“Where do I come from? That doesn’t matter. It could be anywhere. There are many people in many countries who live through what I have lived through. I come from everywhere. I come from nowhere. Beyond the seven mountains. And much further still.”
This is how 15-year-old Madina begins her diary, an account of being an asylum seeker in Europe, anxiously waiting to hear whether she and her family will earn the right to stay or be returned to a war zone. As the opening suggests, their country of origin is never revealed, but this does not mean – despite Madina’s fondness for mentally disappearing into a fairytale forest when things become too much – the story remains in fable territory, untethered to reality.
On the contrary, Austrian writer Julya Rabinowich's Me, In Between (Andersen Press, £7.99) is devastatingly precise on the small indignities of hostel life, alongside the larger crises of fleeing danger and the risk of deportation. The novel, translated into English by Claire Storey, pulls us into Madina's head immediately, vividly evoking a girl who has seen countless horrors that have affected her but don't define her, a girl who bristles under cultural misogyny without renouncing her entire heritage, a girl who is ashamed of her living conditions and also ashamed of her shame.
Storey’s translation, naturally enough, has its ears attuned to the British readership and there’s occasionally a word or phrase that jars, but for the most part this is a book that rings with authenticity, with an engaging story that resists stereotyping or over-simplification. This well-crafted novel is a serious contender for one of the best books of this new year.
Manon Steffan Ros's The Blue Book of Nebo (Firefly, £7.99) is another work in translation, though in this instance the Welsh author has adapted the text into English herself. Set just a few years into the future, the titular "blue book" is a notebook swapped between mother and son living in a "dead place", isolated from whichever survivors may be left after a nuclear disaster. Rowenna helps fill in the background, though there is still much she's not sure of, while Dylan barely remembers the world before "The End" and has become accustomed to their enforced back-to-nature existence.
Comparisons to Emma Donoghue’s Room are perhaps inevitable, not least because this novel, too, makes space for joy and love within a situation that upon first glance seems unbearable. There is no doubt that some awful things have happened but, as Rowenna reflects, “Things are so simple now, and so easy to love.” This is a gentle, yet powerful read about how we live and what we pay attention to.
Seattle-born, Dublin-based Alison Weatherby delves into the past rather than the future for her debut novel, The Secrets Act (Chicken House, £7.99), set among young codebreakers working at Bletchley Park during the second World War. Ellen and Pearl are slowly building a friendship when a sudden death intensifies everything; they are now an unofficial investigative team convinced that it was murder, rather than an accident, and that it has something to do with a spy at Bletchley. But they both have their own secrets, too, and the boundary between personal and political is a difficult one in their line of work.
The appealing setting, nuanced and flawed heroines and engaging plot make this a gripping read. Weatherby occasionally veers towards sentimentality and heavy-handedness – the last two lines of the novel could easily have been cut and I wish they had been – but despite that caveat, this is still one very much worth reading.
Celebrity culture is dissected in two of January's titles, with Australian authors Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich teaming up for If This Gets Out (Hodder, £7.99), a he-said he-said tale of a secret romance between two members of a boy band. Reuben and Zach are best friends who become something more while on a global tour, but have to hide it from the public; "a big part of our appeal has always been us posing as fantasy boyfriends for our fans". Each band member has been pressed into an archetype that bears little resemblance to their real personalities, and the pressure is amplified for all of them as their every move is scrutinised by their fans and by the media.
In a space where any throwaway line can become a big news story, Reuben and Zach are instructed to keep things “professional”. The demands made by their management are complicated by their own personal issues, as they squabble and misunderstand one another in the way that people must do in a romance novel – before an inevitable happy ending. There’s just the right level of angst, and a great deal of hope; this is a delightful antidote to the January blues.
The level of scrutiny that celebrities are expected to put up with, and the level of curation involved with a public profile in this social-media, always-on age, is also explored in Andreina Cordani's Dead Lucky (Atom, £7.99), although the consequences here are much more sinister. Maxine is one of a group of school friends who started an online channel on the fictional streaming platform PlayMii; they have now all gone their separate ways but are still each high-profile PlayMeeps. Xav, for example, is famous for his pranks – so famous that when he is murdered on camera, the recording is viewed by three million people before it's finally taken down.
Maxine is well used to death threats after three years as an online influencer, “but however often it happens, my instinct always responds with a mild stab of panic, every time I see one”. With Xav’s death, and a strange message pointing towards the group’s shared past, it seems clear that she and the others are in serious danger. If the plot sometimes veers a little towards the implausible, the details of a life lived online, constantly “sifting through what I can and can’t post”, are superbly done. And, as with If This Gets Out, there’s a thrilling feel of wish-fulfilment alongside the reminders of how fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, a touch of glamour and glitter alongside the inner turmoil and external stresses.
There's more murder in the latest Karen M McManus book, You'll Be The Death Of Me (Penguin, £7.99), whose capacity to produce quality page-turning thrillers on a regular basis is seriously impressive. McManus's latest, set over the course of a single day, features three old friends skipping school only to end up at a murder scene, and touches on the opioid epidemic in America for its crime elements. Its impact on families and communities is explored in more detail in Kathleen Glasgow's You'd Be Home Now (Rock The Boat, £8.99), a sensitive account of living with a recovering addict and the ways in which economic circumstances affect how addiction is treated. Class, despite being utterly vital in any consideration of privilege or discrimination, is often a neglected issue in discussions about "diversity" in YA fiction, and it's always pleasing to see authors exploring it, particularly when they have Glasgow's level of skill at capturing the messiness of real life on the page.
