5 brilliantly engaging teen reads to try
Wild Horse Summer author Lauren St John recommends five more books that will hook in teen readers.
Lauren St John
When I do school visits, I’m often asked which of my books was my favourite to write. The answer is all of them, for different reasons. Some because I loved living the adventure as I was writing it. Others because researching the book was so much fun.
For instance, part of my research for The Glory involved staying on a Wyoming ranch and riding a palomino mustang over the mountains. It was heaven.
But that was before I wrote Wild Horse Summer, which has become my all-time favourite book to write for so many reasons. Most of all, I loved working on it because my characters Morgan, Cal, Night Dancer, and Exmoor pony Mouse felt like friends.
I loved living in their world of sea, surf, and wild moors, and the thrill of sharing their search for the truth about Morgan’s past. I hope so much that readers enjoy it.
Here are five more books for teens that I’d recommend…
1. Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai
When Japanese-American teenager Adam finds a diary in his attic, he’s struck by its account of a young Japanese woman’s life. A hundred years separate them, yet she, like Adam, is caught between cultures, relationships and heartbreak.
She also writes about ghosts, which seem to be trying to tell her something. At first, Adam believes she’s invented them, until they begin to haunt him too. The mystery takes him to Nagasaki as he tries to solve the puzzle of the diary and his own identity.
Gallagher Girls: I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter
Gallagher Academy claims to be a school for geniuses, but actually it’s a school for spies! Cammie Morgan speaks 14 languages and can kill a man in seven different ways, but she’s utterly unprepared for how to cope when she falls for an ordinary boy who thinks she’s an ordinary girl.
Yes, she can tap his phone and hack into his computer, but can she have a real relationship with a boy who can never know the truth about her?
3. Dead Straight Line by Malcom Duffy
16-year-old Rory is a rule breaker and risk taker who’s invented a game called Dead Straight Line. No matter where you start from, you have got to get home in a dead straight line, even if it takes you through strangers’ gardens, locked parks, or private property.
But what starts as a game ends in a serious accident after he pressures a friend into playing. The fallout is so disastrous that Rory’s school suggests he helps out at a care home to put things right. Rory is unimpressed. But when he works with Tanker, an 80-year-old war veteran, something begins to shift in him.
4. Faerie Realm Series: Nettle by Bex Hogan
An out-of-control misfit in the human world, Nettle is drawn to the glamour of the faery realm. She grows close to Conor, a human stolen centuries before, and also falls under the spell of mysterious Ellion, a Shadow Faery.
To try to help her beloved grandmother who is fading in her world, Nettle makes a pact with the faery king. He’ll heal her grandmother in exchange for Nettle completing three tasks. In this dangerous fantasy kingdom, Nettle discovers, too late, her part in an age-old love story and the price she will have to pay.
5. My Life with the Walter Boys by Ali Novak
When a tragic accident leads to Jackie moving into a house with 12 boys, she gets a lot more than she bargained for.
Jackie’s life goal is achieving perfection in grades, looks, and school. But when she moves in with her new guardians the Walters, who have 12 sons (11, actually, but their daughter Parker is one of the boys), she’s in for a rude shock. The Walter boys are loud, dirty, annoying, and don’t believe a city girl belongs on their ranch.
As Jackie struggles to fit into their chaotic world, while trying not to fall for the hottest boy, she begins to wonder if being perfect is the right way to find love after all.
Wild Horse Summer by Lauren St John is out now.
