The Colour of Trouble by Gerry Bobsien

Title: The Colour of Trouble
Author: Gerry Bobsien

Release Date: 1st July 2012

My Rating: 3/5

Blurb:
Maddy can’t stop making things: art, fashion and, most of all, TROUBLE. A new art project could give her the notoriety she desires, but that’s not all she’s dealing with. Her bestie, Darcy, is acting weird and starts dating a girl he’s never mentioned before. Her mum is living and working hundreds of kilometres away, and a new mystery boy keeps popping up at the most inconvenient times ... Will the fallout from her latest project push away all the people she loves? Does Maddy really want to be this NOTORIOUS?

In A Nutshell:
A quick and enjoyable read, perfect for girls aged twelve to fifteen who like fashion, art and creativity.

My Review:
Maddy is all about extravagance, she loves all things to do with art and craft and often crosses the lines of what she sees as ‘public art’ but others see as ‘vandalism’. She isn’t content with just being good at art, she wants everyone to know about her. She wants fame and recognition, and it would seem, notoriety. Maddy is lots of fun and I love how she and Darcy are so creative and entrepreneurial and I hope they inspire readers.

Maddy’s mum has had to move away for work so she and her twin brother Jack are living with their grandparents. Even so, Maddy and her mum have a great relationship and while the family has been pulled apart by necessity, they are all quite close. I have to say, I loved Norm, their grandpa. He used to have a confectionery company and now, although retired, is always whipping stuff up for friends and family. Their grandma has some attitude too and Maddy is always admiring her style. It would seem that most of the characters have an obsession with something and all of them contribute to the story in some intriguing, quirky or extravagant way: Maddy’s art teacher The Razz, her mentor Harry who is obsessed with yellow, the studious and football-loving Jack, her gardening enthusiast mother, co-conspirators Trinny and Poppy, and the mysterious busker Max. Oh and of course there is Darcy.

Usually in a book where there is a girl/guy friendship and it is told from the girls’ perspective, it is usually the girl who has fallen for the boy. So I like how in The Colour of Trouble, it is the other way around, Darcy has fallen for Maddy, which causes friction in their friendship.

A very cool little inclusion is that Maddy ‘suffers’ from synaesthesia which means she sees colours when she hears a particular noise and she has started to be able to ‘taste’ colours when she sees a particularly vibrant colour. I found it really interesting as it was recently brought up in a random conversation at uni and I had never heard of it before. According to a bunch of websites, it occurs when particular senses mingle in the brain. For more info, I suggest you google it.

A quick and enjoyable read, perfect for ages 12-15.

Thankyou to Walker Books for this review copy.

Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

Title: Graffiti Moon
Author: Cath Crowley

Release Date: 1st August 2010

My Rating: 5/5

Blurb:
Let me make it in time. Let me meet Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers.

It's the end of year 12. Lucy's looking for Shadow, the graffiti artist everyone talks about.

His work is all over the city, but he is nowhere.

Ed, the last guy she wants to see at the moment, says he knows where to find him. He takes Lucy on an all-night search to places where Shadow's thoughts about heartbreak and escape echo around the city walls.

But the one thing Lucy can't see is the one thing that's right before her eyes.

My Review:
Love Love Love Love Love! This is one of my favourite books of 2010! I absolutely could not put it down.

It is the last night of year 12 and Lucy and her two friends, Jazz and Daisy, are aiming for an all-nighter. Lucy, as always, is looking for Shadow. Jazz wants to find a hot boy and Daisy wants to have fun while deciding if she should dump her boyfriend. It just so happens that the boy Jazz chooses happens to be hanging with his mates; Dylan, Daisy's boyfriend, and Ed, who Lucy has an embarrassing history with. And so an adventure all over Melbourne begins!

We are lucky enough to get to hear the adventure from both the perspectives of Lucy and Ed, as well as little snippets of Poet's poetry (Poet writes the words to some of Shadow's artwork). The story is funny, witty and breath-taking. It literally had me laughing out loud at one point (and I received some strange looks as I was on a train at the time)! It is really great to have both the girl and the guy's perspectives. As a plus, at some points the perspectives cross over and we get to see how each of them interprets what the other has said or done, which is not something you see often (usually it is a straight swap to the other person and on with the story rather than going back and seeing what has just happened from the other side).

The conceptual art that Crowley has imagined for Shadow is amazing and I would love to turn around a corner and see some of the pieces on a wall. As the reader, we are able to feel connected to the artwork, not only because it is described in detail but we also get to hear not only how Shadow's pieces make Lucy feel but also what her creative force and the emotions behind her own art are. It is this kind of personal touch that really reaches out to the reader.

Graffiti Moon will speak to art-minded people the same way Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist reached out to those who adore music.

I really liked the extra personal details included such as Lucy's family's quirky arrangement, Jazz's supposed psychic abilities and Ed's inner turmoil over his future, the end of a past relationship and the death of a close friend. There is so much depth to all the characters that you just can't help love them all. You can also feel the tingles of attraction between certain characters. ZING!

I have had one of Cath Crowley's previous titles, Chasing Charlie Duskin, on my TBR list for ages and I am definitely going to have to put it on order because if Graffiti Moon is anything to go by, I'll be reading a lot more of Cath Crowley in the future.

Heist Society by Ally Carter

Title: Heist Society
Author: Ally Carter

Release Date: 25th February 2010 (Australia)

My Rating: 4/5

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre...to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie travelled to Austria...to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own, scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving "the life" for a normal life proves harder than she'd expected.

Soon, Kat's friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring her back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat's father isn't just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat's dad needs her help.

For Kat there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it's a spectacularly impossible job? She's got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in history, or at least her family's (very crooked) history.

I really enjoyed Heist Society, it's fun and has a good amount of suspense to it. It reminds me of Oceans 11 but with teenagers and I would really love for it to become a series. I liked Gallagher Girls but I think Heist Society has just that little bit more substance to it that allows it to be more enjoyable for those of us who are slightly older than the target audience. Ages 11+