Presdales Carnegies Reading Group

King of Nothing
This book was a brilliant read. It deals well with themes of toxic masculinity, and shows how much of an effect having a "reputation" can have on teenagers. Although I found it hard to get into the flow of reading it at the beginning due to the amount of slang language used, I got past that quickly and grew to love it. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested!

Lara

Treacle Town
An incredibly written novel by Brian Conaghan which excellently explores challenging themes such as gang violence and loss. This book is for older readers looking for an absorbing yet heartbreaking novel.

Lizzie

Glasgow Boys
I did enjoy this book, I read it quickly and it kept my attention. I liked the concept and Margaret McDonald is a good writer! Okay, just had to say that because my book reviews tend to come off quite negatively. My biggest criticism of this book is that it can't seem to decide whether it's in second person or in a diary format. Let me explain: each perspective is in third person, "he"; "Finlay"; "Banjo"; but then, occasionally, like this example from early in the book, it'll suddenly shift to being like a diary in a dork diaries kind of way: "What. What. Finlay did not just imply he literally swallowed his own vomit." This is from page 57, and when I read it it really broke my immersion within the story because for the rest of the time, the narrator is impartial and is just relaying the story, so why did it get /embarrassed/ and feel the need to tell everyone it was embarrassing? Instead of that, McDonald could've written "Finlay flushed with embarrassment. He regretted implying he'd swallowed his own vomit.". That probably isn't great, but it doesn't break my immersion. In conclusion, these occasional breaks were distracting and disruptive to my experience reading this book. I found both characters compelling, but it bothered me that Banjo seemed to get a lot more pages than Finlay. The amount of pages both of them got are probably realistically similar but Banjo's perspective always bored me just a bit more so it just feels like Finlay had a lot less pages. As i was reading it, some lines just felt like they were written to be intentionally profound, and because of that it reminded me of TikTok poetry. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it made me cringe a little bit. Here's a few of my favourite quotes: "It's such a beautiful thing to hold somebody" Finlay "What an experience to have a body. This thing that needs watered and fed and rested, is yanked around all day to various places and into various poses. This unreality of it all overwhelms him sometimes: that it's only a collection of cells and tissues and electrical synapses. /I don't exist/, the waves would come. He wanted to run out into the street and shout to anyone /please just touch me, tell me i'm alive, make sure I exist/." Finlay "Finlay realises he's resented everybody who hasn't experienced his very specific pain." Finlay

Ellie