The Memory Hit by Carla Spradbery

review by Maryom

Jess thought that she and Luke were a rock-solid, together forever couple. Sure, he was a little wilder than she was, always pulling crazy stunts, but they were both on course to pass their A levels and head off to the same university to study medicine. then at a New year's Eve party Jess's world starts to fall apart. First she discovers that Luke has been cheating on her with her best friend, Scarlett. Then in Luke's jacket pocket she finds a packet of bright red tablets - the drug Nostalgex - and not just one or two, but a sizeable quantity, the amount dealers carry.
To say she's shocked is understating things - a lot - but before she has chance to confront him about either of these things, a fire breaks out. While the other party-goers escape from the building, Luke and Scarlett are trapped in a bedroom.
Jess's ex, Cooper, is also having problems with drugs. The son of convicted dealers, he's always tried to stay clear of them but now someone is forcing him, through intimidation and blackmail, into selling Nostalgex, and events take a more sinister turn when the petrol-station he works at is set alight.
This unputdownable teen thriller hinges round the puzzle of WHO would be out to kill both Luke and Cooper. Could it be the mysterious mask-wearing drug dealer known only as Whiteface? But if so, why?
Jess feels if she could only remember more details of the New Years Eve party, she might find a clue to why - and this is where the Nostalgex drug comes in. It enhances memory - very handy  for exams - and can take the user back to relive happy memories in great detail. When she tries it though, Jess discovers that often there's a discrepancy between how she remembers events and what actually occurred. Experiencing events without the emotions of the time alters her understanding of them. It helps her focus on the mysterious white-masked person at the party, but it also shows her that her relationship with Luke was not as happy as she'd believed. Revisiting some of her arguments with him, Jess comes to see Luke as domineering, bullying, even abusive - all traits she'd ignored in the past.
 Like any good thriller The Memory Hit keeps you guessing about the identity of the 'bad guy',with plenty of twists and turns along the way, but what makes it stand out is the concept of Nostalgex and how our memories can be altered by time; if a person is generally seen as 'nice' we may overlook the odd outburst, or something very frightening and confusing may be blanked from our conscious memory. In a way, I suppose Nostalgex is doing what regression therapy does, and here it's used to good effect, teasing out memories and shedding new light on events and relationships.


Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Hodder Childrens
Genre - Thriller, teen relationships, YA/teen

The Recruit by Robert Muchamore

Review by The Mole

James is a troublesome kid. He is clever, hot headed and bored at school. All of this gets him expelled from school and while he is terrified of his mum finding out she dies. James and his step sister, Lauren, are temporarily taken into care before Ron, James' step dad, takes Lauren and leaves James in a children's home. Things are pretty grim for James and he gets in more trouble before waking up and finding himself in a new home, a new school, a new... Where is he?

He has been selected for a possible recruit into Cherub, a highly secret organisation that uses children to spy for the government - because no-one suspects kids of anything more than nosiness and vandalism. Agreeing to join the group James has to face his worst fears and learn many new skills in a ruthless training session designed to make people fail.

Will James survive the training and will he get a mission?

This is one of those books that children really see themselves being a part of and maybe even role-playing. It's compelling, fast action and you can take nothing for granted as the story jumps around.

Written ten years ago, technology has really moved on and while James is obsessed by his playstation it somehow doesn't matter as it's still technology that kids can identify with. There are plenty of characters of ages 10-17 of both genders involved - in fact Amy is his swim teacher and becomes his first mission leader and can knock seven bells out of James in the dojo too - so there has to be a wide age group appeal as well as an appeal to both girls and boys.

Hugely popular and a million selling series, a second series of books is now being written and published in parallel to a  reprint of series one. The reprint is being published at a rate of one every six months, so book 2 ("Class A") will be republished in October 2014.

If you're looking for holiday reads for children then this may well be a series for them with everything the young adventure reader could want.

Publisher - Hodder Children's
Genre - Children's(10+), action adventure

Riot by Sarah Mussi

Review by The Mole

The government is trying to curb benefit payments and is using the poorest families as a scapegoat - if teenagers don't have a job to go to or definite further education plans then they will be sterilised to stop them getting a family and becoming a burden. Clearly this is a very unpopular measure and ADAM and EVE orchestrate demonstrations against the Bill. ADAM and EVE protect their real identities closely and in EVE's case this is because she is, in fact, Tia Thompson - daughter of the minister whose Bill this actually is! But demonstrations are something the government will not tolerate and they are prepared to use extreme force to suppress.

As with SIEGE, the reader hits the ground running and the pace hardly lets up as we twist and turn on the way to the final pages.

There are certain similarities to SIEGE but I found RIOT a much better book - not that I didn't enjoy SIEGE because I did - but somehow the author felt more at ease in the writing of RIOT, both of the tender scenes and the violence.

I found that I could never 'believe' in Tia and when certain facts are revealed about her tastes at various times, I thought "Oh, I wouldn't have thought that!". (I did find myself, a lot of the time,thinking of her as a young man!) The only character I found myself thinking of as 'real' though was her father in all his vileness! But none of this mattered because with the pace of the story I didn't get time to stop and think about it at all.

The book is based around a government plot that is so extreme we can easily accept this as fiction but when you stop to consider the power base that the government enjoys you are left wondering if one day...

A great read in which the pages fly by.

Publisher - Hodder Childrens
Genre - Teen thriller

Buy Riot from Amazon

Adaptation by Malinda Lo

 review by Maryom

"Flocks of birds are hurling themselves at aeroplanes across America. Thousands of people die. Millions are stranded. Everyone knows the world will never be the same.

On Reese's long drive home, along a stretch of empty highway at night, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won't tell them what happened.

For Reese, though, this is just the start. She can't remember anything from the time between her accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: she's different now. Torn between longtime crush David and new girl Amber, the real question is: who can she trust?"

Adaptation is an unusual story in that it mixes sci-fi and conspiracy theories with teen romance and Reese's struggles to come to terms with her sexual orientation; so you could see it as a bit of something for everyone, or it could be that some readers are going to find bits of it more interesting than others. For me, it was very enjoyable. I liked the mix of teen relationship issues and government cover-ups, as Reese tries to work out her feelings for Amber and David, or goes out with long-term friend and conspiracy theorist Julian to search for evidence to back up his claims.
The pace seems a little uneven at times with the action scenes being fast and dramatic, and the relationship issues less so, but all in all it pulled me in and kept me reading.
My main gripe would be that, as so often, this isn't the whole story. Although the story finishes at a logical point, there's a sequel, Inheritance and also an ebook novella, Natural Selection, which tells Amber's side of the story.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Hodder Childrens
Genre - YA/ teen, sci-fi, conspiracy theory, teen relaionships

Siege by Sarah Mussi

Review by The Mole

It's 2020 and Leah goes to YOU OP 78 Academy. It's a state run secondary school for the poorer kids and offers a minimal education. It's a Friday and Leah's brother, Connor, has messed up her life by not taking his sister, Sally, to primary school so Leah has had to do it and ended up in a pre-school detention. When she hears 'popping' noises and screaming she starts to worry and then the door bursts open and some younger, year 9, kids rush in brandishing guns. Connor is in year 9! Amidst the shooting and confusion Leah runs with Anton, a classmate, and they hide. Lockdown has kicked in, a system to stop anyone being able to get out of school - it was installed after previous riots.

Concern over injured friends leads Leah to take a more active role in the siege than just hiding and waiting for help - the normal behaviour of the kids of the time. But will help come? And does anyone want to help them?

Tense from the very off until the last page I found myself needing to put it down to de-stress a bit but not able to leave it long either. It moves with a pace and leaves you sharing some of the horrors that Leah endures - and some of the tender moments too.

But this book is not about a siege in a school - well not for me anyway. It's about Leah finding herself, testing herself and growing in maturity and it's about conspiracy. Can these kids have really organised this siege themselves? And are they really in control of it?

A really good read if you've got the time and the energy.

Publisher - Hodder Children's
Genre - YA/Adult Thriller

Buy Siege from Amazon

Beyond by Graham McNamee

review by Maryom

Jane has always had a shadowy figure lurking at the back of her mind, encouraging her to do stupid things that have brought her close to death several times. Although dismissed by her parents and doctors as accidents, Jane knows that her 'shadow' is controlling her actions and forcing her to do these things. Now in her teens, Jane has decided that enough is enough; that she will end up dead if she can't free herself from the ghostly presence. With her friend, Lexi, she tries to find out who or what may be haunting her mind but they end up on the trail of a far more substantial serial killer -  and in danger of a very different kind.

Beyond is an excellent gripping supernatural thriller, playing on our fears of what may lie in wait after death, with the added 'bonus' of a real-life killer thrown in as well.  It's wonderfully atmospheric - conjuring up both the shadowy half-world of Jane's mind and the real Canadian Raincoast setting of dark forest cloaked in almost perpetual rain where events are played out.  I complain that a lot of ghost or horror stories miss their mark for me - possibly by trying too hard - but this one hit it.
Although aimed at the teen/YA age group, I'm sure this will appeal to older readers who like a scary read with less gore than some adult horror.

Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Hodder Children's Books
Genre - Teen/YA, horror, supernatural, thriller
 

Buy Beyond from Amazon


Other reviews; The Overflowing Library

The Vampire of Highgate By Asa Bailey

Modern Day Legends
Review by The Mole

Kathy is a college student living with her adopted parents when she starts having dreams of her sister, Amber, and feels a compulsion to go and find the sister she has never known. It's a journey of discovery in which her family try to protect and help her - by hiding from her what she needs to know to protect herself.

The story is built around a modern(ish) legend of vampires at Highgate cemetery and placing Vampires pretty firmly as the bad guys -  where I like to see them. The plot leaves us looking over her shoulder and saying to her... "But that's not right - and you should know!" but we are also left in the dark as to why she doesn't... until almost the last minute that is.

A very enjoyable read that will still, I'm sure, appeal to readers who like their vampires as the good guys although here they are very undoubtedly bad. Kathy is a character that you will grow to love quite quickly perhaps because she is abused by both friends and family although we don't really get to know any other of the characters - which is just as well as, being a vampire book, they disappear at a rate of knots!

The readers who will like this are a well established group but if you do like the vampires bad then you will enjoy it too.

Publisher - Hodder Children's
Genre - Teen Fiction, Vampires

Buy The Vampire of Highgate from Amazon