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Someone Different
Two very different backgrounds; two young people who need each other. When teenagers Jay and Anna are thrown together unexpectedly, their secret love ignites. But when his world of neglect and youth crime collides with her parents' high expectations for her education and show-jumping success, that love has to battle to stay alive. Will their deep feelings and desperate sacrifices be enough to keep them together, when everything else is pulling them apart? SOMEONE DIFFERENT is a story of how teenage love struggles to survive when the pressures of parents, prejudice and deprivation get firmly in its way. Set against the contrasting backdrops of an inner-city housing estate and an idyllic country estate, the book takes its readers on a dramatic, compelling and sometimes violent journey, in which the characters' only defence against all of this, is each other.
- GenresRomanceYoung Adult
302 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 8, 2012
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167 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 24, 2014
I loved 'Watermelon' for the combination of gritty realism and lively humour, and wasn't disappointed with this, which combines the same qualities.
There are unsparing descriptions of brutality and degradation, but in the midst of these, the reader is subtly, almost imperceptibly, encouraged to be hopeful, like the teenage protagonists, who find a true love that is prepared to overcome all social barriers.
Jay is defined by his alcoholic ne'r-do-well of a father as 'a loser, a thief, a good for nothing'. Eight years ago his mother left him with this paragon, unable to endure the physical and mental abuse any more; Jay has grown up accepting it.
He escapes outside to the streets - which aren't much colder than his unheated, comfortless home - with his mate Billy to a diet of spliffs and junk food when he's lucky, and a series of empty sexual encounters with thoughtless girls. His life drifts meaninglessly, and when he is pressured into burgling a warehouse, he feels he has little enough to lose.
Caught and sentenced to a community service order, Jay is introduced to a whole new world - that of a stables and riding school and the country life of the well-to-do. Here he not only discovers a previously unexpected talent for riding and caring for horses, but meets Anna.
Anna is as emotionally deprived as Jay, though she has never wanted for anything material and her bedroom alone is as big as his house. Her parents also regard her as a loser. Nervous and bordering on developing an eating disorder, she is unhappy and lonely, a failure at her snobbish, fee-paying school, her only true friend her horse; and now it seems she is to be deprived of this comfort, as her parents have decided that she must have a new one, the potential champion, as skittish as Anna herself.
Now, too, Rory, the insensitive, spoiled son of their incredibly rich neigbbours wants to take her on as his girlfriend. Neither his parents, nor hers, can think of anything she could possibly want more.
Throughout the brutalities of his upbringing, Jay has somehow developed and retained a basic integrity, and a capacity for tenderness that is brought out by Anna and by the horses, too. In finding each other, they both begin to change; Anna begins to learn to be assertive and Jay to question the values he was brought up with, which can't help him when he is faced with a brutality and personal tragedy greater than any he's yet experienced, and a moral quandry: to Grass or not to Grass? The merciless world of drug trafficking closes in; can Jay escape it?
The love affair in this story is tender, but never syrupy; the stark descriptions of street life are always lightened by a wonderful streak of humour.
I recommend this face paced, engrossing story for YA readers and adults alike.
I'll leave you with a few delightful quotes: -
'The week ahead loomed over me like a bloodthirsty dentist'.
'By about half three, his face looked like a baboon's arse.'
'His fist blasted into my cheekbone like a lead football.'
'Last year, when we were on holiday in Italy, I went in this huge,transparent plastic bubble thing. You got in through a slit, then they inflated it with air and Velcroed you in. They attached it to a long rope and launched you into the sea,where you bobbed, and spun, and fell around everywhere. It was fantastic. And lying there, in Jay's arms, reminded me of it. I could still see out, I knew everything on the outside still existed, but it couldn't touch me...'
There are unsparing descriptions of brutality and degradation, but in the midst of these, the reader is subtly, almost imperceptibly, encouraged to be hopeful, like the teenage protagonists, who find a true love that is prepared to overcome all social barriers.
Jay is defined by his alcoholic ne'r-do-well of a father as 'a loser, a thief, a good for nothing'. Eight years ago his mother left him with this paragon, unable to endure the physical and mental abuse any more; Jay has grown up accepting it.
He escapes outside to the streets - which aren't much colder than his unheated, comfortless home - with his mate Billy to a diet of spliffs and junk food when he's lucky, and a series of empty sexual encounters with thoughtless girls. His life drifts meaninglessly, and when he is pressured into burgling a warehouse, he feels he has little enough to lose.
Caught and sentenced to a community service order, Jay is introduced to a whole new world - that of a stables and riding school and the country life of the well-to-do. Here he not only discovers a previously unexpected talent for riding and caring for horses, but meets Anna.
Anna is as emotionally deprived as Jay, though she has never wanted for anything material and her bedroom alone is as big as his house. Her parents also regard her as a loser. Nervous and bordering on developing an eating disorder, she is unhappy and lonely, a failure at her snobbish, fee-paying school, her only true friend her horse; and now it seems she is to be deprived of this comfort, as her parents have decided that she must have a new one, the potential champion, as skittish as Anna herself.
Now, too, Rory, the insensitive, spoiled son of their incredibly rich neigbbours wants to take her on as his girlfriend. Neither his parents, nor hers, can think of anything she could possibly want more.
Throughout the brutalities of his upbringing, Jay has somehow developed and retained a basic integrity, and a capacity for tenderness that is brought out by Anna and by the horses, too. In finding each other, they both begin to change; Anna begins to learn to be assertive and Jay to question the values he was brought up with, which can't help him when he is faced with a brutality and personal tragedy greater than any he's yet experienced, and a moral quandry: to Grass or not to Grass? The merciless world of drug trafficking closes in; can Jay escape it?
The love affair in this story is tender, but never syrupy; the stark descriptions of street life are always lightened by a wonderful streak of humour.
I recommend this face paced, engrossing story for YA readers and adults alike.
I'll leave you with a few delightful quotes: -
'The week ahead loomed over me like a bloodthirsty dentist'.
'By about half three, his face looked like a baboon's arse.'
'His fist blasted into my cheekbone like a lead football.'
'Last year, when we were on holiday in Italy, I went in this huge,transparent plastic bubble thing. You got in through a slit, then they inflated it with air and Velcroed you in. They attached it to a long rope and launched you into the sea,where you bobbed, and spun, and fell around everywhere. It was fantastic. And lying there, in Jay's arms, reminded me of it. I could still see out, I knew everything on the outside still existed, but it couldn't touch me...'
December 23, 2013
Someone Different seems to me to be indeed very different from many teenage romance stories, in that both protagonists are in their own private prison. Jayden, the handsome 16-year-old boy, has a life that has been a car crash since his birth: alcoholic abusive father, absent mother, vile criminal associates and rock bottom surroundings, and he is in a prison of economic and social deprivation. And heroine Annabel? She has everything material you could possibly desire, but she’s in a prison that’s every bit as bad: that of self-serving acquisitive mean spirited parents who are determined to push her into being the kind of person they want her to be, pressuring her at school to do better, trying to imbue her with their go-getting achieve-at-all-costs mentality, when, at heart, she’s an ordinary kind girl who doesn’t want massive riches, even though she’s never lived without them. They cannot even understand her pure love for her horse, which has nothing to do with the equine’s value, but is all to do with pure unquestioning love.
These two personable characters, both imprisoned and consequently restricted through no fault of their own, and who come from entirely different backgrounds, meet and fall in love. It would seem that the match between Miss rich-and-posh, and criminal underprivileged desperado Jayden is jinxed from the start. Yet Ms Hanney’s skill at dismantling the huge barriers between them is masterly and utterly convincing.
I don’t normally read love stories, but this is a hard edged, realistic love story, with even a touch of gritty violence (don’t worry, it’s not too graphic), so that, rather like Dickens’s tales, injustices that seem set in stone, are finally reversed, with a lot of anguish, risk and adventures along the way.
This book doesn’t shy away from reality, it isn’t sugar coated. Nor is it so miserably down and gritty that you are repelled in any way. It strikes a balance between a love story and an adventure story, and there are even some neat and clever twists at the end.
And it’s not giving away any secrets to tell you that it does have a happy ending, but to explain precisely how this is achieved would be to take away the pleasure of reading the book.
I liked the protagonists, I liked the story and I liked the emotion. And I particularly liked the ending. Read this book and you’ll enjoy it.
These two personable characters, both imprisoned and consequently restricted through no fault of their own, and who come from entirely different backgrounds, meet and fall in love. It would seem that the match between Miss rich-and-posh, and criminal underprivileged desperado Jayden is jinxed from the start. Yet Ms Hanney’s skill at dismantling the huge barriers between them is masterly and utterly convincing.
I don’t normally read love stories, but this is a hard edged, realistic love story, with even a touch of gritty violence (don’t worry, it’s not too graphic), so that, rather like Dickens’s tales, injustices that seem set in stone, are finally reversed, with a lot of anguish, risk and adventures along the way.
This book doesn’t shy away from reality, it isn’t sugar coated. Nor is it so miserably down and gritty that you are repelled in any way. It strikes a balance between a love story and an adventure story, and there are even some neat and clever twists at the end.
And it’s not giving away any secrets to tell you that it does have a happy ending, but to explain precisely how this is achieved would be to take away the pleasure of reading the book.
I liked the protagonists, I liked the story and I liked the emotion. And I particularly liked the ending. Read this book and you’ll enjoy it.
November 4, 2013
There is nothing earth-shattering going on in this book: it's about two kids from opposite sides of the track who fall in love and all the difficulties they face trying to stay together. So, yeah, the Romeo and Juliet storyline. But Hanney makes it feel earth-shattering. She got me right in there. Anna is the little rich girl who can do nothing right and Jay is a pot-smoking petty criminal from a violent home. After committing a crime, instead of prison, sixteen-year-old Jay and a friend are sentenced to a work program. Jay is sent to help out in the stables on Anna's parents' estate. Anna is young, extremely lonely and rather lost. While her parents give her everything she could physically want, their emotional support borders on neglect. She falls for Jay practically from the minute she meets him because he is one person who seems to notice and care that she exists. And Jay, for once in his life, is told he is worth something. Anna makes him feel it.
Hanney writes in the first-person point of view and leaves little out. I felt gut-wrenchingly close to these two. Any plot coincidences or "contrivances" didn't matter to me because I just desperately wanted Jay and Anna to be together! I cried at parts and stayed up late to finish it.
Hanney writes in the first-person point of view and leaves little out. I felt gut-wrenchingly close to these two. Any plot coincidences or "contrivances" didn't matter to me because I just desperately wanted Jay and Anna to be together! I cried at parts and stayed up late to finish it.
June 18, 2013
Billy and Jay went one incident too far and now find themselves on a twenty-four month Youth Rehabilitation Order working and learning Equine studies. Jay and Billy have been together during the best of times and the worst. As both begin making new paths in their lives, they face new struggles and an unexpected turn.
Annabel feels the walls crowding around her, the pressure is high to be the best in school, to be the perfect representative for her family, she feels stifled and a disappointment to her mother in particular. When she is hurt emotionally by her parents, Annabel finds herself leaning on Jay. Anna and Jay form a unique relationship which is built solely on trust with one another, Annabel doesn’t know why but she knows what she feels for Jay. Jay can’t believe he is lucky to have her in his life but the trials they both face continue to build, despite the soft bubble they are trying to live in.
Emotionally realistic story. Jay and Annabel are completely different, Billy is harder to describe because he was more the carefree leader I think in the beginning. There is an honest quality to each of the characters that is relatable. Exceptional read.
Annabel feels the walls crowding around her, the pressure is high to be the best in school, to be the perfect representative for her family, she feels stifled and a disappointment to her mother in particular. When she is hurt emotionally by her parents, Annabel finds herself leaning on Jay. Anna and Jay form a unique relationship which is built solely on trust with one another, Annabel doesn’t know why but she knows what she feels for Jay. Jay can’t believe he is lucky to have her in his life but the trials they both face continue to build, despite the soft bubble they are trying to live in.
Emotionally realistic story. Jay and Annabel are completely different, Billy is harder to describe because he was more the carefree leader I think in the beginning. There is an honest quality to each of the characters that is relatable. Exceptional read.
May 27, 2013
She's a posh, spoiled and unhappy fifteen year old, too scared to admit she's terrified of the new horse her parents have bought her. He's sixteen, with an electronic tag, a criminal record and an alcoholic father who hits him. She's headed for a skiing holiday; he's headed for Young Offenders institution. They're not exactly the perfect partnership.
But when Jay comes to work at Anna's stables, there's an unlikely attraction. For the first time, Jay's found something he's good at with the horses and Anna's found somebody who listens to her fears. But it's never going to be an easy ride. Jay's past is catching up with him. People want him silenced and they don't care who they hurt in the process.
A YA love story (that is just as readable for those of us less Y and more A) that deals with loyalties, standing up for the person you believe in and ultimately having the courage to be true to yourself. I adore Kate Hanney's books - she gets right under the skin of what it's like to grow up in 21st century Britain and does it was sensitivity and skill.
But when Jay comes to work at Anna's stables, there's an unlikely attraction. For the first time, Jay's found something he's good at with the horses and Anna's found somebody who listens to her fears. But it's never going to be an easy ride. Jay's past is catching up with him. People want him silenced and they don't care who they hurt in the process.
A YA love story (that is just as readable for those of us less Y and more A) that deals with loyalties, standing up for the person you believe in and ultimately having the courage to be true to yourself. I adore Kate Hanney's books - she gets right under the skin of what it's like to grow up in 21st century Britain and does it was sensitivity and skill.
August 16, 2014
The unlikely pairing of Jay and Anna shows two opposite realities, but with the same sad outcome. Jay is a young man toughened by a rough life, while Anna is a sheltered young woman, confined in the world her parents set out for her. They’re both lonely as individuals, but when they are together, their world changes.
This is a modern-day version of star-crossed lovers with grittier realities and more profound consequences. The structure is wonderful, the execution, brilliant. This is not your typical love story. In fact, it’s more than just a love story.
This is a modern-day version of star-crossed lovers with grittier realities and more profound consequences. The structure is wonderful, the execution, brilliant. This is not your typical love story. In fact, it’s more than just a love story.
May 28, 2015
A beautiful story of young love and tragic circumstances
What a beautiful story. Two people, Anna & Jayden, from opposite walks of life. Her being from the rich neighborhood and not feeling as if she belongs. Him being from the poor neighborhood and not feeling as if he belongs. Both have family problems, but can each of them overcome there own paths of life and come together? You'll have to read to find out...
What a beautiful story. Two people, Anna & Jayden, from opposite walks of life. Her being from the rich neighborhood and not feeling as if she belongs. Him being from the poor neighborhood and not feeling as if he belongs. Both have family problems, but can each of them overcome there own paths of life and come together? You'll have to read to find out...
July 20, 2016
Great story about how love doesn't care about money or the past!
November 7, 2013
Also posted to Jen in Bookland
For the most part I enjoyed Someone Different. You just can't help but feel bad for Jay. Sure he made some not so smart choices and he pays for them, but he also has a horrible home life. Once he meets Anna it does seem like he really wants to change and be a better person, and he does start to fix his issues and try to be better. Unfortunately his past does keep catching up to him.
Anna is a rich girl whose parents don't really seem to listen or pay actual attention to her. They are constantly doing whatever they want under it being the best for her, what she would want. Anytime she makes an objection they don't listen. It was nice to see her grow some and get some backbone to stand up for herself.
The two of them together were very sweet. Even though they have to sneak around because Anna's parents would never approve, they make it work. Yes it causes some issues, but they work through it as best they can. They did have some allies which help and they were just really cute together.
So what were some of my issues with the book? Well just two things. One is the dialogue. Sometimes the way Jay spoke was really hard to understand. Those parts were written like the words would be spoken, but there were not enough instances of this for the reader to get into that and be able to quickly read it. It was not like Trainspotting where at first I found it difficult to read, but then you get used to it and it is no big deal. Because these written like the words are spoken sections were not constant it kept pulling me out of the story when they did occur. Not a huge deal, but slightly annoying for me.
My other issue, my bigger issue, is that no one ever acknowledges Anna's obvious eating disorder. Whenever the scene involved food she just pushed it around on her plate and hardly eats anything ever. Jay would comment on how skinny she was, how her wrist was too thin and how could she be that skinny. Does he say anything about it? No. Well not really. Food does come up once and she tells him how she eats more when he is around then when not because when he is not there she just can't swallow the food. So she eats a little bit, but not much. I thought great, now there can be a conversation on her getting help or something. Nope. Obviously she has problems and that could cause some serious issues for her health wise, but it never really gets mentioned. There is no getting her help for her eating disorder, or even her parents acknowledging that she has one (it seems like her mom might know based on some of the dinner scenes, but if she is on to Anna she doesn't do anything about it either). It just upset me a bit that no one does anything about. No one tries to help her and it is never explicitly mentioned.
Overall though I did really enjoy the story. It was sweet and you just want everything to work out for them. Yes the end is a little too convenient but that is the way these things work sometimes.
For the most part I enjoyed Someone Different. You just can't help but feel bad for Jay. Sure he made some not so smart choices and he pays for them, but he also has a horrible home life. Once he meets Anna it does seem like he really wants to change and be a better person, and he does start to fix his issues and try to be better. Unfortunately his past does keep catching up to him.
Anna is a rich girl whose parents don't really seem to listen or pay actual attention to her. They are constantly doing whatever they want under it being the best for her, what she would want. Anytime she makes an objection they don't listen. It was nice to see her grow some and get some backbone to stand up for herself.
The two of them together were very sweet. Even though they have to sneak around because Anna's parents would never approve, they make it work. Yes it causes some issues, but they work through it as best they can. They did have some allies which help and they were just really cute together.
So what were some of my issues with the book? Well just two things. One is the dialogue. Sometimes the way Jay spoke was really hard to understand. Those parts were written like the words would be spoken, but there were not enough instances of this for the reader to get into that and be able to quickly read it. It was not like Trainspotting where at first I found it difficult to read, but then you get used to it and it is no big deal. Because these written like the words are spoken sections were not constant it kept pulling me out of the story when they did occur. Not a huge deal, but slightly annoying for me.
My other issue, my bigger issue, is that no one ever acknowledges Anna's obvious eating disorder. Whenever the scene involved food she just pushed it around on her plate and hardly eats anything ever. Jay would comment on how skinny she was, how her wrist was too thin and how could she be that skinny. Does he say anything about it? No. Well not really. Food does come up once and she tells him how she eats more when he is around then when not because when he is not there she just can't swallow the food. So she eats a little bit, but not much. I thought great, now there can be a conversation on her getting help or something. Nope. Obviously she has problems and that could cause some serious issues for her health wise, but it never really gets mentioned. There is no getting her help for her eating disorder, or even her parents acknowledging that she has one (it seems like her mom might know based on some of the dinner scenes, but if she is on to Anna she doesn't do anything about it either). It just upset me a bit that no one does anything about. No one tries to help her and it is never explicitly mentioned.
Overall though I did really enjoy the story. It was sweet and you just want everything to work out for them. Yes the end is a little too convenient but that is the way these things work sometimes.
December 23, 2014
Fast paced read
From the start, the author dives straight into the action!! The drama surrounding the 2 main characters, although terribly cliche, was believable. I couldn't put this book down.
From the start, the author dives straight into the action!! The drama surrounding the 2 main characters, although terribly cliche, was believable. I couldn't put this book down.
March 24, 2015
A really good book, though both Anna and Jay seemed too mature for 15-16 y.o. kids.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews