Double Cross: Book 4 (Noughts And Crosses)

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Blackman is very strong when talking about teen emotions with their wild ups and downs, and she marches through adult objections to graphic sex scenes with utter confidence and aplomb. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Malorie Blackman is one of the best YA authors I have read in quite some time, each chapter is shown from the point of view of the different characters and they are written so well you get to know the character on a different level, their thoughts and feelings, great to read.

There were a few moments in all of the books which I did not particularly enjoy, I did not like Sephy at all in book one but as the series progressed I grew to like her, you see her growing up, changing, learning to love herself. Noughts, as they are known, face the sort of racism that in real life is directed against black people, including the abusive term 'blanker', and massive discrimination in education, employment and all other important areas of life. So I think his death at the end of the last book was perfect, devastating but perfect for the character and clearly the end he was always running towards.However I thoroughly enjoyed it and was kept gripped and entertained throughout, just as I was with the other books in the series. Cameron desperately needs a new heart when he is offered the opportunity to take part in a radical and controversial experiment involving the transplant of a pig's heart. Most of the story is concentrated on Tobey and his poor judgment, which often made me want to climb into the pages just to smack him. She suffers from a horrible disease which has symptoms of bitchiness, moodiness and erratic behavior. She has been awarded numerous prizes for her work, including the Red House Children’s Book Award and the Fantastic Fiction Award.

It’s such a shame because the original premise so was stellar, I think as a standalone Noughts and Crosses with a bit more work could’ve been amazing. Blackman portrays an engagingly vulnerable, multifaceted character in Tobey, who narrates the majority of the book, and through him creates for her readers profound moral and ethical dilemmas. I bought this book as soon as it came out, but I never got round to it, it's been sitting on my shelf staring at me and I've been aching to read it so I finally made myself sit down with it.Now post emancipation, it is the non-black population who are distinctly disadvantaged and impoverished in this alternative future society which is ruled and controlled by the dominating blacks (Crosses).

I hint at the was only because I first read her books, including the first three in this series when I was teenager (way way back) but I can't seem to get back into them as an adult. I will say that this book is particularly action packed with some interesting events which add to the very dramatic story. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. In it, lies the true tragedy, as misunderstandings and failed communication cause as much damage as the social forces do. This is such a good ending to the series as you see it from how everyone else is feeling about black and white people who are normal everyday people and don't have any money.I’m so sad it veered off the original direction it was going in and rushed to a haphazard conclusion. Her work has appeared on screen, with Pig-Heart Boy, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, being adapted into a BAFTA-award-winning TV serial.

I think that if I'd carried on reading the books in a closer concession I probably would have enjoyed it a little bit more, but the writing and the storyline is always so easy to jump back into that you soon pick up the connection with the characters that you had from the first couple of books. It didn’t need to be tagged on to a series, it’s so relevant to the youth of today and it hits hard.

It is very encouraging that Blackman's series of books has been so successful and is widely read and made available in UK schools – as it quite rightly should continue to be. I 100% recommend checking out this series which starts with the first book, Noughts and Crosses, and if you end up enjoying them enough to reach this book in the series, I'd recommend stopping there and giving this book a miss. Purely because it doesn’t feel like it belongs, it doesn’t feel like it’s meant to be in that world. Gangs are endemic in poor urban areas but they also flouish in collapsing authoritarian societies and so are greatly apropos to Blackman's dystopian world. This is an original, intelligent, perceptive and though-provoking series of books – and whilst squarely aimed at the Young Adult market, it clearly transcends the restrictive boundaries of that genre.