Romance

Steve Light has illustrated this book beautifully. The cover draws you in with its intimate detail and sharp contrast of colours. The first page introduces us to Lazlo who is on a quest to give a rose to his love. However, a mischievous cat intervenes and so the story begins to unfold. We are taken on an adventure as we weave through a theatre and its actors, set makers, musicians, props and the audience. It’s a fast chase through the whole building and the backstage world of Alice in Wonderland.

We Come Apart, a collaborative project between Crossan and Conaghan, is a three-part novel written in alternating voices. The text is in a fractured format, which will be familiar to Crossan’s fans. As you would expect from writers at the top of their game, it seizes the reader’s attention from the first page.

In the acknowledgements of this stunning work, arguably the most important and impressive gay teenage novel ever published in Britain, Patrick Ness cites two influences: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Judy Blume’s Forever. He utilises the structure of the former and Blume’s empathetic frankness, making both very much his own. The novel is also informed, perhaps, by elements of authorial experience: Adam Thorn, like his creator, is a gay American from an evangelical background.

Aidan spiralled into grief after his mother died, making every mistake a teenager can possibly make. Now, he’s focused on finishing his exams, and determined to get a one-way ticket out of Derry. Not that he doesn’t love his city, but the wider world beckons – a world where it doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, an Irish speaker or if your father carried a gun.

Science fiction meets Shakespeare might strike the average reader as an unusual concept, but Pete Mullineaux’s intriguing take on the famous bard’s tragic tale manages to be innovative while remaining true to the original. It is 2040, and technology has evolved to a stage where humanity is dominated by androids in all areas of life. Humans live with social disorders, climate change, environmental issues, and technology overuse.

Immy is haunted by all the lives she has lived; they clamour in the back of her mind, crying out for attention, crying for the person she was a hundred, maybe a thousand years ago. But Immy is trying to live in the here and now, and she’s falling in love. She has been in love before, of course, but never like this.

Inspired by real-life events that saw three British Muslim schoolgirls leave their lives behind to become brides of ISIS, this outstanding début interrogates religious extremism and what it really means to be both British and Muslim.

Set in Northern Ireland, Kelly McCaughrain’s début novel is a charming and quirky love story with important things to say about identity and belonging. Finch ‘Franconi’ Sullivan, along with his twin sister Birdie, is half of the star trapeze act in his parents’ circus. When he’s not in the air, Finch is either being bullied or trying to avoid making friends with Hector, the clumsy new boy in school who trades maths tutoring for juggling lessons.

Told from two different points of view, this coming-of-age story about ‘that summer … the one when everything changes’ begins at sixteen-year-old Emerald’s private school in England. Emerald thinks life can’t get any worse than being bullied on social media by so-called friends. But with a shocking discovery at home her world falls apart, and she finds herself spending the summer in Dublin with her grandmother.

This clever novel is an allegory about embracing your difference and just being yourself.

Morgan Stone is a regular teenager who lives with her best friend, her mother just happens to be a world famous fitness guru whose success is built on the idea of bodily perfection. Morgan has an unusual secret, though: a perfect hole in the middle of her body. She has spent the last seventeen years hiding her difference from everyone except her family and her closest friend.