This outstanding coming-of-age novel feels raw and real, full of nuance and empathy, touching on complicated family relationships and cyberbullying. In New York City, Felix is grappling with identity, growing up and falling in love for the first time, fearful that as a black, queer, transgender teenager he is one marginalisation too many. A wild ride indeed, and the first in a series.īack to the present in Kacen Callender’s Felix Ever After (Faber), a National Book award winner in the US. Stroud’s writing is a treat brilliantly crafted world building, taut action scenes, fabulous villains and witty dialogue. Teenage outlaw Scarlett McCain lives off daring bank heists, a lone agent until she meets Albert Browne, the only survivor of a deadly crash and not who he first appears to be. A future England lies in ruins, a land of hilltop fortifications and wild forests.

There’s dystopia of a different kind in Jonathan Stroud’s The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne (Walker). Her growing relationship with budding American photojournalist Daniel begins to unlock the menacing truths of life in Spain in an immersive and compassionate novel. Following the imprisonment of her mother and execution of her father, Ana lives silenced by the regime in a rundown shack, a stark contrast to the money and decadence of the hotel where she works as a maid. It is 1957 and Franco’s Madrid has a distinctly dystopian air. Back to Spain for The Fountains of Silence by Carnegie medal winner Ruta Sepetys (Penguin).

The fountains of silence book