YA reviews: Poverty, privilege and finding your place in the world

‘Da says it’s like being a fox instead of a dog . . . You Buffers are the dogs, well-fed, well-trained, and we’re the roving foxes, lean and free,” Jim Curran explains to a new friend about what it’s like to be a Traveller. But the truth is that he doesn’t think much about it: it’s just who he is. Attending school, however, means he’s forced to be reminded of his outsider status every day, in increasingly violent ways.

The late Siobhan Dowd's The Pavee and the Buffer Girl (The Bucket List, £12.99) was originally published as a short story. It has now been republished as an illustrated novel. Emma Shoard's smudgy, impressionistic art enriches Dowd's sympathetic, never preachy tale of prejudice and bullying.

The much-hyped The Hate U Give (Walker Books, £7.99), by Angie Thomas, similarly addresses racial prejudice. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this unapologetically political debut novel is narrated by 16-year-old Starr. After witnessing her best friend's death at the hands of a police officer, she reflects that "people like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice".

The smaller ways in which racism encroaches on Starr’s life are also noted; at her mostly white private school she is conscious of avoiding slang or seeming confrontational, aware that she is always at risk of being regarded as “the angry black girl”. Fortunately, the novel avoids being purely a manifesto; Starr’s family and friends are portrayed vividly, and her determination to fight for justice is the result of an authentic emotional journey. This is a powerful book.

Meg Grehan's The Space Between (Little Island, €7.99) is another debut novel, this time set in Ireland and depicting a year in the life of Beth, an isolated, agoraphobic young woman. When a dog presses its nose against her window, and she meets both Mouse and his owner, Alice, she feels "a shy spark of hope" that her world might expand.

Told in verse, this novel carefully balances its portrayal of the power of friendship and love with an acknowledgment that love is not a cure for mental illness (“I can’t be your reason,” Alice gently reminds Beth). It’s a sensitive and hopeful book from a writer to watch.

The world of Irish young-adult literature has been watching the award-winning Sheena Wilkinson for years, so that her new novel, Street Song (Black & White, £7.99), is superb should surprise nobody. Eighteen-year-old Ryan is recovering from the twin traumas of drug addiction and temporary stardom; a fight with his abusive stepfather sparks a chain of events that culminates in his homelessness. This is a compelling, gritty exploration of poverty, privilege, music, friendship and finding your place in the world.

Becky Albertalli's The Upside of Unrequited (Penguin, £7.99) is a much lighter but nonetheless thought-provoking story about falling in love for the first time and what it means, especially for a girl who knows it's safer to have crushes than real relationships. Molly's voice is incredibly endearing; she wants to be a good feminist who doesn't obsess over boys and love, but, as she notes, "I'm seventeen and I just want to know what it feels like to kiss someone. I don't think I'm unlovable. But I keep wondering: what is my glitch?"

Crushes and first love also feature in Rachael Lucas's The State of Grace (Macmillan, £6.99), although the greatest love here is between Grace and her best friend, Anna, who understands her quirks (part individual, part due to her autism). Grace's take on the world is both mysterious and relatable; at times she offers a perspective that is wholly her own and at others she hits the nail on the head about what it means to be a teenager. Looking at her sister's friend, she thinks, "I get the feeling that she's sort of holding on. It's hard to describe, but it's how I feel all the time and I can always recognize it in other people. Like you're expecting to be caught out at any moment and banished from society."

The idea of rules for life is a recurring theme in a novel that looks at what it means to be different, and to feel as though everyone else has all the answers, but also reminds us to be conscious of – and, one hopes, question – the unspoken guidelines that govern so many social situations.

Cecelia Ahern's Perfect (HarperCollins, £12.99) similarly invites readers to question the world. The second in a dystopian duology, this volume sees Celestine team up with others in her restrictive society who have been deemed flawed. Originally an attempt to prevent government corruption, the labelling of those found guilty by morality courts is just as corrupt as the system it has replaced – a theme familiar in dystopian fiction but still engaging here.

The world building is slightly shaky; this society at times has very Irish touches and at others feels generic, which is likely to frustrate fans of the genre used to more carefully rendered settings. The story is gripping, however, and Celestine – a girl who believed in logic, in black-and-white thinking, until forced to face the messiness of humanity and the importance of learning from mistakes – is an admirable heroine.

Like the best dystopian novels, Perfect sheds light on our world, and the theme of moral superiority is particularly pertinent to today's young people, growing up in an environment where imagined offences against political correctness are called out just as viciously as the villains here brand the flesh of the flawed.

Claire Hennessy is a writer, editor and creative-writing facilitator. We are dividing young-adult and children's books into two fortnightly columns, to double our coverage of this important and growing sector. Sara Keating's first children's books column appears on April 29th