Free Ebooks - The Sky is Everywhere & Popping the Cherry

The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson is currently free at Kobo and UK Kindle.

and Popping the Cherry by Aurelia B Rowl is also free at Kobo and UK Kindle.

Review: Heartside Bay 1 & 2 by Cathy Cole

The New Girl by Cathy Cole (February 2014, Scholastic, ISBN: 1407140469);
The Trouble With Love by Cathy Cole (February 2014, Scholastic, ISBN: 1407140477)

The New Girl is the first book in the (currently) twelve-book Heartside Bay series. Heartside Bay is a small sea-side town full of romance and fifteen-year-old Lila and her family have moved there from London as Lila has been in trouble and the family want a fresh start.

Staring a new school is daunting but Lila is soon befriended by Polly and catches the eye of football-star Ollie. On the other hand she soon makes an enemy of Eve, the richest and nastiest girl in the school who has always wanted to date Ollie.

The New Girl follows the interactions between the three plus a fourth – Rhi an old friend/ex-friend of Lila's from her past.

In The Trouble With Love, the second book in the series, the point of view changes from Lila to Polly. Polly is a transplanted American who struggles with anxiety issues and has a crush on Ollie. In this book she meets a new boy and her absent father enters her life with an amazing offer. Polly has some decisions to make.

This is a lovely clean-teen series which is a British version of the high school dramas we see on the tv a lot. The books are quick reads and the point of view rotates between the main members of the group. And it's set in an idyllic sea-side town, what's not to like?

Publishing Deal - Veronica Roth

Very exciting news today - HarperCollins have signed two books by Veronica Roth. Scant details so far but here's what the Bookseller knows:

HarperCollins has acquired two new titles by bestselling YA author Veronica Roth.

Katherine Tegen, vice president and publisher of her eponymous imprint at HarperCollins Children’s Books in the US, acquired the world English rights from Joanna Volpe of New Leaf Literary. In the UK, the books will be published by HarperCollins Children’s Books UK.

The first book is yet untitled and will be published in 2017. It tells the story of a boy who forms an unlikely alliance with an enemy, and how they help each other attain what they most desire. The sequel will follow in 2018.

Review: The Selection by Kiera Cass

The Selection by Kiera Cass (June 2012, HarperCollinsChildren'sBooks, ISBN: 0007466692)

The Selection is the first book in the series and is set in a dystopian America now called Illea. Society is now structured into castes with One being the Royal Family and Eight being the lowest worker. America Singer is a Five and is in love with Aspen, a Six.

It is tradition for the princes of the Royal Family to choose a bride via the Selection process – where one girl from each of the 35 provinces is sent to the palace and the numbers decrease until the Prince finds his mate.

At the beginning of the book, the letters have gone out to all young women eligible for the Selection which includes America. She does not want to enter as she is in love with Aspen and wants to marry him despite it being a downgrade in status. He, however, persuades her to enter anyway and when they break-up due to his pride she is grateful for the opportunity to get away when she is chosen for the Selection.

Prince Maxon is the young man looking for a bride and is not as stuffy and as arrogant as America fears and indeed they strike up a friendship. America makes it clear she has no feelings for him however she cannot control his...

As the Selection process progresses America gets to learn more about the state of the country and experiences two Rebel advances on the palace. And when an old acquaintance joins the palace staff, she becomes confused about why she is at the palace and what she should do about her growing feelings for Maxon.

The Selection wasn't what I was expecting – I was worried about it being all catty and nasty with all those girls competing, however there is only one spiteful girl with the rest bonding together – as even the girls who don't get chosen get a permanent increase in caste and other benefits. In fact not a great deal happens in The Selection, it very much sets the scene for the next books, and I hope these contain plot threads about the state of the country and how Illea can be improved, in addition to America's love life. Nonetheless it was an enjoyable read and there is a lot of potential for a more dramatic continuation of the series.

The CILIP Carnegie Medal 2015 longlist

The CILIP Carnegie Medal 2015 longlist was announced this week.

From the press release:

The books longlisted for the 2015 CILIP Carnegie Medal are:

My Brother's Shadow by Tom Avery (Andersen Press)

Us Minus Mum by Heather Butler (Little Brown, Young Readers)

When Mr. Dog Bites by Brian Conaghan (Bloomsbury)

Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan (Bloomsbury)

The Company of Ghosts by Berlie Doherty (Andersen Press)

The Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss (Simon & Schuster Children's Books)

Tinder by Sally Gardner (author) and David Roberts (illustrator) (Orion Children's Books)

Monkey and Me by David Gilman (Templar)

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children's Books)

The Fastest Boy in the World by Elizabeth Laird (Macmillan Children's Books)

Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman (Walker Books)

Scarlet Ibis by Gill Lewis (Oxford University Press)

The Middle of Nowhere by Geraldine McCaughrean (Usborne Books)

Hello Darkness by Anthony McGowan (Walker Books)

More Than This by Patrick Ness (Walker Books)

Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls (Marion Lloyd Books)

Trouble by Non Pratt (Walker Books)

Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff (Penguin Books)

Smart: a Mysterious Crime, a Different Detective by Kim Slater (Macmillan Children's Books)

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith (Electric Monkey)

The shortlist for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2015 will be announced on Tuesday 17th March, with the winner being announced on Monday 22nd June at a special event at the British Library.

Publishing Deal - Jennifer Donnelly

This sounds fab!

From The Bookseller:

Hot Key Books has acquired a new standalone fiction title from Carnegie Medal winning author Jennifer Donnelly in a six-figure pre-empt deal.

Junior editor at Hot Key Books, Naomi Colthurst, struck a deal for UK and Commonwealth rights to These Shallow Graves [] These Shallow Graves is described as “a return to the style of A Gathering Light, with a thrilling plot that is part murder mystery and part historical romance”.

The book centres on Josephine Montfort, a girl from one of New York’s oldest, most respected, and wealthiest families. Jo’s future looks set for marriage she has other dreams and desires that make her long for a more meaningful and exciting life as an investigative journalist like her heroine Nellie Bly. However, when her father is found dead in his study after an alleged accident, her life becomes far more exciting than she would wish.

Colthurst said: “These Shallow Graves is everything a historical novel for young adults should be – Jennifer deftly illustrates an exciting and dangerous time for New York whilst keeping her characters and story wonderfully vivid and completely relatable for a modern audience. Jo is a fantastic heroine who I know will inspire a whole new generation of Jennifer’s readers to be brave and question the status quo, in just the same way Mattie from A Gathering Light inspired me.”

Hot Key will publish These Shallow Graves simultaneously in hardback with Delacorte in the US in October 2015.

Free ebook: The Selection by Kiera Cass

Kiera Cass's The Selection is currently* free on UK Kindle and Kobo.

Thirty-five beautiful girls. Thirty-five beautiful rivals…

It’s the chance of a lifetime and 17-year-old America Singer should feel lucky. She has been chosen for The Selection, a reality TV lottery in which the special few compete for gorgeous Prince Maxon’s love.

Swept up in a world of elaborate gowns, glittering jewels and decadent feasts, America is living a new and glamorous life. And the prince takes a special interest in her, much to the outrage of the others.

Rivalry within The Selection is fierce and not all of the girls are prepared to play by the rules. But what they don’t know is that America has a secret – one which could throw the whole competition… and change her life forever.

*Update 21.1.15: Not free any more.

Two Instances of Prufrock

T S Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", commonly known as "Prufrock" has popped up twice in my reading recently. I hadn't come across it before, having studied no poetry except for Chaucer at school - that I can remember at least.

The first time I noticed it, I didn't realise it was "famous" - and it was on the cover of Ally Condie's Atlantia:

Human Voices Wake Us,

And We Drown

however I'm currently about halfway through The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and lead female character Hazel has been  quoting the whole poem and when she used the lines mentioned above I got googling.

So I've learnt something. Plus I knew Val McDermid had borrowed the title The Mermaids Singing from Eliot but I hadn't realised it was this poem.

The Age of Miracles (Redux)

Karen Thompson Walker's fabulous The Age of Miracles has just been re-released as a Young Adult Edition by Simon & Schuster:

I first read The Age of Miracles when it came out in 2012 and I loved it. It still haunts me and I really look forward to Ms Walker's next book.

The accompanying paperwork to my copy suggests 14+ as a guideline - though the protagonist Julia is around eleven. In my review I felt that the book would appeal to older readers ie adults more than teenagers, so I'm eager to have feedback from younger readers.

I shall be popping a copy on my upcoming 'Crossover Fiction' display at work (library).

My original review is here.

Favourite Read of 2014

My favourite read of 2014, across all the genres I read - crime, SF and YA - and the only one to get a 5 star rating on Good Reads was ... Divergent by Veronica Roth.

I absolutely adored this book and yet it took the film coming out to nudge me to read it. I watched the DVD and didn't want it to end. I immediately read the Free Four knife-throwing scene then hunted out my copy of Divergent the book. Though there are some differences I think the film captured the book very well and the casting was good (more on this in a moment). Of course once I'd finished Divergent I had to immediately read Insurgent and similarly then Allegiant and finally Four.

Tris alone narrates the first two books however Allegiant is split between Tris and Four and unfortunately this didn't work for me at all. The voices were similar and Four becomes a weaker character and this is where Theo James as Four will have a lot of work to do to carry it off. In the Divergent film he (is and) seems older and wiser than Tris and yet the roles become reversed in Allegiant.

For me the series went from 5 (Divergent)  to 4 (Insurgent) to 3 (Allegiant) stars - nonetheless I'm glad to have read it and wonder what Ms Roth will write next.

The Maze Runner Prequel Announced

In today's Booktrade, James Dashner is to write a prequel to The Maze Runner:

Chicken House Publishing Ltd. will publish the fifth novel in James Dashner's #1 New York Times bestselling Maze Runner series, which has sold 7 million copies worldwide, as announced today by publisher Barry Cunningham.

THE FEVER CODE reveals the time directly before The Maze Runner and will tell the story of how Thomas, Teresa and the Gladers found themselves trapped in the Maze and how it was created. Dashner's The Maze Runnner movie will be released in cinemas in the UK on 10th October. It opened last month in the USA at #1 at the box office.

The second movie based on the series, entitled Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, is scheduled to release on 18th September 2015.

'From the very beginning, I've always wanted to write a prequel about Thomas, Teresa, Newt, Minho, Alby and all the Gladers that leads up to the very moment Thomas enters the Box. There are so many things hinted at that will be fun to reveal in depth. For years, fans have made it abundantly and enthusiastically clear that they want the same thing, so now seems like the perfect time to give readers the story of how the Maze began.' JAMES DASHNER

Read the whole article here

News: Egmont USA & 2 Publishing Deals for Hot Key Books

Some more YA news from Friday's Booktrade: Egmont USA is up for sale, and details of two publishing deals by Hot Key Books:

Norse fantasy and dark psychological thrills abound in two exciting debut acquisitions for Hot Key Books: BIRDY by writer Jess Vallance, and THE YELLING STONES by twenty-six-year-old historian Oskar Jensen.

BIRDY is a troubling and deliciously dark thriller about the all-consuming friendship between two teenage girls. Vallance works as a freelance writer and has written articles on everything from business accounting to embalming a body. Hot Key acquired BIRDY in a two book deal.

In a very different genre is Oskar Jensen's Nordic fantasy THE YELLING STONES. Set in the Danish court of Jelling, Astrid, a Viking princess, and Leif, a brave poet, must unravel the mysteries of their ancient land in order to protect it from a dangerous force. Rich in historical detail, THE YELLING STONES echoes Rosemary Sutcliffe's classic storytelling and Rick Riordan's sense of adventure. Jensen's Danish heritage inspired him to write THE YELLING STONES. He has spent the past seven years at Oxford, reading three successive degrees in History, and is now a post-doctoral researcher in the Music Department of King's College London.

Oskar Jensen says: "I wrote The Yelling Stones because of two stones I once saw standing in a Danish graveyard. This is a world of beauty and of poetry, magic and death all mixed together. It's a world that really existed, and it thrills me to the core that I get to share it."

THE YELLING STONES will be published in paperback in April 2015, with BIRDY following in paperback in July 2015.

Read the whole article here.

Publishing Deals - Lauren Blakely and Lyla Payne

Bloomsbury Spark has given publishing deals to Lauren Blakely and Lyla Payne. From today's Booktrade:

Bloomsbury is thrilled to announce the acquisition of two novels and two novellas for the Bloomsbury Spark imprint from bestselling authors Lauren Blakely and Lyla Payne.

Daisy Whitney, writing as Lauren Blakely, will publish two projects with Bloomsbury Spark in 2015: 21 Kisses, a New Adult novel coming in Spring 2015, and an untitled crossover novella with a holiday theme, coming in Autumn 2015. Both books will be part of the new Wrapped Up in Love series that is a spinoff of Lauren Blakely's successful Caught Up in Love series. Her self-published October release, Stars In Their Eyes, kicks off the new series that will continue with Bloomsbury Spark's 21 Kisses.

Whitney has written several critically-acclaimed, award-winning young adult novels, including The Mockingbirds, The Rivals, When You Were Here, Starry Nights, and The Fire Artist. As Lauren Blakely, she has had five New York Times bestsellers and eight USA Today bestsellers. 21 Kisses is the perfect book to unite her young adult and adult readerships, featuring a tantalizing forbidden love and full of intense family drama.

Trisha Leigh, writing as Lyla Payne, will also publish two upcoming projects with Bloomsbury Spark: The Historians, a young adult novel coming in Spring 2015, in which a seventeen-year-old girl travels back in time to document important events to prevent them from being repeated, and Mistletoe and Mr. Right, a Christmas New Adult novella, coming in December 2014.

Leigh is the author of the young adult series The Last Year and The Cavy Files. As Lyla Payne, she is the USA Today bestselling author of New Adult novels, including Broken at Love, By Referral Only, Be My Downfall, Staying on Top, and the Lowcountry Ghost Story series.

New UK Prize for YA Fiction

Exciting news in today's The Bookseller:

The Bookseller is to launch the first ever prize for Young Adult books in the UK and Ireland.

The decision to create the prize was made after The Bookseller reported on the deficit of YA book prizes for British and Irish authors, a matter highlighted by many of the publishers interviewed.

Nigel Roby, publisher and chief executive of The Bookseller Group, said: “From the very first meetings with publishers and retailers it has been crystal clear that the prize is much needed and that The Bookseller is ideally placed to deliver it. We have one simple desire that underpins everything we do: we want more readers reading more books. The YA Book Prize gives us a wonderful opportunity to put that desire into practice.”

Any YA title written by an author living in the UK or Ireland, published between 1st January 2014 and 31st December 2014, is eligible for the prize. It will be judged by a group of teenage readers alongside leading industry experts such as World Book Day director Kirsten Grant, Waterstones children’s books buyer Melissa Cox, and Rosianna Halse Rojas. vlogger and assistant to YA author John Green.

The winning author will receive £2,000.

Submissions are now open, and a shortlist of eight to 10 titles will be announced in early December. The shortlist will reflect the wide breadth of YA literature that is available—from dystopia and fantasy to comedy, drama, horror and real-life stories.

The prize is sponsored by story-sharing start-up Movellas. Its c.e.o. Joe Cohen said he wanted to get involved with the prize because Movellas users were inspired by YA literature as much as they were by other mediums, such as music, TV, YouTube and Tumblr.  

“The Movellas team wanted to help launch the award because of our community’s relationships with teen books,” Cohen said. “If we can help raise the profile of YA authors and their books, we’re playing a small part in helping our community—and all young people—to engage with great writing.”

The winning title will be announced at a ceremony at Foyles’ flagship store on Charing Cross Road in central London, on 19th March 2015.

Full submission details can be found online at www.yabookprize.com.

Publishing Deal - Amy Alward & James Dawson on Diversity Monitoring

In today's Bookseller, news of a publishing deal for Amy Alward (aka Amy McCulloch):

Simon and Schuster Children’s Books has acquired a new title from Amy Alward, author and editorial director at Puffin.

The Potion Diaries is about a girl called Samantha Kemi who dreams of going to university to study potions. She has absolutely no magical talent but her instinct for putting together a potion is second to none. When the city’s princess is accidentally poisoned Samantha sets off on an adventure to find all the ingredients.

Elv Moody, fiction editorial director, and Jane Griffiths, commissioning editor at S&S Children’s UK, acquired the world English rights from Juliet Mushens at The Agency Group in a six figure pre-emptive deal.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything that feels as fresh as this,” said Moody. “With pulse-pounding thrills, a contest to save a princess (who is much more Kate Middleton than Rapunzel) takes place in a whirlwind of paparazzi and social media – with just a touch of perfect romantic chemistry.”

The book, described as "a clean teen title for readers aged 11 plus", will be published in paperback in summer 2015.

Also in The Bookseller, James Dawson speaking about diversity:

YA author James Dawson has called for “diversity monitoring” from children’s publishers.

The author proposed the idea as he delivered the annual Patrick Hardy lecture to the Children’s Book Circle in London last night (17th September). In the speech, Dawson said children’s and YA books should feature characters of different gender, sexualities, faiths, abilities, ethnicities, cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds.

“Children’s books are actually quite diverse but it’s hard to know for sure either way,” he explained to The Bookseller. “It would be a big job to monitor for diversity but it would come down to publishers. It they kept track of diversity they would have actual statistics. They would keep on top of good practice as well.” He added: “There’s always the risk of ticking a box then moving along. We want to track the industry to check that we don’t get a situation where, for example, suddenly it’s been 10 years since they last published a title with a gay character.”

Awards News: Longlist Announced for NBA Young People's Literature 2014

The longlist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature 2014 has been announced:

Laurie Halse Anderson -  The Impossible Knife of Memory (Viking/ Penguin Group (USA))

Gail Giles -  Girls Like Us (Candlewick Press)

Carl Hiaasen -  Skink—No Surrender (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers/ Random House)

Kate Milford - Greenglass House (Clarion Books/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Eliot Schrefer -  Threatened (Scholastic Press)

Steve Sheinkin -  The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights
(Roaring Brook Press/ Macmillan Publishers)

Andrew Smith -  100 Sideways Miles (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers/ Simon & Schuster)

John Corey Whaley -  Noggin (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/ Simon & Schuster)

Deborah Wiles - Revolution: The Sixties Trilogy, Book Two (Scholastic Press)

Jacqueline Woodson -  Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books/ Penguin Group (USA))

The Guardian fleshes out the list.

Review: The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su and Kate Rorick

The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su and Kate Rorick (July 2014, Simon & Schuster Childrens Books, ISBN: 1471123227)

The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, based on the YouTube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is every bit as delightful as the original.

The Bennet family is somewhat smaller that Austen's but there's lots going on with Jane, Lizzie and Lydia.

Due to financial constraints, Mrs Bennet is keen to have her older daughters married off and out of the house – not necessarily in that order – so when the wealthy Bing Lee rents a posh house in Netherfield, Mrs Bennet schemes to get her daughters in front of him. Meanwhile Lizzie is in grad school and as part of her studies she has decided to document her personal life on video, with the help of her best friend Charlotte. As the diaries become popular, Lizzie's younger sister Lydia begins to do her own.

The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet follows the same path as Pride and Prejudice – introducing Darcy, Mr Collins, George Wickham, Catherine de Bourgh and documents the happy times and the pain these characters cause either by mistake or deliberately, all the while set in the modern-day world with Lizzie and Darcy both involved in creating Internet content. The sisters go from living at home and dependent on their family to being able to leave the nest and have successful careers.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet. Despite being based on a classic story it is very modern (including references to pregnancy-scares and sex-tapes) with lots of twists on the original. Being a diary format, it means you'll think “I'll just read one more chapter” and before you know it you've reached the end! I haven't seen the YouTube series (yet) but that didn't affect my enthusiasm for the book.

Publishing Deal - Eugene Lambert

From today's Book Trade, news of SF trilogy from Eugene Lambert, snapped up by Egmont:

Egmont Publishing has acquired a "page-turning sci-fi thriller trilogy" by debut novelist Eugene Lambert.

The first book, THE SIGN OF ONE, will publish in Spring 2016, in paperback on Egmont's Electric Monkey list, with books 2 & 3 following 9-12 months apart.

On Wrath, a dump-world for human outcasts, identical twins are feared. Only one will grow up human, while the other becomes a condemned monster with 'twisted' blood. When sixteen-year-old Kyle realises he's a Twist, he flees for his life with the help of Sky, a rebel glider pilot. To survive, they must confront what Kyle is, then find out who he is.

"This is compulsive YA at its very best – perfect for fans of Suzanne Collins, Michael Grant and Sally Green," commented Stella Paskins, Fiction Publisher, Egmont Publishing.

Read the whole article at Book Trade.

Review: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins (Jan. 2014, Usborne Publishing Ltd, ISBN: 140957993X)

I remember all the praise Anna and the French Kiss received when it was first published – 2010 in the US – and as it now has a UK release I was able to finally read it myself.

I too thoroughly enjoyed it and am pleased that the second and third books, Lola and the Boy Next Door and Isla and the Happily Ever After, in this (what I understand to be) loosely linked trilogy, are also now available in the UK!

Seventeen-year-old Anna Oliphant, from Atlanta, has been sent by her rich, writer, father to finish her education in an American School in Paris. She speaks Spanish but no French and doesn't know a soul. Fortunately she is soon being looked after by her neighbour Mer, who introduces Anna to her friends, including the gorgeous Etienne St Clair, he of the equally gorgeous English accent.

Anna is smitten by St Clair (as everyone calls him) but he has a girlfriend and she has a tentative relationship brewing back at home nonetheless the pair become almost inseparable.. as best friends.

Over the course of the school year, St Clair helps Anna become more independent and she helps him cope with his difficult family situation. But will they end up together or is this mutual friendship enough?

Who can resist a (possible) romance/coming of age story set in Paris? Anna is someone you can relate too as she stumbles her way through the first few weeks, embarrassed by her lack of French language, and I loved her film references/comments – she wants to be a film critic. St Clair is lovely but also a bit frustrating and that is what makes him a bit different from a standard gorgeous boy character, he is cautious and is also not six-foot plus tall, and makes jokes about his lack of height.

I read the ebook version which also includes a deleted scene, and an extract from Lola.

Free E-Novella: Fearless by Brigid Kemmerer

Fearless by Brigid Kemmerer is currently free on UK Kindle and at Kobo.

Hunter Garrity is used to watching his back. The kids at school sense something different about him. And they're right.

Hunter has powers that have nothing to do with how hard he can throw a punch.

Maybe that's what Clare Kasten is picking up. She's shy, quiet, and intense, but she's sought him out. There's no telling what she wants from him.

But Hunter knows enough to sense a secret when it's close. And getting close to Clare is a danger he's ready to face.