BfK 14+Secondary/Adult continued Ed’s Choice Bone Gap HHHHH


Laura Ruby, Faber & Faber, 380pp, 978-0-5713-3276-2, £7.99 pbk


Bone Gap is an astonishing, complex and captivating read. It’s one of those books


difficult to put down; you just want to


keep story reading, of savouring


that’s the


story, to find out what happens. Set in a tiny village in Illinois, it’s the


seventeen-year-old


Finn, who is trying to make sense of a bewildering world during one strange and magical summer. Finn lives with his older brother Sean, following their mother’s departure a couple of years previously. As the story opens, we find out that Roza, a beautiful Polish student who had been staying with them, was abducted a couple of months ago. Finn witnessed her being taken away by a tall stranger, but he can’t describe the man’s face, and no- one believes him. He determines to try and find Roza, to mend the rift between him and his brother. At the same time, he is drawn towards Priscilla the beekeeper’s daughter – otherwise known as Petey. They spend magical night-times together, falling in love for the first time, and Petey helps Finn to understand what has been happening. The novel is told from different


characters’ viewpoints, and moves backwards and forwards in time,


shifts she can grab at Sandwich City in the days before Christmas, but she’s still short of cash for a bed for the night. How to pass the long, cold hours? Avoid the office party (nothing to wear, can’t afford it), drift round the stores to keep warm, watch others with homes to go to, imagine loved ones waiting to care for them. Then ride the night buses, along with all the others with nowhere to go. There is a sort-of happy ending as she discovers friendship where she least expects it. Before she wrote, Lisa Williamson ran some creative writing workshops for Crisis members and listened to their stories. This is what a night of homelessness tastes like. GF


Unconventional HHH


Maggie Harcourt, Usborne, 464pp, 978-1-4095-9015-6, £7.99 pbk


The first page, and Lexi’s in crisis. She’s suffering from a “very specific, palm-tree-related sensation” in the pit of her stomach. Problem is, she misplaced a hyphen in an email order, and the supplier’s sent three boxes of inflatable metre-high palm trees when Lexi needs just one box of inflatable three-metre-high palm trees decorate the convention registration


to


so that the whole story gradually unfolds, with a satisfying ending. The characterisation


is strong;


Finn is absorbing with his different outlook on life, Petey is deliciously individual and quirky and Roza is a brave and resourceful heroine who refuses to be a victim. Bone Gap is full of original


characters, and strange happenings. The story moves into the realm of fantasy, but in a natural and intriguing way, sweeping the reader along.


the story are unexplained and mysterious – but that


Many elements of just adds


to the Bone Gap atmosphere. At times intense, with an uneasy undercurrent of menace, but also clever, funny and beautifully written. LT


area in only three days’ time. Not any convention, but one of Max Angelo’s conventions for fans of books and comics and cosplays (dressing up as super-heroes and elves and so on), with loads of writers and film people and art shows and themed parties and merchandise. Max is Lexi’s dad and she leads the team of “week-end grunts” who do all the underpinning stuff


smoothly. Answer to the palm tree catastrophe?


As in Samira. Lexi talks with Sam like she talks with no-one else. No-one else except her readers,


everything running Call Best Friend Sam.


that is. She confides and jokes with us as tirelessly as she does with Sam, barely drawing breath from that first page to last. The voice is attractively witty (often at her own expense), and she introduces us to scenes few readers will know – behind the scenes, in fact, of the monthly, Easter- through-Halloween fan conventions. For Lexi, “they’re where I feel safest. They’re what make me feel like me”. Life and friendships at home and Sixth Form College come a long way back in second place...she’s always behind with her A-level course work and she’s not improving her chances of university or career;


entranced by those frenetic weekends 30 Books for Keeps No.222 January 2017 she’s too to keep


when she comes alive. The


convention chapters


constraints upon the author, since the mundane details of convention admin and incident lose their novelty. As Lexi says, each convention hotel is indistinguishable from the last, and the same is true of the conventions themselves. An actress might create a fuss when she loses her pet dog inside a wardrobe, the registration forms might be filed in the wrong order;


Maggie Harcourt focuses on Lexi’s growing relationship with Aidan Green, which begins badly in a short- tempered


but the plot needs more.


an authorisation pass to the guest speakers’ green room and some extended teasing about clipboards. To Lexi’s deep embarrassment, it soon emerges that Aidan (pen name: Haydn Swift) has written a novel which is rapidly becoming a world best-seller with film rights, book signings and the accompanying rock-star


Lexi’s read the book five times and adores it, which only makes her feel even worse. While the course of True Romance does not run smooth, it does keep running, albeit slowly. Will Lexi have to share Haydn with hordes of (female) fans around the world, or can she and Aidan create something unique? Whenever they find time together, she and Aidan connect in sparky dialogue and even share some playful games such as sliding along carpeted hotel corridors on a metal tray.


powerful vibes whenever their hands touch or he’s so close to her she “breathes him in”, they continue to circle each other as far as even a first kiss is concerned, though there’s ample opportunity, notably when they get locked into a function room for the night. Given that she’s 17 and he’s 19 and the electric attraction between them, some sort of contact might well have been made before page 447 when, I think, they kiss and “he tastes like the courage it’s taken me my whole life to find”. This may provide a climactic moment for the plot, but it also may stretch readers’ belief. Some firm less-is-more editing might have been helpful while still allowing space for Maggie Harcourt’s engaging, comic enthusiasm and for Lexi to see that there’s a life for her beyond conventions and, in a time- honoured RomCom conclusion, that she’s “not nobody. I’m me.” GF


A Quiet Kind of Thunder HHHHH


Macmillan Children’s Books, 305pp, 978-1-5098-1098-7, £7.99 pbk


Steffi Brons is sixteen. She has been selectively mute since she was five. She is intensely lonely, especially as her adored stepbrother Clark three years ago died in a car crash on his way home from university. To help Steffi communicate, her family have taught her British Sign Language. Starting sixth form, Steffi is without her best friend Tem. She finds herself paired with a boy named Rhys Gold, who is deaf. At least Steffi will be able to sign to Rhys. Barnard’s


significant questions. Steffi is dead novel poses two Though she feels incredibly celebrity. misunderstanding about


to another, putting


slide


from one


set on getting to university. Will she be able to overcome her impairment sufficiently to get to college? And will she make a friend of Rhys along the way?


Barnard to fall into a familiar trap, depicting two brave souls battling against undeserved


This trap she avoids. Steffi and Rhys are two perfectly normal teenagers with flaws of character and bad habits just like everyone else. The two of them make an unannounced journey to Edinburgh, during which Rhys falls and breaks his arm. He and Steffi have a bitter row about the accident. It turns out that Rhys has cast himself in the role of the protective male and is frustrated not to be able to fulfil it. He is as prone to gender stereotypes as any other young male.


impairments. It would have been easy for


a telling and complex issue: Rhys has attended a school with a substantial group of deaf children, mingling with children who hear. In a mainstream school where everyone else hears, how does Rhys feel at ease? In which world does he truly belong? It is a question that many young people, especially


pose for themselves, but one that authors rarely mention. This reviewer made the transition from a Special Educational Needs school to


mainstream and thence to university. Barnard’s book resounds with echoes of that time. I would recommend this book as widely as possible. RB


Our Chemical Hearts HHHH


Krystal Sutherland, Hot Key Books, 320pp, 978-1-4714-0583-9, £7.99pbk


Henry Isaac Page is a senior in an American


particularly talented academically but he has a burning ambition nurtured for two years. Henry is dead set on becoming the editor of the school newspaper, the Westland Post. Finally he achieves his ambition. But affairs are disrupted by the arrival in the school of Grace Town. Grace dresses like a boy. She walks with a cane. She has a boy’s haircut. And it seems her personal hygiene leaves much to be desired.


high school. He is not the young disabled people,


Barnard explores in convincing style


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