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Joanne Owen - Editorial Expert

Joanne Owen is a writer, reviewer and workshop presenter whose lifelong love of books began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, Wales. An early passion for culture, story and folklore led her to read archaeology and anthropology at St John’s, Cambridge, after which she led the UK children’s book team for a major international retailer, going on to market books for Bloomsbury, Macmillan, Walker Books, Nosy Crow and Rough Guides. She now divides her time between writing, travel writing, reviewing and hosting writing workshops.

Joanne is the author of several books for children and young adults, among them the Martha Mayhem series, the Carnegie Medal-nominated Puppet Master, and You Can Write Awesome Stories, a how-to guide to creative writing. She’s also worked on a major community story project for the National Literacy Trust (Story Quest), and a number of travel guides, including The Rough Guide to Responsible Wales and guidebooks to the Caribbean region. In additional, she’s an occasional chair of LoveReading LitFest events, and judge for the 2023 Branford Boase Award.

Latest Features By Joanne Owen

Summer sizzlers – the best YA novels set in summer

Industry Insights - David Fickling Books celebrates 10 years of independence

Industry Insights: Cadno - magnificent Middle Grade writing from Wales

Fabulous YA fiction with friendship at its heart — from the best books about besties, to tales of transformative bonds that’ll tug at your heartstrings

View All

Latest Reviews By Joanne Owen

Seventeen-year-old physics prodigy Gottie has experienced much loss in her short life. One summer on from losing her grandfather and being rejected by her first love, Gottie finds herself free-falling, like Alice down the rabbit hole, but through time, back to when these experiences happened. These time-slips intensify when Gottie’s childhood friend returns after being away for five years, and so she works on the “The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle” to try to figure out what’s happening to her. This bold, soulful debut about loss, the black hole of grief, friendship - and physics ... View Full Review

Brimming with drama — of both the emotional and musical theatre variety — and threaded with a fun “What would Freddy Mercury do?” mantra, Rachael Fernandes’ The Mercury in Me is an inspiring ode to being unapologetically yourself. Alongside tackling universal themes — first love, family conflict, fallings-out, and school bullies — it’s also brilliant on the British Indian experience, and fist-pumpingly uplifting. Though studious sixth-former Maya is set on becoming a doctor, she also has a talent for music that comes to the fore when handsome Harry ... View Full Review

Like his previous novel, Darkhearts, James L Sutter’s The Ghost of Us boasts brilliant dialogue, and presents an authentic, alternate take on YA romance. In this case, The Ghost of Us is a comic, quirky, coming-of-age story that tackles grief, friendship and romance in an utterly unique, page-turning style. Cara’s voice had me in its hold from the off: “While only sociopaths are completely proud of themselves, at eighteen, I’d spent plenty of years learning the hard way not to give a shit what anyone ... View Full Review

The Life Changing Magic of Skateboarding A Beginner's Guide with Olympic Medalist Sky Brown

Penned by Olympic Medallist Sky Brown, with dynamic illustrations from Shaw Davidson, The Life Changing Magic of Skateboarding is a brilliant, tip-packed autobiographical handbook for 6+-year-old aspiring skater champs. Kicking off with the story of how skateboarding changed Sky’s life through illustrated comic-book-style panels, the book also shares insights into everything from the make-up of skateboards and how to get started, through to more advanced moves and tricks. Alongside being an infectious introduction to the magic of skateboarding and an inspiring autobiography, The Life Changing Magic of Skateboarding also shares valuable life lessons, like the importance of not ... View Full Review

First novel in Antonia Maxwell’s Terra Electrica trilogy, The Guardians of the North is an absolute treasure. Set in the near-future, when the Arctic’s ice caps have melted, this is dystopian fiction at its finest, with lyrical folkloric flair to the writing, and ecological themes threaded through the enchanting action-packed story. As for the story, we meet our remarkable protagonist, 12-year-old Mani, wishing “more than ever that her father would return”. She and her dad have been alone in the world since the terrible Terra Electrica disease claimed her mother&... View Full Review

With its stellar storytelling, and unique, unforgettable characters, Tania Unsworth’s Nowhere Island is a fresh, thought-provoking survival-in-the-wild adventure. Both nuanced and immediate, Nowhere Island gets to the heart of human bonds in an arresting voice that speaks of, and to, young minds. It also transcends age boundaries, and really is a wonder for all ages. “Gil was five years old when his parents were drowned in a kayaking accident.” Now twelve, after spending “his whole life being taken to one place after another” in the foster care system, ... View Full Review

Created by a husband and wife duo — acclaimed fantasy artist Rodney Matthews and writer Sarah Matthews — Oddney's Otherland is a madcap magical mystery that kicks off when retired naturalist Professor Oddney discovers a strange secret realm at the end of a tunnel beneath his shed. Accompanied by his trusty sidekick, Magnus the talking magpie, Oddney enters Otherland and embarks on a quest to find The Two-Headed Firedrake — a seemingly impossible task, given that the firedrake is said to reside on “a volcanic island surrounded by a lake full of ferocious fiends”. Presented as a fancy ... View Full Review

“This was Hawthorne House. There would always be another mystery…This was the beginning…and I was ready to be bold”. So ended the previous novel in the enigmatic, dripping-with-wealth-and-mystery Inheritance Games series, and The Final Gambit picks up the baton in edge-of-your-seat style. Avery’s year in Hawthorne House has almost come to an end, which means she’s on the verge of fulfilling the condition of Tobias Hawthorne’s inheritance. On the cusp of becoming the richest teenager in the world. Over the past year, she and the handsome Hawthorne bros ... View Full Review

With an almighty bombshell dropped at the end of The Inheritance Games, Jennifer Lynn Barnes set the stage exquisitely for The Hawthorne Legacy, the second book in an exhilarating series that’ll satisfy a huge range of reader types — from romance addicts, to fans of rip-roaring mysteries. What’s more, though laced with tightly-crafted, complex plot twists, The Inheritance Games series is written in an immediately engaging style that’ll grip even the most reluctant of readers. “If there’s one thing I’d learned about Tobias Hawthorne, it was that he was ... View Full Review

When eccentric billionaire Tobias Hawthorne leaves his multi-billion fortune — including all his properties — to Avery, a stranger who came from nothing — the Hawthorne Brothers are blindsided, to say the least: “What kind of person does that to their own flesh and blood?” Matters are complicated when Avery learns there’s one condition — she must move into Hawthorne House. What a concept, and executed with page-turning aplomb as Avery and her new Hawthorne Brothers’ mansion-mates try to decipher the secrets and codes left by the late Tobias to find out why Avery was ... View Full Review

In Lies We Sing to the Sea, debut novelist Sarah Underwood reimagines the Greek myth of Penelope's twelve hanged maids from Homer’s The Odyssey to present a richly detailed, sweeping story that will satisfy latter-day fans of fantastical fiction. Teeming with tragedy, romance and big themes — fate, sacrifice, desire and female agency — it relates an epic quest to break a curse and exact revenge. While some superstitious townsfolk had whispered about her having “mystical powers”, seventeen-year-old Leto has lived a largely unremarkable life in the kingdom of ... View Full Review