There are some things, like an eclipse, dangerous to look at directly. For horrific global crises, the risk is not so much a physical blindness as a protective, psychological one – to take in the full scope of an atrocity can leave one feeling utterly powerless to make any sort of a difference. One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic; the epigram often (incorrectly) attributed to Stalin explains why it is the small, particular details of a disaster, rather than the totality of human life lost, that affect us so deeply.
Manjeet Mann's The Crossing (Penguin, £7.99) is about the refugee crisis, about the huge numbers fleeing injustice, poverty and violence in their home countries. But it is also about a girl, Nat, and a boy, Sammy, whose lives overlap briefly just as their poems do (by a shared word or phrase) in the text, and who have experienced loss and hardship in different ways. The verse format is another way of looking at the experience at a slant, not quite taking in the whole thing at once but zooming in on specifics, snapshots that illustrate both the similarities and differences between these two characters. It makes for a moving and effective novel that achieves its intertwined artistic and moral ambitions.
Sera Milano's YA debut also delves into the ugliness of the world, depicting a fictional terrorist attack on a small local festival in This Can Never Not Be Real (Electric Monkey, £7.99). Milano moves quickly between teenage narrators as they relate their experiences of that night, of stepping through bodies "like some messed-up playground game" or the desperate yearning for "someone else to deal with this". Taut and tense, the novel avoids specifics when it comes to motive; there is, as one character notes, "no possible justification for what happened that night". It allows the focus to remain on what it is to live through something which mere hours before was unthinkable, and for these fictional constructs to become real humans whose beliefs about love and hope in the aftermath feel earned.
"We're going to run out of air in a few months, and I can't get out to a stupid party." Olivia is terrified of taking risks, even as the impending Creep, the rapid changing of the atmosphere from breathable to toxic, has everyone racing around trying to cross off items on their bucket lists; Emily Barr's latest thriller is aptly titled Things to Do Before the End of the World (Penguin, £7.99). The arrival of a long-lost, charismatic cousin sees Olivia venture beyond her comfort zone, but she soon realises there is more going on than just "seeing Europe".
Barr’s teenage voice is solid, as always, but with such a compelling backdrop – even if environmental disaster may be a little too close to comfort for some readers – it’s a little disappointing that this is another tale of family secrets rather than something delving deeper into this near-future scenario and the ways in which people respond to impending doom.
Fans of horror will appreciate Goldy Moldavsky's The Last Girl (Electric Monkey, £7.99); the title's nod to the Final Girl of feminist film criticism is one of many intertextual references, some obvious (a secret society known as the Mary Shelley Club, inventing terrifying pranks rather than just scary stories, as Shelley and her companions did when she dreamt up Frankenstein) and others less signposted ("We draw a lottery and stone the winner to death" as a wry remark, a nod to Shirley Jackson's classic tale). New girl Rachel accidentally stumbles across the club and quickly becomes a part of the strange group. Haunted by an attack in her home the previous year, she discovers that scaring others goes a long way towards alleviating her own fears.
Inevitably, of course, things are more complicated than they first appear; a strange figure in a mask turns up to interfere with the pranks, and it’s only a matter of time before the game of psychological torment turns fatal. All the while, Moldavsky keeps the narrative authentic through Rachel’s outsider-awareness of how privileged her fellow students are; what they’re up to is “supremely screwed up”, she recognises, but adds, “maybe this was just the evolution of fun for rich kids”. Sharply-observed details – a fellow student “sipped her kombucha through her stainless-steel straw”, another smells of what Rachel describes as “the preferred eau de parfum of future disgraced political wives” – help make this sinister slasher tale a memorable one.
There's more eeriness and violence in Cari Thomas's debut, Threadneedle (HarperVoyager, £14.99), in which a London teenager joins a coven despite her strict guardian's insistence that magic is a thing "not to be enjoyed but endured". Anna's journey serves as an allegory for growing up in a cult as well as working beautifully as the opening instalment of a dark fantasy trilogy.
Using magic as a way of tackling school bullies is an appealing conceit, though familiar in witchy texts for teens. Thomas balances the grandiose, theatrical claims of established witches (“Nature’s justice. A woman’s revenge. Wild and lawless, measured out by moonlight, exacted by the Dark Moon itself.”) with the more mundane concerns of justifying being out all night to anxious parents. This is a magical underworld it is entirely possible to believe in.
Since 2014's The Apple Tart of Hope, Sarah Moore Fitzgerald has consistently produced excellent, thought-provoking books for young readers. Her sixth and latest, All The Money In The World (Orion, £7.99), does not disappoint. This nuanced take on the rags-to-riches trope, set very much in today's Ireland, is narrated by 15-year-old Penny, the brightest girl in school but still tainted by being a kid from "The Flats", a world where yearning for anything better is dismissed. People "just get on with it", her mother tells her.
An unexpected bequest from a rich neighbour provides Penny with the opportunity to attend an exclusive school, and here she reinvents herself as Lola. “I became a magpie for every detail: the food they ate, the words they used, the way they walked,” she reflects, noting the way her fellow students “all purred with wealth” and “glowed with an inner warmth of the certainty and happiness that being rich brings”. Money may not buy happiness, but it helps; through Penny, Fitzgerald casts a clear eye on what it means for many, though not all, worries to be removed from one’s shoulders. More textured than a simple fable, this is a must-read title of the summer.
Canadian author Susin Nielsen also has a stellar track record when it comes to exploring privilege – or lack thereof – and in Tremendous Things (Andersen, £12.99) she's in flying form. Wilbur is a tender, endearing character who is grateful for the wisdom of his best friend, a next-door neighbour 71 years older than himself. Not quite fitting in at school, he says things like "I did what any 14-year-old boy would do when he's full of rage. I wrote a poem." He's also just clueless enough to be believable, and this provides much of the humour in a warm, wonderful tale of unrequited love, rotten bullies and appreciating the fleeting marvels in life.
