Kelly Moore - Amber House (2012)

This is the first book in the Amber House series and was co-written with Moore's two daughters Tucker and Larkin Reed.

The premise of this book was interesting, a house that absorbed the echoes of the past that members of the family could see by touching items belonging to their ancestors. I liked the whole one-action-changes-everything idea. The theory that a relative's past choices could shift the course of future family is very real, but not often noticed in real life, except for people who are researching their ancestry.

I think if we knew enough of the past we could avoid a lot of today's problems. But, people choose to forget, and, as in this book, misfortunes keep perpetuating themselves - just like in the echoes that Sarah keeps seeing, and using, to repair her families unhappy past-present.

The alternative timeline was fun - who hasn't looked back and thought if-only-I-had-done-that-differently? This is a book that makes that if only come true.

Robin Benway - Also Known As (2013)

Maggie Silver is a brilliant safe-cracker and teenage spy. Spending her childhood roaming the world with her spy parents, solving world crises, trying not to get kidnapped and keeping her life 'beige' is all she has ever known.

Until New York.

The spy ring Maggie's parents work for suddenly thrusts her on a solo mission at an expensive private school with the lives of every spy in the organisation at stake. No pressure, right?

Benway writes a fun novel. I really liked the characters and the plot progression. The ending of the mission seemed a bit sudden, but it was really more a backdrop for Maggie's introduction to high school and a normal teenage lifestyle. Any girl who has ever wanted to be a spy will love this book... I did.

Katie Alender - From Bad to Cursed

This was a refreshing change from the usual attempts at paranormal by teen authors. No smooth sailing where the heroine always wins. The whole book is a roller-coaster ride of scariness. Even at the end I wasn't sure who had won, or if anyone had won - I was too anxious over the final horror! Ghosts! Is there anything that terrifies us more?

Alender writes a brilliant novel. This is her second in the Bad Girls Don't Die series. I had a lot of fun reading it and wondering and imagining and checking under my bed before I went to sleep. I'm really looking forward to reading the third book in the series.

If you like thrillingly scary novels, without the silly shock factor or re-used plots, this is the series to read. I thought book one was scary, but book two definitely wins the fright award. There's nothing scarier than not knowing you're kind-of-possessed.

Jackie French - A Rose for the ANZAC Boys (2008)

This was an extraordinarily beautiful book. It's powerfully written, I could almost feel the war and the loss through 16 year old Midge Macpherson. Midge is from New Zealand and is at a finishing school in England when World War 1 begins. Because they want to help, Midge, and her friends Ethel and Anne, leave school and start a canteen in France, giving sandwiches and hot chocolate to soldiers passing through the train station returning from the front. Here the girls get to know and become friends with soldiers as they are injured, patched up and returned to fight the war of attrition. But, as the war goes on, men are in short supply to run the ambulances and Midge joins the lorry brigade, ferrying the injured to and from the make-shift hospital and trains. The suffering she see's strengthens her character and swiftly changes her from a teen to an adult.

It's a hard war for the girls and it transforms them considerably, when they return home nothing is how they remembered it and what was important before is now meaningless. The book is sad, but it's so well written that you can see the beauty in the bleakness. Jackie French should get an award for this book and it should be read in schools. It says more about the loss and utter destruction coupled with the sheer bravery and dogged determination of people who were in the Great War than any history text can emotionally get across.

Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

This is Eoin Colfer's seventh book in the Artemis Fowl series. It's a great set of books, but this one isn't as good as the others. Artemis Fowl is a genius, a criminal mastermind and a friend to the fairies. In this book he develops what the fairies call 'Atlantis Complex' resulting from too much exposure to fae magic. It brings out an alternate personality, in Artemis it bought out a nice sickly boring stupid one. And that's why the book was flat, because it's nothing without Artemis' planning and scheming. It became a story of the supporting characters with a few surfacing thoughts from the real Artemis thrown in. I'm not sure how they managed to save the fairy city without him and I don't think they should have bothered putting his name in the title since he was absent through most of it.

Anyways, still a good read, but not as enjoyable as all the others. I can't see how there could be any more books in the series unless some of the supporting characters are killed off or have a personality transplant. They're holding Artemis back from what he does best and dulling the fun. Here's hoping Colfer comes back with a bang and Artemis decides to take over the world. Life is more fun when he's in criminal mastermind mode.

Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Angel (2010)

This is the first book in Cassandra Clare's new series The Infernal Devices, it's also a prequel to her excellent Mortal Instruments series. This series is set in the Victorian era and follows the arrival in England of Tessa Gray, a sixteen year old orphan, who seeks refuge with the Shadowhunters. The Shadowhunters keep the balance between humanity and Downworlders (Vampires, Demons, Warlocks and other supernaturals). Tessa gets caught up in the Shadowhunters fight when Downworlders try to use her shape-shifting ability to bring down the Shadowhunters so they can use and abuse humanity as they choose.

It's a fun book. Definitely aimed at the current teen trend towards paranormal romance. I liked it and I liked the first series too. I'm enjoying the Victorian aspects in the book. The historical edge with the paranormal and the strong female characters are something I'm attracted to. I love a good action book with one or more kick-ass female heroines.

Michael Pryor - Moment of Truth (2010)

This is book 5 in Michael Pryor's incredibly addictive The Laws of Magic series. The story is a mirror-world of our own in the early 1900s before England and Germany were at war. It has many similar historical aspects as the problems between the countries escalate until an assassination leads to war declared. The difference between our world and Albion is the existence of magic.

Think barely-post-Victorian, devious political plots, an evil 'wizard' and countries in danger - this is the daily life of Aubrey, George and Caroline. They're Albion's best hope for survival - a magic-user, a journalist and a suffragette. No, Albion isn't doomed - not yet.

It's hard to explain how exciting these books are without giving away any spoilers. The dialogue is fast and witty, there's no unnecessary fillers and it's hard to put the book down until the last page is read. Even then I was thinking about the story for weeks after and now I'm anxiously awaiting the next book. They're truly a seriously great read.

Suzanne Harper - The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney (2007)

Harper has based her book in Lilydale, New York, USA - a spiritualist community founded in 1879. It's occupied by mediums and healers and a gate pass needs to be purchased to enter. The community is open all year round and runs workshops on spiritualism. In many ways it seems like a little nation of its own with rules and regulations that maintain the spiritualist way of life.

Into this world was born the character Sparrow Delaney, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter and believed to be the most powerful medium her family has had - only she doesn't want to be. Sparrow has spent her life hiding her abilities from her family, pretending she's as psychic as a rock and ignoring the ghosts who come to her to have their messages passed on. She's even gone so far as to enrol in a high school outside Lilydale, away from all the hocus pocus in her attempt to live an ordinary life. But the ghosts just won't leave her alone and when she makes a friend who is in deep pain from the death of his brother Sparrow has to decide whether to help or continue to turn her back on her abilities and make her own path in the world.

The book is interesting, mostly because I'd never heard of Lilydale before. I found the writing a little flat, even for a teen novel. It gets a slightly disjointed towards the end of the book and rushes into the ending, almost like the author was running from something - probably an angry ghost or a grumpy orc. Seriously, it's an okay book with an interesting premise. But, I thought it could have been developed better and ended more sincerely, with a bit more compassion for its subject matter. Teen's though, in this era of paranormal novel obsession, will enjoy it.

http://www.lilydaleassembly.com/ The Link to the Lilydale Community.

Kristin Cashore - Graceling (2008)

Graceling is an interesting book. It tells the story of a girl gifted with the skill to kill and survive and how this influences her life and the people around her. There's a rite of passage style underlying the main plot where Katsa grows into her skills and is able to accept them peacefully. It's quite beautiful in parts and completely alien in others. But it all just keeps you reading.

I was slightly confused and disappointed with the ending. The two main characters fall deeply in love (Po and Katsa) but at the end, after everything they'd fought through, they just went separate ways and agreed to meet when they met. It felt a little odd. Like the tone of the book had changed. But that wasn't the first time. In a way it was like several books merged into one with large gaps in-between that blithely ignored character changes, mentally and physically. Not that this distracted majorly from the storyline. They were heroes and they risked their lives to protect the people of the seven kingdoms, and that is what it was all about. The character development seemed almost secondary to the fact that they were "big damn heroes" as a Whedon-ite would say.

Kelley Armstrong - The Summoning (2008)

This is book 1 in a new supernatural teen series. Armstrong has written many books for adults, my favourite is Exit Strategy with an ex-cop hitwoman dispensing justice for a fee, (the book reads better than my blurb does), but this is her first foray into teen literature.

The main character, Chloe, has just turned fifteen, she's also just gotten her period, and that seems to have triggered something in her mind because now she see's ghosts, she talks to ghosts, she has to defend herself against the nastier grumpier ghosts - and it's driving her mad. Because ghosts don't exist, right? But for Chloe they're very real and her abilities, along with a group of teens who also have different supernatural abilities, have gotten them all locked up in Lyle House. This isn't your ordinary teen home and living there will be deadly.

I really enjoyed this book and I'm about to read the second in the series. It's a nice comfy read. There's no real tension, just curiosity over how they'll survive and what Chloe really is. It's a great teen book, the perfect blend of supernatural and teen lifestyle.

Holly Black - Valiant (2005)

I really didn't like this book. It started out interesting, but it quickly slid into depravity and cruelty. It's a teen book, but it reads like the senseless horror of the worst of depraved reality that fills many adult books. It made me sad. Sad when the main character, Valerie, ran away from home. Sad when she began injecting faerie drugs. Sad when she forced herself into a home and tormented a strange family. Sad when she was cruel to strangers she'd pass on the street. Sad when her friend threw a kitten under a train and she did nothing but shrug. I don't like this book at all. I'm going to wrap it in red electrical tape and put it backwards on my shelf so I remember to never read anything from this author ever again.

It was full of so many dark things. Valerie's mother sleeping with her boyfriend. Valerie's anger and need to destroy. The homeless friends she makes who are lost and cruel. Their world that she willingly joins. The Fae who die, the Fae who revenge, the Fae who bind her to them. The whole book is full of dark deeds done by creatures who obviously have no conscience or feel no remorse. It was a tiring read. I kept going because I hoped that it would end happily or that some sort of good would come out of so much bad. But nothing came of it. Nothing at all.

It's a pity. The book had so much potential to be an interesting story before the plot suddenly changed and everything went black. The author calls Valerie an "angry angsty girl", but she was more than that. She was lost and cruel and hurtful. Valerie wasn't a character I could ever even slightly like. If you sit back and allow something cruel to happen you're just as much to blame as the person who commits the cruelty.

Not Valiant at all, Betrayal would have been a better title.

Carolyn Keene - The Secret in the Old Attic (1944)

I spent my childhood reading Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and Sally Baxter Mysteries. I wanted to be a courageous-horse-riding-journalist-sleuth who went camping and ate crabapples. Unfortunately I grew up, was only adventurous when it came to the action I read in novels and tasted a crabapple - which is really sour and face-puckering. So went my childish enthusiasm for my career - but not my reading. I retained my love for sleuth's - especially Nancy Drew, my all-time favourite heroine. I began collecting the unrevised novels of the 30s, 40s and 50s - they are so much better than the revised (as in take out all the non-politically-correct stuff). It's fascinating.

I recently bought The Secret in the Old Attic at an auction and I read it whilst I read its revised issue from 1970. They took out ALL the good and interesting bits. They were so worried we'd stub our toes on previous culturalisms that they wrapped us up in wool and stuck us in a display cabinet with a plastic coated novel - no sharp edges and no fun at all!

I love these old novels. They have so many interesting aspects of the time they were written in. The old crank cars and how tyres went flat easily; how hard it was to get rubber and petrol and other car parts during World War 2; how much a sandwich in a diner cost and what people generally ate; the design of very old houses with their historical slave quarters and hidden passages; the kind of jobs women were allowed or expected to do and how they were expected to behave; that it was illegal to have a tattoo removed because police considered it an easily identifying mark - which tells you about the kind of people who had tattoo's back then; that most people still cooked with wood fires unless they were lucky enough to own an AGA gas cooker - and so much more. These novels are rare gems.

The Secret in the Old Attic has Nancy helping a World War 1 veteran and his orphaned granddaughter recover his son's musical compositions that have been stolen by an elusive ghost-burglar that enters the old plantation house through a secret door and leaves behind scary traps for Nancy, Bess and George. Along the way Nancy helps her father solve a mystery of his own (want to know how Gossamer was made?) and avoids going to a dance with a very persistent young man. It's a fun Nancy Drew mystery. It has everything a Nancy Drew enthusiast expects from the intrepid sleuth.

Here's a great site that gives a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the differences between the revised and unrevised novels.

Lili St. Crow - Betrayals (2009)

This is the second book in the Strange Angels series. The first book was Strange Angels and there's a third book coming out this year. It's also St. Crow's first foray into Teen novels. She's written many books for adults, my favourite being the Dante Valentine series, under the name Lilith Saintcrow.

I really enjoyed Betrayals. It fleshed out the many questions left from Strange Angels. It was more of a fill-in-the-blanks novel than a forwarding plot. But, the first book left so many things unanswered that this was necessary. St. Crow tells us more about the orphaned Dru and her past - we learn about her mother and her legacy. It was good to finally understand what Dru is and what she'll become. Too many questions for too long makes things hard to follow. But, St. Crow kept the suspense just long enough. It's a light novel - no deep and heavy themes. The characters are interesting, but not overly brilliant. You don't feel sucked into their world, like you MUST know what happens next and you feel exhausted by the end of the novel. It's just a fun book without any pressure.

So if you like werewolves, vampires, half-vampires and other things that go bump in the night - this book is for you. It's a dark and dangerous world, but done well for a teen audience.

Aprilynne Pike - Wings (2009)

This was a really lovely book. I'm hoping there's a sequel - there would definitely be room for one.

The characters were sweet and real. They had their moments and moved through them like rational beings, no matter what danger they were in. They didn't do anything extraordinary that a teenager actually wouldn't do. It was very refreshing to read a book were the teens were overly nice, but quite normal too. The whole super-teen dealing with extraordinary circumstances with flair and precision gets sooooooooo boring. Puh-leez! As if! Go stand outside a high school one day and just watch... and the illusion vanishes. Teens know this too. They'll avoid books with over-perfect teens in them. It's just too surreal for them - like being discovered as the next supermodel/rockstar in the local grocery store. They'd daydream it, but honestly? It's not in their reality.

The main character, Laurel, is a faerie. These aren't your run-of-the-mill Fae in Grimm's Fairytales and the like that followed. Pike has created a beautiful new Fae world in which she's weaved old myths in charming ways. I could almost believe her view of the Fae world and the myths (I won't tell you which, it would spoil the story) are real and the fairytales I grew up with are wrong. Pike is just that good at weaving fantasy into reality. They merge seamlessly.

This book is full of mystery, danger and everyday life - as are the characters. It's a teen book, but I think any adult who loves fantasy or Fae would enjoy reading it.