The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan

This book is set in what I think it our world, maybe the future? It doesn’t specify. But, wherever it is, things are not going well. Cities have huge walls around them to protect them from the infected out in the forest. The infected are people that have been bitten by other infected people. When someone gets bitten, the infection kills them and they come back as either breakers or mudo (different types of infected) depending on the circumstances. When they return, they don’t remember anything about their past lives. All they do is try to infect other people who have no option but to kill them.

The main character is a girl called Gabry who starts the story by climbing over the wall with her friends. She is having the time of her life because the boy she likes (her best friend, Cira’s, brother, Catcher) has just told her he likes her and kissed her for the first time but it all goes wrong when a breaker crashes the party. Some of the kids become infected and the rest get caught for going over the wall. Catcher gets bitten but, as it is only a small bite, it will take a few days before he turns. He doesn’t want to infect the rest of the city so he hides in the forest waiting to turn. Gabry is scared so runs away which means she doesn’t get caught with her friends. She vows to find Catcher and to free Cira.

I love the whole concept and, at the beginning, I loved the story. I loved finding out about Gabry’s past but I got frustrated and began to hate her by the end because she changes her mind completely. There’s someone she loves who would do anything for her and she randomly decides to like someone else but still leads him on. Also, it wasn’t as scary as the cover and blurb suggest. I didn’t really find it scary at all. Maybe that’s because I didn’t feel that the infected and their attacks were described in enough detail to scare me. Despite that, I still really want to read the sequel.

By Zobdy

Age 13

Dark Secrets 3: The Back Door Of Midnight by Elizabeth Chandler

It is the third in the Dark Secrets series. I have read Dark Secrets 2. It doesn’t make a difference whether you have already read any of the previous books because they each have individual, unrelated stories with different characters. The first two have two stories in but the third one has one.

The story in Dark Secrets 3 is called The Back Door Of Midnight. The main character is a girl called Anna who has a complicated family history. Her mother, Joanna, was taken in by her aunt and uncle (Anna’s great aunt and uncle) when she was pregnant with Anna. Her aunt and uncle are called Iris and Will and are brother and sister. Joanna was murdered when Anna was three so Anna was adopted by Kathryn who she thinks of as her mum. She has a seven year old adopted brother called Jack and six year old adopted twin sisters called Claire and Grace.

Uncle Will invites Anna to stay with him and Aunt Iris but when she gets there she discovers that he has died in between sending the letter and her getting there. Everyone thinks that it was a simple accident but something doesn’t feel right to Anna. That added with Aunt Iris talking to Uncle Will as if he’s still there and local boy Zack seeming to know more than he’s letting on makes her look around to find out what really happened that night.

Like Dark Secrets 3 it was impossible to guess what had actually happened. I had a thousand theories buzzing around my head but none of them were right. I couldn’t wait until I could read some more to add more clues so I could try and work out the mystery. But the, more I read, the more options seemed possible and it was only at the end when I knew what had really happened. I couldn’t put it down and loved it to bits especially the last page.

By Zobdy