reviews


and empathetic gay best friend, the alternating narrators. But beyond these features, they also explore an intimacy which lies outside the grasp of Sophia and Matt’s closest friends (complex characters in their own right with psychological disabilities you       beyond their parents who in different ways - in yet another YA stereotype – display a lack of understanding worthy of Lord and Lady Capulet.


14+Secondary/Adult continued Dawson deals very


deftly with


powerful issues of life, religion and death. The emotions felt by Sam and his circle are highly nuanced, despite the brevity of the book. Smith’s monochrome illustrations, particularly of snow, are highly evocative of Sam’s bleak mood. RB


Moonrise 


The abrasive energy of the words and actions around Sophia and Matt – and even those over-used YA features – stand in contrast to the sincerity and delicacy of the love between them, often expressed through tenderness, quick and responsive humour, and the gentle, searching language of both words and bodies. To communicate such a love is a challenge for authors who allow themselves a plot time-span of        Year Later’ chapter gives a glimpse of how things develop. It’s not giving too much away to disclose that the story of Sophia and Matt doesn’t conclude as terminally as R&J. GF


Grave Matters 


Juno Dawson, Alex T. Smith (illus.), Barrington Stoke, 144pp, 978-1-7811-2604-2, £7.99pbk


Sam Beauvoir is aged seventeen       Eliza, also seventeen, has died in a car crash. He was the driver, driving on a dangerously snowy road. Sam emerges physically unscathed from the crash. This books deals with how Sam copes or fails to cope with her death and his grief and guilt.


In his grief, Sam turns to necromancy. He becomes determined to bring Eliza back from the dead. The mysterious Milk Man will be his helper. Does he    heightened because Sam’s father is a vicar and Sam may now be tampering with the divine will.


       himself in an alternate world where he is badly injured but Eliza survives. In this alternate world Sam’s mother is also seriously ill. The idea of an alternate world between the living and the dead is a very ancient concept. It occurs in Greek mythology and tragedy. It is also used, in the form of an ethereal Kings Cross station, for the last meeting place between Harry Potter and deceased Albus Dumbledore. Sam must now decide which of these two worlds is the more tolerable to inhabit.


 reviewer. The Milk Man, a satanic                negatively on people with this kind of complexion, an example of unintentional disablism.


Sarah Crossan, Bloomsbury, 404pp, 978 1 4088 6780 8, £12.99, hbk


Sarah Crossan goes from one challenging subject to another. This time she uses the verse novel form to consider the human repercussions of the death penalty as it is carried out in many American states. Joe’s brother Ed is on death row in Texas and Joe decides to leave home in New York and miss the summer holiday high school track               The great strength of the verse novel is its ability to draw the reader inside the mind and voice of its protagonist, to look from the inside out. And everything         the hand to mouth, and sometimes squalid, circumstances in which he   Ed and their relationship. Perhaps the close involvement of the prison governor, and certainly the surprise connection that emerges between him  it’s a penetrating and moving novel, skilfully moving between the past and the present, and between New York and Texas, and taking us into the heart of a family already battered by circumstance and now apparently helpless in the grip of a remorseless judicial process. Unsentimental, and driven by a controlled anger about the traps that society makes for the powerless, this is, like Crossan’s previous novels, both moving and thought-provoking. CB


No Shame 


Anne Cassidy, Hot Key Books, 215pp, 978 1 4714 0678 2 ,£7.99 pbk


This is the sequel to No Virgin, in which        who she likes and who she thinks likes her. However, he idolises his corrupt older brother Martin and lures Stacey                  to the police and No Shame tells the story of the court case which ensues.


This book-and the prequel-are very important publications since they offer a familiar scenario to far too many young women and girls and, in addition, they


clearly explain


procedures-both medical and legal- which victims will be subjected to as the process of accusation and trial move inexorably forwards. Cassidy


is also careful to detail the help which is available, in the shape of policewoman Annie Mulligan, a charismatic and understanding woman who seeks to explain and thus to reassure, giving young women the   blame for what happened to them.


Perhaps most tellingly, the judgement of the court goes against Stacey and newspaper headlines make immediate and clumsy moral judgements which dismay her even further, causing her to retreat into her bedroom, unwilling to face the world. However, her courage and the belief which her parents, Patrice and her teachers have in her give her the strength both to continue to apply to university and to cement a friendship with a young man who she met in her part-time job. Cassidy then demonstrates that the trial was not in vain as the publicity which Martin unwisely sought after the verdict rebounded on him when three women contacted the police to say that they, too, had been raped by him.


Cassidy’s thorough research, vivid characterisation and narrative honesty make this a book which should be in every school library, so that young women everywhere will be aware of both risks and rights. VR


It Only Happens in the Movies 


Holly Bourne, Usborne, 444pp, 978-1-4749-2132-9, £7.99 pbk


     Hepburn, is aged seventeen. She lives with her mother in a British suburb. Her brother is away at university. Audrey and her mother are struggling to come to terms with a deeply acrimonious divorce. Her father lives nearby with his new family. He has just insisted they sell the family home.


Audrey decides to apply for a job at the local artisan cinema, the Flicker, as a means of escaping from this distress. Audrey has been studying drama but has abandoned her plan. At the cinema she meets another employee named Harry. Harry is the charming bad boy. The book poses questions.               


Bourne has embarked on a challenging task, combining a conventional teen romance with a more fundamental  her characters to examine their motives more critically and more searchingly than usual, and at the same time encourages her readers to do the same. Bourne gives us a decent picture of the charming and beguiling aspects of love. But she also gives the reader a clear perception of the anguish and disappointment love may involve. The only failing of the book is that from time to time the pace of the narrative        impression of a work less original and perceptive than the book is.


The denouement of the book is stunning at diverse levels. RB JC


A shiver of Snow and Sky 


Lisa Lueddecke, Scholastic, 341pp, 9781407174037, £7.99


        dreading the return of red lights to the sky above her home on the bleak island of Skane. The lights had appeared as she was born and they brought a plague that decimated the population, including her mother. Her father and older sister have always blamed her for the death and this time  further deaths. However the lights are not the only thing that the islanders         looks as if their island has been found and they are going to face two dangers       reach the mountains and ask the Goddess to help her people, whilst her friend Ivar stays behind to help        any upcoming attack. The question is whether time will run out before they 


This is a gripping story that really gets the reader involved, if they give it some time. The story is told from       Ivar, so that occasionally you wonder who is narrating at that moment. However you soon settle to the pace    ancient Scandinavia, possibly due to   very cold and dark winter at the time of the events. It is a story about love and friendship and also about family and how important that can be. At the        allow their hurt to put the blame on        control over. The heroine is a truly strong person and makes a brilliant role model for young people today. She has a deep faith in the presence of the Goddess and will not give in to the evil that is threatening her people. This is a book that really repays the effort of reading and seeps into the reader’s mind. I thoroughly recommend it. MP


Books for Keeps No.227 November 2017 31


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