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The Last Thing You’ll Ever Hear by Jan Dunning – Blog Tour Book Review
About the Book
Have you ever been so obsessed with someone that you start to lose yourself?
Wren and Lark are rivals first and sisters second, so when mysterious music producer, Adam, and his DJ prodigy, Spinner, come to their small town, the game is on to impress.
Lark is soon taken under Adam’s wing, but as she’s pulled deeper into his web, distancing herself from friends and family, Wren starts to suspect that there’s a more sinister side to Adam. And when the sisters get a chance to perform at Enrapture the most talked-about festival of the summer, suddenly there is a lot to lose…
Can Wren put her own ambitions aside to save her sisters life?
One thing’s for sure: after this summer, nothing will ever be the same again.
About the Author
Jan Dunning’s debut Mirror Me, a YA thriller that reimagined the tale of Snow White, set in the high-fashion world was crowned winner of the Oxfordshire Children’s Book Award 2024.
A former fashion model, Jan lives in Bath with her family, and in addition to her writing and photography, works as an art teacher.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jandunningbooks/
What I Thought
Over the past couple of days I’ve been totally enraptured by this thrilling book.
The Mackenzie family are a small English town’s equivalent of the Von Trapp Family. Parents Mac and Paloma were once in a band, and their one hit is suddenly used by a TV programme which propels them to popularity again. Off they go on a reunion tour of Norway which turns them into classic Point Horror parents – out of the picture for havoc to ensue.
Sisters Wren and Lark appear to have inherited their musical prowess but there is no love lost between them. Younger sister Wren feels very much shoved into the shadows by her sister’s effortless talent.
When they both get spotted by an up and coming DJ and are invited to audition for the mysterious Enrapture festival their rivalry gets kicked up a few octaves.
Wren was an excellent YA protagonist with an amazing character arc, from annoying younger sister to I’m going to save the day – and my sister.
Lark is initially presented as an ethereal supernatural talent and leans ever more into this as the book progresses. It’s also quite horrifying to see her carefree nature crumble as she begins to believe the messages she is given about herself.
Wren’s best friend and unrequited love Danny is both the bridge and the snapped string between the sisters. A talented musician who has acquired deafness, this is a nuanced and intimate portrayal. I was intrigued to read the author’s notes about this in the acknowledgments and don’t know how I missed the fairytale reference. When you read this see if you spot it.
Then there are the villains – the enigmatic music producer Adam and his protege, who morphs into him as the book progresses. Do they both get what they deserve by the end of the book – I think we could have a great debate about this.
The sense of danger in this book kicks off with a bang. With missing and dead girls and a friend literally falling into a coma. Then it backs off to be replaced with excitement which turns into feverous nightmare. I was quite a few steps ahead of our main character, and that is very much the point. We side with Danny, immune to the music.
The ending is claustrophobic and pacy. The threat is all too real and ominous.
This tale of sibling rivalry and incel entitlement mixes in brainwashing music and cults. It builds to a crescendo and has your heart hammering for the sisters at the heart of the story. With the summer music festival vibes this is a perfect read for sunny days and red skies at night.
Huge thanks to Bee at Kaleidoscopic Tours and Scholastic for the gifted copy. Opinions are my own. I haven’t been listening to tainted music!
Check out the other stops on the tour too.
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Your Time Is Up by Sarah Naughton – Blog Tour Book Review
About the Book
One has a secret, one of them saw, there’s blood on the papers, who’ll take the fall?
Zaina never meant to get involved. The plan was always to focus on her exams, make her dad proud.
But none of this is what she’d planned for. Chanelle never made it to the exam; Nero’s convinced he saw something last night and Ysla can’t stop crying.
As Zaina starts to scratch the surface of secrets which desperately want to stay hidden she begins to wonder … how far will they go to keep her from the truth?
About the Author
Sarah Naughton worked as an advertising copywriter for ten years before her first book was published in 2013. A supernatural thriller for teens, The Hanged Man Rises was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards and a second thriller for teens, The Blood List came out the
following year. She also writes psychological thrillers for adults. Tattletale was followed by Amazon bestsellers, The Other People, and The Mothers (The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month). Her first Christmas YA thriller, You Better Watch Out, published in October 2023 with Scholastic.
She lives in London with her family.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahnaughtonauthor
X: https://twitter.com/SarahJNaughton
What I Thought
What if the worst thing about your A-Level Maths Exam wasn’t the equations?
Take one ticking clock, subtract memories of a drunken party, equals poor Zaina feeling the pressure. She wants to make her late dad proud and win the School Maths prize as well as get into her university of choice. But she also wants to know that she has won it all by being the best. And with one of her rivals sobbing throughout the exam and another one not having turned up the competition doesn’t feel very fair.
Add to that a falling out with your two best friends, one of whom seems determined to get you caught out for cheating by passing you notes and an AirPod, teachers prowling the exam room, students on “toilet breaks” prowling the school. Distractions are everywhere. Divide it all by blood splatter on the front of your exam paper,
and concentrating on quadratic equations becomes the last thing on her mind.
How can Zaina solve a disappearance – or maybe something worse, make up with her best friends, destroy her rivals, make her family proud and maybe even find love in the space of two supposedly silent hours.
Your Time Is Up is a tense thriller with an excellent hook. Zaina’s point of view during the exam is interspersed with her memories of the party she never should have gone to and police interviews with some of the “prime numbers” in the case.
Zaina’s pull between doing what she thinks is right and wanting to block everything out to fulfill her final promise to her dad definitely adds up to an engaging read. We also get a well developed sense of all the secondary characters that feature with each of them going on their own journey.
I would share a quote from near the end where Zaira’s mum gives her some wonderful words of wisdom that I think every teen facing GCSEs or A-levels but instead pop a copy of this book in their hands and they will be so relaxed heading into their next exam though simply knowing it won’t be as eventful as this one.
Fans of Holly Black and Karen M
McManus will enjoy this riveting rollercoaster. It even features actual maths discussion so may come in useful as revision for your maths exam!
Huge thanks to Bee at Kaleidoscopic Tours, Tina Moore’s and Scholastic for the #gifted copy for the purposes of an honest review. Do check out the other tour stops to see what everyone else thought.
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The Nameless by Stuart White – Blog Tour Book Review
About the Book
For dystopian fans of THE LAST OF US, THE MAZE RUNNER, and THE HUNGER GAMES.
The YA debut from award-winning author, Stuart White.
IN A NAMELESS WORLD, ONE HERO RISES BY DISCOVERING THEIR IDENTITY.
In a dystopian world dominated by genetic perfection and numbered gene pools, sixteen-year-old E820927, known as Seven, yearns for an identity beyond his assigned number.
To escape a life as a Nameless Exile, and become a citizen of the Realm, he must pass a loyalty test to prove his allegiance to the totalitarian Autokratōr.
With the world’s fate hanging in the balance, Seven’s journey sparks rebellion, hope, and the reclamation of individuality.
But as the truth unfolds, Seven faces a difficult choice between revenge and love.
About the Author
Stuart is an award-winning author and secondary school teacher. He has a Masters Degree in Creative Writing and founded, and now runs, WriteMentor. In 2020 and 2022 he was placed on the SCWBI Undiscovered Voices longlist and named as an Hononary Mention for his novels ‘Ghosts of Mars’ and ‘Astra FireStar and the Ripples of Time’. In 2023, he won the WriteBlend award for his middle grade debut, Ghosts of Mars.
Stuart was included in The Bookseller’s 2021 list of Rising Stars in the publishing industry.
What I Thought
The Nameless brings another meaning to the phrase “Making a name for yourself”. Children in this society have to follow the rules of the Realm and enter Realm camps as numbers. This ends with them taking the Caste Test. Success leads to being named and entering into Academics or Military recruitment. Failure leads to Exile or Reevaluation!!
Our protagonist Seven grew up under the care of Cherish, but she was not his biological family and he has always felt that innate need to find his roots, where he came from. He also realises that all is not right in a society that worships perfection. Especially when they are willing to do anything to achieve it in animals and humans, and disregard those who don’t meet that ideal.
This dystopian thriller follows in the footsteps of Divergent and The Hunger Games with a young protagonist’s personal struggle leading them to their place in a wider rebellion against a whole society. What was intriguing here was who Seven turned out to be. It did take a while for us to find out his origins and personally I think I’d have liked this information earlier because it sheds a whole new light on events.
This is quite brutal at times with plenty of death and Seven even makes a commentary on the lives of those dying just being seen as a number to both sides. This hits a bit close to what is currently going on in the world. The major inciting incident threw me and did continue to have reverberations through the story.
Seven is quite naive at times – especially when it comes to girls. And here he is pretty led by his emotions. I don’t think I fully bought into the love triangle that was introduced but I guess that’s what happens when who you think should be endgame for them is introduced early on. Whether she ends up as endgame I will leave you to read and see – although the series looks like it will continue so plenty of time for everything to change.
With a theme so vast as Namelessness there is a lot of focus on identity. There seems to be something very odd about being handed a name at the age of sixteen, when this is an age where teens are trying to claim themselves (not that being given a name at birth is any less strange I guess). During the book Seven actually experiences being known by different names but does he claim any for himself?
I’m intrigued to see what happens next and how the main theme continues to develop – because I don’t think identity is a static thing at all. I also hope we get much more of the side characters in future books as there are some really interesting ones I really want to know more about.
If you are a fan of the genre I think you will enjoy playing spot the influence because I think there’s quite a few nods to other stories and I do enjoy this intertextuality.
Please note trigger warnings for violence, torture and cannibalism.
Huge thanks to The Write Reads and the author for the gifted e copy provided for the purposes of an honest review. Do follow along with the rest of the tour to see what others thought too.
kirstyes 