Six YA books perfect for fictional characters

Lucy Ivison and Tom Ellen’s ‘Never Evers’ has some brilliant characters. The friendships are groups you just want to worm your way into, joke along with, and be a firm part of. Of course, there’s one thing we do to all our friends, we recommend them copious amounts of books. So we had a think and have nailed down the perfect YA book for each ‘Never Evers’ character. If we had these fictional friends here is what we would make them read.

Mouse – Because of her former ballet prowess our minds instantly leapt to Sophie Flack’s ‘Bunheads’ or Noel Streatfeild’s ‘Ballet Shoes’ (although, let’s be honest, I bet she would have already read this one a thousand times). Then we realised that this would be the worst thing we could give mouse. She was just forced out of ballet school for not being good enough, the last thing she would want to think about is ballet! We decided the perfect book for her would be ‘Love Song‘ by Sophia Bennett. It would take her mind off ballet for a little bit and instead focus on somehow ending up beloved by a world famous music icon …something that Mouse is becoming a little bit familiar with.

Kiera – Kiera is a badass and basically a teenage witch, so we decided she would need to read ‘Hex Hall‘ by Rachel Hawkins. We feel that Kiera would definitely resonate with insisting on trying a love spell …which doesn’t exactly go to plan. And she’s the kind of person who, well, if her room mate turned out to be a lesbian vampire? She would definitely be cool with it and just go on being the best friend ever.

Connie – It’s called ‘Time Travelling with a Hamster‘ (by Ross Welford). We saw the title of this book and instantly knew it was perfect for Connie. Connie ends up smuggling her hamster (he’s called Mr Jambon, not Alan Sheerer) through boarder control to France with her. If she were to take on the dimensions of time and space we know she would do so, hamster in tow. She’s also definitely the kind of person who would accidentally stumble across a time machine and end up in 1984.

Max – Max is determined that by the end of the ski trip he will have kissed a girl. We thought (considering his brain was clearly already there) we might recommend him ‘Forever’ by Judy Blume, but then we thought he’d prefer things a bit more modern, so we’re recommending ‘Trouble‘ by Non Pratt. This is a book which goes into things a little bit further than kissing. We’re not sure whether Max would be shy to read this or not, I mean, he does moon a coach load of school girls but this is serious sex talk! We felt either way he probably needs to read it and would enjoy it if he gave it a go.

Toddy – We were tempted to give Toddy a hamster book as well but in the end we decided one hamster book per list was probably enough to be getting on with. We instead went for ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower‘ by Stephen Chbosky. Toddy was definitely the shy one of the group, we thought he might empathise with Charlie quite a bit and would definitely enjoy a good book or seven. And like Charlie seems just a little bit surprised when girls should an interest in him.

Jack – It all came down to the band eventually (well, and his crush on Mouse, but we thought he might consider a romance book a bit soppy) and thus we decided to go with Robert Muchamore’s ‘Rock War‘ (which actually does have it’s fair share of relationships stuffed in around the music). I think he’d appreciate seeing that bands come in all shapes and all sizes and he could read along and imagine he’s out there playing a gig, stage-fright be damned!

So those are our six picks. Let us know what you thought of the books we choose over at @maximumpopbooks.