Reviews written by Graeme Cash

26 results - showing 1 - 15
1 2
Ordering
March 31, 2017
Overall rating
 
3.7
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Young Adult Fiction
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Thirteen Reasons Why (stylised as Th1rteen R3eason Why) follows shy high school teenager Clay Jensen. Clay has received a box of with seven cassette tapes. Upon listening to them he learns that they were recorded by Hannah Baker, his classmate, workmate at the local cinema, and his...

March 01, 2017
Overall rating
 
3.3
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Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

Nick O’Leary, the straight bass player in queercore punk band, is playing at a club in downtown Manhattan when he spots his ex-girlfriend Tris with a new guy. So he asks a random girl dressed in an oversize flannel sitting nearby to be his five minute girlfriend. The random girl,...

January 31, 2017
Overall rating
 
3.3
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Young Adult Fiction
The Maze Runner by James Dashner

The Maze Runner is the first novel in a series set in a dark post-apocalyptic world. Our central character is sixteen-year-old Thomas. When he wakes inside an metal elevator car, he has no memory of how he got there or who he is, except for his name....

December 31, 2016
Overall rating
 
3.7
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

As the title suggests The Diary of a Part-Time Indian is written in a first person episodic diary format. The novel follows fourteen-year-old Native American Arnold Spirit Jr., known as Junior, over his first year in high school. Junior is growing up on a Spokane Indian Reservation...

November 01, 2016
Overall rating
 
3.0
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Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling

Rowling wrote Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them, along with Quidditch Through the Ages, as a supplement to the Harry Potter series. Profits from both books benefited the charity Comic Relief. It is designed to be a reproduction of the textbook owned Harry Potter, first mentioned...

October 05, 2016
Overall rating
 
3.7
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Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is told from the point-of-view of sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman. As a child Jacob’s grandfather Abe, a World War II veteran and Jewish refugee, would tell him stories from his own childhood featuring flesh eating monsters and children with the most peculiar...

August 31, 2016
Overall rating
 
3.0
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The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

This post-apocalyptic novel takes places in Dayton, Ohio following a wave of alien invasions that has devastated the Earth’s population (more than 99% of the population was wiped out before the story begins – dramatic backstory!). Our central protagonist is sixteen-year-old Cassie Sullivan (short for Cassiopeia). She...

June 30, 2016
Overall rating
 
4.0
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Young Adult Nonfiction
Crank by Ellen Hopkins

The protagonist and narrator is Kristina Georgia Snow, a straight A high school student, who travels to Albuquerque, New Mexico for three weeks during the summer before her junior year to visit her estranged father, who she has not seen in eight years. It is here in...

June 01, 2016
Overall rating
 
3.3
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Young Adult Fiction
Gone by Michael Grant

‘One minute the teacher was talking about the Civil War. And the next he was gone’ is the opening line to Michael Grant’s first novel in the Gone series. 14-year-old surfer Sam Temple is day dreaming in his third period history class when his teacher Mr. Trentlake...

June 01, 2016
Overall rating
 
3.3
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Young Adult Fiction
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

The novel opens with Melinda Sordino starting her high school freshman year. She has been ostracised by her friends and fellow students after she called the cops at a summer party. It is clear that something happened. I think most readers will be able to predict what happened at the...

April 03, 2016
Overall rating
 
3.7
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Young Adult Fiction
A Rose for the ANZAC Boys by Jackie French

A Rose for the ANZAC Boys focuses on the female volunteers of World War I, who nursed and cared for soldiers, drove ambulances, raised money for the War effort, sent food parcels and knitted clothing. Jackie French calls these women the ‘forgotten army’. It is 1915 and...

March 01, 2016
Overall rating
 
3.0
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Young Adult Fiction
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

Nine-year-old Bruno is growing up in Berlin during World War II. After Bruno’s father is promoted to a Commandant, he and his family move to ‘Out-With’ on the orders of ‘The Fury’. ‘Out-With’ is Bruno’s misinterpretation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and ‘The Fury’ was his misinterpretation...

February 04, 2016
Overall rating
 
4.0
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Young Adult Fiction
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

This coming-of-age novel is written as a series of anonymous letters that fifteen-year-old high school Freshman Charlie writes to someone he has never meet but thinks will understand him. He addresses the letters as only as ‘Dear Friend’. The 53 letters span a period from August 1991 to August 1992....

January 12, 2016
Overall rating
 
3.7
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Young Adult Fiction
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Jerry Renault, is a freshmen at Trinity, a Catholic high school for boys. He is a quiet and reserved student, silently coping following the death of his mother. One day Jerry is approached by Archie Costello, who is the Assigner for the Vigils, a secret underground student...

November 01, 2015
Overall rating
 
3.7
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Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

The novel is narrated by seventeen-year-old Ellie Linton as she documents in a journal her experiences during a military invasion and occupation of Australia. Tomorrow, When the War Began takes place in the fictional small rural Australian town of Wirrawee. Ellie and her high school friends Corrie,...

26 results - showing 1 - 15
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