Penguin Random House

First of all, I have to say – I loved this book. Favourite one of 2018, by far. That said, I have not read Love, Simon (also known as Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda) and Leah on the Offbeat is a sequel to this. For the first chapter or two I was caught off-guard by the amount of names the reader was supposed to be able to recall, which I’m sure is easier when you’ve heard of all these people from Love, Simon. After those couple chapters though…. Wow. I read it from cover to cover in one sitting and cannot wait to read its prequel.

This young adult novel was intense and engrossing from start to finish. It opens with a funeral, and you immediately get a sense of Sydney, her best friend Olivia, her mom, and out-of-her-league June Copeland. Sydney thinks that there is more to her therapist father’s death in a car crash. Is there? Or is something else going on? Who is keeping secrets in this small town? And would they kill for it?

This anthology is large, in physical size and in the span of its content. These five hundred and fifty-three pages carry an important weight; the weight of vulnerability and shared experiences. It’s Not OK to Feel Blue and other lies is compiled of stories from many different inspirational people, from Yomi Adegoke to Emma Thompson.

Think the world has gone all dark in 2020? Try spending some time in The City of the Dead. Governed by the ubiquitous McCallum, fought over by elite gangs, and populated by drug-addicted “opes”, it’s here that the eponymous Hawk ekes out a perilous existence. She lives with and provides for her “family”, four of the many victims of medical experiments. For ten years she has also waited each day for half an hour at the same spot, hoping for the return of her (unbeknownst to her, imprisoned) parents.

The Cousins is Karen McManus’ second standalone novel. She hit the ground running with her first titles, One of Us is Lying and One of us is Next, and has really made a name for herself within the YA genre. The Story family have secrets, one of them being why their elderly mother disowned and disinherited them all twenty-four years ago. The novel follows the Story grandchildren and why, after all these years, the infamous grandmother, whom they’ve never even met, summons them to come and work at her island resort for the summer.

Simone Garcia-Hampton is seventeen years old and HIV positive. She is going through a lot of changes in her life: a new school, co-directing the school musical, making new friends and figuring out her sexuality whilst falling for Miles from the lacrosse team. She navigates all of this between her support-group meetings and hospital appointments, and it works – until she finds a mysterious note in her locker from someone who is threatening to reveal the secret of her condition.