YA titles You Wont Want to Miss

Murder on a Summer Break

The YA market is getting better and better and there are now books available in every genre for this audience.

This book is perfect for those who like a murder mystery.

Amateur sleuths and wannabe influencers Kerry and Annie are back on the case when a social media festival inspires some killer content—and several on-camera influencer deaths—in this page-turning and side-splitting sequel to Murder on a School Night from author and comedian Kate Weston. After catching the menstrual murderer red-handed, Annie and Kerry are now the Tampon Two, Barbourough’s most famous—well, only—detective duo. So Annie (and decidedly not Kerry) is enjoying her five minutes of fame. Except life in the spotlight seems to be a magnet for death these days. After a famous prankster is found dead with a condom stretched over his entire head, the Tampon Two are on the scene at their small village’s Festival of Fame to catch another killer. Honestly, Kerry doesn’t know how she ended up here again, but this might be her one chance to prove to the folks at the local paper that she has what it takes to be a reporter—and to prove to herself that she doesn’t need her boyfriend, Scott, to save the day. Or even Annie, who definitely has stars and hearts in her eyes investigating all these influencers. With Annie distracted, Kerry has to work quickly, before one more live stream can be cut off by yet another grisly death. And this time, the murderer might be following her—and not just on social media—in their quest to create some truly killer content.

This was a good read, though some of it passed me by as this isn’t aimed at my age group, I’m definitely too old to get some of the influences meanings

But the murder mystery was good and well written and I couldn’t leave the book until I had read to the end to discover who the murder was.

This has everything a teenager reader will want in a book, it has modern terms and modern technology.

The characters were good and well planned out, and it cleverly shows us the different types of online influencers there are now, it also shows us that it is not a nice world to belong to.

This will be very popular with readers 13+.

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods

I knew I was going to love this book as soon as I picked it up.

She has power over death. He has power over her. When two enemies strike a dangerous bargain, will they end a war . . . or ignite one? I found this an interesting concept the thought of being able to kill someone with just a touch

Heroes die, cowards live. Daughter of a conquered world, Ruying hates the invaders who descended from the heavens long before she was born and defeated the magic of her people with technologies unlike anything her world had ever seen. 

Blessed by Death, born with the ability to pull life right out of mortal bodies, Ruying shouldn’t have to fear these foreign invaders, but she does. Especially because she wants to keep herself and her family safe. It was a really interesting idea to make the character Ruying unwilling to use her death powers and it was a fascinating look as she struggled to know what to do. And try and work out what was right and wrong

When Ruying’s Gift is discovered by an enemy prince, he offers her an impossible deal: If she becomes his private assassin and eliminates his political rivals—whose deaths he swears would be for the good of both their worlds and would protect her people from further brutalization—her family will never starve or suffer harm again. But to accept this bargain, she must use the powers she has always feared, powers that will shave years off her own existence.

Can Ruying trust this prince, whose promises of a better world make her heart ache and whose smiles make her pulse beat faster? Are the evils of this agreement really in the service of a much greater good? Or will she betray her entire nation by protecting those she loves the most?

This was a great read, wondering which way Ruying would turn, all the characters were well thought out and written, the secondary characters were just as interesting as the main ones.

The world the author has created was plotted well.

The build up was slow but it was needed in this book. I became fully invested in the characters and as this is the first in the series I can’t wait for the next part of the adventure.

How to Survive a Horror Movie

• Published by Little Tiger

Over the last couple of years the YA market has really improved and authors are really tuned in to what the readers want in a book.

Alot of them want a scare and even at a young age they want a good old murder.

Horror movie enthusiast Charley is determined to keep a low profile when she’s enrolled in a girls’ boarding school on a remote island. That is, until someone starts killing off her senior class! From elaborate scare tactics to severed heads in fridges, Charley has found herself at the centre of a teen horror movie. And that’s not the only alarming thing that’s happening – she’s now seeing the ghosts of her former classmates!? Haunted by her peers, and with everyone beginning to suspect her, Charley decides to do something about it. She and her only best friend Olive are going to solve the murders and find out who’s killing off the class before graduation. Charley just needs those pesky ghosts to shut up and give her a hand…

A fast-paced tongue-in-cheek YA novel about two friends trying to survive senior year – literally!

This was such a fast paced , action packed book. It was funny and there is alot of murder and horror. There are a lot of horror film mentions in this book which people of my age will already know but many of the YA audience will not have heard of any of these films but after reading this book I expect readers will want to see the films mentioned.

The characters were well plotted and there was enough information about these characters to make them believable. I couldn’t believe the amount of deaths that were in this book.

The author also didn’t shy away from gory scenes which I appreciated and created some very atmospheric settings.

The massive plot twist that happened at the end was very unexpected and I reread the last couple of chapters just to make sure that I had read it right,

And I loved that the book ended on a cliffhanger and now I’m desperate to read the second book, unfortunately for me it’s another year until that comes out.

A Better Nightmare

• Published by Chicken House

More and more I’m enjoying YA Fantasy and this is one of the best I have read.

Emily Emerson is nearly sixteen, finally a senior at the Wildsmoor Facility. But so is Meera, isn’t she? Meera, who is nineteen and has been a senior for as long as Emily can remember? Here, the students live each day as shadows, one day blurring into the next, hardly aware of life passing them by while the symptoms of the Grimm Cross Syndrome that afflicts them all is trained out of them. Rules. Order. Repetition. Medication.

Emily was eight when she started showing signs of the disease. Odd dreams, hallucinations – impossible things that happened around her. Unconscious thoughts that could be set free into the world—flowers that covered the house, thick like a forest and sowed with nothing more than her unconscious thoughts. It was beautiful until it turned evil, when Emily did her first bad thing and found herself here. Now, she’ll do anything to get better and get back to her life. She’ll be more quiet and obedient than everyone else.

Until she meets Emir.

Emir isn’t like the other kids at Wildsmoor. He’s quicker and livelier. He says things that he shouldn’t – dangerous things. Emir is electric, magnetic in more ways than Emily can know.

When Emir introduces her to The Cure, a secret society for kids who believe that The Grimm isn’t a disease at all, but a gift, Emily starts to wake up, and so do her strange abilities. The outcome is a dream come true. But sometimes the best dreams and the worst nightmares have the same people in them.

Oh my goodness what a fabulous book, and it’s a debut.

Set in the Wildsmoor school the children here suffer from The Grimm and to control the children they are drugged up to the eyes, and they come across like they are all zombies.

But what happens when you come off the meds and you see what is truly happening. This is what happens to our main character Emily. This is a slow burner as we experience the drugged up life through Emily’s eyes, but it picks up pace when she comes off her meds, then the book remains fast paced through the rest of the book.