Coming Up in February: Kids' and YA books

There are loads of exciting new releases heading our way in February, so I thought I'd put up a quick post highlighting some of the ones that I'm interested in.

In the Children's shelves, I'm looking forward this month to reading Talina in the Tower, while the YA releases I'm most excited about at the moment are Hollow Pike, Someone Else's Life, This is Not Forgiveness and An Act of Love.

Talina in the Tower by Michelle Lovric (Orion Children's, 2nd Feb) is a fantasy adventure set in Venice featuring scary hyena-like creatures and Talina, who discovers the power to turn into a cat. How cool does that sound? And it's a beautiful hardback; very purply and atmospheric with gold lettering.

Hollow Pike by James Dawson (Indigo, 2nd Feb) is this month's big paranormal release. Centred on Lis, who moves into an area with a history of witchcraft, this is a classic chiller and I loved it. Look out for a review later on this week.

The other three February YA releases I'm highlighting today are all contemporaries.

Someone Else's Life by Katie Dale (Simon & Schuster, 2nd Feb) is an emotional story focused on Huntingdon's Disease and its effects on Rosie as she loses her mother Trudie to the illness. As if that weren't enough to deal with, Rosie discovers that Trudie wasn't in fact her biological mother and, naturally, seeks to discover the truth. Again, there'll be a review of this rollercoaster ride of a book shortly.

This is Not Forgiveness by Celia Rees (Bloomsbury, 2nd Feb) is a tense drama exploring the relationship between Caro (a 'bad girl' type) and Jamie, together with Jamie's brother Rob who's been fighting in Afghanistan and is not coping well with everyday life back home. It's all a bit sinister and dark and something is clearly going to go badly wrong. I'm in the middle of this one at the moment and will certainly be reviewing it in the near future.

Finally, An Act of Love by Alan Gibbons is being released in trade paperback by Indigo on 2nd Feb, having been previously published in a larger format in the summer. This is a thriller weaving 'big ideas' of terrorism and trust together with the story of a specific friendship. I reviewed this one last year and recommend it highly as dealing with important issues in an individualised way which makes it easy to relate and empathise.

Which other titles are you excited about at the moment?