Tag: Danger

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YA Review: The Exiled

Title: The Exiled
Author: Sarah Daniels
Edition: Paperback
Rating: 5/5

YA Review: The Exiled

I absolutely loved The Stranded when I read an ARC last year, and waiting a whole year to read the sequel was tough! I rushed out and bought The Exiled on launch day, and jumped straight back in to the dystopian plot.

To recap: refugees from a war-ravaged Europe have been stuck at sea for more than forty years, confined to the cruise ships that were supposed to bring them to safety. A fractured US refuses permission for them to come ashore, fearful of the weaponised virus that might lie dormant in the bloodstream of everyone on board.

I don’t want to give too much away, but after the events of The Stranded, protagonist Esther’s hopes for a better life are fading. Leaving her cruise ship – the Arcadia – and making it to the Federated States was supposed to be her ticket to freedom, but the refugee camp isn’t where she hoped to end up. She’s exchanged shipboard anarchy for land-based oppression and gang rivalry, her parents and friends are missing, and she’s wanted by the Federated States.

Narration is shared between Esther, Nik (her sister’s former boyfriend), Meg (a girl from the Arcadia), and Janek, this book’s utterly delicious baddie. I thought Hadley, the sadistic administrator of the Arcadia in The Stranded was a fantastically nasty antagonist, but Janek is even better. Unlike Hadley, she’s in a position of power in the Federated States, with the means and motive to punish the refugees and prove her loyalty to the president. As Janek’s efforts provoke support for rebellion in the camp, Esther finds herself in even greater danger. Unsure of who she can trust, she is pushed into taking risks she has been desperately trying to avoid.

It’s another twisty plot, with heartbreak and bravery, adventure and betrayal, and a constant feeling of being on the edge of disaster. I absolutely loved it.

Have you read The Stranded and The Exiled? What did you think of the story? Did you enjoy reading the baddies’ chapters as much as the good guys? Click through to the full blog to access the comments section, and share your thoughts! No spoilers, though – you can post those on GoodReads!

YA review: The Exiled cross-posted to GoodReads.

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YA Review: Gwen and Art Are Not In Love

Title: Gwen and Art Are Not In Love
Author: Lex Croucher
Edition: Paperback
Rating: 5/5

YA Review: Gwen and Art Are Not In Love

Arthur and Princess Gwendoline have known each other all their lives. They were betrothed at birth in a bid to unite Gwen’s family (her father is the King of England) and Art’s, and while they have only seen each other during Art’s short visits to Camelot, the only thing they can safely say is that they truly hate each other.

Gwen feels the pressure from her family to be the perfect princess – to turn up to events, to dress and behave appropriately, and never to risk her reputation, or that of her father. Art is everything she detests – a habitually drunk young man who delights in provoking her, staying out all night, and spending his days lounging about and nursing his inevitable hangover. To Art, Gwen is uptight and judgemental, and he has no idea of the expectations she struggles with every day.

To prepare for their wedding, Art arrives at Camelot with his friend and manservant Sidney, who promptly falls for Gwen’s Lady in Waiting. Before long, Gwen discovers Art kissing a stable boy, and Art uncovers Gwen’s diary, complete with wistful passages about Lady Bridget Leclair, England’s only female knight. As much as they hate each other, Gwen and Art agree to keep each other’s secrets, and grow into allies as the book progresses. But Art and Gwen are not the only people affected by their forbidden feelings. As Art finds himself falling for Gabriel, Gwen’s older brother and heir to the throne, and Gwen’s relationship with Bridget develops, they need to decide what to do about their wedding – and the rest of their lives.

What can I say about this book? I loved every moment! Gwen, Art, and Sidney are beautifully written, strong-willed and witty, and their constant banter and snark sparkles on the page. Lady Bridget is a tough young woman, competing alone in the man’s world of tournaments and fighting, where she is not welcome. Her bravery, independence, determination and loyalty make her the perfect fit for Gwen, who finds her own life of formality and etiquette suffocating. Gabriel is the bookish older brother, fiercely intelligent and never happier than when he’s studying in Camelot’s library – and definitely not ready to be king.

While the early stages of the book are immensely enjoyable, with verbal sparks flying every time Gwen and Art are forced to spend time together, their relationship matures as the story progresses. Their banter becomes less about one-upping each other, and more about navigating the political expectations around their marriage. There’s a tense build-up as their secret relationships develop, and an exciting finale where I genuinely feared for everyone’s safety.

I loved the pseudo-Arthurian setting, in a country where King Arthur and his knights are revered historical figures, and Camelot is still the seat of power. The castle and the town are vividly imagined, and every step along the corridors and the streets feels completely real. Gwen’s restricted life contrasts beautifully with Bridget’s dare-devil adventures, and of course the book addresses homophobia and the process of finding out who you are – and what to do about it.

Come for the inconvenient arranged marriage trope, be drawn in by the constant smile-raising banter, and stay for the genuine against-the-odds love stories. An unequivocal five stars from me.

Have you read Gwen and Art Are Not In Love? What did you think of their story? Did the characters grab you as much as they grabbed me? Click through to the full blog to access the comments section, and share your thoughts! No spoilers, though – you can post those on GoodReads!

YA review: Gwen and Art Are Not In Love cross-posted to GoodReads.

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YA Review: Finale (Caraval #3)

Title: Finale (Caraval #3)
Author: Stephanie Garber
Edition: Kindle
Rating: 4/5

YA Review: Finale

The plot twists continue in the final book of the Caraval trilogy, and both Scarlett and Tella have narrating roles throughout the story. With a new Emperor about to be crowned, the city of Valenda is in a holiday mood, but revelations about their family and their love interests lead both sisters further into danger.

It’s hard to review Finale without dropping all sorts of spoilers. Scarlett and Tella find themselves deeply involved in the struggles of the immortal and dangerous Fates while navigating the complexities of relationships they can’t control and the safety of people they care about. The story is darker than the previous books, and the stakes are higher. There is no Caraval to bring a sense of order and reward to their actions, and failure would mean consequences for the entire Empire.

It’s a complex plot, and I confess to losing track of some of the threads at times, but Scarlett and Tella’s relationships keep the pages turning. While their strong personalities drive the story, each sister learns to adapt to a rapidly changing environment – Scarlett becoming more daring and brave, and Tella drawing closer to the people around her. There’s an exciting climax and a satisfying ending, and an Encore chapter that had me grinning as I turned the final page.

The Caraval series is an exciting – and exhausting – journey through magic, danger, deception and love. I cared deeply about Scarlett and Tella, and about where they might end up, and I’m pleased I finally picked up their story. The series would be a excellent beach or holiday read, and a perfect place to escape to when you have plenty of time to relax with a book. Definitely worth stepping into Caraval and allowing yourself to be swept away.

Have you read Finale? What did you think of the final book in the series? Click through to the full blog to access the comments section, and share your thoughts! No spoilers, though – you can post those on GoodReads!

YA review: Legendary cross-posted to GoodReads.

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YA Review: Legendary (Caraval #2)

Title: Legendary (Caraval #2)
Author: Stephanie Garber
Edition: Kindle
Rating: 4/5

YA Review: Legendary

Scarlett and Tella Dragna are back, and this time Tella has the chance to narrate. With the more daring sister steering the story, this book ramps up the danger and brings complications and plot twists for both sisters, their family, and their love interests.

The Empress has commanded Legend to run another Caraval in honour of her seventy-fifth birthday, so the company travels to the capital, Valenda, to prepare for the game. Scarlett and Tella, having escaped from their father, travel with them. Neither intends to participate in another Caraval, but Tella owes a debt to a stranger and Scarlett is revelling in her new freedom.

This Caraval promises to be more than a game. The Fates, powerful beings imprisoned for centuries, are fighting to return – a disaster that would threaten the Empire, and turn everyone into their playthings. The players are charged with finding the magical object that will destroy the fates and safeguard the future of the Empire. Tella and Scarlett are drawn into the game, only to discover that the solution is more personal than they imagined.

Legendary is a maze of a book, with truth and deception twisting around Scarlett and Tella as they follow their paths through their second Caraval. It’s a story of fear, pain, and surprises, and the lengths Tella, as the younger, bolder sister, will go to to protect her family. The relationship between the sisters remains key to the plot, but both sisters find themselves entangled in love triangles with potentially deadly consequences.

Once again, the final chapter opens up an entirely new facet of the story, and I had no choice but to keep reading …

Have you read Legendary? What did you think of Tella’s 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!

YA review: Legendary cross-posted to GoodReads.

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YA Review: Caraval (Caraval #1)

Title: Caraval (Caraval #1)
Author: Stephanie Garber
Edition: Kindle
Rating: 4/5

YA Review: Caraval

The Caraval trilogy has been sitting on my Kindle for ages, and finally made it to the top of my eBook TBR. Why did I wait so long? The story is captivating, the characters interesting, and the setting is literally magical.

The first book of the series follows seventeen-year-old Scarlett Dragna, the older of two sisters, as she prepares for her wedding to a mystery suiter selected by her cruel father. Scarlett is the sensible sister, constantly trying to protect her younger sibling and making sacrifices to keep them both safe from their father’s obsessive controlling behaviour.

But Scarlett has a secret. Since she was eleven, she has been writing to the mysterious Legend, the magical master of Caraval – an annual immersive game where participants experience illusions and puzzles at the hands of Legend’s group of actors, and compete for valuable prizes. She knows that Donatella, her impulsive younger sister, has always wanted to experience Caraval, but Legend never responds to her letters.

Ten days before her wedding, everything changes. Legend writes back, inviting Scarlett, Tella, and Scarlett’s fiance to participate in an invitation-only Caraval on his private island. Tella is desperate to go and never come home, but Scarlett is determined to take her sister with her she gets married, and keep them both safe from their father. Her plan fails, and Scarlett finds herself heading for Caraval with Tella.

Separated from her sister, and accompanied by the sailor who brought them to the island, Scarlett must negotiate the games and illusions of Caraval. Desperate to find Tella, Scarlett has no choice but to engage with the game, and attempt to see past the magic to discover who she can trust, and who might be working for Legend. Along the way she finds love, loss and impossible choices, and experiences everything Caraval has to offer – wonderful, mysterious, and terrifying.

While the magic and mystery of Caraval is gorgeously described and entirely captivating, the heart of this book is its characters. Even with their contrasting personalities, Scarlett and Tella are entirely believable as sisters, used to protecting each other from an abusive father. Scarlett is sensible, careful, and afraid of letting Tella down. Tella is impulsive, confident, and always on the look-out for thrills and danger. Much of this story centres around Tella, but telling it from Scarlett’s point of view invites the reader to care about the younger sister, and fear for her safety as Scarlett does. It’s a clever twist, and it kept the pages turning as I needed to find out what would happen to both sisters at the end of the book.

The short epilogue kick-starts another stage of the story, and I couldn’t help reading on into Legendary, book two of the series.

Have you read Caraval? What did you think of Scarlett’s 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!

YA review: Caraval cross-posted to GoodReads.

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YA Review: Wonderland

Title: Wonderland
Author: Juno Dawson
Edition: Paperback
Rating: 4/5

A retelling of Alice in Wonderland with a transgender narrator and a cast of rich kids enjoying sex, drugs, and murder at London’s most exclusive party.

Alice is trying to fit in at her very expensive girls’ school. She’s the first transgender girl at St Agnes, and outside the staff room no one is supposed to know. She’s also the daughter of a successful novelist, so her New Money background sets her apart from the Old Money heiresses in her classes. When her friend Bunny goes missing, Alice discovers an invitation to Wonderland among her belongings. With no idea what she is heading into, and armed only with a credit card and a designer disguise, Alice uses the invitation. She throws herself down the rabbit hole and into an exclusive Old Money world where anything can happen, and the usual rules don’t apply.

Wonderland is an extravagant party. Alice feels like an outsider from the start, hiding behind her disguise and trying to look as if she was invited. People keep judging her on her outfit, trying to work out who she is and whether she is on the guest list, and she constantly invents lies to justify her presence. As she explores the party, always looking for Bunny, Alice meets some familiar characters – a top-hatted boy at a drug-laced tea party, twins who spike her drink and try to assault her in a hot tub, another gatecrasher dressed as a cat who keeps turning up when she needs help, and the Red Queen, who controls everything at her own private party.

Alice’s anxiety about being discovered as an imposter in Wonderland parallels her anxiety about being outed at school. The tricks she plays at the party – with clothes, her avoidance of questions, and avoiding detection – mirror the measures she takes in real life to keep anyone from questioning her gender. Alice is right to be concerned – Wonderland is a dangerous place, and her secrets are not as safe as she believes. But Wonderland is also a place of freedom from everyday rules, and Alice finds acceptance as well as threats at the party. The two consensual sexual encounters in the book affirm her gender, and demonstrate other people’s acceptance of the body she is trying to change. Her partners are kind, attractive, and attracted to her, even when she feels self conscious and out of step with her physical appearance.

This retelling of a familiar story as a fable about identity, navigating written and unwritten rules, and finding your value when other people want to exclude you. It is an effective use of the Alice in Wonderland concept, with the dream-logic of the original mirrored in the drug-fueled, alternative reality of the party. Alice is an engaging narrator – smart, funny, and determined to claim her place in the world without apologising for who she is. It’s a refreshing, affirming read, with a relatable transgender narrator and positive portrayals of characters of a range of genders, sexualities, races, and class backgrounds. Like Alice after the party, I’m still trying to process everything that happened, and how I feel about it. There’s a lot going on here, and the themes will resonate with anyone who’s ever felt as if they didn’t fit in. A feel-good book about assault, discrimination and murder? Anything’s possible when you fall down the rabbit hole …

Have you read Wonderland? What did you think of the story? Do you think it worked as a reimagining of Alice in Wonderland? 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: Bearmouth

Title: Bearmouth
Author: Liz Hyder
Edition: Paperback
Rating: 4/5

Newt is one of the Bearmouth boys, living and working deep underground to mine coal for the Master. It’s hard to make a living in the mine – Newt has to pay for boots and candles, and send money home to his mother. He can’t afford the cost of the trip to the surface, so he’s stuck underground with his work team. The boys and men who share his dorm are his Bearmouth family, looking out for each other in a dangerous environment, and keeping each other’s secrets. Thomas takes care of the younger boys, and teaches them to write – and this allows Newt to tell his story.

Bearmouth is a book about friendship, loyalty, identity and rebellion. So far, so YA – but it is Newt’s distinctive voice that sets this story apart. The book is written in first person present tense, and narrated using Newt’s attempts at phonetic spelling. As with any phonetically transcribed book, the first few pages are hard to engage with, as the reader attempts to find the voice behind the unfamiliar words. Thanks to the skill of the author, and a careful balance between misspelled words, expressive dialect, and the cadences of Newt’s storytelling, it doesn’t take long to tune in and hear the narrator’s voice as you read.

It’s a captivating voice. Newt is good at his job, and he tries hard to learn his letters with Thomas, but there is so much he doesn’t understand. There is pressure on the Master to open up more of the mine and produce more coal, which makes Bearmouth a dangerous place to live and work. As the realities of his world come into focus through the events of the story, the injustice that is obvious to the reader becomes clearer to Newt and his friends.

The book doesn’t pull its punches. There are scenes of violence, and scenes that hint at the constant threat of violence that surrounds Newt and his work team. There are deaths and disappearances, mining accidents, fights, and abuses of power. Newt’s dorm feels like the only place of safety in a mine full of violent men, and this danger draws the reader into the story.

This is a captivating story, engagingly told. The reader can’t help but sympathise with Newt, and the actions he takes in order to survive. Stick with the first few pages, and you are rewarded with Newt’s unique voice and growing understanding of the world around him. Follow Newt into the dark, and you’ll be cheering him on as the danger closes in.

Definitely worth a read.

Have you read Bearmouth? Did you enjoy the story? What did you think of the Newt’s narration? 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 Girls I’ve Been

Title: The Girls I’ve Been
Author: Tess Sharpe
Edition: Paperback ARC
Rating: 5/5

Probably my favourite read of the last twelve months, this book has everything. A fast-paced, thrilling plot; interesting, engaging characters; a clever and intriguing back story for the protagonist; and some genuine, how-are-they-going-to-get-out-of-this peril.

The setup is simple. Nora is seventeen. She’s spent most of her life helping her con-artist mother to target rich criminal men in a succession of scams, but now she’s trying to live a normal life with her sister. By page two of the book she finds herself held hostage in a bank heist, along with her best friend (and ex-boyfriend) Wes, and her new girlfriend Iris. She’s used to running cons with her mother in charge, and there’s always a plan and an escape route – but there’s no plan for escaping from the bank, and nothing in place to protect the people she cares about.

The bank heist turns into a battle of wits between the men with guns, and Nora and her friends. There’s a running tally at the start of each chapter of the plans that have worked or failed, and a list of the items they’ve collected that might help them, building the tension as the story progresses. Running alongside the chapters set in the bank are flashback chapters detailing the scams Nora has taken part in, and the girls she’s had to become to con the targets.

Nora’s experiences as the smiling Rebecca, demure Samantha, religious Hayley, smart Katie, and athletic Ashley have taught her how to read other people, how to understand what they want, and how to manipulate them. They have also taught her to be brave, daring, and protective of her friends. If she can figure out what the bank raiders are looking for, maybe she can save herself and the other hostages.

There isn’t a wrong step or a weak chapter in this book. The danger keeps coming – both in the bank chapters and the flashbacks – and Nora needs all her experiences and determination to stay calm, and look for a way out. Without the flashback chapters, the bank heist would be an exciting story. Without the bank heist, Nora’s backstory would be harrowing and traumatic. Bringing the two plotlines together is a genius move, keeping the reader’s attention on Nora while the hostage situation plays out around her. Both plots are utterly gripping, and together they build Nora’s complex character, explaining who she is and how she got there.

I loved every minute of this book, and I couldn’t put it down. I’m going to be recommending it everywhere!

The Girls I’ve Been will be published on January 26th. Thank you to Hachette for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Have you read The Girls I’ve Been? What did you think of the story? Did you find yourself sympathising with Nora? 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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