Tag Archives: young adult

Indie Book Reviews (7)

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The books reviewed by allonymbooks author Evie Woolmore this week share strongly imagined worlds.

Demon’s Grip by Tahlia Newland (Amazon UK and Amazon US)

DPeakDG2.2The third novel in the Diamond Peak series by Tahlia Newland is a somewhat different book to its two predecessors. Perhaps that is not surprising, for over the course of a series of books, the pacing will vary, and the narrative will bend and flex as it moves towards its concluding volumes. Unlike other serial novels, like the Harry Potter books, Ariel is on a long linear journey, and so the books will vary on that journey. Continue reading →

Indie Book Reviews (6)

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This week, allonymbooks novelist Evie Woolmore reviews three novels that show how broad the definition ‘magical realism’ can be.

Dark Night of the Soul by E. M. Havens (Amazon UK and Amazon US)

This is one of the most accomplished novels I have read in a long while and it is well worth a read, whether you are YA or adult. Don’t let the synopsis put you off: it is a novel about death, about suicide in particular. But it is also a creative, imaginative, thought-provoking but thoroughly readable novel in an incredibly well-imagined world. It draws very cleverly on our own environment, reflecting familiar aspects that bring lightness to what otherwise might seem dark subject matter (the Wal-Mart section is particularly good in that respect), but it also does what the very best magical realism should do, which is to make you feel that this other world is just around the corner, if only you could learn how to see it. Continue reading →

Indie Book Reviews (4)

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This week Evie Woolmore reviews the second in Tahlia Newland’s Diamond Peak series, and a cold war thriller by Helena Halme.

Stalking Shadows by Tahlia Newland (Amazon UK and Amazon US)

This second volume in Tahlia Newland’s YA series picks up just where the first volume, A Lethal Inheritance, finishes. Ariel has barely begun her journey to rescue her mother and she has already faced both the darkest of foes and her own internal doubts and fears. Following a fierce battle, she has barely time to regroup before she and Nick, her companion and would-be boyfriend must set off again on this, the next stage of their journey. Continue reading →

An interview with Flora Chase, author of The Strattons – new to Kindle this week

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To coincide with the publication this week of the first novel in The Strattons series of YA historical fiction, allonymbooks author Flora Chase tells us a bit about the novel, and what led her to write it.

Flora, why did you choose to write a historical YA novel rather than something in the currently popular YA genres of fantasy or dystopia?

I was told once by a literary agent that it’s difficult to pitch historical novels successfully to teenagers and young adults, but I’ve always wondered if that was really true. The 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has recently been celebrated and lots of writers have been talking about why they love it so much. For me, reading it for the first time as a teenager (a long time ago!), I felt a great sympathy with how long the process of courtship seemed to take, how much time there was to sit around and wait and think and pine for the person you were falling in love with. Falling in love is an agonising experience as it is, but if you impose a lot of waiting around on it, every tiny change is ripe for interpretation and dissection.

But in these days of instant messaging, texting, facebook and Twitter, young people wear their hearts on their sleeves and the pace of romance has accelerated, hasn’t it?

That’s right, and that’s why I picked the Edwardian era. The novel is set in 1913, just before the start of the First World War, and was just at the start of the period of mass communication. In fact, one of my characters, Julia, is terrified of the new-fangled telephone, so it is a period which combines that traditional slow pace of older historical periods with a new degree of urgency. It’s also quite a racy time – there was a lot of gossip and intrigue, particularly among young people who were going to debutante balls or doing the social rounds of their peers, there was lots of flirtation, fashions were beginning to become more daring, and I think that makes a great backdrop for the writer and the reader.

Tell us something about the characters.

Freddie, Julia and Blanche Matchingham are the three teenage children of a travelling diplomat, the 4th Marquess of Stratton, and they have grown up pretty much alone on their family estate in the English countryside. Blanche, the youngest, is perhaps the most modern of the three, an adventurous social butterfly who is eager to escape the boredom of the country house to enjoy parties and enter the exciting adult world. Her older sister Julia is extremely shy, more interested in books than people, particularly since she was dumped by a Continue reading →

The Story So Far…

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The last few months since the first allonymbooks blog was published has been a period of slow but distinctive change in the arena of independently published books. British book chain Waterstones have embraced the technological shifts by stocking Kindles in their stores, though still show no sign of having the capacity to embrace the indie book market. A leading British newspaper, The Guardian, has begun to publish reviews of indie books, though some work is still to be done by them to define how they can most effectively explore that category of published material without getting ensnared in some preconceptions about the quality and content of the books they will be reviewing.

And allonymbooks has become part of an ever-expanding debate about quality, process, benefits, pricing and promotion of indie books, joining with other authors to challenge assumptions about how these books and their authors should be received and considered by the readership and the publishing marketplace.

So what have we learned?

All fur coat and no undergarments?

A non-publishing acquaintance said the other day they were in awe of how much wordage allonymbooks had generated in the process of publishing and promoting Evie Woolmore’s books. On the contrary, however, in terms of the unfettered stream of tweets and posts emitted by other authors, allonymbooks has been rather mute in comparison, Continue reading →

The Strattons by Flora Chase – a sample

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This week, we offer a first glimpse of the first volume of Flora Chase‘s young adult Edwardian saga, The Strattons. Set in the English countryside in the autumn of 1913, the teenagers of Stratton Hall are about to find their lives changed forever…

If you enjoy Chapter 1, the novel is available at Amazon UK and Amazon US.

To find out more about the novel, visit Flora’s page.

Chapter 1

‘Did someone die?’ exclaimed Blanche Matchingham, as she twirled through the doors into the Drawing Room at Stratton Hall. The peach muslin layers of her dress floated around her most satisfactorily, although frankly the effect was wasted on the others. Her older sister Julia was sitting ramrod straight and prim-as-you-like in the high-backed chair nearest the fireplace, dull and demure in ivory broderie anglaise with barely a dip in the neckline and her arms covered. Opposite Julia stood their brother Freddie, his hands clasped behind his back, the oldest of the three of them and, at least in age, just a man. But his stiff white collar was a teensy bit too high and grazed his chin, his thick, dark hair was refusing to lie down beneath the slick of brilliantine, and he wore the hand-stitched suit from London as though it were a hand-me-down suit of armour.

‘You’re late,’ said Julia in her mousy voice.

‘I couldn’t find my shoes and I was ringing and ringing the bell, but no-one came.’ Blanche looked indignantly at the row of housemaids arranged neatly along the wall, their faces as pale as their aprons against their black dresses. ‘Look at me! My outfit doesn’t match!’

She lifted her skirt in just the way that annoyed Julia, especially in front of all The Staff, and wriggled her foot. Of course, the tiny white shoes looked adorable anyway, and they were her favourites — this week. She glanced slyly at the chauffeur, Charlie, whose eyes were cast down so as not to catch her gaze, but his lip surely twitched around a smile. Of course, he never gave her the satisfaction of knowing she had made him laugh, and he had that way of looking right through her as though she were the least important person in the world, not the attractive sixteen-year-old daughter of the 4th Marquess of Stratton. These House gatherings were So Dull, all this ridiculous formality, The Staff looking so hopelessly out of place against the handprinted Venetian wallpaper while the three Matchingham offspring, the same age as most of the housemaids and footmen, pretended they weren’t there. Blanche sighed noisily, and glanced at the ugly ormolu clock on the mantlepiece. Only eleven o’clock. Ronnie wasn’t expected until lunchtime, but perhaps there was time to run out and call her on the telephone downstairs and beg her to come-over-here-quick-and-stop-me-dying-of-boredom!

‘Please sit down, Blanche,’ implored Julia, her palms hot and damp in her lap. Her stocking-tops were itchy, and the panels of her corset felt even tighter than usual.

I shouldn’t have chosen this chair, she thought suddenly, panic surging through her, this is the chair Papa sat me in when he told me that Ralph had broken off our engagement.

But she couldn’t move, not now all The Staff were here, arranged like sightless statues.

She glanced at Freddie. He was standing exactly where Papa had stood that morning, just out of reach, surely a little ashamed of her. Stiff and awkward, disappointed, bowed over.

Ralph. Julia swallowed her sigh, gulping his name back down into the pit of her stomach where all her misery lay. It had been five long months of hating the staircase down which she had swept on the glorious spring evening of the Easter Ball in her glistening new pale blue ballgown, her fan fluttering coyly in her fingers, picking Ralph out of the crowd of guests who mingled in the Hall. She had sworn she would never go into the orangerie again where she had waited an hour for him, while music and laughter filtered Continue reading →