YOUNG ADULT
BECK by Mal Peet with Meg Rosoff (Walker Books £12.99)
When awardwinning author Mal Peet died last year, he left behind an unfinished novel he had discussed with his friend and fellow writer Meg Rosoff, who bravely agreed to complete it. This extraordinary book is a tribute to their different but complementary talents.
Beck is the mixed-race son of an impoverished, Liverpudlian mother and a black, U.S. sailor who is left in the care of nuns when his mother dies.
Sent from Liverpool in 1922 to a Christian Brotherhood home in Canada, he is violently (and graphically) sexually abused before being sent to work as a virtual slave on a farm from which he escapes to live on the road.
he falls in with bootleggers, mobsters, thieves and bigots before finally finding a spiritual and emotional connection with a most unlikely woman. It’s a raw, challenging, coming-of-age story where the instinct to survive almost trumps the power of love.
Peet’s wit seeps through the darkness and though Rosoff’s almost invisible hand is skilful, it reminds us of what a wonderful writer we have lost. Age 16+
THE CALL by Peadar O’Guilin (David Fickling Books £10.99)
On heR tenth birthday, nessa’s childhood comes to an abrupt end. her native Ireland is ravaged by an ancient war in which mythological fairies, Sidhe, driven ‘under the mounds’ thousands of years ago are ‘kidnapping’ human teenagers.
If the children can survive 24 hours (three minutes in the real world) being hunted in the hellish Sidhe underworld, they can return to their lives, though the few that make it back are often horribly mutilated and changed.
nessa attends a special training school where, super-fit and battle-hardened, the students await The Call. But her legs are handicapped and she finds that enemies among her classmates can be just as dangerous as the fantasy figures.
It’s a wildly imaginative scenario and the fiercely fought battle scenes and sudden, violent deaths will appeal to hunger Games fans, who’ll eagerly await an undoubted sequel to this impressive debut. Age 14+
CUCKOO by Keren David (Atom £6.99)
KeRen DavID sets her camp firmly in the internet culture as she explores what it means to live out your life in a public arena. Jake Benn was 12 years old when he started acting in the country’s most popular television soap opera, Market Square, but as soon as he hit 16, his character was sent upstairs to his bedroom and never reappeared.
Jake’s depressed, unemployed father has spent all of Jake’s money and now a catastrophic incident has resulted in the soap being cancelled.
Jake decides to tell his side of the story by re-enacting the last six months in a daily internet broadcast, using his friends and family — including his autistic brother — to show how his life has careered out of control, leaving him homeless and displaced: a cuckoo in the nest.
The pace is suitably fast, with online comments from fascinated viewers.
Though only Jake’s character emerges in any real depth, this is a clever use of a social media that teenagers will be comfortably familiar with. Age 14+