KS4 Extended Reading List YA Fiction by Jill Fenton

That Asian Kid

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 15:48:09 UTC

Despite his hard work and brains, Jeevan, is doing badly in his GCSE English literature class. His teacher, Mrs Greaves, dislikes him intensely and Jeevan is convinced that he is the victim of racial prejudice. Can he stand up for what's right? When he comes upon her in the woods outisde school in a compromising situation with another teacher, Jeevan can't help but film the scene on his phone. With this secret new ammunition at his fingertips - dare he upload it to social media?
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When The World Was Ours

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 15:59:38 UTC

Vienna. 1936. Three young friends spend a perfect day together, unaware that around them Europe is descending into a growing darkness and that events will soon mean that they are ripped apart from each other as their lives take very different directions...
Inspired by a true story, When the World was Ours is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking and shows the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times.
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Run Rebel

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:03:41 UTC

A girl tries to escape the oppressively strict and abusive family life she experiences dominated by her alcoholic father.
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Tamar

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:05:48 UTC

When her grandfather dies, Tamar inherits a box containing a series of clues and coded messages. Out of the past another Tamar emerges, someone involved in the terrifying world of resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Holland half a century earlier. His story is one of passionate love, jealousy and tragedy set against the daily fear and casual horror of the Second World War. Unravelling it will transform the younger Tamar's life.
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My Sister's Keeper

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:09:26 UTC

Anna was born to be a perfect genetic match for Kate, who at just two years old was diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia. For thirteen years, she has acted as donor to her sister. Now, Kate needs a kidney, and nobody is asking Anna how she feels about it, they're just assuming she will donate.Until the Sheriff serves the papers that will rock their family's world: Anna is suing her parents for the rights to her own body . . .
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Second Best Friend

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:11:49 UTC

Irrational jealousy threatens Jade's friendship with her best friend, Becky when a throwaway comment from an ex-boyfriend makes her feel inferior to her 'perfect' BFF.

Jade has a near-perfect best friend in Becky - until a throwaway comment triggers a serious inferiority complex. How come Becky is better than her at everything?

So, when life offers Jade the chance to come out top, she grabs it. But there are some popularity contests that you just can't win.
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Unboxed

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:14:30 UTC

Four friends meet up at their old school to open the memory box they stowed there years ago - with five letters inside for four of them, because their friend Millie has died.

Alix, Ben, Zara and Dean meet at their old school to keep a longstanding promise to open a memory box they left there when they were thirteen. But there is a gaping hole - their friend Millie has died. When they open the box, secrets tumble out and old feelings rise to the surface.
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Long Way Down (Graphic)

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:17:39 UTC

A boy is visited by ghosts of family and friends he knew as he takes the lift down from his family's flat to exact revenge on the person who shot his brother dead in a gangland attack.
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The Loop (Trilogy)

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:20:10 UTC

Superbly dark and utterly gripping, The Loop is the first book in a new series by Ben Oliver. Inside a hi-tech prison, Luka awaits his death sentence. One day, a considerate warden who brings him books, also brings him a warning: the world is headed for a catastrophe, which might still be averted – but only if Luka manages to escape the Loop.
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Heartstopper series (Graphic)

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:22:05 UTC

Follows the growing relationship of two boys in Year 10 and Year 11 who meet at school and fall in love.

Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love.
Charlie and Nick are at the same school, but they've never met ... until one day when they're made to sit together. They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn't think he has a chance.

But love works in surprising ways, and Nick is more interested in Charlie than either of them realised.
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Loveless

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:26:40 UTC

LOVELESS is a journey of identity, self-acceptance, and finding out how many different types of love there really are. And that no one is really loveless after all.
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Punching The Air

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:30:22 UTC

After a sixteen-year-old American boy is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison, he struggles to find a way to keep true to himself.
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This Mortal Coil series

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:32:45 UTC

In a dystopian world where implants control genetic technology, a teenage girl seeks to discover the secret left by her father that will kill a devastating virus.
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The Hate U Give

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:37:08 UTC

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful, gripping and piercingly relevant YA novel about inequality, police violence, 21st century prejudice and one girl’s struggle for justice.
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Crongton novels

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:42:19 UTC

Cane Warriors

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:45:10 UTC

Based on true events in 1760 in Jamaica, a fourteen-year-old slave boy becomes involved in an uprising against his oppressors.

Nobody free till everybody free.

Moa is fourteen. The only life he has ever known is toiling on the Frontier sugar cane plantation for endless hot days, fearing the vicious whips of the overseers. Then one night he learns of an uprising, led by the charismatic Tacky. Moa is to be a cane warrior, and fight for the freedom of all the enslaved people in the nearby plantations. But before they can escape, Moa and his friend Keverton must face their first great task: to kill their overseer, Misser Donaldson. Time is ticking, and the day of the uprising approaches.

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The Art of Being Normal

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:48:43 UTC

Two teenagers, one from a troubled home life, and the other a transgender girl, make friends while in detention together.
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The Book Thief

jfe5 — 2023-02-05 16:51:06 UTC

It is 1939. In Nazi Germany, the country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier - and will become busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed forever when she picks up a single object, abandoned in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, and this is her first act of book thievery.

So begins Liesel's love affair with books and words, and soon she is stealing from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library... wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times, and when Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, nothing will ever be the same again.
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When Our Worlds Collided

jfe5 — 2025-07-15 08:26:01 UTC

Three teenagers are brought together when they witness a fatal attack on a 14-year-old boy and have to contend with institutional racism in the aftermath.

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Glasgow Boys

jfe5 — 2025-07-15 08:27:53 UTC

Meet Banjo and Finlay. Thrust together in a group care home when they were teenagers, inseparable until an incident three years ago..

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The Final Empire

jfe5 — 2025-07-15 08:30:04 UTC

Kickstarting the Mistborn series in stunning style, Sanderson's wildly entertaining fantasy heist sees a motley assortment of criminals attempt to overthrow an all-powerful tyrant.

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