Hostage by Malorie Blackman - Barrington Stoke Book 18

I have read Hostage by Malorie Blackman in a reading partnership when covering for a volunteer reading mentor at Parkwood Academy. It is a simple but thrilling adventure story. It worked perfectly in my short reading partnership. By page three the hero of the story, Angela, has already been kidnapped and we know a little of her unstable back-story. It really does encourage you to read on, and tension builds and builds.

Tension is perhaps an understatement. Angela is "choking on terror". But she is smart as well as scared and she out-thinks all the adults in the story.

Malorie Blackman's Bibliography is pretty remarkable, from the urban thriller of Noughts and Crosses series to the novel length poem, Cloud Busting. Hostage is something different again; a perfect short story that grips to the end.