Picking up a short time after the events of book 1 Revolution finds our group in disarray. They know they need to do something, but are really unsure how to go about doing what they need.
Ollie is struggling with his own insecurity, and also feeling that people are fighting his authority. However, when it counts Ollie shows his potential.
In this instalment Ollie and the Haven are forced to enter Forest Mount in order to try and establish the whereabouts of Jack’s brother. What they discover is a shocking conspiracy to take over the running of the country.
Except things aren’t quite what they seem. The reality is more shocking than we imagine, bu5 it certainly opens up some interesting potential for the next part.
Huge thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication.

I want to preface this review with the fact that I am a 24-year-old lady - while that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy fiction aimed at a younger audience it does mean I try to read those books with a younger audience in mind. With this book, however, I’m fairly sure a lot of the negatives I found were because I was reading it as an older reader. So, if you’re looking for whether or not you should read this book and you are a teen/middle-grade reader or you’re a librarian or educator - take what I say and pull it into your own context.

Disclaimer over!

So, the characters in this series and in this book - I think they’re great. I really liked that there was a character who uses a wheelchair. Despite the fact that a lot of this book involves being in tunnels or running away from things she is always included and it’s never seen as a limitation - that felt powerful to me. I also liked that they acknowledged that the decisions made at the end of book one as regards leadership did not have to be permanent. I think the characters and most of the decisions they make were my favourite aspects of this book.

Now on to the things that were less...wonderful.

One of the things that was so exciting about The Haven was the place itself, this kind of strange child-led utopia that was created in an abandoned building. I found myself wanting more of that world, wanting to know more about what had happened to various children after they left the Haven, what else they did to pass the time. Instead, most of this book takes place outside the Haven and the bits that do take place within it are mostly meetings where you don’t get to see much of the ‘culture’ of the children who live there. I wanted to explore how the general population were dealing with a comparative outsider as a leader. Maybe that’ll come into play in the third book? Am I going to have to read it and find out? Probably.

Did anyone else read the Alex Rider books when growing up? I’m pretty sure they were the only ‘he’s a teen spy’ series I read - though I know there are a lot more - for most of the series. I stopped reading, however, when he went into space. For me that felt so ludicrous that I wasn’t willing to keep going - that was my line in the sand. Maybe that was a sign of me becoming a belligerent older teen, the loss of that willingness to believe the very silly for the sake of a teen-spy plot? But that was similar to how I felt reading this. It felt utterly ludicrous that a prime minister might go to a private school in order to begin a re-election campaign - that just….wouldn’t happen. And even if by some miracle it did, if the school children are aware the headmaster has connections to shady Russian politics SURELY the prime minister would know and wouldn’t go there? There were a few moments like that where even I, the fantasy lover, couldn’t quite suspend disbelief enough to go along with what was happening. Again, I suspect that is, in part, due to my age, maybe if I’d read Alex Rider earlier I would have accepted the space travel without batting an eyelid? Maybe an upper middle-grade reader wouldn’t be bothered by this? I honestly can’t say.

Overall, I suspect this would be a great book for upper middle grade readers. I wouldn’t recommend it to readers who are already reading older YA titles - it’s more of a transitional book. I liked a lot of things about this book and I will say that it is a nice fast-paced read - at 320 pages it didn’t feel like a slog to get to the plot.

While this might have been a two-star book for me I’ve chosen to mark it three stars to allow for the age difference between me and the intended audience.

My rating: 3/5 stars

I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.

The Haven: Revolution is available August 8th