Review: No Experience Required by Janet Quin-Harkin

Publisher: Ellfie Books
Published: 11 January 2021

Synopsis: 
It s 1989. Life's easy for Deborah Lesley: she's up-market, drives her own flash car to school, and looks pretty good too. She's never had a job, either; but now her parents have split up, and she needs the money. Joe Garbarini is cool. He likes motorbikes, girls, and fun. He doesn't have time for much as he's running the Heartbreak Café when he's not at school. The Heartbreak Café is a noisy hangout on the north Californian coast. Joe's worked there for years, and knows what it takes. He's sure Debbie won't last a month but Debbie's determined to put up with his wisecracks and prove him wrong. 

Review:
Set in 1989, this series was originally published in the eighties. Janet Quin-Harkin was a huge favourite of mine when I was a teenager and so I was thrilled at the news that the Heartbreak Café series was being republished for a whole new audience of readers. I thought that the story might feel a little dated considering it's over twenty years old but it didn't at all. It deals with so many universal themes which will resonate with teens today, such as trying to become independent and find your own way in life, juggling the demands of school and friends with a part-time job and facing the trauma of parental divorce, that it still feels as fresh and new as when it was first written.

'No Experience Required' centres around Debbie, whose parents have just split up. Finding it hard to cope with a mother who has decided to go back to school, Debbie decides to get a part-time job. When she stumbles across the Heartbreak Café her mind is made-up that this is where she's going to work, even though she has never flipped a burger in her entire life. She begins to work alongside the gorgeous Joe and they develop a bit of a love/hate relationship. But with sparks flying between them, could their wisecracks mean something more?  

I adored the Heartbreak Café gang. There's cool Joe who all the girls are head over heels in love with, Ashley and her penchant for chocolate, plus geeky Howard and carefree Art. They are such a great gang that I wanted to scoot over on a stool, with a dish of chocolate madness in front of me and join in with all their fun.

If you're looking for hot and sizzling then you won't find it here but what you do get is a sweet, clean teen series where the romance is innocent and you won't catch the characters using any expletives, not even when things get steamy in the kitchen. It's such a refreshing change that I enjoyed kicking back and delighting in a wonderful slice of nostalgia.   

Next up in the series is 'The Main Attraction'.  Will Debbie and Joe ever become a couple?  You'll have to wait and see.      

Blog Tour: Heartbreak Cafe series by Janet Quin-Harkin

I'm delighted to have been invited by Ellfie Books to take part in the blog tour for Janet Quin-Harkin's Heartbreak Cafe series. It's very exciting that the whole series is being re-published in February which is the first time in over thirty years. I was a huge fan of Janet's books when I was a teenager and I still have some of them among my collection now. 

The Heartbreak Cafe series centres around Deborah Lesley and her life as it’s turned upside down when her parents split up. She finds herself having to move house and find a job in the popular beach hangout Heartbreak Café where life is never dull. In this hit eighties series about teen life in northern California, themes of friendships, work, family, divorce, and love are ever present. From movie makers coming to town and surprising romances, the Heartbreak Café series will transport you to a retro California, full of sun, surf, and heartbreak. 

Janet has very kindly put together her Top 5 Writing tips for the blog tour:

1.Write the book you are dying to read but it’s not on the shelf.

2. Don’t ever write anything because you think it will sell. You have to be passionate about anything you write.

3. Nothing is written in stone! If a scene is serving any useful purpose it has to go, even if it’s the best prose you have ever written.

4. Once you have created characters, it’s their story. Let them go where they want to, do what they want to. If you are experiencing writer’s block it’s often because you are forcing characters to do something they don’t want to.

5. Don’t talk about writing that book someday. If you want to write, you have to sit down and write. Every day. Writing is a craft form, not an art. You only get better at manipulating words when you practice, practice.

Janet Quin-Harkin first found success as a picture book writer, winning several awards. She was then asked to write a teenage series and Heartbreak Café was born! The first in the series No Experience Required was an instant success when it was originally published in the eighties. By the time the third book came out she was selling half a million copies. Since then Janet has gone on to become a New York Times bestseller. Writing under the pen name Rhys Bowen, she is the author of the historical Molly Murphy and Royal Spyness mystery series. She has won the Agatha Best Novel Award and was nominated for the Edgar Best Novel. Janet is British and divides her time between California and Arizona.

Visit her website to find out more about Janet aka Rhys Bowen and her books. I've definitely got a hankering to read her Royal Spyness mystery series now!

Review: Lock the Doors by Vincent Ralph

Publisher: Penguin
Published: 4th February 2021

Synopsis: 
Tom's family have moved into their dream home. But pretty soon he starts to notice that something is very wrong - there are strange messages written on the wall and locks on the bedroom doors. On the OUTSIDE.

The previous owners have moved just across the road and they seem like the perfect family. Their daughter Amy is beautiful and enigmatic but Tom is sure she's got something to hide. And he isn't going to stop until he finds the truth behind those locked doors. . .

Will their dream home become a nightmare?

Review: 
Before I started reading ‘Lock the Doors’ by Vincent Ralph, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a YA horror or a thriller. After the first few chapters, I knew that I was going to be treated to a twisty, dark story which was full of suspense and which featured some very heavy, emotional issues. As I read on and the plot deepened and gradually began to unwind, it perfectly mirrored the way in which the main character Tom, started to discover the truth about his new home and the family that previously lived there. 

This review is difficult to write because I really do not want to give anything away which would spoil a new reader’s enjoyment of the book. I definitely think that the less you know about it in advance, the better off you will be. This is a story that creeps up on you bit by bit and by not knowing the truth, it makes the revelations, when they come, even more shocking. Tom was a great central protagonist and it was certainly interesting to see a character struggling with OCD. This isn’t something that I’ve come across before in YA books. Although at the start Tom seems pretty quiet and dare I say it, a bit timid, as he reveals more about himself, you realise that he has been through a huge amount of childhood trauma but grows in confidence so much throughout the story. He is dogged and determined as well, which means that when he befriends Amy, the girl that used to live in his new home, he is fascinated by the secret that he believes she is hiding and determined to help her.

I absolutely love YA thrillers and while I wouldn’t call this a typical book in the genre, it has a lot of the elements that I enjoy. Particularly the slow build of suspense and the desire to keep on and on reading, to try to get to the bottom of the mystery. There are some hard-hitting themes in the book which were well handled by the author and which tackle some quite difficult and emotive issues. I didn’t guess anything that happened and was definitely kept on my toes from beginning to end.