reviews 14+Secondary/Adult continued


Cillian discovers, to his increasing horror, that he is himself part human, part genetically engineered machine, and that everything he thought he knew about himself is a lie. Richard Kurti’s screenwriting credentials are evident in the short, tense chapters in which violent action sequences alternate with shock discoveries and revelations, leaving both readers and protagonists breathless. The ideological clash         fanaticism is powerfully portrayed       the characters of Cillian and Tess; other characters appear more as     and are less believable.


Cillian, the non-human, seems the most human character of all as he struggles to work out his own identity, showing compassion throughout.     consequences are presented throughout the book and should encourage readers to think, discuss and work out their own viewpoints on the ethical dilemmas raised. As readers follow Cillian and Tess’s desperate struggle for survival, identity and truth they will also be confronting philosophical questions about science, religion, technology, surveillance, privacy, responsibility and what it means to be human. This disturbing, thought-provoking, modern thriller  SR


Not If I See You First 


Eric Lindstrom, HarperCollins Children’s Books, 400pp, 978-0-0081-4630-6, £12.99 pbk


Aged seven, Parker Grant was involved in a car crash. Her mother died. Parker lost her sight. Nine years         few months earlier her father has died, possibly from a cardiac event or possibly (as Parker suspects) by his own hand. Her aunt, her uncle and her two cousins have moved in with her. Of the cousins Petey is a boy aged eight and Sheila about Parker’s age. Scott Francis Kilpatrick is a friend of Parker’s at school. He was her boyfriend but he violated her trust in a way not initially divulged to the reader, but serious enough to split them. Emotional waves are buffeting Parker from different directions. How will she cope, at the same time negotiating her sightless life? The novel hinges on Parker’s


Ironically,


between Parker and Scott looms too large, obscuring other equally  their uncertainty. She should forgive him and start again or dump him for good. Lindstrom also strikes a false note describing how Parker is taught. In a trigonometry lesson Parker       to her by a fellow-pupil who is not even her regular classroom partner. Surely Parker would have a Learning Support Assistant who would have prepared a Braille version of the diagram in readiness for the lesson? The plot development here rests on an improbable weakness in the pedagogical method. Lindstrom is attempting a task beyond the ambition of many writers. He achieves an almost total success. RB


How Hard Can Love Be? 


Holly Bourne, Usborne, 476pp, 978 1 4095 9122 1, £7.99 pbk


Check out the content and the voice: ‘[Melody was] all tumbling blonde hair, and glowy skin, and teeth like cosmetic dentistry adverts, and legs so far up she’d have to apply deodorant to her knee pits.’ Then, by contrast: ‘Well actually, the three of us have formed this club. It’s like a feminism club where we meet and talk about women’s rights. We’ve campaigned for stuff too. Like, we got that horrible pop song about rape banned from being played on       Am I Normal Yet? will know about the club, founded by Evie, Lottie        Spinster Club trilogy, nominated for the 2016 Carnegie, focussed on  as Usborne’s publicity puts it, ‘facing down tough issues with the combined powers of friendship, feminism and cheesy snacks’. We meet 17 year-old Amber heading


personality. She is determined and courageous but sometimes obstinate and aggressive. She has the kind of determination and single mindedness that a disabled person needs if she is to survive. For any disabled readers,      many familiar notes. One day Parker decides to walk home from school, using her cane. She gets lost and in her frustration breaks the cane. Of course she has no spare. My misgivings about this novel are twofold. First, the relationship


through airport security on her way to California, with the ‘world’s worst hangover’ after a heavy farewell night on the sambuca with Evie and Lottie. She’s struggling not to vomit, and at the same time she’s embroiled in yet another venomous row with her Laura Ashley clad ‘cliched evil stepmother’ and her ‘standardised evil stepsibling,’ Craig. Ineffectual             betrayed not only by Dad, but also by her alcoholic Mum who left a couple of years ago to be with her therapist, Bumface Kevin. California is where Mum is now, running The Mountain Summer Camp with her new partner. Amber is to work there for bed and board, hoping desperately that she can somehow reclaim the mother she lost in the haze of booze and marital despair. So far,


Conventional. And much of life at the Camp – the kids, the counsellors, the programme, the partying - is what you       frizzy ginger hair, pale freckled skin and tall frame, her restless mind,


you might think, so YA


swift tongue and forthright views, is not your conventional YA narrator. Her English take on the American Way of Summer Camp Life makes the oddities of it all readily accessible – and funny - to British readers. But Holly Bourne’s distinctive achievement is that she        readers and yet also, as Amber begins to deal with her growing feelings for co-worker Kyle, Bourne interweaves      with its self-doubts, disconcerting passions and revelations. All that      mother/daughter relationship in which both are damaged. Amber is too honest, too self-aware, to settle for the stereotypes of some second- hand feminism – she’s constantly      perspective on things. Beneath his requisite tan and clean good looks,       sees as his conformist Prom-King, Ivy League Adonis personality as Amber        about everything else. As for Mum, Amber has to recognise that far from being the mother she lost, she is still absorbed by the self-centred needs and deceptions of recovery alcoholism.


from


Amber’s dialogues with her Spinster Clubmates back home, along with her searching conversations with Kyle don’t avoid those ‘tough issues’ the publishers claim for the book. But the       avoided: there are wide-eyed visits to  life at the Camp includes an episode in which Mum, to Amber’s horror, uses a Sorting Hat to allocate campers and counsellors to Hogwarts Houses (too        then there is that balancing, often  from Amber.


Online, Holly Bourne speaks of her concerns about mental health and inequality (on which she has written in The Guardian). She also notes: ‘I want to inspire readers to campaign for the changes they want to see in society... The Spinster Club trilogy is essentially my call to arms.’


GF Follow Me Back 


Nicci Cloke, Hot Key Books, 336pp,978-1-4714-0508-2 £7.99 pbk


Lizzie Summersall has gone missing and when the police visit her former boyfriend, Aiden Kendrick, he has no idea where she might be.     revealing information about the key characters and their situations piece by tantalising piece, tightening and      building in shocks and surprises along the way. The structure of the storyline will hold the attention of young adult readers but there are other hooks, too-the keen ear for dialogue, the      can typify teenage relationships and the thoroughly modern references to social media and its prominent and, at times, dangerous and destructive effect on young lives. As the story unfolds, allegiances and dislikes are made clear-and, in


Deacon Honeycutt, Cloke gives us the archetypal teenage bully: arrogant, brashly handsome and emotionally ruthless. Aiden’s best friend Scobie is the geek-technologically brilliant but preferring his own company, or that of a few close and trusted friends. Yet the reader never feels betrayed by  Aiden’s rich, talented and socially adept stepfather in whose state-of – the-art house he and his mother live. Scobie and Aiden begin to search for Lizzie through her newly-discovered online persona and, as the search gains momentum it twists and turns, cracking the surface veneer of      emotions and secrets beneath so that       what passes for reality. The shock of      and so keeps the reader thoroughly engaged until the end.


VR More Of Me 


Kathryn Evans, Usborne,336pp, 978-1-4749-0302-8, £6.99 pbk


This debut novel is both unusual and ambitious, tackling a number of     ways. Teva appears to be an ordinary 16 year old girl, with a great talent for Art, Ollie, an irresistible boyfriend and Maddy, a best friend on whom she can utterly rely. However, she also has an enormous and unpalatable secret-once a year she divides and the old Teva is, necessarily, cast aside to make way for the new and must watch the latest version take over her life, friends and ambitions while she remains a prisoner in her own home- unable to leave, unable to pursue an independence in any way. This has now happened eleven times and Teva is determined that she is not going to be the twelfth stay-at-home clone with  The futuristic overtones of this


story are the least believable part, as the reason for this deathly cycle is a long-absent father who manipulated  an aphid gene then incubating the child inside its mother’s womb. As the aphid element of the child’s DNA matures it bursts out of the host body,        the outside world, since the presence         relevance, however, and the ingenuity of the story lies in the way it uses such a strangely gripping structure      freedom; a fear of being viewed as  Teva’s intense internal dialogue is beautifully handled and vividly conveys to the reader the increasing sense of alienation, desperation and panic which she feels as the time for her destructive transformation draws closer. Evans neatly avoids the trap of the happy ending-although there are solutions and resolutions, there is no sense that these VR


Books for Keeps No.217 March 2016 31


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