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Joanne Owen - Editorial Expert

Author, publishing expert and LoveReading’s YA Lead Reviewer

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.

Reading guides Joanne Owen helps choose

Latest Features By Joanne Owen

How to craft truly terrifying tales - three fearsome tips and techniques for writing spooky stories this Halloween (and through the year).

Witchy words and potent potion poems - writing activities and book recommendations inspired by witches.

Word-themed walks on the wild side - taking creative inspiration from enjoying autumn in the great outdoors.

Get Creative and Create Powerful Poems to Cheer your Friends and Family

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Latest Reviews By Joanne Owen

A Review for Book 1 Shot-through with wit, myth, friendship and fart jokes, and told through a blend of narrative text, doodles and comic strips, Louie Stowell’s Loki: A Bad God's Guide to Being Good is a riot from start to finish. Oh, how the mighty are fallen! After playing one joke too many, trickster god Loki has been banished to earth by Odin, and this book presents Loki’s diary account of his 31-day exile as a mere mortal. The interlocking of words and pictures is hilariously effective from the off, such as when the ... View Full Review

The Lightlark Saga: The Ultimate Box Set

Alex Aster’s Lightlark, the first book in the The Lightlark Saga series, sees the TikTok sensation serve YA readers a feast of cinematic fantasy centred on a deadly game. Suffice to say, the concept is sure to entice fans of The Hunger Games, with the story also delivering the lushness, romance and twisting secrets of novels by Leigh Bardugo and Sarah J Maas. In a richly-imagined world, Lightlark island manifests itself every 100 years as the stage for the Centennial — a game that rulers of six different realms are summoned to ... View Full Review

The Final Gambit: Deluxe Collector’s Edition

“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

Combining courage, community, and canine capers with Christmas cheer, Ben Miller’s The Dog Who Saved Christmas amounts to a splendidly entertaining festive story that will thrill young animal lovers and fans of adventure fiction at one sparkly seasonal swoop. Alfie adores his dog Bear more than anything. So, when a dastardly Baron decides to seize Bear on Christmas Eve, Alfie knows exactly what he has to do: break into the Baron’s castle to rescue Bear and return him safely to his rightful home. On entering the castle, Alfie finds out that Bear isn’t the ... View Full Review

Rooted in a South Wales valley community, and beautifully written by Eloise Williams, the inaugural Children’s Laureate of Wales, The Library of Lost Stories is an enchanting child-centred story of harnessing love, friendship, community and the power of stories to navigate the stormy darkness of loss and grief. The time and place is Aberglas in December 1976, with a sense of a South Wales community, with its chapel, chip shop, and townsfolk like the novel’s 11-year-old protagonist Rhiannon (Noni) and an older woman local children think is a witch, brilliantly evoked from the start. Observant ... View Full Review

Written and illustrated by film-maker and artist Ana Graça, Young Carers in Space is a stellar story from the Young Carers Illustrations Project stable. Centred on a young carer who finds the courage to stand tall and speak out, it’s a beautiful book about being brave, and listening to the youngest of young carers. Young carer Honey lives with her mum and autistic big brother, Pip. As a result of helping Pip get ready in the mornings, Honey is often late for school, but can’t find the words to tell her teacher why: “... View Full Review

All hands are on deck at the ghost-infested Tartarus Hotel in Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun, second book in Catherine Doyle's Scare B'n'B series. Not only is this the family’s first Christmas season at the hotel, but their first wedding booking is also on the horizon. Given that the happy couple are none other than a celebrity pop star and the wealthy heir to a confectionary empire, the occasion is set to be a “glitzy, over-the-top spectacle to rival the fanciest of royal weddings”. What could possibly go ... View Full Review

Available from Amazon Books2Read Link Fast-paced and exuberantly fantastical, Sharique Zea’s Lionborn and the Secret of Dark Rider sees Fionn confront greater dangers, decisions and challenges than he endured in the first book in the Lionborn series. Existing almost in limbo between London and the magical realm of Arborea, his hero’s journey from insecurity to tentatively finding a sense of self-confidence is nothing but gripping and emotionally resonant. Life in Crestview Academy feels at once relatably ordinary and extraordinary as Fionn and his friends Ella and Tiny eat lunch while discussing a monster, Marrok, who &... View Full Review

Part of the Fear File series (think Goosebumps meets The X Files, thanks to its fascinating, well-designed DARKIVE database documents), Christopher Edge’s A Trick of the Light is perfectly pitched for 9+ year-olds who adore scary stories, spooky movies and ghoulish games, and paranormal enthusiasts. Ten-year-old Hazel isn’t having the best time of it on a residential school trip. Ostensibly an opportunity for pupils to “break down barriers and forge new friendships”, Hazel overhears unpleasant Imogen instructing her clique to ostracise her: "We ghost her....Let's all pretend that she doesn’... View Full Review

“The Long Night begins with flesh and ends with blood, the Sisters liked to say, as if their prose rendered the occasion mysterious and beautiful”. But the way Bryn sees it, once the Trial of the Long Night was underway, “I’d be naked before lunch, and dead by dawn”. Such is the arresting opening of M.J. Hastings’ Firstborn, and such is the fiery, forthright nature of its protagonist, who finds herself facing the ultimate conflict between remaining loyal to country or family, and between saving herself or her siblings. &... View Full Review

Part of a superb series, David Long’s What It Was Like to Be...a Norman deploys publisher Barrington Stoke’s characteristic dyslexia friendly-format and accessible style as it shares engaging detail on who the Normans were, how they came to enhance their hold, and how they left their mark. After handy visual profiles of key players from both sides of the Channel, Long launches into a lucid explanation of who the Normans were, relating their origins as formidable Viking “pirates and ferocious warriors” who “would arrive by sea to rob, ... View Full Review

In Our Strange Duet, Erin A. Craig has reimagined Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera as a lushly romantic, tormented love story that gives greater agency to young soprano, Christine Daaé. Playing out on the stage of the glamorous Parisian Opéra Populaire, it tells a story that feels at once rooted in a very specific context, and timeless in its evocation of dramatic matters of the heart. The drama begins in the dressing room of the Parisian Opéra Populaire, where we meet dancer Christine, and discover how she was ... View Full Review