A Better Nightmare

Despite my having read several absolutely brilliant middle grade fantasies in the last few months, my YA reads have been somewhat lacking in this area. It’s not that I haven’t read some really great books – I have – but, as I think I said in my last YA review, the titles I’ve been reading that fall under that umbrella have either been romances or thrillers.

Not knowing anything about this read when it dropped through the letterbox, my curiosity was very firmly piqued by the accompanying press release and although there were several other books ahead of it in the pile, I couldn’t help bumping it up to the top rather swiftly. A cracking story about society’s attitudes towards and treatment of difference, this is a read that I really enjoyed and one to which I am very much hoping there will be a sequel because – and I’m sure I won’t be alone in this – I need to know what happens next.

In the years that she has lived at Wildsmoor Facility, Emily has become compliant with its many rules and routines. Queuing up with the others who live there for the morning medication that controls the Grimm-Cross Syndrome, the Grimm, that she and her fellow residents have been infected with, her attention is caught by a younger boy who refuses the medication, saying that he is better and who knocks her to the floor before being tasered by one of the guardians on duty and removed.