Being sent to a remote island with your family is a teenager’s worst holiday nightmare. Julia Bell’s The Dark Light (Macmillan, £6.99, for readers aged 13-plus) mixes religious zealotry with the dawn of love between two girls. Fierce, tender and spiky, it is a stunningly original suspense novel. Meanwhile, Frances Hardinge’s stylishly imaginative The Lie Tree (Macmillan, £6.99, 12-plus) sends Faith’s Victorian family to a place where scandal, murder and lies grow in the darkness.
A different continent is just as challenging, and two fine authors writing for young adults set their novels in (gasp!) Europe. Helen Grant’s astringent Forbidden Spaces trilogy reaches its climax in Urban Legends (Corgi, £7.99, 13-plus) as a group of Flemish teenagers is hunted by a calculating serial killer. Thrilling and chilling – but don’t read it when home alone. Keren David’s This Is Not a Love Story (Atom, £6.99, 13-plus) evokes Amsterdam beautifully as the backdrop to Kitty’s encounters with the moody Ethan and troubled Theo. They share a north London Jewish background, so the wilfully romantic Kitty misreads the clues to Theo’s true nature. Their perspectives are presented with an engaging liberalism, narrative assurance and psychological acuity.
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