When poor James Henry Trotter loses his parents in a horrible rhinoceros accident, he is forced to live with his two wicked aunts, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. After three years he becomes "the saddest and loneliest boy you could find". Then one day, a wizened old man in a dark-green suit gives James a bag of magic crystals that promise to reverse his misery forever. When James accidentally spills the crystals on his aunts' withered peach tree, he sets the adventure in motion. From the old tree a single peach grows, and grows, and grows some more, until finally James climbs inside the giant fruit and rolls away from his despicable aunts to a whole new life…

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A criminal isn't necessarily a bad guy, is he? Stanley Yelnats isn't a criminal; he didn't steal a car or rob a bank. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Doing something he thought would benefit his father, the inventor, and his mother.

Stanley, or 'Caveman' as the boys at Camp Green Lake call him, is a juvenile with a disturbing secret. He is the stereotypical bullied child, because he is overweight. He never knew what real friends were, until he met the colourfully named 'Armpit', 'X-ray', 'Zero', 'Zig-Zag' and 'Squid'.

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The Maze Runner is the first book in a trilogy written by the American author James Dashner. The book was first published in 2009. The similarities between The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner are striking. Firstly, the setting is a post-apocalyptic world with an authoritarian regime, secondly a young teenage hero or heroine decides to fight against the rulers, and finally the heroes are being tested in a trial and have to fight for life or death.

In The Hunger Games the hero, Katniss Everdeen, and the world the story plays in, Panem, are introduced at the beginning and only later in the book the actual trials start. Quite in contrast, The Maze Runner kicks off directly in the middle of the trial and as the title says, a seemingly unsolvable maze must be solved.

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The Giver is a morally driven and interesting story about a young boy called Jonas who lives in a society free of crime and sadness. At the age of 12, children are assigned their jobs, which they will train for and do for the rest of their lives. Everything is chosen; from your parents to your partner. Jonas stands apart from the community when he is chosen to become the new "Memory Keeper". Society has been kept free of all the negative aspects of life because for as long as it has been formed, there has been someone who holds all the bad and good memories of the past within them. This is both bad and good for the inhabitants because, although they are protected from harm, they are also not exposed to the wonderful aspects of life.

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Suzanne Collins' supposed young-adult novel is well written and enjoyable. The concept is amazing and I'm jealous of Collins' for conceiving the idea. It's one of the few books you can call a page-turner, and the characters are much more interesting than Ron, Harry and Hermione - apologies to all Potterhead's!

Katniss Everdeen, the book's heroine is one of my favourite characters in fiction, as she is a beacon of hope. It's set in a dystopian future, where America has been turned into a vicious land called Panem. It's run by the "Capitol," a sick dictatorship of a government...

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