I'm So Starstruck: 'Star Struck' Review

'Star Struck' by Jenny MacLachlan
Review by Christopher Moore

Summary:

Following on from Flirty Dancing, Love Bomb and Sunkissed, Jenny McLachlan's next book is perfect for fans of Geek Girl and Louise Rennison.

A spotlight shines down on the two of us and everyone drifts into the shadows...Pearl is destined to be the star of this year's school musical. Being the lead is all she wants - especially as it means kissing super-hot Jake Flower.

Then a new girl walks into the audition...Hoshi can sing, she's an amazing dancer and she's seriously cute. Before Pearl knows it, she's stolen her part, her friends and Jake's attention! But this girl doesn't know who she's messing with. Pearl's used to battling every day and she's not going down without a fight. Sparks are going to fly!
 

Review:

Star Struck is the last in the Ladybirds series. I should probably point out now that I haven’t read the others but that didn’t take away from my reading enjoyment.

If I’m being honest, I thought that Pearl was an absolute cow. She came across as a complete rhymes-with-witch but I get it. MacLachan crafts her characters on two levels; their characteristics and outer appearance and their internalised problems like Pearl's home life where we get to see her softer, more vulnerable side. So yes, on the outside, Pearl isn’t a very nice person but when we get a 360 view of her life, we begin to understand the complexities that drive her and make her act the way she does.

Domestic abuse haunts her home life. Pearl has to lock her bedroom door to prevent her brother from invading her personal space and finding new ways to torture her. There were parts where I was actually scared for Pearl; where I experienced her panic and fear as if there were some sort of fictional-real-world, psychic link tethering us together.

I don’t think the book covers do justice to the stories. When I picked it up, I wanted to put it down again because the cover gave the impression that this was going to be a girly, all-frills kind of book when it’s more than that. It’s a book that touches on some really strong issues like abuse and there's a nice surprise towards the end. Pearl, as the narrator, is funny and cruel but she demands your attention and makes you want to read her story.

Is this the best book I’ve ever read? No. Is this a book I’d recommend? Certainly. It’s an ideal beach read. The only drawback for me was the way the abuse was handled; I don’t feel like there was any sense of resolution and for younger readers, that’s a bit dangerous, hence why I knocked off a star.

Rating: 4/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★

 

Christopher Moore:

  

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-five year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.

'A Fierce and Subtle Poison' by Samantha Mabry Review

'A Fierce and Subtle Poison' by Samantha Mabry

Review by Christopher Moore

Summary:
 

In this stunning debut, legends collide with reality when a boy is swept into the magical, dangerous world of a girl filled with poison. Everyone knows the legends about the cursed girl - Isabel, the one the senoras whisper about. They say she has green skin and grass for hair, and she feeds on the poisonous plants that fill her family's Caribbean island garden. Some say she can grant wishes; some say her touch can kill. Seventeen-year-old Lucas lives on the mainland most of the year but spends summers with his hotel-developer father in Puerto Rico. He s grown up hearing stories about the cursed girl, and he wants to believe in Isabel and her magic.

When letters from Isabel begin mysteriously appearing in his room the same day his new girlfriend disappears, Lucas turns to Isabel for answers - and finds himself lured into her strange and enchanted world. But time is running out for the girl filled with poison, and the more entangled Lucas becomes with Isabel, the less certain he is of escaping with his own life.


Review:

 

It was the combination of title and cover that brought A Fierce and Subtle Poison to my attention on Net Galley. I read the synopsis and seriously, how could I not read it? It took a single page to hook me on its lyrical, magical prose that delights and excites. Though dissimilar in theme to E. Lockhart's We Were Liars, I couldn't help but feel echoes of its style in Mabry's work. It's very readable with the words painting a visceral and vivid picture in the mind.

I adore the Puerto Rican setting; a breath of fresh air from the city settings of so many YA stories. I swear, either Mabry has lived a significant period of her life in Puerto Rico or she researched it thoroughly and infused it seamlessly into her plot and characters. The protagonist is likable though I don't think he's the most interesting part of the story. Isabel is an incredible character; she's dark and dangerous, the monster that haunts the island but is she really? There's so much more to her and her story than meets the eye that will have you tearing through the pages into the early hours of the morning.

I don't want to spoilt the story for anyone so I'm going to park this review here. It's a sensational debut; a murder-mystery meets magical realism; a balance of light and dark. Not only is  it the best book I've read so far this year, it's one of the best I've read in the last twelve months. A must for fans of E. Lockhart's We Were Liars and Moira Fowley-Doyle's The Accident Season.

Rating: 5/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
 

Christopher Moore:

  

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-five year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.

The #YAtakeover Author Line-Up

The author line-up for the #YAtakeover:

1.   C. J. Skuse (Monster)
2.   Frances Hardinge (The Lie Tree)
3.   Siobhan Curham (True Face)
4.   E. R. Murray (The Book of Learning)
5.   Matt Whyman (The Savages)
6.   Melinda Salisbury (The Sin Eater's Daughter)
7.   Becky Albertalli (Simon Vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda)
8.   Virginia Bergin (The Rain)
9.   MG Harris (Gemini Force One)
10. Cat Clarke (The Lost and the Found)
11. Non Pratt (Remix)
12. Lisa Heathfield (Seed)
13. Sarah Mussi (Siege)
14. Alexia Casale (The Bone Dragon)
15. Holly Smale (Geek Girl)
16. Rachel McIntyre (Me and Mr J)
17. Clare Furniss (How Not to Disappear)
18. Jana Oliver (The Demon Trappers)
19. Andrew Smith (Grasshopper Jungle)
20. Jess Vallance (Birdy)
21. Anna McKerrow (Crow Moon)
22. Jess Vallance (Birdy)
23. Louise O'Neill (Asking For It)
24. Marcus Sedgwick (The Ghosts of Heaven)
25. Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
26. Ryan Graudin (Wolf by Wolf)
27. Kendare Blake (Mortal Gods)
28. Sally Green (Half Wild)
29. Samantha Shannon (The Mime Order)
30. Keren David (This is Not a Love Story)
31. Liz Kessler (Read Me Like A Book)
32. Alice Oseman (Solitaire)
33. Lu Hersey (Deep Water)
34. Lynn Weingarten (Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls)
35. Taran Matharu (The Novice)
36. C. J. Daugherty (Night School)
37. Robin Stevens (Murder Most Unladylike)
38. L. A. Weatherly (Angel)
39. Christi J. Whitney (Grey)
40. Eve Ainsworth (7 Days)
41. Jenn Bennett (Night Owls)
42. Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
43. Tabitha Suzuma (Forbidden)
44. Teri Terry (Mind Games)
45. Lauren Kate (Fallen)
46. I. W. Gregorio (None of the Above)
47. Darren Shan (The Vampire's Assistant)
48. Lisa Williamson (The Art of Being Normal)
49. Laura Jarratt (Louder Than Words)
50. Brian Conaghan (When Mr. Dog Bites)
51. Charlotte Eyre
52. Jake Hope
53. Katie Webber
54. Joy Court

Author Interview: Melinda Salisbury

Melinda Salisbury is the debut author of The Sin Eater’s Daughter, the first in a new YA trilogy. She lives by the sea, in England, and saw The Grand Budapest Hotel (great film!) ELEVEN times at the cinema.


Follow Melinda on Twitter: @AHintofMystery

Buy 'The Sin Eater's Daughter':

-  Amazon
-  Foyles
-  Waterstones

 

 

 

 

The interview

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.


1. For those that haven’t read The Sin Eater’s Daughter, can you sum it up in 140 characters?

Executioner of traitors. Embodiment of a Goddess. Betrothed of a Prince. Puppet of mad queen. Take away her duty and who is Twylla?

 
2. Were there any books, in particular, that influenced or shaped the story? 

Originally I’d planned it as a re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, but instead of a young woman navigating a forest, she’d have to move through castle politics, where the wolves were the people around her. That motif was largely lost, as the story grew, though it still has a very fairy-tale theme to it, which I like, as I have such a love for the traditional fairy-tales – the darker the better. The Pied Piper of Hamelin and Sleeping Beauty all play a massive part in building the foundations of the world, though both have been distorted to suit my needs.


3. What made you want to write this story and in particular, why the fantasy genre and (young adult) audience?

When I was a little, almost all of my games involved very elaborate world building. At my Nana’s house I’d play with the decorative glass stones she’d bought for her garden, organising them by colour into factions; red for the royals, yellow for servants, blue for the armies, and green for villains. I’d play out childish versions of love affairs between princes and witches, and queens and jesters. I was the same with normal toys, preferring ones with lots of characters, where I could spin the game out for days, if not weeks, until it became a self-supporting world of its own.
 
The same thing happened with The Sin Eater’s Daughter – I never consciously chose to write it, it just developed out of the materials in my head – a love of poison, and medieval history, and darkness, and fairy tales. Fantasy has always been my favourite genre, because I find it difficult to be entertained by ‘reality’. I don’t like to read or watch things that I could be doing myself – soap operas and any kind of reality based television has no appeal to me, because I feel almost wasteful watching people live a life that is very similar to mine, or doing things I could be doing. I tend to want something different – like Vikings, or The Musketeers, for entertainment. I want to experience lives that are vastly different from mine and fantasy offers me a way to do that.

As for why YA, because quite simply it’s what I prefer to read. YA novels, regardless of genre, are always breaking new ground and pushing boundaries in ways that challenge the reader without alienating them. They are stories filled with people figuring out who they are and how they fit in, and I think deep down that’s how most people feel all the time. I’ve technically been an adult for a while now, but I still feel as though I’m on a learning curve and YA is a great reminder I’m not alone in that. I’m writing what I feel I know. And what I love.


4. Where did the idea for Twylla’s story come from? How did you go about creating the mythological framework for the story?

It started with a small, idle idea in the shower and grew from there. I was singing away to myself and suddenly wondered what it would be like if I had to sing for a king, was taken from my home to do it, and my family’s lives would be at stake if I didn’t? What if I’d originally seen this as an escape, only to find it was even worse? What if my whole life was designed around me and I had no choice in it? The plot grew from there. I knew there would be a queen and she would be a bad person. I knew my heroine would be forced to choose between love and duty, and I knew that every single character – even the good ones – had an agenda.

I also knew religion would be a huge part of it, because it’s the cornerstone of every world, including ours. It determine a lot of the laws, and rules, and behaviours of a people and so I spent a lot of time developing those and making sure they were both ‘realistic’ and solid. Civilisations have risen and crumbled in the names of gods. Countries have been invaded; populations decimated – all in the name of gods. For any world to be fully realised, whether we like or not, it needs some kind of higher power, a rallying or rebellion point for its people.   

And because kings and queens are traditionally the gods’ representatives on earth, regardless of century, country or people, Gods and kings (or queens) are inextricably linked. Therefore if I was having a royal family, I needed gods, and vice versa.

So I created my gods; the female, Næht – death, darkness, temptation, and her counterpart Dæg - life, light and strength. I can’t say, without revealing part of the plot of the next book, why there are dual gods, and how they came to be worshipped in Lormere, but that mythology exists, and will come to the fore.

As for fairy tales and mythology, I’ve always believed those are the tools we use to make sense of the world around us – the monster in the woods, the wicked witch. It’s how we learn, and teach. Again, as with religion, a fully-developed world needs its own folklore.


5. Twylla: where did her name come from and how did you build her identity?

Twylla was the name that came to me when I imagined her! It was never a choice; I’d never heard it consciously before, but I must have picked it up from somewhere. I just knew that was her name, and I never questioned it. I later found out though that ‘Twyla’ is the Cherokee word for ‘twilight’ and loved how that fitted with her being Daunen Embodied (Daunen is Old English for dawn) and Naeht and Daeg (Old English for day and night). It felt right, somehow.

I built her identity out of my own experiences at her age! I had tremendously strict parents, my weekend curfew at age seventeen was 11pm, I wasn’t allowed a key for the house and was rarely allowed to remain in the house unsupervised, (I would often spend the day at the library if it was raining, or in the woods if it was sunny, taking food and books with me). I was very, very rarely allowed to sleep away from home, I had to fight tooth and nail for almost every freedom and it really isolated me from my peers, who were experimenting with boys and girls and drinking and basically being “normal” teens.
 
I lived a double life at home and at school, keeping so much of who I was a secret from everyone in my life. And I also had a very strained relationship with my family. So it wasn’t at all hard for me to put myself in the shoes of a seventeen year old who is disconnected from the world around her, and who has little love and support in her life. I was better off than Twylla in many ways, but there’s a lot of me at seventeen in her. All her naivety, and her fear of questioning the status quo comes directly from my experiences and my fears. So I built her around that – at her core is a confused, frightened and lonely young woman who doesn’t know who she is or what she should do.


6. What was the most difficult part to write?

I didn’t find any of it difficult! I don’t know whether it was because I didn’t feel under any pressure when writing it, but the words just flowed, I didn’t get at all stuck during the first draft. At times it was almost as though I wasn’t in control of the story at all, it happened without any planning, or real thought – it just happened. Of course, the first draft was kind of a hot mess because of that, but there was a lot of stuff in there that made it to the final version. 


7. The ending to The Sin Eater’s Daughter is a definite nail-biter. What can we expect from the next book?

I can tell you that it’s set in Tregellan, and is based around a new character, and their life and the challenges they face in the aftermath of The Sin Eater’s Daughter. There is more danger, more treachery, and more death; we’ve said goodbye to some characters and we’ll say hello to some other new ones. It’s always been an uncertain world, and it continues to be so. What happened in The Sin Eater’s Daughter set off a chain of events that reaches far across the realm, and things are changing for everyone. 


8. How did you find the writing-to-publication process? 

Surprisingly pleasant! I went down the traditional route of finding an agent, working with her, and then submitting to publishing houses when we thought it was ready. Thanks to her expertise the whole thing was very smooth, and easy to participate in. 

I found my agent because I submitted a different book to her, but whilst I’d been looking for an agent I’d begun to write The Sin Eater’s Daughter as way of keeping myself occupied. My agent came back to me after reading the full MS of the original book to say she loved my writing, but the story wasn’t anything new or exciting, and then she asked if I had anything else. By coincidence, I’d finished the very first draft of The Sin Eater’s Daughter the day before, so I told her about it, but warned it was unedited. She read it anyway, loved it, though felt it needed some work, and eventually we both got it to a place where she felt she could try and get it onto publisher’s desks. And boy did she! 

I’ve been incredibly fortunate that both my agent and my editors have loved the story as much as I do, and have so much faith in me. I’m very privileged and honoured to work with the team I do; there is a lot of expertise and creativity – but more importantly, a lot of trust and support from them and it makes writing an absolute pleasure.


9. Do you have any unusual or strange habits while writing?

No. I’m really dull! I free write at first, and pretty much just let the characters do what they like! I loosely map the ending, and the beginning, and who the main characters are, and what they are to each other, but in between I give them free reign to do their thing while I build the world around them. I keep a notebook with me all the time in case I have an idea, and I like to get it down on paper, as a starting point, as soon as possible. I love editing, I prefer it to writing. I like making things pretty, the hard work bit at the start is my least favourite.

I am a night-time writer. Between 7pm and midnight is my best time for writing. I tend to start by re-reading the last passage I wrote, and making alterations, which helps ease me back into the story, and then the new writing tends to come between 9pm and 11pm. Then I read back again for a bit. I’ve tried working in the day, but I get distracted by the outdoors very easily, so it’s better for me to work at night, when the light is gone. I like to have a cup of tea going cold beside me, and I can’t write to music, but that’s about it.


10. You’re on Mars (because that’s what authors do, right?) and you realise that you only have 48-hours of oxygen left in your canisters. You reach for your emergency kit filled with five books (apparently, there was a food shortage, you’ve lost communication with Earth and no Kindles!). What five books are they?

The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
 
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Snow Spider by Jenny Nimmo

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

 
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. We, at YAfictionados, wish you all the best with the book and your writing career.

 

'The Vanishing Girls' Is An Edge-Of-Your-Seat Nail-Biter

'Vanishing Girls' by Lauren Oliver

Review by Sarah Nuttall

 

Summary:

 

Lauren Oliver returns with her exceptional new book ‘Vanishing Girls’ once again delivering a novel that will appeal beyond her adult audience with a coming-of-age story with YA appeal. 

Dara and Nick used to be inseparable, but that was before the accident that left Dara's beautiful face scarred and the two sisters totally estranged. When Dara vanishes on her birthday, Nick thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl, nine-year-old Madeline Snow, has vanished, too, and Nick becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances are linked. Now Nick has to find her sister, before it's too late.

In this edgy and compelling novel, Lauren Oliver creates a world of intrigue, loss, and suspicion as two sisters search to find themselves, and each other.

 

Review:

 

New York Times bestselling author, Lauren Oliver, has once again created a story that will appeal to adult readers with Vanishing Girls due to its rich complexity and emotional intelligence but with characters on the cusp of adulthood, faced with life-altering decisions, the books are relatable for YA readers too. The central theme of Vanishing Girls is loss; the loss of identity through a person’s beauty, body, relationships and friendships. The accident rips all these from Dara and her loss of identity and anger at Nick feels justified and relatable because Dara feels she’s vanished from her own life; a pale shadow of her former self. When Dara crashes a nearby party to avoid the first night she’ll see Nick, she’s struck by her peers' reaction to her now to what it would have been a few months earlier. When her best friend drops by to return her possessions she’s left in her car, Dara notices that she doesn’t look at her eyes; that the possessions aren’t because she thinks Dara would want or need them but because she doesn’t want to see them; she doesn’t want to be reminded of Dara. When she leaves and Dara realises that this is the end of their friendship, because neither know how to be friends now, it's real and heart-breaking.

It’s a testament to Oliver’s writing that we are able to understand the closeness of Nick and Dara’s relationship from a few past memories and little instances in these scenes sow the seeds for later developments in the book, causing an unsettling air or tension. Within this tension, we are also introduced to the disappearance of Madeline which breaks into the forefront of the main story in unexpected places. Oliver uses this dual storyline to her advantage ratcheting up the tension in the book between the sisters, between the past and the present and the loss of Madeline to create an unsettling thriller. Yet, it's also an extremely emotional drama about the loss of the relationship between two sisters who were so close they were almost one. I found Vanishing Girls both extremely emotional and unsettling. I enjoyed it so much that  I passed on my copy immediately to a friend as I needed someone else to read it so I could talk about it.

 

Like Oliver’s other books this is a well-written novel that will stay with you long after reading and can be read as an introduction to Oliver’s style as well as a standalone novel. I’d highly recommend trying any of Oliver’s works as she is in a class of her own, from her chilling horror book Room, to dystopia with the Delirium trilogy to this thriller in Vanishing Girls she is able to write in any genre and make it engaging, providing complex and interesting characters and themes YA readers will adore.

 

 

Rating: 5/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Sarah Nuttall

Sarah is an active contributor for the YAfictionados blog site. She has written posts for the Waterstones blog and has worked as a bookseller (for 9 years), a Children's bookseller (for 6 years) and is now a manager at her local bookstore. Needless to say, Sarah is a valued member of the YAfictionados team - a true Children's and YA literature expert.

LBOY2015 Shortlist Review #5: 'Summer's Shadow' by Anna Wilson

'Summer's Shadow' by Anna Wilson

Review by Christopher Moore



 

Summary:

Her mother's will states that Summer's legal guardian is her uncle Tristan: a man Summer has never even heard of before. Forced to leave her life in London, Summer moves to Tristan's creepy, ancient house in Cornwall. There she is met with indifference from him, open hostility from her cousin, and an aunt who has chosen to leave rather than to tolerate her presence.

Soon Summer comes to believe that the house may be haunted. But is it haunted by ghosts, or by the shadows of her family's past?

Scared and lonely, Summer begins to spend more and more time in the beautiful sheltered cove she discovers nearby. But she's not alone. A local boy frequents it too. Can Summer find first love and the answers to the mysteries of her new home with this good-looking boy who appears to be too perfect to be true?


Review:

This is a sweet book that's almost literary in style, telling the story of Summer after the death of her mother and her new life at Bosleven with her estranged family. Summer is a middle-of-the-road character. It's a pity that I read Clare Furniss' The Year of the Rat before this because Furniss really captures the essence of her narrator's, Pearl's, pain and grief with splashes of humour and a distinct voice that intrigues the reader. Summer's voice is a bit flat. I found it difficult to engage with her or pay attention to what was going on. I found myself reading a page and having to re-read it because I wasn't sure what happened. I couldn't focus. I think the reader would have benefitted from a first-person perspective from Summer's point of view.

The settings were well developed; the beach, Bosleven. Wilson anchors the reader in specific places that are beautifully described.

As I read the story, I wasn't sure what sort of story it would be. There were some supernatural elements that almost echoed Alyxandra Harvey's Haunting Violet but ultimately, the story is more in line with The Year of the Rat. The characters were OK. I wanted them all to be pushed a bit further.

Overall, it's a nice read but it's not the best book in this area that I've ever read.

 Rating: 3/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ 

 

 

Christopher Moore:

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-four year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.

Follow Christopher on Twitter: @YAblooker

Find Christopher on Goodreads: Christopher Moore



LBOY2015 Shortlist Review #5: 'Riot' by Sarah Mussi

'Riot' by Sarah Mussi

Review by Christopher Moore

 Summary:

England is struggling under a recession that has shown no sign of abating. Years of cuts has devastated Britain: banks are going under, businesses closing, prices soaring, unemployment rising, prisons overflowing. The authorities cannot cope. And the population has maxed out.

The police are snowed under. Something has to give. Drastic measures need taking.

The solution: forced sterilisation of all school leavers without secure further education plans or guaranteed employment.

The country is aghast. Families are distraught, teenagers are in revolt, but the politicians are unshakeable: The population explosion must be curbed. No more free housing for single parents, no more child benefit, no more free school meals, no more children in need. Less means more.

But it is all so blatantly unfair - the Teen Haves will procreate, the Teen Havenots won't.

It's time for the young to take to the streets. It's time for them to RIOT:

OUR RIGHTS, OUR BODIES, OUR FUTURE.


Review:

The novel is more plot- than character-driven but that's fine and the sterilisation of the school leavers from poorer classes is so strong that it actually ensnares and intrigues the reader from the first gruesome pages. The story reads like a sucker-punch to the face. It's bold with a fast-paced narrative and plenty of action.

Mussi flicks emotional switches at the right times though, allowing us to identify with her characters even though her characters read, for me anyway, as physical, ideological representations in this dystopian Britain. That's not to say they're bad characters and in fact, I think it mostly works for this kind of story.

Tia is an interesting enough narrator though I felt at times, there was some repetition with her language; in particular the "flipping" curse word stripped her of some of her credibility as a teen - and in general, I felt like she could have been pushed even further (to the extent that Day was in Marie Lu's Legend trilogy). She also lapses into Americanisms which conflicts with the London setting. The only other thing that irked me was that the antagonist read a bit cartoony when I wanted more depth to match the gravity and severity of the law that's being implemented.


Overall, it's a fast-paced story with a good backstory and setting that will please fans of Sophie Kenzie and Marie Lu.

 Rating: 4/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★ 

Christopher Moore:

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-four year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.

Follow Christopher on Twitter: @YAblooker

Find Christopher on Goodreads: Christopher Moore

LBOY2015 Shortlist Review #4: 'When Mr Dog Bites' by Brian Conaghan

'When Mr Dog Bites' by Brian Conaghan

Summary:

Hilariously touching and outrageously unforgettable: Mark Haddon's Christopher Boone meets Holden Caulfield on one *#@! of a journey. . .

Dylan Mint has Tourette's. Being sixteen is hard enough, but Dylan's life is a constant battle to keep the bad stuff in - the swearing, the tics, the howling dog that seems to escape whenever he gets stressed... But a routine visit to the hospital changes everything. Overhearing a hushed conversation between the doctor and his mother, Dylan discovers that he's going to die next March. So he grants himself three parting wishes or 'Cool Things To Do Before I Cack It'. But as Dylan sets out to make his wishes come true, he discovers that nothing - and no-one - is quite as he had previously supposed.


Review

When Mr Dog Bites is the second novel from rising talent Brian Conaghan and similar to his debut is a novel with wide crossover appeal between adult and YA fiction. The book is shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year award and is in exceptional company alongside many wonderful YA novels. When Mr Dog Bites is a pleasant addition to the list as it is not strictly just a YA novel; it was simultaneously marketed with an adult cover and contains complex adult relationships alongside the teen characters.


Our narrator is Dylan Mint a 16-year old teen with Tourettes syndrome in his last year at his high school for teens with difficulties. Dylan is attending a routine visit at the hospital when he overhears from his doctor that he has only got six months to live. Determined to make these months count, Dylan creates a list of desires to fulfil before he passes on. His first wish is to have sexual intercourse with Michelle Molloy, his second to help his best friend Amir who is constantly bullied by racist cretins and lastly to get his dad back from the army to see him before he dies.


Dylan is an exceptional narrator and intriguing voice, I’ve not read a book from the point of view of a character with Tourettes and Conaghan brings such depth and clarity to his character that I immediately empathisde with Dylan. The results are honest, heart-breaking and hysterical - I loved Dylan’s attempts to speak to Michelle yet his nerves make him yell obscenities at her causing her to threaten him with violence. Or when Dylan tries to correct racist taunts by pointing out that the two insults are from different ethnicities and therefore can’t be used together.


When Mr Dog Bites is an exceptionally well-written book, observant, clever and engaging, I was completely swept away in the story. Due to its unflinching and vivid portrayal of its wide range of characters with various disabilities, the book is also educational and enlightening and I left the book with a greater understanding of Tourette’s Syndrome. A friend of mine who works in a high school library described this book to me as the best book she couldn’t have in her library (due to the swearing as her school has a no-swearing policy) and I think this realistic language and racism might limit the book’s appeal to the younger choosers of this prize as it’s a more challenging read than many books on the list. However it is a worthy contender for the prize and I would be pleased to see it win as it’s a book that deserves wider recognition. 

Rating: 5/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Sarah Nuttall

Sarah is an active contributor for the YAfictionados blog site. She has written posts for the Waterstones blog and has worked as a bookseller (for 9 years), a Children's bookseller (for 6 years) and is now a manager at her local bookstore. Needless to say, Sarah is a valued member of the YAfictionados team - a true Children's and YA literature expert.

LBOY2015 Shortlist Review #1: Louder Than Words by Laura Jarratt

'Louder Than Words' by Laura Jarratt

Review by Christopher Moore

 

 

Summary:

Rafi hasn't spoken for eight years. It's up to her to tell her brother's story now that he can't speak either ...

Rafi idolises her seventeen-year-old brother, who is popular, generous and a borderline genius. Ever protective, Silas always includes her when he's with his friends, so Rafi gets to hear all sorts of things that younger sisters wouldn't normally be a part of. Like the time Silas hacks a gaming site to help out his friend Josie, who has been trashed by her ex.

 With Josie, Rafi finds herself with a proper friend for the first time in her life. As they grow closer, she realises that she wants to find a way back into the world – she wants to learn to speak again. But Silas has found a new interest too – and it’s taking him away from everything that was once important to him. Can Rafi find the words to save her brother?

 

 

Review:

 

I absolutely loved this book. Rafi is a sensational narrator and character, chronicling her story poignantly as she communicates with her brother and Josie through text and hand gestures. Josie, too, is a fantastic, optimistic character that lifts Rafi up whenever she falls and stands by her friend.

 

 

The story is not one of romance but more an emotional recounting of Rafi's brother and their relationship and the rift that slowly starts to separate her from everything she cherishes. But she has Josie and through Josie, she finds her voice in ways she never could have hoped. Josie buys her a phone so that they can communicate and teaches Rafi that she's good enough as she is; that she's special and the right guy will like her for her; that she's more special than even she realises.

 

 

Jarratt educates the reader about Rafi's progressive mutism (and of selective mutism). She imbues her characters with qualities and personalities that readers will love; allowing anyone who picks up the book to establish an immediate and strong emphatic connection to Rafi.

 

 

I selected this book to review for the Lancashire book of the year award. It is not a book I would have picked off a book shelf. I'm glad I did though as the writing blew me away. The plot is strong but it's largely character-driven and th and it's Rafi (and Josie) that draw you in; it's Rafi's remarkable voice that kept me reading late at night and almost made me late for work more than once.

 

 

It's an emotional, psychological story of a friendship where Rafi doesn't speak at all and Josie speaks too much. It's the story of a brother and sister; the sibling highs and lows. It's everything you want in a summer read. Read it by the beach, in the park, by the pool or on the train. It will grip you, make your heart pound in your chest. You'll feel Rafi's pain, her fear, like a physical cut.

 

 

And one of my favourite quotes: "Don't change yourself for another person."

 

 Rating: 5/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

 

 

Christopher Moore:

 

 

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-four year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.

 

 

Follow Christopher on Twitter: @YAblooker

 

Find Christopher on Goodreads: Christopher Moore

 

Louise O'Neill Talks Inspiration, The YA Book Prize and What's Next

Louise O'Neill is the phenomenal debut author on the lips of YA readers nationwide. Her debut, 'Only Ever Yours', has claimed the inaugural YA Book Prize, an Irish Book Award and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize. We can expect big things from Louise and her hotly-anticipated follow-up, 'Asking For It, publishes in September.


Follow Louise on Twitter: @oneillo

Buy 'Only Ever Yours':

- Amazon

- Waterstones

- Foyles

The interview

1.For those that haven’t read Only Ever Yours, could you sum it up in 140 characters? 

The Handmaid’s Tale meets Mean Girls. (With a side of Heathers for good measure.)


2.Where did the premise for the novel come from? 

 On a very cold January day in New York, I was waiting in a Starbucks for the subway to start running again. I was reading one of those terrible gossip magazines that had red circles of shame drawn around the body parts of female celebrities deemed to be somehow unacceptable. All of a sudden, a vision flared in my mind. It was of a young girl in a bikini, standing in front of a classroom of other girls while a teacher in long black robes drew circles around her ‘defective’ body parts in red marker. The other girls were pounding their fists on their desks, shouting FAT, FAT, FAT. 

And I thought to myself – a world in which women are bred for their beauty.

 
3.How long did it take to pen it and how difficult was it to build and develop the world in which it is set? 

I had the idea in January 2011 but I didn’t start writing it until March 2012. At that point, I had all of these ideas for the world and the characters so when I actually started putting words down on the paper, it seemed to flow easily. I had a first draft written by the 31st of August 2012

 
4.Who was your favourite character to write? 

megan was always fun to write because she could be such a bitch. I had an entire back story created for her in my mind so I always felt she was more sympathetic than perhaps she was perceived. She’s so different to me and that forced me to give more thought and consideration to her motivations.

 
5.If you had to write from the perspective of one other character, which character would you pick and why? 

I would have been interested in writing this story from megan’s perspective or Darwin’s point of view. I deliberately kept isabel as quite a shadowy character in the narrative so I think it would be strange giving her a voice in that way.

 
6.You explore sexuality and gender (and even touch on race) and force the reader to face a very dark and twisted world. The most frightening aspect of the world you’ve created is that it holds some kernels of truth that are relevant to our society. How conscious were you of this in the writing process? 

Every single thing that I write about in Only Ever Yours was inspired by something that happened in real life. Every day, I would look at my Twitter feed, or read an article on the Vagenda or Jezebel, or see a post on the Everyday Sexism Project and I would instantly want to include that in my novel. It was about 140,000 words when I initially finished it and the book in its present form is approximate 92,000 words. We cut a lot – not everything I wanted to include was helpful to the pacing!

 
7.The novel is very intimate and personal. I know you’ve suffered from an eating disorder in your personal life and you share this in the love through frieda. What elements of frieda’s character mirror your experiences?  
 
freida is a work of fiction and she isn’t based on me. Writing is like acting in a way, you try and figure out a way into each character’s head, try and figure out what it is that makes them behave in the way that they do. Everyone has experienced grief, shame, fear, love, hope, sadness... It’s about remembering how that felt and then thinking about how a particular character would see those emotions.

 
8.How did you find the publication process? 
 
I’m very, very busy! There are a lot of invitations to events and speaking engagements and literary festivals.

I’m lucky enough to have incredible people working with me. From my agent and my editor to all the team at Quercus shouting about Only Ever Yours on my behalf, I’ve felt encouraged and supported from the very beginning.

 
9.The novel has achieved tremendous success in both Ireland and the UK. Were you surprised by this? How did you react when you discovered you won the Bookseller YA book prize? 

While I was writing the book, I remember telling a friend that I thought if I managed to do justice to the idea, that I thought the book could be important. She looked at me like I was crazy! I didn’t think I was the best writer in the world but I believed in the story, in the message. I was hungry for something like Only Ever Yours to exist and I hoped that other people might feel the same way.

As for the awards... well, I think I’m a bit psychic. I had the strangest feeling with both the Irish Book Awards and the Bookseller prize that I had won, whereas when I woke up on the morning of the Waterstones Book Prize, I knew that I had not. 

It was a huge honour to win the YA Book Prize because the shortlist was so incredibly strong and the judging panel was made up of people whose opinion I truly respected. The entire event was so well organised – it was a pleasure to be involved.

 
10.Now that Only Ever Yours has been published, what’s next?

Only Ever Yours is going to be released as an adult book in July 2015 which I’m very excited about. My second book, Asking For It, will be published on the 3rd of September. It’s about a young girl, Emma, who wakes up the morning after a party to find images of her sexual assault all over social media. It deals with issues of consent, rape culture, and victim blaming.

 
11.Do you have any unusual habits when you write?
 
I meditate for about ten minutes beforehand, then I invoke all the angels, saints, gods and goddesses that I can think of to surround me and to help me connect to the greater consciousness from which all the best ideas come from.

Yes, I’m a bit weird.


12.You’re on Mars and you have meagre food reserves. You have no communication with Earth and you’re down to your last two canisters of oxygen. You have just enough time to read five books. What five would you choose? 
 

THIS IS SO HARD. God. 

Amongst Women – John McGahern

Skippy Dies – Paul Murray

The Secret History – Donna Tartt

Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood

Are you there God? It’s Me Margaret. – Judy Blume.
 

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions. I have so much respect for any author that puts so much of themselves into a novel; the good parts and the dark and you certainly don't hold back. Congratulations on your success and good luck for what lies ahead (though I doubt you'll need it).