The Truth About Celia Frost by Paula Rawsthorne

Celia Frost is a freak. At least that’s what everyone thinks. Her life is ruled by a rare disorder that means she could bleed to death from the slightest cut, confining her to a gloomy bubble of “safety”. No friends. No fun. No life. But when a knife attack on Celia has unexpected consequences, her mum reacts strangely. Suddenly they’re on the run. Why is her mum so scared? Someone out there knows – and when they find Celia, she’s going to wish the truth was a lie… A buried secret; a gripping manhunt; a dangerous deceit: what is the truth about Celia Frost?

I have an extra reason to have read TTACF - the writer is a fellow SCBWI BI member and she is one of the winners of the Undiscovered Voices competition SCBWI hosts every 2 years.

I have never met Paula and have only ever spoken to her via Twitter so I had no idea what to expect when I started on The Truth about Celia Frost.

When we meet Celia all we know is that she's to be treated delicately.  She has a condition that will make her bleed to death, should she be cut or hurt in a way that allows her to bleed.

This in itself freaked me out a bit.  Then, when Celia confronts the school bully and gets hurt and rushed to hospital I really did expect Celia to die.  But she doesn't.  Her mum turns up and acts very strangely indeed.  She grabs Celia and they run.  Not for the first time either, we learn.  They run to an estate that sounds as dangerous as any place I can imagine living in.

Celia starts wondering what exactly is wrong with her, the way her mum is acting, you would think she either had the plague or ... not quite sure what!

Slowly, but surely, we are let in on the fact that Celia won't in fact die when she is cut, but there is definitely something going on that sounds dangerous and uncomfortable.  But the reason is withheld for most of the book.  I wanted to rush ahead and figure out what exactly it was that's going on and had to be very strict with myself and read it at a decent pace.

By doing so, I got to enjoy the layered and complex story, written by a strong debut novelist.  Celia's character is not at all what you would expect - I fully expected her to be soft, malleable and a bit of a wimp and initially, there is a bit of that, but as she develops, and finds herself, her strengths and weaknesses and also her place in the world, she really does grow into a very believable, very strong character.

In fact, her character develops into quite a nasty piece of work for a part of the book, and yet, I 100% totally believed and understood why she was acting the way she did.  It sold the story and the writing to me more.

The secondary characters and the sub-plots are handled skilfully and well, you know.  Just go buy the bloody book and read it.  Great storytelling just does not get better than this.

A fast paced contemporary young adult novel written with such skill and ease, I have no hesitation recommending it to readers who would like something different, meatier and with a hint of Kelley Armstrong's YA series, sans the supernatural elements.

Find the official "Celia Frost" website here.

Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon

Synopsis

Desire. Danger. Destiny. Little did I know that this is what I would find at Gottfried Academy.

Coming from sunny California, the mist-shrouded Academy was a shock, with its strange customs, ancient curriculum and study of Latin - the language of the dead. Then I discovered that the school has more than one dark secret... I also discovered Dante. Intelligent, elusive and devastatingly gorgeous, most people can't decide whether they love, hate or fear him. All I know is that when we're together, I've never felt more alive - or more afraid.

I hadn't really been aware of Dead Beautiful until about a week ago. I started seeing it mentioned on Twitter and then walked into my local Waterstones and picked it up from the shelf. It's got a great synopsis and I always love a fish out of water story line so I took it home (with other books but this isn't the time or the place to discuss my obsessions). I read it in a week which is pretty slow for me - although I read the last third in a matter of hours, flipping the pages like a woman possessed.

Renee's parents die in mysterious circumstances and she's sent to Gottfried Academy on the East Coast. Gottfried's is exclusive and virtually unheard of. The dress code is archaic and Renee is faced with more rules than she's even known and a whole list of subjects that make no sense to her at all. Instead of lacrosse and history she's expected to learn Latin and horticulture. Against her wishes she makes the move but soon makes friends in the spooky, Gothic school. There's more than a few mysteries at Gottfried. The previous term a pupil called Benjamin was found dead in the grounds, his tie stuffed into his mouth. She's replacing a girl who left under suspicious circumstances and then there's Dante who barely speaks to anyone, except Renee. Nathaniel, Eleanor and the Grandfather are great characters, I could have quite happily read more about them. There's also some very thorough research and mythology in place that gives Dead Beautiful a solid foundation to build upon.

I enjoyed this book but I found I didn't love it. I'm not sure if it was a pace thing or the dialogue but it didn't grab me a hundred percent. It could be that I'm still in mourning after having finished an awesome book and am still searching for something to fill the void. Having said that as the mystery unravels the last third of the book flies. There are some original new twists to the paranormal genre and the relationship between Renee and Dante is very touching. The last chapter is simply gorgeous and although I've heard that there's a sequel on the way Dead Beautiful would be perfect as a stand alone such is the strength of the symmetry of the plot.