Growing pains and pleasures

ONE OF THE BOOKS I WAS most looking forward to all year was the third novel by Mal Peet, The Penalty (Walker, £6.99).

Two outstanding novels that impressed with their naturalistic depiction of teenage attraction were Exchange by Paul Magrs (Simon and Schuster, 9.99) and Close-Up by Sherry Ashworth (Simon and Schuster, 5.99). Magrs's is the more unusual and multi-layered, remarkable for being a novel about reading and the place of books and book-ownership in people's lives. The rich, quirky characterisation makes you feel you have really observed the drama being played out. Close-Up is more conventional teen reading, but no less impressive. The working atmosphere in the coffee shop where the two main characters meet is especially well-evoked.

Of the two young adult novels about the Holocaust published earlier in the year, I still prefer Morris Gleitzman's Once! (Puffin, 5.99) over John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (David Fickling, 10.99). Gleitzman's moving story of a boy escaping an orphanage to go in search of his parents is the more rewarding because his main character Felix is both quick-witted and naive. Boyne's character, on the other hand - and the drift of the book depends on his being so - is slow on the uptake.

Anne Fine's The Road of Bones (Doubleday, 10.99), meanwhile, tackles the tyranny of evil head-on. One of this author's most powerful novels, it is written throughout in impeccable style. It opens in a Gorkyesque household, with the narrator becoming increasingly aware of the encroaching impact of a post-Revolutionary totalitarianism, and his sceptical gran making comments like: "Only a fool cheers when the new prince rises."

This is without doubt one of the top novels of the year, by one of the best writers we have. Essential reading and Fine's best book since The Tulip Touch.

Breathe by Anne-Sophie Brasme (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 9.99), a slim debut by a young French author, shares something of the tone of that earlier Fine novel, in that it is a chilling study of the psychological effects a dominant and manipulative friend can have on the subservient partner.

Sara's Face (Andersen Press, 9.99) - a gripping psychological thriller about a face transplant - contains some of Melvin Burgess's best writing to date, and reconfirms what a varied writer he is. The tone in the investigatively biographical sections of the novel is redolent of Paul Auster.

Two books I read at the start of the year still belong with the best of 2006. Kevin Brooks's extraordinary and violent thriller, The Road of the Dead (The Chicken House, 8.99) had me gasping for breath, while Graham Marks's Tokyo (Bloomsbury, 6.99) was a grippingly cinematic foreign location thriller which remained firmly focused on its central character.

SAFE BET

Just In Case by Meg Rosoff (Puffin, 10.99)

Well-received follow-up to the even more well-received How I Live Now. Witty but disengaged.

WILD CARD

Exchange by Paul Magrs (Simon & Schuster, 9.99)

Deeply humane and understanding about time, book-owning and relationships, both old and young.