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Happy World Book Day!

Happy World Book Day! 📚We hope everyone is celebrating with a good book! We thought we would share with you what everyone on the Paper Lanterns team is reading this week. There are some fantastic YA reads here that we would recommend checking out. Let us know what you’re reading at the moment!

Amy is reading Savage Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan

Maggie is reading Courting Darkness by Robin Lafevers

Grace is reading A Song For Ella Grey by David Almond

Joyce is reading Spare and Found Parts by Sarah Maria Griffin

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News and Updates – Book Club and New Team Member

Hello everyone! We’ve had a lot of exciting things going on behind the scenes here, and wanted to share some of the updates with you.

Issue 2 Cover


Firstly, we wanted to wish our co-founder Ruth Ennis well on her next adventure! Ruth was a co-founder and co-editor of the journal for our first year, and we’re excited to see what she does next! 


We’re absolutely delighted to announce that Maggie Masterson is joining the Paper Lanterns team as production manager. Maggie was a children’s and young adult librarian in the Chicago suburbs, where she also sat on the committee for the Illinois Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award. She moved to Ireland to complete her M.Phil. in Children’s Literature at Trinity College Dublin, where she studied the illustration of fairy tales, and thought about books as souvenirs of childhood. She conducted bibliographic research in the Pollard Collection of Children’s Books. She is currently working on her PhD at Trinity, researching the construction of girlhood in the children’s literature archive. 


We’re excited to let you know we are changing how we run our Book Club! From Issue 4 onwards, we’re creating a space for readers to come together and have interactive discussions about each issue’s selected book. We’ll also have author interviews, and there will be a chance for our readers to ask their questions too! Readers are welcome from all over the world. We can’t wait for you to join us, and we’ve a wonderful author lined up for Issue 4!


Finally, we’d like to give a huge thanks to Rachel Drohan, who helped us overhaul our book club. Rachel recently completed a 3 weeks internship with us as part of her Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Writing and Literature.

Don’t forget, you can save 10% on our back issues with our bundle deal!


We hope everyone is reading, writing, and staying safe. We’ll be sharing our contributors for issue 4 soon, so watch this space!

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Thrill Seekers

Thrill Seekers
Edwina Shaw
Ransom Publishing, 2019
Paperback, 280 pages, £7.99
ISBN 9781785916755

Thrill Seekers is a good novel. It isn’t a nice novel, and it certainly isn’t a fun novel, but it’s the kind of novel that grabs you by the front of your coat and shakes you around a bit before dropping you just as suddenly. The premise is simple: the protagonists’ father is dead and in order to deal with that there’s going to have to be a whole lot of drinking, smoking and drugging. Luckily, Brian and Douggie Spencer are the boys for the job. Unluckily? Douggie has started hearing voices, and everything looks like it’s about to go down the creek and fast.

And there are a lot of creeks. It’s set in an existentialist Brisbane, where the youth have no purpose and nothing but time. The pacing is excellent, the characters are believable, the grit is gritty. The chapters-as-vignettes approach works well. The only major issue arises from the inclusion of a third narrator, Beck: an enjoyable character but not really a protagonist. Shaw gives her very little agency and her chapters suffer for it. Don’t worry though, it’s not the end of the world, since the prose is consistently excellent: unfussy, but with a rare liveliness and spring to it which could save almost any meandering scene.

This is for fans of (or an introduction to) McCabe’s Butcher Boy and E.M. Reapy’s Red Dirt. Depression, addiction, faith and love are all thrown in the pot and discussed frankly by Shaw, as well as severe mental illness – the book is dedicated to her brother, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He died aged twenty. Not for the faint of heart and certainly not for the squeamish, Thrill Seekers is a bloody, harrowing, all-Australian tale which is well worth grappling with.

 Luke Power

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Savage Her Reply

Savage Her Reply
Deirdre Sullivan
Illustrated by Karen Vaughan
Little Island Books, October 2020
Hardback, 256 pages, £13.99
ISBN 9781912417643

Savage Her Reply is a captivating tale that delves deeper into the myth ‘The Children of Lir’. It is a book that not only gives you a completely different perspective on the story but also makes you wonder about the lives and motives behind the characters in other legends and fables.

The book is written from the perspective of Aífe, known as the wicked stepmother in the original myth, who turns the innocent children of Lir into swans for nine hundred years. In the original, she is a very flat character who is a simple, evil antagonist. However, in the book, her character is developed and we see her as a tender human being. Aífe tells us about her life from the very beginning; about her family, how and where she grew up, her tragic and joyful experiences, and how her whole life led up to the very moment she placed a curse upon the four children. We also get to discover what became of her after she did it.

It’s a really interesting take on the myth and I love the concept of adapting an ancient legend and writing it from an unexpected character’s perspective. I also really enjoyed that we got to see the reasoning as to why Aífe did such a terrible thing to the faultless children. She is no longer just the horrible, jealous woman that we all thought she was. We see her as a warrior, a survivor – someone who was driven to madness by her own entrapment and abuse.

I truly relished this read. As an Irish person, I also feel very connected to my roots by the story, as many Irish words are used and many other Irish legends referenced, including some that I had never heard of. This book was a learning experience. Deirdre Sullivan really manages to pull the reader into the enchantment and poignancy of the story. It feels like  being read an old tale by a familiar voice.

I would recommend this book to those interested by Irish legends and history, as well as those who enjoy a classic moral tale.

Hanna-Rose Sullivan, teen reviewer

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Again Again

Again Again
E. Lockhart
Hot Key Books, June 2020
Paperback, 320 pages, £7.99
ISBN 9781471407291

After saving her brother from a drug overdose, Adelaide Buchman and her family agree that they all need a fresh start. So, Adelaide and her father Levi move to a new city – six hours away from her mother and brother – to Adelaide’s new school, where her father takes a job teaching. Adelaide is thrown into a summer of falling in and out of love all the while presenting a sophisticated and charming personality, which can sometimes expose how vulnerable she can be.

In a beautifully structured novel by E. Lockhart, Again Again is full of heart-wrenching storylines. Almost every situation has a few alternative endings before you actually read the real one and I loved this because I had never read
anything like it. It was a very refreshing way of reading, where you think you can see which outcomes the author considers using.

Adelaide and Toby Buchman’s brother-sister relationship really appealed to me as well because, although they keep things from each other, they are always there for when the other is in need. I loved this book! I would recommend it to anyone who likes romantic fiction that includes real-life situations. Again Again is a wonderful story that shows us the reality of loving and losing the right and wrong people.
Aoibhe Toft, teen reviewer

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Star Trek: Discovery – Aftermath

Star Trek: Discovery – Aftermath
Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson
Illustrated by Tony Shasteen and Angel Hernandez
IDW Publishing, April 2020
Paperback, 96 pages, £12.99
ISBN 9781684056507

Star Trek: Discovery – Aftermath chronicles the efforts of Captain Pike and Chancellor L’Rell to bring about peace between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingons following the events of Season Two of Star Trek: Discovery. Commander Pike is accompanied by Spock, whose adopted sister has gone missing along with the U.S.S. Discovery. This graphic novel also includes a story featuring Commander Saru, who must rescue the crews of the Discovery and the U.S.S. Dorothy Garrod from interstellar pirates.

Beyer and Johnson’s gripping story is brought to life by atmospheric illustrations from Shasteen and Hernandez, who perfectly capture the visual intricacies of human emotion in difficult situations, such as the hijacking of a ship or the breakdown of political communications. The illustrations within the novel portray the grief and worry experienced by Spock through an empathetic rendering of body language and facial expressions that speak volumes to the reader.

Both of the stories in Star Trek: Discovery – Aftermath are highly appealing in terms of plot, but also carry a nuanced discourse on human nature and emotion. The Klingon narrative aptly suggests that peace and equality between races should be a very real and achievable goal, and yet a hopeful future is threatened by those who are dangerously narrow-minded. The stories within this graphic novel comment on the importance of unity in the face of danger from a common enemy. 

The combination of insightful storylines, vivid illustrations and highly emotive colour palettes make for an immersive and compelling reading experience.

Joanna Geoghegan

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Wrecked

Wrecked
Louisa Reid
Guppy Books, September 2020
Paperback, 304 pages, £7.99
ISBN 9781913101367

 

Wrecked, by Louisa Reid, is an emotional rollercoaster. Eighteen-year-old Joe narrates the events of his life which hinge on a court case where he is on trial for dangerous driving that resulted in a fatal accident. Written in verse, each poem tells a new aspect of Joe’s story. It is an intense novel which subtly touches upon domestic violence, emotional abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, rape, and abortion. Romance is at the forefront of this novel. There is so much to unpack within this story, every page brings something new and worthwhile to the narrative.

Reid’s writing is clever, sophisticated and perfectly suits this coming of-age story. Using variations of typeface and font, the placement and size of the words on the page are used to reflect emotion and action. At times, the narrative is possibly too fast and could do with more expansion, but this simultaneously asks the reader to slow down while reading Wrecked in order to savour its literary craftsmanship. If it is coming-of-age novels you enjoy, this one has all of the traditional themes, although it is in an unconventional format, both in form and in perspective. This is a young-adult novel that can be enjoyed by both young and old, and should be making its way onto all school reading lists.

Lorna O’Dea