Review: The Last Chance Hotel by Nicki Thornton

I recently posted my review of THE LAST CHANCE HOTEL by Nicki Thornton on my library's Facebook page:

THE LAST CHANCE HOTEL is the first book in the Seth Seppi series. We meet Seth, who is to all intents and purposes an orphan, working as a kitchen boy/general dogsbody to the Bunn family who run the Hotel. He is bullied mercilessly by their awful daughter Tiffany who is supposedly training to be a chef.

There is a grand event being held at the Hotel and Tiffany tricks Seth into making a dessert which is unsuitable for the main guest so Seth quickly rustles up an alternative and labels it for the main guest’s consumption only.

So when the main guest dies of apparent poisoning after sampling their special dessert, Seth is immediately the main and only suspect.

It is then Seth discovers that his cat, Nightshade, can talk and that magic is real. The main thing going for him is that the main detective doesn’t seem to think that Seth did it. Can Seth clear his name? And what else doesn’t he know about his home and its residents?

With its short chapters this is a quick read, and combines a locked-room-style mystery with Harry Potter-style magic. As well as a death there are a few punch-up scenes during the thrilling finale which might steer this to a slightly older children’s audience eg 9+ years.

THE LAST CHANCE HOTEL won the Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition in 2016.

Review: Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult & Samantha van Leer

Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer (July 2012, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN: 1444740962)

Review: Between the Lines is a joint production by best-seller author Jodi Picoult and her daughter Samantha van Leer. It's a fairytale about a fairytale.

Fifteen-year-old Delilah has an unhappy school-life after accidentally hurting the most popular cheerleader. She has one best friend and lives with her mum after their dad left them to have a second wife and family. She is obsessed with the fairytale book Between the Lines which she found in the school library, and relates to the handsome prince, Oliver, as he also has no father. What she doesn't know, at first, is that the characters in the book lead their own lives when not being read and Oliver wants out of the story and into Delilah's world. Up until now no-one has been able to hear Oliver's pleas until Delilah notices that a drawing has changed in the book. And then Oliver is able to communicate with her. They then spend all available time trying to work out how Oliver can join Delilah.

The story alternates between the point of view of Oliver, Delilah and excerpts from the fairytale which Oliver is enacting over and over again.

The first thing to mention is how gorgeous the book is. It has a pretty cover of course but it also has thick paper and beautiful full-page colour illustrations at the beginning of the excerpts and smaller black illustrations throughout the text. The only thing missing is a built in silk-bookmark.

I enjoyed Between the Lines. It's probably aimed at the younger end of the teenage age-rage and is charming and I enjoyed the humour in it. I found the pace flagged temporarily about half-way as one attempt after another failed to extract Oliver and I began to muse on some of what I thought were inconsistencies in his knowledge, but that's probably just me. I loved the fairytale that Oliver was in which has some unusual elements and the fact that the characters had completely different personalities when they weren't “on-stage”. This was a good story idea and I look forward to more YA books from the authors either singularly or jointly.