Best Teen Reads
Reviewed by Sarah Pollok, Helen van Berkel, David Herkt and Ethan Sills
THE BOOK OF DUST
by Phillip Pullman
(David Fickling Books/penguin, $35)
The venerable courtyards of Oxford University, airships, armoured bears, great floods, occult bureaucracies and a young girl at the mercy of forces and plots she barely comprehends. These have been fingerprint features of Phillip Pullman’s books. His original His Dark Materials trilogy has been a Young Adult publishing mega-success. Now comes The Secret Commonwealth, the second volume of his follow-up trilogy, The Book of Dust. Pullman’s parallel universe, where humans and their animal-shaped daemons live in symbiosis, is changing. Lyra, now 20, and her daemon, Pantalaimon, have grown up — and grown apart. Pullman’s familiar setting of shadowy religious and political powers in conflict continues as a context for a plot of more personal stresses. It is a story that foregrounds the strains of growingup and the edge of adult challenges. Pullman’s characters have matured and developed; past dilemmas have present consequences. A dizzying journey across Europe to a daemon-haunted city, however, promises an answer. (DH)
IMPOSSIBLE CAUSES
by Julie Mayhew (Allen & Unwin, $33)
This is a well-crafted tale of secrets and hidden currents in a close-knit community on the small island of Lark, off the coast of mainland Britain. Julie Mayhew creates a forbidding setting, eerie in the winter cold and mists, and weaves the perspectives of her characters as they experience the same events but interpret them and act on them in different ways. Add witchcraft and religious quackery, tied together with a knot of abusive power, and you have an age-old tale that Mayhew keeps full of suspense until the end. It’s well-written, cleverly plotted and although aimed at young adults, is a meaty enough read for more mature readers as well. (HVB)
THE HAVEN
by Simon Lelic (Hachette, $20)
It’s London but not as you know it. The government has turned its back on society and adults are too busy looking after themselves to care for youth. So when Ollie Turner’s guardian is violently attacked right before him, the orphan takes refuge deep in the sewers under the city. It’s here he stumbles upon a secret headquarters who may just offer him the belonging and safety he needs. Run for kids by kids, the Haven protects youth, champions justice and accepts Ollie into its mysterious ranks. But nothing comes without a cost. Fans of rapid-pace novels packed with adventure, thrills, twists and turns will love Lelic’s first foray into Young Adult fiction after success in the adult thriller genre. (SP)
WATCH US RISE
by Renee Watson & Ellen Hagan (Bloomsbury, $18) What does it mean to be a young woman today? This is the question that sets up Renee Watson and Ellen Hagan’s fresh and challenging novel. Watch Us Rise may not be fully innocent of avoiding the Young-adult tropes and stereotypes it critiques, but the fierce and timely novel presents younger readers with issues even adults wrestle with. A great choice for young readers who devoured novels like Moxie and The Hate U Give and are looking for their next summer read. (SP)
TOFFEE
by Sarah Crossan (Bloomsbury, $17)
A broken family, a woman with dementia and a girl without a home. What sounds like the opposite of an uplifting story is one of profound courage, heart and forgiveness in Sarah Crossan’s latest novel. While the extent of family dysfunction may be foreign for some, Allison’s struggle between loving and loathing family and discovery of who she is without them is something all will recognise. (SP)
THE STARLESS SEA
by Erin Morgenstern (Harvill Secker, $38)
It’s been eight years since Erin Morgenstern released The Night Circus, which became the sort of global hit you’d expect the author to repeat with a string of follow-ups riding on its success. Instead, Morgenstern has been carefully crafting her even grander, more eloquent and imaginative follow-up, The Starless Sea. It begins with college-student Zachary Rawlins stumbling across an improperly labelled book in the campus library and explodes into a sprawling tale of hidden societies, magical libraries and intricately connected fables. It’s the type of story where every sentence is a clue to the wider mystery, where every answer asks a dozen more questions, and the author’s imagination knows no bounds. The importance of stories has been a recurring theme this decade but few have captured the true essence of that idea the way Morgenstern does here. (ES)
CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT
by Brigid Kemmerer (Bloomsbury, $19)
Is it okay to do something wrong for the right reasons? Should we judge others on one mistake or their full selves? Readers are left to ponder these questions, along with several other mysteries, in Brigid Kemmerer’s teen novel. A classic bread-and-butter teen fiction built around the tumultuous task of figuring out who you are and who you want to be, Kemmerer’s novel will ring true for any new high-schoolers facing the same questions. (SP)
THE GUNNERS
by Rebecca Kauffman (Profile Books, $33)
This may be a story of high-school friends, but don’t expect a regular tale of note-passing and locker-room gossip. Meet Alice, Jimmy, Lynn, Sam and Mike, a group of ragtag high schoolers who were inseparable, until the day of graduation. Years later they reunite, but the event is hardly celebratory. Rebecca Kauffman’s blunt-yet-beautiful prose carries the complex story along at a good pace, giving readers a brilliant introduction into the murky world of drama novels, where a happy ending isn’t guaranteed. (SP)