Bad Influence is one of those books that you don’t have much faith in, when you pick it up—but once you’ve gotten past the first five pages, suddenly you’re invested in the characters and the story to such a point that you desperately need to find out what happens next, even if you have a fair idea. And that, in truth, is the book’s real success.
If you like your young adult novel sepia-tinted, then this book is for you. The beautifully detailed cover illustration of lilies in shades of grey, beige and the cleverest touch of red captures the mood of the book. It is a sombre account of twelve year old Evelyn’s journey from Argentina to war-torn England.
The Misfits by Kate Darnton is the heartwarming story of eleven-year-old Chloe and her new life in New Delhi.
Exotic and enigmatic, yet crowded and dirty, India is indeed a daunting challenge for the American family that has moved in here. ‘Everything in Delhi was the opposite of Boston—the heat and the smells and the noises and the colours and the tastes. Everything was totally different.’
Set around the time of World War II, young Tally Hamilton lives with her father and two aunts in a slightly shabby house in a slightly shabby street in England. The threat of war is in the air, and when an offer comes for a full scholarship for Tally in a private boarding school from a patient, Dr Hamilton gratefully seizes it, seeing it as an opportunity to see his daughter to safety in the countryside.
Roddy Doyle’s Brilliant is less than a brilliant book. Ray and Gloria live with their parents and granny in the outskirts of Dublin. Their uncle Ben arrives one day to live with them (for a while, their mother adds). The kids learn that Uncle Ben is in financial trouble and cannot continue to live in his house even though the house is his—the banks won’t let him use it.
The story is set in 1910, where young and orphaned Maia has to voyage all the way to the Amazon from England, to go live with her only family, the Carters. The gruesome depictions of Amazon, of man eating alligators, blood thirsty piranhas and yellow fever inducing mosquitoes by her boarding school peers doesn’t deter Maia from fantasizing…