HappyHead: The Most Anticipated YA Debut of 2023: Book 1 of 2

Product Information

I'm finding it difficult to explain why this was so good without spoiling the entire plot and I do think that it's worth going into this without knowing much about it. But all I know is that I absolutely can not wait until the next book comes out. I need to know what happens!

We explore the idea that an epidemic of unhappiness has infiltrated the minds of the nation, particularly our young people. What if preventative measures could be taken to allow our young minds to be happy? Some sort of wellness retreat or boot camp? Enter HappyHead - the one thing that will make everything better. Tasks, assessments, and teamwork all combine to allow the students to be analysed, catergorised, and ultimately scored. It all seems fairly innocuous, if odd, until things begin to be cast in a strange shadow of doubt. So tense doesn't quite cut it. It's SO GOOD!' -- A.F. Steadman, author of Skandar and the Unicorn Thief I read Josh’s book in one sitting. It was immediately clear to me that it is something special. I could not be more excited to be a part of the team bringing this story to the screen,” he said.Not for me. I am going to have to search for the word "dystopian" harder in blurbs than I do now. I mainly found this book irritating, unrealistic (as regards parents/feelings rather than the concept of a place to "make" you happy). The only people who appeared to be happy at the end were Lucy and Raheem so the whole project had failed 98 of the 100 intake. Or maybe the point was that we should pretend to be happy for the sake of others, which appears to be the status quo. Das Hörbuch ist wirklich wundervoll; Huw Parmenter liest umwerfend gut! (Wenn auch ein wenig langsam – ich habe das Buch auf 1.25x Geschwindigkeit gehört und das war perfekt für mich) Ich liebe seinen Mut und seine Kreativität, was Stimmenvarietät angeht. Aber nicht nur verschiedene Stimmlagen werden genutzt, denn Huw Parmenter etabliert auch verschiedene Akzente für Charaktere, was nice ist. Für non-native speaker manchmal schwer zu verstehen, aber machbar. because of the details I mentioned above, but I will round it to 4 because it was a well-imagined YA Squid Game equivalent.

When Seb and Finn discover that the fences are electrified and that they are all trapped, they have to investigate to find out the true aims of HappyHead and how far will those in charge go to achieve their aims? Die Geschichte an sich war spannend und ich mochte das Konzept ultra gern. Dem Ende nach vermute ich einen zweiten Teil und ich bin sehr, sehr gespannt <3Unfortunately, I don’t find the statement „Like Hunger Games but better“ on the cover appropriate. On the one hand, it’s too judgmental and subjective a statement, and on the other, the stories and characters are just massively different. In my opinion, you can also promote a book/audiobook with its own qualities and don’t have to resort to such an inappropriate comparison.

Seb, along with ninety-nine other teenagers, enters HappyHead where over a period of thirteen days they undergo a series of individual and group challenges. The residents are each allocated a single bedroom and they are told that each subsequent morning they will move to another one. How they perform in those challenges determines their bedroom number – the closer they move to bedroom one, the better they have performed. To his surprise, Seb begins to demonstrate qualities he was not aware that he possessed – such as resilience, determination and intelligence. Seb is an engaging and somewhat naïve young man and the author has created a personal trajectory for him which allows for his qualities of resilience and self-confidence to be expressed. The author captures well the push/pull of adolescence between Seb’s wanting to succeed at the program to please his parents and his wanting to establish his individualism and self-direction. As the novel is written in the first person and the present tense, Seb’s thoughts and responses to what happens around him are immediately available to the reader and this adds an authenticity to the narrative.Egerton and Range will be equal partners on the project across all creative and business aspects, butEgerton has no plans to star in the project. Wow - This really took me by surprise and blew me away! The creepy atmosphere was present right form the outset and really pulled me in. One of the quotes on the cover of the book says that it's like Hunger Games, but better and I thought - 'Yeah, right'. Hunger Games is one of my favourite series and this is certainly along the same lines, but in a contemporary setting. I loved the main characters and they felt very relatable. My favourite books are genre fiction with queer main characters and this really delivers! In some situations, you can hear him swallow or it just sounds salivating. It FITS the situation, but ... for every noise-sensitive person (like me) it is pure torture and I unfortunately almost had to throw up whenever that happened ... (and I would have liked to stop the audiobook, although I found everything else great). The narration was good though. Huw Parmenter does a fine job of various accents and a stellar job of irritating teenage girl squeak. His vocal chords must have hurt after intoning Eleanor for more than a second or two.