Young Adult

Divergent by Veronica Roth

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Some of my favourite stories are ones that are set in our world, but in the near future.  Divergent by Veronica Roth is one of those stories.  It is set in a society where everyone is separated into 5 different factions or groups; Erudite the Intelligent, Dauntless the Brave, Amity the Peaceful, Candor the Honest, and Abnegation the Selfless.  The main character, Beatrice, belongs to Abnegation, the faction that focus on others rather than themselves.  When you get to a certain age, you have to take a test to find out which faction is the best one for you to spend the rest of your life in.  You have the choice of staying in the faction you were born into or changing to your best-suited faction.  Beatrice’s results in her test means that she could choose from three different factions.

She chooses Dauntless, the faction of the daring and fearless, leaving behind her family and a faction that she can’t return to.  To become Dauntless, Beatrice (Tris, as she now calls herself) must pass the 3 stages of initiation.  She makes friends and enemies throughout the initiation, including Peter who will do anything to be the top initiate.   As she goes through the stages of initiation, it becomes clear that Tris is able to manipulate the simulations within the challenges and cope better than anyone else.  She discovers that she is Divergent, but what does that mean and why is it dangerous for anyone to find out that she is?

Divergent is full of suspense and I was on the edge of my seat right to the end.  Tris is an incredibly strong character who gets put through some tough challenges.  As I was reading Divergent I was thinking that I wouldn’t be strong enough to make it through the Dauntless initiation.  Veronica Roth has created a society that, at first, seems like it is perfect, but you see cracks slowly start to appear.  If you like stories like Hunger Games, you’ll love Divergent.  Recommended for 12+      10 out of 10

Plague by Michael Grant

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The Gone Series by Michael Grant is one of the coolest series ever written. It’s just a normal day in Perdido Beach when all the adults (anyone over the age of 14) suddenly disappears and the town is surrounded by an impenetrable wall. You would think that life would be great without adults; you can do whatever you want, when you want to, and eat whatever you like. But when you’ve cut off from the rest of civilization, with a small supply of food and water, life starts to get worse. If that isn’t bad enough, some of the kids in Perdido Beach start developing super powers, including levitation, invisibility, healing, and super-speed. Two groups of kids form; Sam leading the kids from Perdido Beach and Caine leading the kids of Coates Academy. Their new home comes to be called The FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone) and as time passes they have to deal with kids who suddenly disappear on their 15th birthday (Gone), a shrinking food supply (Hunger), the manipulation of The Darkness (Lies), and in the latest book, a terrible Plague.

In Plague the darkness has been foiled once again and the resurrected Drake has been contained. But the streets of Perdido Beach are far from safe, with a growing army of mutants fighting against the humans for power in the town. In a small room of a house near the edge of town, Little Pete lies ill on a bed. In his fevered dreams, he continues his battle with the hidden evil that seeks to use his power to bring about anarchy and destruction. The situation in the FAYZ is the worst it’s been but can Sam actually save them all this time?

Plague is a really intense book with some parts that will leave you cringing. I still can’t believe that the characters survived through their challenges. One thing that stands out about this book in the series is that there is some sense of hope, which made me want to read the next book right away (I can’t say any more otherwise I’ll ruin the surprise). I’m amazed at how Michael Grant keeps track of all his characters and how he comes up with new ways to test them in each book. I’ll eagerly await the next in the series, Fear, to see what he has in store for Sam and the kids of the FAYZ. The series is in the Young Adult section so they’re recommended for good readers aged 12 and up.    9 out of 10

Teen vs. society – rise of dystopian fiction

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My first couple of reads for the year have been dystopian novels and this looks to be a growing trend in Young Adult fiction. Personally I love dystopian novels.  I love the imaginations of these authors who build a society that could easily exist in the not-too-distant future.  They take a small piece of today’s society, such as social networking or consumerism, and ask ‘what if this got totally out of control?’

CoverIn Rae Mariz’ debut novel The Unidentified, 15 year-old Katey (AKA Kid) goes to school in the Game, an alternative education system run by corporations.  These ‘Games’ have been set up in disused shopping malls, so where there used to be shops, there are different spaces that students can go to try new products and participate in activities to increase their ‘score.’

The students vie with each other to be noticed and sponsored (or ‘branded’) by the corporations, thereby giving them celebrity status and financial freedom.  Students each have iPad-like devices that they use to update their profile pages and live streams. When Kid witnesses a mock suicide staged by an anonymous group called the Unidentified, she begins to doubt the system. The story will strike a chord with teens and they’ll be able to really relate to Kid and the suffocating world she lives in.

If you’re a fan of  YA dystopian fiction there are plenty of titles to choose from.  Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy is the most obvious choice (and the most popular) but here are a few others I recommend:

  • The Maze Runner and the sequel, The Scorch Trials by James Dashner
  • The Ship Builder by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Matched by Ally Condie
  • Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

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Across the Universe is the absolutely amazing debut  Young Adult novel by Beth Revis and I can already tell that it is going to be one of my favourite books of the year.

The story starts with Amy who, along with her parents, is being prepared to be cryogenically frozen for the next 300 years as they travel to a new planet.  Her parents and the other adults on the ship all have special skills that will help to colonise this new planet, while Amy is a nonessential, just there because of her parents.    There are also others on board the ship, Godspeed, who are not frozen but keeping the ship moving on it’s course.  Elder is one of these people.  He is the youngest person on the ship and the one chosen to lead the next generation.  When Amy is violently woken 50 years before they are due to arrive on the new planet, she creates tension in Elder’s carefully ordered society.  On a ship in the middle of space where everyone has the same skin and hair colour, similar features, and never questions the rules, Amy is not welcomed.Amy’s questions and Elder’s own discoveries lead them to uncover the lies that Eldest has been telling them all about the ship and their quest for Centauri-Earth.

Beth Revis leads you on a rollercoaster ride, with lots of unexpected twists and turns.  Across the Universe has something for just about every reader – a dystopian society, science fiction, mystery, murder, and a touch of romance.  It’s the first book in a new trilogy and I really can’t wait to read more.  Get your hands on one of the hottest YA novels of 2011!

You can also check out Beth’s website and read her very entertaining blog.

My Top Ten YA Books of 2010

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There have been so many great Young Adult books published this year.  I don’t tend to read paranormal romance (which is a good % of the market), but here are my top reads of 2010.

  1. Prince of Mist – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  2. The Cardturner – Louis Sachar
  3. The Emerald Casket – Richard Newsome
  4. Monsters of Men – Patrick Ness
  5. Trash – Andy Mulligan
  6. This is Shyness – Leanne Hall
  7. The Project – Brian Falkner
  8. The Scorch Trials – James Dashner
  9. iBoy – Kevin Brooks
  10. Fierce September – Fleur Beale

Across the Universe – hottest YA of 2011

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Across the Universe by Beth Revis is going to be one of the hottest YA novels of 2011.  I absolutely loved it and will be posting my review as soon as the book is published in NZ on 4 January.  If you’re anticipating its release or want to know more about it, check out this fantastic book trailer:

It has something for everyone – a dystopian society, science fiction, mystery, murder and a touch of romance.

Check out Beth Revis’s website for more info.

Spend your holidays with Dash and Lily

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Imagine this:

You’re in your favourite bookshop, scanning the shelves.  You get to the section where your favourite author’s books reside, and there, nestled in comfortably between the incredibly familiar spines, sits a red notebook.
What do you do?
The choice, I think, is obvious:
You take down the red notebook and open it.
And then you do whatever it tells you to do.

From these opening sentences of Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares I was hooked.  Set in New York in the days leading up to Christmas, and a few days after, the story alternates between the characters of Dash (written by David Levithan) and Lily (written by Rachel Cohn).  Lily is the girl who left the notebook in the bookshop for just the right guy to come along and accept the challenges found inside.  Dash accepts the first challenge and leaves the notebook for Lily to collect.  The notebook continues to be passed back and forth between them, with the help (and sometimes hindrance) of their friends and family members.   They decide to meet each other, but will the boy and the girl in the notebook measure up to the boy and the girl in reality?

I loved everything about Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares.  Dash and Lily are great characters with lots of personality, and  their family and friends that help them complete their dares are hilarious.  The authors have created a real sense of time and place and I really wanted to be there with Dash and Lily, celebrating Christmas in New York.  It’s the perfect book for this time of the year, whether you love Christmas (like Lily) or loath it (like Dash).