A Year of Reading: Nevertell by Katharine Orton, reviewed by Katherine Roberts
My challenge to review a random book for every month of this year ends with a suitably snowy read for the holidays. Nevertell by Katharine Orton was originally published for young readers, which usually means a good read for adults too, and this book delivers a magical story for anyone aged 10+.
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| Nevertell by Katharine Orton |
Lina and her mother are prisoners in a Siberian labour camp, the only home she's ever known. When a group of daring escapees recruit Lina to steal food from the greenhouse, she finds herself stranded in a snowstorm with desperate men she doesn't trust. Only her best friend Bogdan, who follows them with his smuggled maps, can help Lina find her grandmother in far-off Moscow and rescue her mother. But first they must cross snowy wastes haunted by ghostly hounds and an evil sorceress, who wants to know why she can't enchant Lina. The magical elements creep gently into this book, drawing the reader from its historical Soviet setting into an enchanted world populated by characters straight out of a Russian fairytale. What at first appears to be a real-world prison escape story soon transforms into an intriguing fantasy where mystery meets magic. Is there any truth to the rumour that the camp commandant is Lina's father? Who is the shadow-girl helping them with her whisper of "Nevertell"? And what is the secret of the pendant Lina's mother gave her that grows warm in the face of danger? Find the answers to all these and more in Katharine Orton's magical world of ice and myth, where Lina's power is the key to her freedom.
This completes my year of letting books find me. Often, these books came to me secondhand because I'd missed them on their first publication. But a good story never gets old, and even the out of date non-fiction proved interesting with the benefit of hindsight.
Since January, I have reviewed:
A Winter Wedding at Bletchley Park by Molly Green (historical WW2 fiction)
Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart (historical fiction featuring the dancing horses of the Spanish Riding School)
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman' (fiction)The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (memoir about walking the South West coast path)
The Dragon Republic by RF Kuang (adult fantasy fiction)
Stormswept by Helen Dunmore (older children's fiction)
Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer (memoir about riding the Mongol Derby)
The Racehorse Who Wouldn't Gallop by Clare Balding, illustrated by Tony Ross (younger children's fiction)Machines That Think by New Scientist Instant Experts (non-fiction about Artificial Intelligence).
What If? by Randall Munroe (quirky non-fiction/fiction!)
Time by Alexander Waugh (non-fiction)
Nevertell by Katharine Orton (older children's fiction)
My reading year might be over but yours just about to begin! The UK's Secretary of State for Education has named 2026 as a National Year of Reading in an effort to address the steep decline in reading among children and young (and older) adults... so which books will YOU choose to read in 2026?
Wishing all our readers a peaceful winter holiday and a New Year filled with magical books of all kinds.
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Katherine Roberts writes fantasy and historical fiction with a touch of legend for young readers.
You can now listen to her entire Pendragon Legacy series as virtual-voice audiobooks (also available in ebook and paperback, and possibly secondhand in hardcover if you can find the original Templar first editions!)
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| Pendragon Legacy series |
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