Lonely Castle in the Mirror

Genuinely moving, involving story following seven junior high students in Tokyo who have stopped going to school. The early part of the book may seem a little slow-paced, but I think it's just laying the groundwork and developing the characters, ready for the intensity to pick up with a wild twist in the middle and an ending that's both heartbreaking and yet, strangely, hopeful.

CWs: bullying, cancer, death, sexual assault

This is one of these books that pulls you in and gets better and more compelling as it progresses. It deals with some very serious issues (all the protagonists are Japanese teenagers who for one reason or another do not go to school), and is part fairy tale, part YA fiction, part magic realism, part fantasy, but really quite hard to categorise.

It's very cleverly plotted, with a number of plot twists that come thick and fast towards the end, and involves a truly moving denouement.