'The best books, reviewed with insight and charm, but without compromise.'
- author Jackie French

Saturday 29 September 2012

KBR Recommends: Young Adult Fiction, September 2012

The quality of YA fiction just keeps getting better and better. Here is a stash of new release YA that will tempt both late teens and adults alike. Enjoy every delicious drop.

Whisky Charlie Foxtrot by Annabel Smith (Fremantle Press, $24.99, 9781922089144)

It is less than twenty-four hours since Charlie received the phone call from his mother, and in those hours his only thought has been that Whisky must not die. He must not die because he, Charlie, needs more time.

He and Whisky have not been friends, have not talked or laughed together for months, years. But he has never thought it will end like this. He has always thought there will be time.

Whisky and Charlie are identical twins. But everything about them is poles apart. It's got so bad that Charlie can't even bear to talk to his brother anymore – until a freak accident steals Whisky from his family, and Charlie has to face the fact he may never speak to his brother again.

Rigg's Crossing by Michelle Heeter (Ford Street Publishing, $19.95, 9781921665707 )

A girl is found in the wreckage of a car crash. Severely injured and psychologically damaged, the girl cannot or will not tell the authorities who she is or where she comes from.

Her carers call her ‘Len’, after the name embroidered on the jumper she was wearing when she was found.

Secretive, intelligent, and abrasive, Len is moved to a children’s shelter. Slowly, Len’s repressed memories fight their way to the surface of her troubled mind. And an evil figure from her shadowy past comes looking for her.

Eve and Adam by Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant (Electric Monkey, $25.95, 9780312583514)

In the beginning, there was an apple - and then there was a car crash, a horrible injury, and a hospital. But before Evening Spiker's head clears a strange boy named Solo is rushing her to her mother's research facility. There, under the best care available, Eve is left alone to heal. 

Just when Eve thinks she will die - not from her injuries, but from boredom--her mother gives her a special project: Create the perfect boy. Using an amazingly detailed simulation, Eve starts building a boy from the ground up. 

Eve is creating Adam. And he will be just perfect . . . won't he?

Falling to Ash by Karen Mahoney (Random House, $18.95, 9781742754932)

Marie 'Moth' O'Neal is an eternal teenager, cursed to live out her life as an eighteen-year-old vampire and shunned by her strictly religious family. Her Maker, Theo, prizes her as his best Retriever and sends her on increasingly difficult missions. That's how Moth finds herself investigating the suspicious deaths plaguing a group of Otherkin kids in Boston. The 'kin like to live the vampire lifestyle, but they've managed to attract the attention of a dark force that's slowly picking them off one by one. Then the dead teenagers start to rise again-as something other than vamps. Who knew that zombies actually existed?

Now Moth has to infiltrate the Otherkin without them figuring out that she's the Real Deal, find out who or what is transforming them into the walking dead, all while keeping resident vampire hunter Jason Murdoch from shooting anything that doesn't breathe. It doesn't help that she and Jace have a history, and the sexy young hunter feels he has a lot to prove-and a score to settle…

Greylands by Isobelle Carmody (Ford Street Publishing, $19.95, 9781921665677)

After a long, long moment, the sound faded, though the air seemed still to throb with the awful anguish of it. ‘What was that?’ he whispered.

One wakeful night in the aftermath of his mother’s death, Jack enters a land devoid of colour or scent. Here he meets the tragic laughing beast and Alice, a strange girl with a secret.

Will Jack escape before the terrifying wolvers find him? Or is he destined to be trapped in the Greylands forever?

Only the cats know …

A haunting fable from the acclaimed author of The Gathering and Green Monkey Dreams

Every Day by David Levithan (Text Publishing, $19.99, 9781921922954)

Every morning, A wakes in a different person’s body, a different person’s life. There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

And then A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

Can you love someone who is destined to change each day? YA superstar author David Levithan brings all his trademark insight to a novel that is edgy, romantic and page-turning. Every Day has a touch of the paranormal and a grounding in the real world.