Elizabeth Norris - Unraveling (2012)

This book started out poorly - Janelle Tenner gets hit by a truck, dies and is brought back to life by a boy in the same grade at her high school, Ben Michaels. As she is magically healed she shares his memories of her and realises he has loved her since he was 10 years old - sound familiar? It's book 1 of the Roswell series.

Then everything got interesting - radiation deaths, an explosive device counting down, earthquakes, multiverse and a murdered FBI father. It started to become a really good book and I'd actually forgiven Norris for the beginning. Until I got to the ending. That was just AWFUL.

Talk about deus ex machina.

Mysterious men from a parallel universe pop in and shoot the bad guy just in time, the same teenage bad guy who'd murdered Janelle's father and best friend. His other two friends, one of whom is Ben, are just allowed to go home to their parallel universe AFTER killing hundreds of people in Janelle's universe. Everyone just left Janelle in a remote location with the body of her best friend even though she couldn't phone for help because the city was destroyed by an earthquake and everyone was struggling to survive. Worse - Janelle just happily sits there and thinks how wonderful life is and how much she wants to live it with Ben. Hopefully the FBI found her and locked her up as an accessory to getting hundreds of people dead because she withheld so much information from them because of her "love" for Ben.

As endings go that one really sucked. What an utterly disappointing book.

Meg Cabot - Safe House (2002)

This is the third book in Cabot's Missing series.

Jess is back from summer camp and finds herself blamed for the death of fellow student Amber Mackay. Amber had disappeared while Jess was away and didn't know she was missing, but that doesn't make the students at Ernest Pyle High School any less angry at Jess. When another girl goes missing everyone looks to Jess to save her and she's forced into trying to save Heather, whilst keeping her family safe from the FBI.

Considering this was a murder mystery it wasn't too heavy. Cabot is good at writing books where the subject matter doesn't draw you into the dark too deeply, but you're still wanting good to win and evil to be pummeled into gooey pulp. You can recognise that you're in Hell, but it doesn't overwhelm you. I like that about these books. They're darker than Cabot's Princess Diaries (which was more light than dark), but I can see how they're the next level up for kids developing. This is their first look at the horrors of the world and how to live with or fight it.

Meg Cabot - Code Name Cassandra (2001)

This is the second book in Cabot's series 'Missing'.

Jess, aka Lightning Girl, has told the world she's lost her powers to protect her family and friends from the media and government's constant harassment. To get away from it all she takes a job at a musically gifted summer camp, hours from home, and hopes it's far enough to put the last few months behind her. Everything's going great until a desperate father turns up needing Jess to find his daughter and the outcome has her running for her life.

I like any Meg Cabot book. They're fun young adult books. Lots of adventure and none of the trauma that the equivalent adult book throws at you. This is a great book, it's part of my I'm-stuck-in-bed-sick-and-need-a-happy-book shelf of books.

Jennifer Archer - The Shadow Girl (2013)

Lily Winston has a voice in her head - it belongs to Iris. They've been together forever and now Iris is pushing Lily to find out the truth about their past. To solve the mystery of why they exist and how Lily can remember things that Iris did before she was ever born. Is Iris a ghost? Is Lily possessed?

I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, so I can't really explain more than that. It was an interesting book and it raised a lot of questions in my mind. Mostly about whether souls exist or the mind just creates a personality? Also, is who we are a part of every cell in our body? What does this mean for organ transplants? The concept of the book is a worrying pit of questions without answers, but it's a future we're rapidly moving towards.

Lucy Carver - Young, Gifted and Dead (2013)

When I began this book I almost threw it aside. It initially begins like season one of Veronica Mars - the murdered best friend is even named Lily! But, the brilliant plot quickly had me hooked. Our heroine, Alyssa, is sent off to an elite boarding school in the wilds of England where she encounters a ruthless secret society with a very nasty agenda.

Put like that it doesn't sound like much, but the author has a way of twisting the plot and throwing the blame in different directions until you don't know who the real murderer is until the very end. Some of the topics raised in the book were a little frightening, but very relevant in today's egotist society. I wouldn't want anyone under the age of 16 to read it, but it definitely would be thought provoking for older teens.

Jonathan Stroud - The Screaming Staircase (2013)

Brilliant book! Very scary!

Stroud has come up with an interesting storyline - ghosts have become a major problem in England, but the only people who can see or hear them are children. So children with this gift (or curse) are trained to rid England of ghosts or become nightwatch-kids to protect entries to buildings - all very dangerous jobs.

It's quite horrifying that children are put in often fatal situations, protecting adults from the very things the adults should be protecting them from. This ghost-wormed England is quite topsy-turvy to our current day world and almost Victorian in its child-labour aspects. Stroud's characters face down situations that would make an adult run screaming - but these 'psychic investigator's' are resigned to their role in society. It's in their speech and actions, it distances them from ordinary people. They know the reality of what's out there and that it will probably kill them, whilst others get to live normal lives.

The whole concept was wonderful. I cannot wait for book two.

Nancy Springer - Enola Holmes Mysteries

I've just finished this six book series by Nancy Springer and I absolutely loved them. They're young-adult mysteries and they're truly a delight. The concept and characters were so refreshing, I couldn't stop reading them. I was through the whole series in one week.

Enola Holmes is the 14 year old much younger sister of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances Enola ends up on her own in Victorian London, solving mysteries and evading her brothers.

Enola sets herself up with an imaginary male boss (a necessity in Victorian England where women weren't allowed to have a brain) who is a perditorian, a finder of people or things.Then she sets about, in complete opposition to her brother, Sherlock, to find the missing and solve the mysteries - often crossing his path without Sherlock even realising his little sister was there.

The books are a lot of fun. Nothing nasty happens in them and the character Enola is such a lovely person - she goes out at night dressed as a Nun to help the homeless and often causes herself a lot of extra trouble just because she decided to help someone. They're a great read and it's a pity there aren't more of them. Six books just weren't enough for this engaging heroine Enola Holmes.