrow Lake become more creepy and unsettling, the longer she stays in town. The residents introduce her to their superstitions about the town, the woods, the caves, and her father’s film. A series of unnerving events forces Lola to question her own memory, and the sanity of the people around her.

Lola is an interesting narrator. She’s not particularly likeable – she’s the spoiled teenage daughter of a rich and famous film director. Her father keeps her out of the spotlight and expects her to follow him around the world as he makes his movies. She’s understandably curious about Harrow Lake, and about anything she can find out about her mother, but she doesn’t listen to the warnings from the residents about going into the woods, or into the caves.

There are plenty of horror elements in the story – spooky puppets and dolls, toys that belonged to Lola’s missing mother, unexplained events, and the chills that go along with exploring the setting of a horror film in the dark. It’s YA appropriate, but if you’ve watched any horror films you’ll be familiar with the ideas in the book. The creepy atmosphere is very well crafted, and there’s a constant sense of something being not quite right with the town and the people Lola meets.

There’s a great twist at the end of the book, and a punch-the-air moment as the story comes together – but it’s not quite enough to give a satisfying conclusion to Lola’s experiences. I’m giving the book three stars, because there are plenty of events that remain unexplained, and I would have liked to learn more about the strange events in Harrow Lake. I can’t help thinking that everything that happens to Lola is connected, and it was frustrating to find that these connections are not entirely explained. Horror fans will probably disagree!

Have you read Harrow Lake? Did you find it scary? What did you think of the story? Click through to the full blog to access the comments section, and share your thoughts! No spoilers, though – you can post those on GoodReads!

Review cross-posted to GoodReads.


Please keep your comments YA appropriate. Be patient! We want to hear from you, but comments are moderated, and may take some time to appear.