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The First Move

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My favourite thing about the writing process is the first draft, where you can just get it all out and see what it is. I find that part so exciting! My least favourite thing is probably coming up with plot. I love people, with all their various quirks, and could think about characters all day. Plot on the other hand… What are you working on now? Juliet believes girls like her - girls with arthritis - don't get their own love stories. She exists at the edges of her friends' social lives, skipping parties to play online chess under a pseudonym with strangers around the world. There, she isn't just 'the girl with crutches'.

The beautiful story is important because every year about one in 10,000 children in Ireland is diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. According to Arthritis Ireland, there are an estimated 1,200 to 1,400 under-16s with the condition. My copy of The First Move was provided to me by the Jennifer Lohmann herself, after I tweeted her to ask whether she knew if the e-version would be available in the UK. I'd read Wendy the Superlibrarian's review, you see, and it sounded like just my sort of book.

Knowles commented: “Dark secrets, quests, enemies and lovers. Family curses, morally dubious villains and summer feuds – our 2023 YA titles truly offer something for every reader whatever their genre of choice. It’s an exciting time for YA and we believe these books and their talented, creative authors are about to make it even more exciting.” Both instantly engaging and finely nuanced, The First Move is a YA romance with real-life resonance and uplifting vibes. Always honest on the realities of living with a long-term condition and mental health struggles, it’s also happy-making, wholesome, and a whole lot of fun, with well-developed characters readers will root for and relate to.

There was a lot to like here. Renia is a really interesting character, and at a really interesting time in her life. I really appreciated how sensitively the issue of her having given her daughter in adoption was handled. This is not yet another book saying that giving a baby up, even when it’s patently the right thing to do, will screw you up for life. It’s true that Rey IS pretty screwed up about what happened, but I’d argue that it’s clear that this is more about her mother’s abandonment of her teenage self than about her own abandonment of her baby. I think I went mad from sleep deprivation,” she says about the time when her kids—now eight and nine—were little. “I wrote one story, loved it, and got absolutely hooked.” In a “whatever-doesn’t-kill-you way”, Ireland credits her encephalitis with giving her the confidence to write about chronic illness. “[Since my surgery,] I don’t freak out about the tiny things any more. I’m more inclined to go for it and write about what I want.” This is for readers who are in the mood for problems and emotions surrounding giving up a child for adoption. Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma ComplexFor Jenny Ireland, pain from arthritis has been part of life for 13 years. But now the Northern Irish author has tapped into that, as Juliet—the teenage protagonist in her début novel The First Move—suffers from the same condition she does. Penguin Random House Children’s imprint Penguin has announced a string of new YA authors added to its list for 2023, with books ranging from “heart-stopping” thrillers and fantasies to inclusive and high-concept romances. During the period around her first diagnosis, after having studied French law, Ireland worked as a paralegal. “It wasn’t the career for an anxious person,” she tells me over Zoom from Belfast. Ireland quit law after getting married and starting a family. But just weeks after each of her two children were born, she suffered months-long arthritis flare-ups that left her unable to walk. Bedridden and home with young children, Ireland began writing. I would love it if my kids grew up reading stories of kids their ages with disabilities and chronic illnesses

With a thrilling will-they-won’t-they rollercoaster ride of a plot revealing their respective struggles through a compelling dual narrative, The First Move is that story that’ll move readers while putting great big grins on their faces. Real life is the doctor handing you disgusting grey crutches and telling you that you’ll need to use a walking aid for the foreseeable future. Dystopian Fiction Books Everyone Should Read: Explore The Darker Side of Possible Worlds and Alternative Futures I was a bit less enthused by the romance. Renia questions whether Miles loves the real her or whether he’s just reacting to his old crush on her 16-year-old self, and I must say, I questioned that at times. Also, although Miles was pitch-perfect most of the time, always being very accepting of Rey’s past and her current issues, there was that fight at the end, which seemed to show that deep down, he wasn’t quite as accepting as all that. I’m in two minds about that. On one hand, I liked seeing he wasn’t quite perfect, but on the other, that might have come a bit too late in the book, and he didn’t quite redeem himself from what I felt was a really mean, almost unforgivable thing to say.

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My incredible mum and dad paid for it,” she says. “That was the start of everything really because the tutor said I could write and to keep going. I kept trying, although I got a lot of nos at first.” The turning point was when she applied for the Penguin Random House WriteNow programme in 2020. Jenny was one of 14 out of 3,700 entrants selected for mentorship by a Penguin editor. “It changed everything for me,” she says. Upon waking up one week later, Ireland was told the virus had developed into encephalitis: inflammation of the brain. While unconscious, she underwent two brain surgeries and had a tube implemented to drain fluid from her brain to her abdomen. Although she’s now recovered, the tube is there to stay. Commissioning editor Tom Rawlinson scooped debut YA thriller Their Vicious Games by Joelle Wellington from Jenny Meyer of The Jenny Meyer Literary Agency for publication in July 2023. “This engrossing read about The Finish – a brutal and elite game where the rules can be changed at any minute – will make you think as it thrills,” the publisher said.

Having completed her degree, Jenny worked as a paralegal in the area of family law. While she enjoyed the work, she left as she wasn’t suited to it. “I’m a very anxious person,” she explains. “Being in front of people and public speaking wasn’t for me.” Jenny began writing in the sleep-deprived days after Rory was born, and got more serious about it in 2017 when she did a writing course with the literary agency, Curtis Brown. Senior commissioning editor Naomi Colthurst acquired UK and Commonwealth rights for Chaos and Flame by Tessa Gratton and Justina Ireland in a two-book deal via Kim Ryan at Penguin Young Readers. Billed as “a scorching, enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance”, the book will be released in March 2023.

I was thinking about how I would have felt in that position as I was so incredibly self-conscious at school and mortified by everything,” says Jenny. “I think young people dealing with anything extra in school are heroes because it's already hard enough being a teenager.”

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