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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 Exiled by Sarah Daniels – Blog Tour Book Review
About the Book
Trust no one.
It is six months since the Arcadia set sail for the first time in forty years. But this wasn’t the freedom the inhabitants were hoping for. Esther Crossland did what she had to do, but it has left a trail of destruction in her wake. Now the wrecked ship is abandoned. Its inhabitants are in exile, trapped in sprawling make-shift shelters made up of warehouse, tents, shipping containers.
Esther and Nik, architects of the rebellion, are on the run. Esther is in hiding, desperate to do something to help her people, and Nik seems to have abandoned all hope, on a journey taking him further and further from home. And neither of them want to face up to their true feelings about one another . . .
Not only that, there is a new villain in town. With the fall of Commander Hadley, it’s left to the ruthless Admiral Janek to deal with the traitors, and her own past is beginning to catch-up with her.
Then the shaky ceasefire negotiated by General Lall, Nik’s mum, falls apart. Nik and Esther find themselves in a world of betrayals and double crossings – a game of power, with no one to trust but themselves.
It’s time for the final showdown.
About the Author
Sarah Daniels is an ex-archaeologist who escaped academia and now writes stories from her home in rural Lincolnshire. Her work has been published in various online magazines and has been nominated for best British and Irish Flash Fiction and Best Small Fictions.
If you want to contact her, you can do so at the following locations:
Website: http://www.sarahdanielsbooks.com
Instagram: @sarahdanielsbooks
TikTok: @sarahdanielsbooks
Twitter: @sarahdanbooks
What I Thought
With a gap of a few months since the end first book The Stranded we spend a little while filling in what and happened and why. We also get some new POV characters introduced. First up we return to follow Esther who is stuck in the camp but exiled from the rebellion she was instrumental in. Although there’s a new love interest in town to keep her somewhat busy.
And Meg, a character we met in book one but who was never named then. Meg is a complex character and as readers our relationship with her is equally as complicated.
While the pace of the first book was breakneck it does slow a little here, allowing us to settle into the reality of Esther’s new day to day. There’s quite a few chapters back and forth between these two until we get to hear from Nik again – and Hadley’s old Boss Janek picks up where his evil left off. Nik has run away from everything – literally -and his grief for May continues and isn’t just swept aside.
I guess one aspect I’d have liked to better understand in this series is what happened to split the US apart so dramatically and how the Federated States came to be so dire in relation to human rights but then I look at what is currently happening in the world (not just the US) and sadly can see how something like that could happen.
In the first book Hadley – although terrible – had a personal backstory that gave a hint of relatability to him. Janek has no such redeeming feature and just seems intent on destruction. Luckily some of the other characters around her have more humanity!
As soon as Nik and Esther were back together I felt the tension ratchet – both between them and in the story as a whole. It was another white knuckle ride to the finish.
I have to admit that the bot technology I found freaky as anything, and the scene with Nik near the end did not help with my fear of normal nor robotic spiders.
Overall this Duology has a great series of characters, a compelling drive towards escape and freedom and brilliant writing. I did slightly prefer the claustrophobic nature of book one but this was a strong conclusion which upped the stakes from fighting the Coalies on the ship to battling the whole Federated States and a lot of evil individuals along the way. The ending was both hopeful for our characters and disappointing for society – because humans never learn from our mistakes and seem doomed to repeat them!
One of the things I loved the most was that this was not a chosen one tale. Neither characters had special powers, and both were thrust into positions in the rebellion they weren’t ready for. I enjoyed how Esther’s calling as a doctor remained consistent throughout and although she steps up into badassery and wavers at times, she remains gentle at heart too.
Huge thanks to The Write Reads and the Publisher for the gifted copy for the purposes of this honest review. The rest of the tour is ongoing but I think everyone is loving this series.
kirstyes 