Hadn’t the Pleasure # 49

The books that have been collecting dust for so long they have become stained from it

This one’s a little different; it’s something I really want to do this ever since I saw the book in the bookshop, didn’t buy it, and then had to (you all get it). It’s the reason BBD was posted like that, its idea came from these two books. So…

Below are two books, and I recently bought, and I want (and going to) read them back to back (ish) and do a review on the two. I think the idea is cool. Until I really thought about it, and the stupidity of what I was going to put myself threw, but can’t stop wanting it, so it could take a while.

A father who misses his son.
A soldier home from war.
A man with nothing to lose.

When Brian Stutts walks into a first-grade classroom with a gun, Emery and Jake’s world is blown apart. They’re just teenagers helping to tutor some kids, but now they’re at the centre of a deadly hostage crisis.

While Jake tries to get a secret message to the outside world, Emery reaches out to the desperate, unstable man. But Brian Stutts is holding the gun, and one way or another he’s not leaving without his son.

This is not a Drill by Beck McDowell

First published 25 October 2012 by Nancy Paulsen Books

This copy (au.) 1 November 2012 by Hardie Grant Egmont

paperback, 222 pages

contemporary YA

Night seeps through the hospital blinds. I can’t stop shivering as I pull the blanket the nurse gave me around my shoulders. I’m so tired, but every time I close my eyes, I see that terrible image—the image of the first-graders blinking in shock at the gun pointed at their teacher’s head.

 

Leah Jackson - in detention. Then armed Year 9s burst in, shooting. She escapes, just. But the new Lock Down system for keeping intruders out is now locking everyone in. She takes to the ceilings and air vents with another student, Anton, and manages to use her mobile to call out to the world.

First: survive the gang - the so-called 'Eternal Knights'.
Second: rescue other kids taken hostage, and one urgently needing medical help.

Outside, parents gather, the army want intelligence, television cameras roll, psychologists give opinions, sociologists rationalize, doctors advise - and they all want a piece of Leah. Soon her phone battery is running out; the SAS want her to reconnoiter the hostage area ... But she is guarding a terrifying conviction. Her brother, Connor, is at the center of this horror. Is he with the Eternal Knights or just a pawn?

She remembers. All those times Connor reached out for help ... If she'd listened, voiced her fears about him earlier, would things be different now? Should she give up her brother?

With only Anton for company, surviving by wits alone, Leah wrestles with the terrible choices...

Siege by Sarah Mussi

First published 7 March 2013 by Holder Children’s Book

paperback, 303 pages

Contemporary YA

The windows start rattling. They’re small, thick things, made of cheap blast-proof plastic, suitable for our kind of school. They mask another sound, something like popcorn popping. I tilt my head, trying to make it out.