Alex in Wonderland by Simon James Green

2019

Alex is gay and never been kissed.  He lives with his dad and his dad’s new girlfriend, Kendra, a property developer with exacting domestic standards.  

After a freaky accident, Alex manages to secure a job at the run-down amusement arcade, Wonderland. But the establishment is in trouble; owner Maggie keeps getting final demands for unpaid bills and the bailiffs actually turn up in one scene. There also seems to be some sabotage going on; Maggie also keeps getting threatening letters.

Who is behind it all? A rival from the pier? A local property developer? Could it even be Kendra? Is it an insider? Just as Alex is beginning to get on really well with his new found friends and even embarking on a relationship with Ben, he comes under suspicion as being the insider.  Kendra, though, gives him the proof that he isn’t involved and he manages to persuade his friends that he is innocent.

Alex and his friends try to help Maggie.  They work on relaunching the arcade. However, with the press present at the reopening a fire alarm goes off and the place burns to the ground. They also discover that the doors are locked in the mirror maze and they have to rescue people from inside.

Maggie had been behind with her insurance payments.  However, the council agree to buy the land; she is able to pay off all of her debts and move to Ibiza.  Alex and Ben are back on. Kendra and his dad take a break. Life looks promising again.     

We never do find out, however, who was behind the sabotage.        

There is a lot of humour in the book. The paperback is 387 pages.  

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Igloo by Jennifer Burkinshaw

2022

Nirvana – Niv to friends and family - does not enjoy skiing. Her two mums and her step-brother do. She sneaks away from the pistes and stumbles across an igloo that Jean-Louis has built.  She and Jean Louis become friends and then lovers. She has to initially keep him secret from her family.

Niv is at odds with her two mums.  She wants to join an apprentice scheme and work with wood. She has been forbidden from attending a wood-work group whilst she gets ready for GCSEs.  She wants to work with the wood saved from the oak tree, nick-named Quirky, which had to be felled. Jean-Louis shows her his grandparents’ house where there is a shepherd’s table. She decides to replicate this as a miner’s table for her grandfather’s new cottage.

Jean-Louis has problems too.  His mother has constantly rejected him.   She is not a nice person – she smokes in the restaurant, she fails to stop the ski-lift when Niv almost has an accident and she makes sure that Jean-Louis’ igloo is flattened.

Niv and Jean-Louis rebuild the igloo.

A crisis point comes for both young people at the same time. Niv’s mock GCSEs are a disaster.  Jean- Louis’ mother finally leaves.

Niv steals money and credit card details from her mother and dashes back to see Jean-Louis. Mum comes after her. Niv manages to make her mum understand about what she wants in life and about Jean-Louis.

The final scene is where Niv has finished the table for her grandfather and they are having a celebration in the garage. The doorbell rings; it is Jean-Louis. Niv’s mum has sent for him. We can’t know at this point whether their relationship will last or whether Niv will succeed with her work plans but it looks very optimistic.

The novel is 294 pages long in the paperback edition.            

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Upper World by Fadugba Femi

 

20212, YA, Key Stage 4, ages 14-17, maths, physics, philosophy, Socrates, free will and determinism,Fadugba Femi

Esso lives in outer London.  Life is difficult. There is gang warfare and he is caught up the middle of it  a chance accident enables him to  access the Upper World.  A note book he finds in which his father has written has notes from his father, about the Upper World.  Girlfriend  Nadia also glimpsed the Upper World and it literally drives her mad.

Fifteen years further into the future we meet Rhia, whom Esso tutors. He is here under false         pretences.  He is trying to connect with Rhia; she is Nadia’s daughter.

Both characters have a harsh background.  Tier connection with the Upper World bring some hop    

Noor’s story is partly true.  The other characters are fictional.

The story is 388 pages. There is booked text.  The font is a standard serif adult one, though it has difficult ‘a’s but simple ‘g’s.

Ay   the back of the books there are appendices which give extra information about the maths and scincne. There is also a,  little information about the author.   

    

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Never Forget You by Jamila Gavin

  

2022

Dodo, Gwen, Noor and Vera meet at boarding school.  Just before the outbreak of World War II.   Dodo’s parents live in Germany and are Nazi sympathisers. Gwen acts as narrator and is at school because her parents live in India. Noor is from India, daughter to a Sufi philosopher and sees fairies.  Vera is Jewish.  Her parents and younger brother have been seized by the Nazis. She lives with her aunt and uncle in Paris.    

Noor’s story is partly true.  The other characters are fictional.

Dodo dies when she becomes involved in the rescue form Dunkirk. She has been working as a spy, looking into the work of Nazi sympathisers.

Gwen tells us very little about her work but it is top secret and involves maps.      

Noor becomes a member of SOE – Special Operations Executive. She works with the Resistance in France but is captured and executed.

Vera works for the Resistance in Paris and is very involved in forging documents in order to allow Jews to escape the Nazis.

There is some romance for all four girls and an upbeat ending for Gwen and Vera.   

This is a very long read – 500 pages of blocked text. There is a short note at the end about Noor Inayat Khan      

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Wicked Little Deeds by Kat Ellis

 

2021 

Dead-eyed Sadie is said to appear just before a member of the Thorn family is about to die. This seems indeed to happen as people around Ava Thorn die or are murdered.  She becomes a suspect in a murder case and in turn she and her unlikely ally, Dominic Miller, suspect one of their teachers.

The Millers and the Thorns have been enemies for some time.  Dominic and Ava find out out that his may go back to the time of Sadie Burnett Miller who was left to die by the Thorn family. Her eyes were gouged out.  Despite Dominic’s sister Freya and Ava’s best friend Ford being two of the people who die, Ava and Dominic become close.

Ava’s parents were killed in a car accident and Ava blames Dominic’s father, whose car slammed into theirs on an icy evening as they drove home. Ava’s Uncle Ty and his wife Caroline have to sell the manor, the Thorn family home, before the bank forecloses and Ava is astounded that they sell it to the Millers. Freya and Ava clash particularly; they are both promising art students and compete for the summer school art scholarship. Ava still endures nightmares and more recently has also had  hallucinations. She puts this down to the trauma of losing her parents and of being the one who found Freya’s body.  

The truth is horrible.  Caroline is a fortune-seeker. Uncle Ty resented Ava’s father as her grandfather had left Ty none of his fortune.  Much of the proceeds of the sale of the manor has been put into a trust fund for Ava. But Caroline and Ty plot to kill her and frame her for Freya and Ford’s deaths. Caroline has systematically been adding a drug to Ava’s drinks. She and Ty were also instrumental in her parents’ death and the arrival of Mr Miller was just a lucky (unlucky?)  coincidence.

Ava and Dominic almost get trapped in the manor which is burnt to the ground.      

There are also strong bildungsroman elements in this.  Ava grows: she loses her family home and the value she attached to it, she overcomes the enmity between the two families and she finds out that her beloved uncle Ty and her close friend Ford were not quite what they seemed.   

This is a fast-paced novel and keeps readers engaged right to the end. Yet there is also plenty of solid character development.

This is a long book – 385 pages of blocked text in a serif font. 

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Hide and Seek by Robin Scott-Elliot

 2021

Amélie’s parents and older brother are taken by the Gestapo form their Paris apartment as she hides in the wardrobe with her mother’s fur coat.  She survives for a while by eating all the food that is left in the apartment.  She spends her days in the museum.  She has removed her Star of David from her coat but Cécile who works there realises this. Cécile takes Amélie in.  Cécile works for the Resistance and soon Amélie is doing the same.  However, there is a traitor in the network.  Amélie and Cécile wrongly accuse Alain. It is in fact Raymond, whom Amélie pushes form a train when she realises this.  Amélie lies about her age and is eventually recruited for the SOE (Special Operations Executive) after she has accompanied a British airman back to England. There she goes first to a boarding school and then to a government establishment where she is trained for SOE.  That she is a native speaker of French is very useful. This enables her to return to Paris where she also becomes involved in rescuing Jewish children.  Some are hidden amongst families in Paris and the others are smuggled into Switzerland. One little boy, Lou, doesn’t make it through the fence and returns to Paris with Amélie where they both wait for the end of the war and for their older brothers to return. The final scene is of Amélie meeting her brother Paulie at the station. We do not learn whether her parents or Lou’s brother return.    

This is a fiction but some real characters are mentioned in the text.  An afterword by Robin  Scott-Elliot explains this.         

The book is 325 pages long in blocked text which uses an adult font. 

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