Silence is Goldfish by Annabel Pitcher

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 384

Publisher: Orion's Children's Books

Released: 1st of October 2015

My name is Tess Turner - at least, that's what I've always been told.

I have a voice but it isn't mine. It used to say things so I'd fit in, to please my parents, to please my teachers. It used to tell the universe I was something I wasn't. It lied.

It never occurred to me that everyone else was lying too. But the words that really hurt weren't the lies: it was six hundred and seventeen words of truth that turned my world upside down.

Words scare me, the lies and the truth, so I decided to stop using them.

I am Pluto. Silent. Inaccessible. Billions of miles away from everything I thought I knew.

What I Have To Say 

This is a beautifully told story about identity and how important it is to children and teenagers. Tess was a wonderful character who desperately wanted to find out who she was after having been lied to by her parents for years. She's a character who's identity has always been tied up in what other people want from her, partly due to her controlling father, so it was really interesting to see how she changes due to what she's found out. 

I was rooting for Tess a lot. It's not often that I find a character in a book that I really get behind and want to succeed. I don't know what it was about Tess, whether it was her situation or how hurt she got by everything that happened, but there was just something about her character that made me really want her to succeed. 

Annabel Pitcher is such an amazing author. I fell in love with her writing when I first read My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece and I've definitely fallen in love again with Silence is Goldfish. 

Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 400

Publisher: Indigo

Released: TBA

The year is 1956, and the Axis powers of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan rule the world. To commemorate their Great Victory over Britain and Russia, Hitler and Emperor Hirohito host the Axis Tour: an annual motorcycle race across their conjoined continents. The victor is awarded an audience with the highly reclusive Adolf Hitler at the Victor's ball.

Yael, who escaped from a death camp, has one goal: Win the race and kill Hitler. A survivor of painful human experimentation, Yael has the power to skinshift and must complete her mission by impersonating last year's only female victor, Adele Wolfe. This deception becomes more difficult when Felix, Adele twin's brother, and Luka, her former love interest, enter the race and watch Yael's every move. But as Yael begins to get closer to the other competitors, can she bring herself to be as ruthless as she needs to be to avoid discovery and complete her mission?

What I Have to Say

A Shape-shifting heroine taking part in an intense bike race across several continents to assassinate Hitler?  What's not to like! Although it wasn't as good as the Walled City, which isn't surprising considering how much I loved the Walled City, I still really enjoyed Wolf by Wolf. 

Yael was a really interesting character, I loved the way her shifting affects her sense of identity especially as she can't remember her original way she looked. 

I'm surprised that the idea of super-powers developing from experimentation in Jewish concentration camps hasn't been used much before. It seems like an idea that is right there for people to use. It makes me happy that is right there for people to use. It makes me happy that it's been done so well. 

Ghosts of Shanghai by Julian Sedgwick

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 360

Publisher: Hodder Children's Books

Released: 2nd of July 2015

Obsessed with martial arts and ghost stories, Ruby is part of a gang of Chinese and ex-pat children who hide out in ruined White Cloud Temple. 

But the world of Shanghai in the late 1920s is driven with danger: disease, crime, espionage and revolution are sweeping the streets. And since the death of her younger brother Thomas, Ruby is stalked by another anxiety and fear. Faced with a series of local hauntings, and armed with a lucky bookshop find - The Almanac of Distant Realms - Ruby forms the Shanghai Ghost Club to hunt down restless spirits.

 When best friend Faye is kidnapped by the Green Hand, Ruby must trust a mysterious stranger - and face her worst fears - in order to save her friends, and her own life. And in the ensuing fight she will catch a glimpse of the one spirit she has longed to see

 ...The secrets that Ruby's father and friends have kept from her are coming back to haunt them all

What I Have to Say 

This book has so many different threads to the story. It has the wonderful group of ghost hunting children that makes the basic idea of the book, but it's quickly overturned by the start of Communism in China. Ruby and her friends have to face the disturbances in their city and it shows how hard it was during this time, not only for Faye, a Chinese girl, but Ruby, a foreigner trying to save her. 

There's also the fact of Ruby's brother, who has been killed previously to the start of the book. Ruby is facing trauma, guilt and sadness over her brother's death. This all gives her one more thing to cope with and another layer to the story. 

This is a middle grade ghost story, but shows so many more human threats that the group face, that to be honest, the ghosts are a little lost in the story. Though I liked this, others may not. Personally I loved looking at 1920s China through a young girls eyes. 

Crow Mountain by Lucy Inglis

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 368

Publisher: Chicken House

Released: 3rd of September 2015

While on holiday in Montana, Hope meets local boy Cal Crow, a ranch hand. Caught in a freak accident, the two of them take shelter in a mountain cabin where Hope makes a strange discovery. More than a hundred years earlier, another English girl met a similar fate. Her rescuer: a horse-trader called Nate. 

In this wild place, both girls learn what it means to survive and to fall in love, neither knowing that their fates are intimately entwined.

What I Have to Say 

I loved this story. There’s something about the American West which makes everything feel more exciting, not just in frontier times, but with modern day ranches and wild horses. This book had both. The interlocking stories were woven together so nicely, the modern day parts and the frontier parts paralleling well, both telling similar stories.

Even though I loved both stories, it’s the frontier story-line that sticks in my mind the most. I loved Emily’s relationship with Nate. I don’t normally like guys being cruel to women that way, but he was so arrogant and cocky and as he points out, he was only refusing to take her back to the town, not keeping her prisoner. I don’t know, it’s still probably not a good way to start a relationship in real life but the way that Emily was being such a sheep following a path that was set out for her and the way she develops whilst living in the cabin just makes it work for me.

I loved the horses and the Native American characters as well. Especially as the Native American culture is such an interesting one. Also Rose; there was no way I wasn’t going to love Rose and the way she was accepted by the tribe despite acting like a man. It’s such a contrast to Emily’s tight, corsetted life with her family.

I want everyone to read and love this book as much as I did.

Demon Road by Derek Landy

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 512

Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books

Released: 28th of August 2015

Killer cars, vampires, undead serial killers: they’re all here. And the demons? Well, that’s where Amber comes in...Sixteen years old, smart and spirited, she’s just a normal American teenager until the lies are torn away and the demons reveal themselves.

Forced to go on the run, she hurtles from one threat to another, revealing a tapestry of terror woven into the very fabric of her life. Her only chance rests with her fellow travellers, who are not at all what they appear to be…

What I Have to Say 

 I only started reading Derek Landy's books recently (so late, I know). Not only are  his inventiveness and humour the things that make him the amazing author that he is, they are also the thing that I think I like most about him.

Demon Road is a really good book to highlight the amount of creativity that he puts into his work. 

The style of this book is much more serious than that of Skullduggery Pleasant. Although both possess serious plots and stories (at times), Skullduggery Pleasant is written in a more lighthearted style whereas this one on the most part is on the serious side, whilst still managing  to maintain it's humorous moments.

I did feel however, that there were moments when the humour was written more in the style of Skullduggery Pleasant than Demon Road. It wasn't a big deal, but it jolted me out of the book a little. At other times the humour blended perfectly, so I'm certain that Landy will get used to the style by the next book. 

I think my favourite thing about this book was how much of a teenager Amber was. Even though she had to be very grown up and brave running from her parents, she still had times when she dug her heels in and showed the ultimate stubbornness that only teenagers possess.

Few books show teenagers as they really are and when they do, it's very easy for them to come across as annoying but this was perfect. 

I really like this series and can't wait for the next book. 

Trouble is a Friend of Mine by Stephanie Tromly

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 314

Publisher: Hot Key Books

Released: 6th of August 2015

After her parents get divorced, high school junior Zoe Webster moves with her mother from Brooklyn to upstate New York, determined to get back to the city and transfer to the elite private school her father insists on. But then she meets Philip Digby--the odd and brilliant and somehow attractive?--Digby, and soon finds herself in a series of hilarious and dangerous situations all centered on his search for the kidnapper of a local teenage girl who may know something about the tragic disappearance of his kid sister eight years ago. Before she knows it, Zoe has vandalized an office complex with fake snow, pretended to buy drugs alongside a handsome football star dressed like the Hulk, had a serious throw down with a possible religious cult, challenged her controlling father, and, oh yeah, saved her new hometown.

What I Have To Say 

If you want a really fun read with hi-jinks, crime and friendship then this is definitely the one you should choose. Digby was an excellent character. I loved the way he disregarded all of Zoe's protests that she didn't want any part of his schemes because he knew she would always come along anyway. 

I loved the way Stephanie Tromly wrote, setting up all the threads of the story from the cult across the road to Digby's missing sister to Zoe's plan to transfer to a private school. There was a lot going on in this book and it all worked really well together. I loved how easily the friendships formed between Zoe and Digby and Henry. Though the way that they became friends was unusual, it felt easy and natural that they did. 

Even the serious threads of missing persons and drug dealing running through the story, the lightness and levity that the author has managed to create in the story makes it a really fun and enjoyable book to read. 

Night On Fire by Ronald Kidd

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 288

Publisher:  Albert Whitman & Company 

Released: 1st of September 2015

Thirteen-year-old Billie Simms doesn't think her hometown of Anniston, Alabama, should be segregated, but few of the town's residents share her opinion. As equality spreads across the country and the Civil Rights Movement gathers momentum, Billie can't help but feel stuck--and helpless--in a stubborn town too set in its ways to realize that the world is passing it by. 

So when Billie learns that the Freedom Riders, a group of peace activists riding interstate buses to protest segregation, will be traveling through Anniston on their way to Montgomery, she thinks that maybe change is finally coming and her quiet little town will shed itself of its antiquated views. But what starts as a series of angry grumbles soon turns to brutality as Anniston residents show just how deep their racism runs. 

The Freedom Riders will resume their ride to Montgomery, and Billie is now faced with a choice: stand idly by in silence or take a stand for what she believes in. Through her own decisions and actions and a few unlikely friendships, Billie is about to come to grips with the deep-seated prejudice of those she once thought she knew, and with her own inherent racism that she didn't even know she had.

What I Have to Say 

This is the sort of book that really makes you think. It's a very interesting insight in the lives of the children during such turbulent historical events. It was obviously very well researched and thought out, because the two girls were fitted into the events that happened really well. Jarmaine obviously fits in as a young black character who is angry at the world, but putting Billie right up the road from where the bus event happens was a really good choice. 

At first I was a bit uncertain about the fact that the author was showing such an important part of black history through the eyes of a white girl, but as the book went on, I started to see what he was trying achieve and I think it worked really well. As Billie's eyes are opened to the prejudice surrounding her everyday life, it's easier for the reader to see it. Telling it from Jarmaine's perspective wouldn't have worked so well to highlight the segregation and how deeply it ran. That said, I think that a dual narrative would have been nice for this book. 

As I said, this book is obviously so well researched. It was clever how the author slid the two girls into the events so that they were at the center of everything without affecting the integrity of the events that happened. 

I stayed up late two nights in a row to read this book because it was so addictive. This is a must for all fans of Middle Grade and a great book for diversity.