Reviews written by Graeme Cash

Four high school students, Julie, Helen, Barry and Ray are returning from a party when they accidentally hit a young boy riding his bike home. Other than stopping to make a call to report the accident the teens do nothing to help. Fearing the accident will ruin their lives they...

The protagonist and narrator for the novel is high school sophomore Paul, who is openly gay and accepted by his family and friends. Paul has known he was gay since he was in kindergarten and ‘became the first openly gay class president in the history of Ms Farquar’s third grade...

The novel opens with eleven-year-old Jonas awaiting his Ceremony of Twelve, where he will be assigned his career and begin his training. Jonas lives in a community where a group of Elders select everything including one’s parents, career, spouse and children. All the negative aspects of society...

The novel follows sixteen-year-old Steve Harmond, an African American teenager from Harlem, who is on trial for his role as an accomplice in a drugstore robbery that resulted in the death of an employee. To help him process this life changing experience Steve records his experiences in...

The prologue to the novel opens with our protagonist Quentin “Q” Jacobsen recalling an incident from when he was nine-years-old; when he and his neighbour and childhood friend Margo Roth Spiegelman found the body of Robert Joyner, who had committed suicide. The novel flashes forward, Quentin is...

The novel opens following the death of 14-year-old Alex Rider’s guardian and uncle Ian in a car accident. Alex becomes suspicious after learning his normally very careful uncle was not wearing a seatbelt and finds that his uncle’s office has been cleared out. Alex finds his uncle’s...

14-year-old Jim Hawkins is growing up in rural Ontario, Canada dealing with the loss of his father Hub, following his sudden disappearance two years earlier. Many in the community suspect suicide but his body has never been found. Jim’s world is further thrown into turmoil when he...

This coming-of-age novel is written by a teenager for teenagers. Susan Eloise Hinton was 15 when she started writing The Outsiders and 17 when it was published in 1967. The Outsiders is often credited as beginning the realistic young adult novel. The story is about of a...

The novel opens with eleven (soon to be twelve) year-old James Choke at school. Teacher’s pet Samantha Jennings relentlessly teases James about his obese, stolen goods dealing mother Gwen. James retaliates pushing Samantha against the wall. She cuts her face on a protruding nail. Panicked James flees the classroom knocking...

The story follows a group of young friends over a 24 hour period in the fantastic art and culture infused city that is Melbourne. Lucy has just finished Year 12 (final year of high school in Australia) and is about to take her HSE exams. Lucy’s parents...

Seventeen-year-old aspiring shoe designer Johnny Marco is approached at his family’s struggling shoe repair shop in a ritzy Miami South Beach hotel, by Victoriana, an Alorian Princess, who asks him to find her brother Philippe, who has been transformed into a frog by an evil witch. In...