Claire Hennessy

Claire Hennessy

Contributor

Claire Hennessy, a contributor to The Irish Times, specialises in reviewing young-adult literature.

September’s YA fiction: Sending shivers down the spine of anyone who was ever a teenage girl

From an utterly gorgeous story by Gavin Extence to another delight from Sally Nicholls and a superb second book by Helen Corcoran

August’s YA titles: Arm yourself to fight all sorts of monsters

From escaping sex trafficking in India to mastering anxiety

Choosing honesty over sentimentality in this month’s YA titles

Reviews: Sing If You Can’t Dance; Sunshine; Stars In Their Eyes; A Calamity of Mannerings; Bellegarde

YA summer reads: Queer identities discovered, policed and celebrated

Books that highlight the importance of queer love stories for teenagers in an era of bans and challenges

June’s YA titles: reckonings with the past and the present

Joyce Efia Harmer’s How Far We’ve Come and Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming are among a good crop

YA fiction for May: a kaleidoscope of loss (but also kissing)

From Sam Blake’s teenage murder mystery in south Dublin to the painful break-up of a friendship

Young adult picks for April: ghosts and chess, myth and murder

Reviews: What Walks these Halls; The First Move; Stand Up; Lies We Sing to the Sea; Stars and Smoke; Royal Blood

Libraries and LGBTQ+ books: controlling what people read is a dark, dangerous step

In a civilised society, we do not burn books. Even when we loathe them

YA fiction: Fragmented time, censorship and an utter wagon of a teacher

Reviews: Catfish Rolling, Promise Boys, Different for Boys, Freya Harte Is Not A Puzzle, Chaos Theory and HappyHead

February’s YA titles: The joys of love and the dangers of virtual reality

Brief reviews of This Time It’s Real; Glow Up, Lara Bloom; Game Over Girl; Every Gift a Curse; and more

January’s YA fiction: the madness of the modern world and some reimagining of the past

Reviews: Influential; Never Ever Getting Back Together; The Agency for Scandal; A Million to One; A Dark Inheritance; The Midnight Game; This Book Kills

December’s YA picks: Teenagers go up against the government, the mob and an evil witch

Reviews: Monochrome; Five Survive; Seasparrow; Wearing My Mother’s Heart; Good Enough To Eat; The Heartstopper Yearbook

The Irish Times books of the year: Best young-adult fiction of 2022

From a skillful condemnation of an unjust system to a strange and eerie fantasy, Claire Hennessy selects her favourite young-adult titles

Survival stories that will leave lasting impressions: the latest YA titles

You Don’t Know What War Is; As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow; Babel; We Are All Constellations; Activist; The First to Die at the End

Rapunzel redux: October’s best YA titles

Reviews: Big Bad Me, The Truth About Riley, Let’s Chase Stars Together, H.A.W.K.S., Let Down Your Hair and Rapunzella