TEENAGE   | Daily Mail Online

AGAIN AGAIN

by E. Lockhart (Hot Key £7.99 320 pp)

Emily Lockhart captures the complexity of teenage life in richly layered and sometimes darkly thrilling novels — but this has a poignancy that pierces the heart.

Sixteen-year-old Adelaide faces a long summer holiday at the New England empty boarding school where her father teaches.

Her mother and adored younger brother Toby are back in Baltimore where Toby is recovering from opioid addiction. Adelaide’s boyfriend has dumped her, she’s hurt and her grades are so bad she faces expulsion.

Then she meets cool, handsome, poetry-writing Jack and falls in love. Or does she? Lockhart creates ‘parallel universes’ re-enacting each encounter and imagines the consequences for Adelaide of each decision.

Underpinning everything is the pain and loneliness of being the ‘good’ child while a sibling causes havoc. Moving and witty.

THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES

by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic £18.99, 624 pp)

It’s been nearly ten years since the last Hunger Games outing, so this prequel has been eagerly awaited. The lead character is Coriolanus Snow, familiar as the cruel President of Panem, but here an 18-year-old whose family has fallen on hard times.

Salvation may lie in acting as mentor to a young competitor in the Hunger Games, which is losing popularity. He is given Lucy Gray — a wild, colourful singer, and he spots her potential as a crowd-pleaser. As we discover what made Snow so ruthless later, there’s plenty of bloody violence and clashes between old and new money.

ASKING FOR A FRIEND

by Kate Mallinder (Firefly £7.99, 244 pp)

Studious Agnes has Asperger’s and is struggling to cope after her older sister Rose leaves home for a job in Weston. Scatty Hattie has been ‘ghosted’ by her friends after an incident at a party. Jake is terrified he has a serious illness but can’t tell anyone. The three barely know each other but travel to school on the same bus. When Agnes discovers Hattie has an aunt who runs a boarding house in Weston, she suggests a pre-GCSE study break and Hattie and Jake invite themselves.

As Agnes struggles with the demands of company and secretly searches for Rose, Hattie and Jake confront their own fears in a feel-good adventure that reinforces how friendship can be a source of strength in the face of intimidation — from others and from within.

Join the Summer Reading Challenge — run digitally for the first time this year. Sign up on June 5 at summerreadingchallenge.org.uk