Scareground by Angela Kecojevic – TWR Blog Tour Book Review
About the Book
Roll up, roll up, the Scareground is in town!
Twelve-year-old Nancy Crumpet lives above a bakery and her life is a delightful mix of flour, salt, and love. Yet her mind is brimming with questions no one can answer: Why did her birth parents disappear? Why can she speak with the sky? And why must she keep her mysterious birthmark hidden?
Everything is about to change when the Scareground returns to Greenwich. Nancy is convinced it holds the answers to her parents’ disappearance. Nancy and her best friend Arthur Green meet the fair’s spooky owner, Skelter, and discover a world full of dark magic and mystery. Nancy must confront her greatest fears to get to the truth. But is she ready for all the secrets the Scareground will reveal?
About the Author
Angela Kecojevic is a senior librarian, author and creative writing tutor. She has written for the Oxford Reading Tree programme and the multi-award-winning adventure park Hobbledown where her characters can be seen walking around, something she still finds incredibly charming! She is a member of the Climate Writers Fiction League, a group of international authors who use climate issues in their work. Angela lives in the city of Oxford with her family.
What I Thought
Nancy Crumpet is a girl at home on the rooftops of Greenwich and with her family of baker parents. She knows she is adopted but when black balloons, raven feathers and music only she can hear arrive in town, she begins to realise that maybe they didn’t tell her the truth about her origins.
Along with her friend, Arthur, Nancy gets a ticket to the mysterious Scareground and although she’s made a promise to stay away it’s one she simply can’t keep when the truth is out there on the wind.
Author Angela Kecojevic has created a perfect spooky middle grade read with sumptuous writing. The descriptions leap off the page and the scares leap out at the scareground’s participants. It’s not too frightening for the reader but, as the book describes the Scareground, it is macabre. I think this would make a marvellous Tim Burton cartoon.
But are the scares as innocent as they seem and are the enigmatic Skeltor and his fairground crew to be trusted? After all the fair takes in boys that are otherwise unwanted. Waltzer, Shy, Racer and Dodge remind me of Fagin’s boys but they deal with illusion rather than thievery.
Without giving things away, and probably because people reading this will be too young to remember, but this gives me the same vibes as one of the 80s Care Bears Movies. But there are no Care Bears here to save the day it’s up to Nancy and Arthur and the Sky!
Love that this is all wrapped up but with the promise of a new adventure. I think our protagonists are ready to tackle the next one.
Huge thanks to The Write Reads tours and Neem Press for the gifted copy. Opinions are, as ever, my own.
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Norah’s Ark by Victoria Williamson – Blog Tour Book Review
About the Book
Two very different lives. One shared hope for a brighter future. No time to waste. The flood is coming…
Eleven-year-old Norah Day lives in temporary accommodation, relies on foodbanks for dinner, and doesn’t have a mum. But she’s happy enough, as she has a dad, a pet mouse, a pet spider, and a whole zoo of rescued local wildlife to care for. Eleven-year-old Adam Sinclair lives with his parents in a nice house with a big garden, a private tutor, and everything he could ever want. But his life isn’t perfect – far from it. He’s recovering from leukaemia and is questioning his dream of becoming a champion swimmer. When a nest of baby birds brings them together, Norah and Adam discover they’re not so different after all. Can Norah help Adam find his confidence again? Can Adam help Norah solve the mystery of her missing mother? And can their teamwork save their zoo of rescued animals from the rising flood? Offering powerful lessons in empathy, Norah’s Ark is a hopeful and uplifting middle-grade tale for our times about friendship and finding a sense of home in the face of adversity.
About the Author
Victoria Williamson is an award-winning author who grew up in Scotland surrounded by hills, books, and an historical farm estate which inspired many of her early adventure stories and spooky tales. After studying Physics at the University of Glasgow, she set out on her own real-life adventures, which included teaching maths and science in Cameroon, training teachers in Malawi, teaching English in China and working with children with additional support needs in the UK. Victoria currently works part time writing KS2 books for the education company Twinkl and spends the rest of her time writing novels, and visiting schools, libraries and literary festivals to give author talks and run creative writing workshops.
Victoria’s previous novels include The Fox Girl and the White Gazelle, The Boy with the Butterfly Mind, Hag Storm, and War of the Wind. She has won the Bolton Children’s Fiction Award 2020/2021, The YA-aldi Glasgow Secondary School Libraries Book Award 2023, and has been shortlisted for the Week Junior Book Awards 2023, The Leeds Book Awards 2023, the Red Book Award 2023, the James Reckitt Hull Book Awards 2021, The Trinity School Book Awards 2021, and longlisted for the ABA South Coast Book Awards 2023, the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2020, and the Branford Boase Award 2019.
Her latest novel, The Pawnshop of Stolen Dreams, is a middle grade fantasy inspired by classic folklore. Twenty percent of the author royalties for this book are donated to CharChar Literacy, an organisation working to improve children’s literacy levels in Malawi.
You can find out more about Victoria’s books, school visits and free resources for schools on her website: http://www.strangelymagical.com
What I Thought
This was such a heartfelt and emotional book featuring two loveable young protagonists.
It also touched on a range of tricky topics but handled them with nuance and a light touch. This could have been a very heavy and preachy read but it isn’t.
Topics covered include: Poverty, homelessness, food poverty, foster care, childhood cancer, gambling and addiction, climate change.
This could have easily become an overly saccharine portrayal of a Pollyanna type figure but Norah is not perfect and her flaws and judgments make her a much more interesting character, along with her desire to strive to make good any mistakes she makes. This book makes me look back with some shame in terms of how I maybe treated kids at school from poorer backgrounds and I wish that there had been books like this to teach me better empathy and how to challenge pervasive societal attitudes.
Adam’s story of surviving childhood cancer but struggling to return to normal life is also relatable. My one wish would be that the parental roles in this maybe weren’t as stereotypical – only because I do feel that focusing on an overanxious mum character perpetuates the gaslighting that can occur in medical settings.
Unlike in many books the parents have a hugely important role in this story and that was refreshing to see. The relationships between child and parent were complex and reciprocal. The empathy that both Norah and Adam showed to their parents demonstrates why it is so important to have an open dialogue with children about thoughts and feelings and beliefs because children often hold a lot which can weigh them down.
Using the animals as a shared focus for Norah and Adam’s friendship worked well. Overall this was a quick, enjoyable read with just enough peril to keep me on tenterhooks wondering if everyone – animal and human – would end up with a happy ending.
Thanks to The Write Reads and Neem Tree Press for the gifted ARC for the purposes of an honest review. Do check out what everyone else on the tour thought – spoiler everyone seems to be loving this one.
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The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan – Blog Tour Book Review
About the Book
In this queer YA psychological thriller, the sole surviving counsellors of a summer camp massacre search to uncover the truth of what happened that fateful night, but what they find out might just get them killed.
Sloan and Cherry. Cherry and Sloan. They met only a few days before masked men with machetes attacked the summer camp where they worked, a massacre that left the rest of their fellow counselors dead. Now, months later, the two are inseparable, their traumatic experience bonding them in ways no one else can understand.
But as new evidence comes to light and Sloan learns more about the motives behind the ritual killing that brought them together, she begins to suspect that her girlfriend may be more than just a survivor – she may actually have been a part of it. Cherry tries to reassure her, but Sloan becomes more distraught. Is this gaslighting or reality? Is Cherry a victim or a perpetrator? Is Sloan confused, or is she seeing things clearly for the very first time? Against all odds, Sloan survived that hot summer night. But will she survive what comes next.
About the Author
Jennifer Dugan is a writer, a geek, and a romantic who writes the kinds of stories she wishes she’d had growing up. She’s the author of the graphic novel Coven, as well as the young adult novels Melt With You, Some Girls Do, Verona Comics, and Hot Dog Girl, which was called “a great, fizzy rom-com” by Entertainment Weekly and “one of the best reads of the year, hands down” by Paste magazine. She lives in upstate New York with her family, their dog, a strange kitten who enjoys wearing sweaters, and an evil cat who is no doubt planning to take over the world.
What I Thought
The idea of the last girls or final girls standing after a slasher event appears to be in the zeitgeist right now with a slew of books written around this topic. The Last Girls Standing is a Young Adult thriller and it is very much focused on the aftermath of an horrific event and how people come to terms with it – or don’t.
Our two main characters and survivors Sloan and Cherry form a very co-dependent relationship as the two surviving counselors and as queer girls who were crushing on each other before the massacre.
Sloan is our point of view character and this works really well because she has a mind blank on what happened that night so the audience follows along with her as she tries to unpick flashes from her therapy and bring forth memories of that night. We are taken for a very scary ride with her. Cherry meanwhile remembers more and this leads to Sloan’s concern with finding her own version of events and not just what she has been told.
I wasn’t entirely sure of the ending which came a little out of left field and I do agree with some of the criticisms I’ve seen that how trauma/PTSD/hypnotherapy is portrayed in this book maybe needed further sensitivity reads. That being said, as a thriller this worked extremely well. I thought the pacing was spot on and I wanted to know the who, what, why along with Sloan. I think the search for meaning after events like these can be futile and I do think this is portrayed though what happens.
I would determine this as more of a psychological thriller than an horror so do go into the book bearing that in mind as I do think the cover leads us to think we will spend more time in the event than it’s aftermath.
Huge thanks to Bee at Kaleidoscopic tours and Putnum books for the #gifted copy for the purposes of an honest review. This tour has lots of stops so do check out what everyone else is saying too.
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