Flirty Dancing, Jenny McLachlan

Pages: 256

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Release Date: 3^rd July 2014

Edition: UK e-proof, review copy

A warm, hilarious bestseller to be. Geek Girl meets Dirty Dancing meets Lousie Rennison’s Tights, all rolled into an irresistible story of friendship, bullies and how to to steal a heart on the dancefloor.

Bea Hogg is sky but fiery inside. When national dance competition Starwars comes to her school looking for talent, she wants to sign up. It’s just a shame her best friend agreed to enter with school super-cow Pearl Harris. Bea will fight back! But when school hottie, Ollie Matthews, who also happens to be Pearl’s boyfriend, decides to enter the competition with Bea, she will have more than a fight on her hands.

This warm, nuanced, hilarious story about friendship, fortitude...and dancing is impossible not to fall in love with. Jenny’s voice is fresh and convincing, and she handles both darker and lighter elements of the story with unequal panache.

While Flirty Dancing is cute and fun, it didn’t wow me.

Bea is shy and hides her personality from the second she leaves for school in the mornings to the moment she gets home. She lets her ‘friends’ push her around and the school bullies make her life miserable. And then Bea’s Nan puts her in a jive class, and it just so happens that the school hottie is her partner.

With the introduction of dancing, Bea starts to come alive. She starts to stick up for herself, realise she deserves more, starts to think that she could actually have something to offer in the Starwars competition. I really enjoyed seeing bits and pieces of the real Bea popping up. And yet I still didn’t connect with her. There was very few things about her that I sympathised with and I never really got the feeling that I could be her friend.

There was a little something lacking in Flirty Dancing for me, but it’s a cute, fun read for fans of dancing and utterly ridiculous little sisters.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the review copy!

Sophie

Starring Kitty, Keris Stainton

Pages: 224

Publisher: Catnip

Release Date: 10^th July 2014

Edition: UK manuscript proof, review copy

Other Titles by this Author: Della Says OMG!, Jessie Hearts NYC, Emma Hearts LA, As Delightful as a Carrot

The first in a new series by much-loved teen author Keris Stainton.

Sometimes the greatest love stories happen behind the scenes...

Kitty’s keeping secrets. Like how she’s struggling to cope with her mum’s illness. And how she’s falling for the girl with the purple-red hair... A fun film competition with ehr friends Sunny and Hannah seems like the perfect distraction. But then Dylan wants to be more than Kitty’s secret. Is Kitty ready to let her two worlds meet or will she risk losing Dylan forever?

I’m a huge fan of Keris’s novels. They’re cute, warm and full of heart; Starring Kitty is no exception.

Kitty has a huge crush. A blush-inducing, babble-causing, mind-bending crush. Kitty has seen Dylan around and she lives next to Kitty’s nan. I loved watching Kitty grow more confident with Dylan – starting with managing to speak full sentences, of course – and grow out of her crush into genuine affection. I really enjoyed how Kitty was more freaked out by what other people would think about Kitty liking girls than her liking girls in the first place – it’s a take on discovering your sexuality I hadn’t come across before.

In the UKYA blogosphere Keris is known for her championing of feminism and all things girl-power, and this thread runs through Starring Kitty as well. It’s wound through the novel in a subtle and unassuming way that just underpins common sense and how fourteen-year-old girls should react to boys making lewd comments at them and boys dumping them because they won’t go further than they’re comfortable with. It’s the way feminism should be portrayed - as a given, as a natural response.

All of this is happening while Kitty, Sunny and Hannah are organising and filming for a community competition to win a London film course. There idea for the film was absolutely brilliant – I’d watch it! Filming and editing videos is something I’d really like to try my hand at, being firmly behind the camera,  of course. Starring Kitty made me genuinely want to look into it, even though I know absolutely nothing about it and I’m a terrible photographer so we’ll see...

Starring Kitty is the first book in what is looking like a wonderful new series.

Thanks to Keris for sending me an early copy for review.

Sophie

Most Anticipated Books of July to December 2014

As we’ve reached the mid-point of 2014, I thought I’d share my most-anticipated releases for the last half of the year. Buckle up, there are a few of them...

July

Dawn, Eve Edwards (3^rd, Puffin)

Shipwrecked: Dark of the Moon, Siobhan Curham (3^rd, Electric Monkey)

Zom-B Clans, Darren Shan (3^rd, S&S)

Sinner, Maggie Stiefvater (3^rd, Scholastic)

Silver Shadows, Richelle Mead (29^th [US], Razorbill)

Darcy Burdock: Sorry About Me, Laura Dockrill (31^st, Corgi)

August

Opposition, Jennifer L Armentrout (5^th, Entangled Teen)

An English Boy in New York, TS Easton (7^th, Hot Key Boks)

Isla and the Happily Ever After, Stephanie Perkins (14^th [US], Dutton)

Dangerous Boys, Abigail Haas (14^th, S&S)

Messenger of Fear, Michael Grant (28^th, Electric Monkey)

September

No One Needs to Know, Amanda Grace (8^th [US], Flux)

Kiss of Broken Glass, Madeleine Kudrick (9^th, Harper Teen [US])

Heir of Fire, Sarah J Maas (11^th, Bloomsbury)

Magisterium: The Iron Trial, Cassandra Clare and Holly Black (11^th, Doubleday)

Unmade, Sarah Rees Brennan (11^th, S&S)

Afterworlds, Scott Westerfeld (25^th, S&S)

How to Build a Girl, Caitlin Moran (23^rd, Harper)

Zom-B Family, Darren Shan (25^th, S&S)

October

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, Sara Farizan (7^th, Alonquin)

My True Love Gave to Me, Stephanie Perkins et al (9^th, Macmillan)

Talon, Julie Kagawa (28^th [US], Harlequin Teen)

Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Maggie Stiefvater (21^st, Scholastic)

November

Waistcoats and Weaponry, Gail Carriger (4^th, Atom)

Vowed, Liz de Jager (6^th, Tor)

December

Breaking the Rules, Katie McGarry (30^th, MiraINK)

What are your most anticipated reads of June to December this year?

Sophie

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Anne of Green Gables

Originally published in 1908 by L.C. Page & Co.

My edition: very cheap Kindle edition, but soon to be the gorgeous Puffin Clothbound edition above

What’s it about?

Spunky redhead Anne Shirley is adopted by the elderly Cuthberts who own a farm in Avonlea. When she learns that they meant to adopt a boy, Anne sets to win over their hearts.

Why now?

Sometime a month or so ago, the lovely Jim of YA Yeah Yeah started reading it on recommendation from Stacey of The Pretty Books and posted a continuous stream of quotes on Twitter. I fell in love with them and here I am!

The verdict:

Anne of Green Gables is a novel so thoroughly loved by people young and adult that I was a little intimidated to dive in. Those who read it in childhood talk about it fondly in adulthood, and those who discovered it later wish they had fell in love with it when they were younger. I was terrified that I wouldn’t love it the way I should; that I was old for it. And Gilbert Blythe is a legendary childhood crush and I was scared I had missed out on him. Thankfully, all was well.

Anne Shirley is a strong character and once she lodges herself in your heart, there’s nothing you can do. This is something that Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert discovered very swiftly after the mistake that brought Anne to Green gables rather than a boy to help on the land. My first thought on Anne: ‘God, will she ever stop talking?!’. The answer: not for a good long while. But I loved her rambles, because they had childlike awe and wonder coupled with intelligence and emotion. Her imagination and capacity for stories is mind-blowing and I loved seeing Marilla become accidentally caught up in them. She often seemed to say the things aloud that Marilla had thought but kept buried for years. I actually ended up noticing that most of the novel is based around Anne recounting her day and her adventures and her stories to Marilla and it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Marilla and Matthew were the best things that could happen to Anne, and her to them. Watching them warm and open up and fall in love with Anne, even with her tendency towards disaster, was so sweet. It is especially poignant after Anne’s tells her story early on in the novel: passed around, neglected, and never given a stable, loving home, her need to live off of her imagination becomes so clear. But it was the fact that she retained her positivity and the sense of wonder that she looks at the world with that made my throat close up a little – I don’t think I would have leaned that way in her situation. LM Montgomery’s writing embodies Anne’s character – bubbly, vibrant and so alive – even though the story is written in third person. It’s a joy to read and get lost in Green Gables.

My only slight disappointed was Gilbert Blythe. I’ve heard of the legend of this boy, and while he was brilliantly funny and I loved the teasing friendships he had with the girls in Anne’s class, I wasn’t expecting their relationship to be the way it was. He was on the periphery for most of the novel, being used as the push for Anne’s ambition to be top of the class. The fierce rivalry between them was brilliant and I loved that Anne’s changing perspective on Gilbert held so much prospective for that on in their stories. So thinking about, I really wasn’t that disappointed, just surprised. I hope I eventually get to read the rest of the series and find out just how Anne and Gilbert’s friendship progresses.

Anne of Green Gables is charming, warm-hearted and so much fun. I’m so glad I read it, and even more so that I read it now. I can’t wait to read this to my children.

Still not convinced?

- Have you seen that edition? It screams ‘READ ME’.

- There’s a reason it’s so fondly remembered from childhood to adulthood.

- You really need to meet Anne Shirley, or revisit her.

Sophie