‘Sweet Sorrow’ by David Nichols

Everyone likes David Nicholls.

This novel is good.

Two teenagers meet in an amateur dramatic company that is about to put on Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ – you can probably see where this going – it’s better than you’d imagine.

Well worth a read.

‘Alone on the Wall’ by Alex Honnold’

A book about climbing. I watched a documentary on TV about Alex Honnold, an American free-solo climber.

I thought the book might go into a bit more detail about the man himself. It didn’t really. There was a lot of ‘we climbed a mountain’ and ‘it was a 5.12a difficulty’ and ‘we got the speed record’. But I don’t really know more about him than I did originally.

I’m sure that if you are into climbing you would enjoy it more than me. I didn’t really enjoy it.

‘Day One’ by Abigail Dean

I really didn’t like this book – I never actually got into it at all. I finished it, but only because I rarely give up on a book.

It’s about a school shooting. The actually incident itself is never explained in detail, the book is more about the effect on individuals and the community.

It follows a couple of characters: Marty, a girl involved in the shooting (or not); and Trent, another local who believes the whole thing is a bunch of lies.

I found the book quite confusing at times, it jumps between characters and moments in time, which normally I’m ok with, but with this I never felt comfortable reading. I just found it all a bit hard work.

‘The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh’ by Helen Rutter

It was another teenage novel.

Billy Plimpton wants to be a stand-up comedian, but he thinks something is stopping him: his stammer.

We follow Billy has he deals with bullies, a dying grandma and girls. The book culminates in an end of year talent show that doesn’t go to plan.

If I was an 11 or 12 year old, I’d love the book!

Also, each chapter starts with a joke. Nice.

The past, the present and the future walked into a bar.

It was tense.

‘Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black’ by Marcus Sedgwick, Julian Sedgwick and Alexis Deacon

I read this because it was partly written by Marcus Sedgwick, he writes YA fiction and is always very good.

This book is a slight detour from his normal stuff, as it was for me. The title was a big clue – not my normal read – but always good to have a go of something different.

Teaming up with his brother Julian and artist Alexis Deacon, this novel brings together prose, poetry and illustration as it follows the story of two brothers in WWII.

It was all a bit too dreamlike and strange for me. The ‘real’ parts were brilliantly written, just too much of the weird stuff for me.

‘Elvis in London’ by Alice Beneyto

Not good this one.

It follows Eddie, who wins a talent competition impersonating Elvis Presley. Although, the win wasn’t really a surprise: he is the reincarnated Elvis Presley. It’s just that he is too afraid to tell anyone.

It wasn’t a great read, but I saw it out until the end.