Book reviews - YAdudebooks

October 7, 2022

Secret Schools: True Stories of the Determination to Learn

Education goes undercover in this compelling look at some of the world’s most secretive schools through history. Can you keep a secret? What if it meant hiding from your loved ones, sneaking out late at night or risking imprisonment? And what if that secret was that you were going to school? From covert classrooms created by enslaved Africans in the United States, to academic schools disguised as “sewing lessons” for women in Afghanistan, to espionage schools run by powerful governments, Secret Schools explores the hidden classrooms that have opened their doors so children and adults could learn. Vivid linocut […]

October 7, 2022

Felix Silver, Teaspoons & Witches

After his parents announce that his bizarre, emerging abilities are getting in the way of their divorce, Felix Silver relocates to Dorset Harbor and becomes the charge of his Grandma Aggie. As Felix adjusts to life in a new school, Aggie decides that it’s time he learns The Silver Way, and teaches him all she knows about sorcery and magical arts. When Felix and his new friends decide to solve the mystery of local teenagers who have gone missing, Felix learns that his crush, Aero, has a big secret. Is dark magic creeping into the town, and can Felix learn […]

September 2, 2022

Falling Shadows

Growing up, Cori, Maz and Sam were inseparable best friends, sharing their love for Halloween, arcade games and one another. Now it’s 1992, Sam has been missing for five years, and Cori and Maz aren’t speaking anymore. How could they be, when Cori is sure Sam is dead and Maz thinks he may have been kidnapped by a supernatural pinball machine?

These days, all Maz wants to do is party, buy CDs at Sam Goody and run away from his past. Meanwhile, Cori is a homecoming queen, hiding her abiding love of horror movies and her queer self under the bubble-gum veneer of a high school queen bee. But when Sam returns—still twelve years old while his best friends are now seventeen — Maz and Cori are thrown back together to solve the mystery of what really happened to Sam the night he went missing. Beneath the surface of that mystery lurk secrets the friends never told one another, then and now. And Sam’s is the darkest of all.

Award-winning author of If You Could Be Mine and Here to Stay, Sara Farizan delivers edge-of-your-seat terror as well as her trademark referential humor, witty narration and insightful characters.

September 2, 2022

Big Lies : From Socrates to Social Media

Growing up, Cori, Maz and Sam were inseparable best friends, sharing their love for Halloween, arcade games and one another. Now it’s 1992, Sam has been missing for five years, and Cori and Maz aren’t speaking anymore. How could they be, when Cori is sure Sam is dead and Maz thinks he may have been kidnapped by a supernatural pinball machine?

These days, all Maz wants to do is party, buy CDs at Sam Goody and run away from his past. Meanwhile, Cori is a homecoming queen, hiding her abiding love of horror movies and her queer self under the bubble-gum veneer of a high school queen bee. But when Sam returns—still twelve years old while his best friends are now seventeen — Maz and Cori are thrown back together to solve the mystery of what really happened to Sam the night he went missing. Beneath the surface of that mystery lurk secrets the friends never told one another, then and now. And Sam’s is the darkest of all.

Award-winning author of If You Could Be Mine and Here to Stay, Sara Farizan delivers edge-of-your-seat terror as well as her trademark referential humor, witty narration and insightful characters.

August 5, 2022

The Faraway Paladin: The Torch Port Ensemble

 4/5 Author: Kanata Yanagino Publisher: J-Novel Club Genres: young adult, fiction, fantasy, action, adventure After returning from the battle at the Rust Mountains, what awaited Will was not a fairy-tale ending or another terrifying threat, but the commonplace events of his everyday life. Also, his friendship and a fierce battle with his dependable ally, the swordsman Reystov. An adventure in a snow-filled forest with the troubadour Bee. A battle with an ancient indomitable giant. And prayers and conversation with the god of the flame. Penned by the Paladin, these are the stories of a single winter. This adventure is […]