You can check out my main entries for the book bingo here and the rest of my bonus reads here.
Title: Running the Risk/Going to Ground/Dowsing the Dead/Stirring the Storm/Feather and Fang
Author: Ali Sparkes
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Things to look forward to:
✓ Hunting in the woods
✓ Midnight feasts
□ Falling out with your best mate
Oh no...
Falling out with his mate wasn't exactly the start to the new term that Dax Jones wanted, but when Gideon's life changes, it seems that he's leaving Dax behind.
And as if that's not enough, everyone at school has started acting weirdly. Is Dax really the only one who can see their strange behaviour? Gideon thinks Dax is being paranoid, so what's the point of telling the staff - especially as it could be their experiments that are putting Dax and his friends in danger...
Dax's fox instincts have never let him down before – he has to trust them. But before he can help Gideon and the others, he must first overcome his own rising panic and learn more about his shapeshifting powers...
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Things to do with your best friends:
✓ Go to the cinema
✓ Chat on the phone
□ Flee from sinister forces
Hmm…
When Dax receives an urgent call, he knows he has to drop everything and race to the aid of his friends. But that's not as easy as it sounds. Strange things are happening - unbelievable occurrences that seem to be following Dax and his friends wherever they go.
And that's not all that's after them...Government agents are stalking their every move - tracking them down. The very people who are supposed to be protecting them seem to be the biggest threat. Who can they trust? Where should they run?
Each of the friends must call upon their special powers to try to outwit their pursuers - but will these abilities spell the end for them all?
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Things to do on your free weekend:
✓ Build a tree house with your best mate
✓ Go exploring at night
□ Completely freak out your stepmum by shifting into a fox
Oops…
Dax Jones didn’t plan for Gina to find out about his shapeshifting powers this way, but she was going on and on at him and it was the only way to make her shut up. Then the screaming started…
On top of that, he and his friends have been asked to take part in some kind of weird ritual to try and track down Luke and Catherine, Gideon’s dead brother and sister. But when they finally do receive a message, it doesn’t give them the reassurance they’re after.
Dax must take to the air and use his falcon power to fly to France. Could Luke still be alive? And if he is, evil Catherine must be too – and the person she’s out to get above all others is Dax Jones.
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Things to do at the local disco:
✓ Check your hair’s looking cool
✓ Hit the dancefloor
□ Blow up the girl’s toilets
Uh-oh…
There's a lot of strange stuff going on for Dax Jones. To start with, there's the mysterious letter from his dad telling Dax to go to a secret location and find something from his dead mother. Perhaps it's a clue about how he became a shapeshifter?
Then there's the weirdness at school. The scientists are up to something, but Dax is sworn to secrecy-he can't even tell his best mate. So when his classmates are suddenly taken away 'for their own safety', Dax's fox senses tell him all is not as it seems.
If Dax continues with his quest to find out more about his mother he could be leaving his friends in danger. Is he really willing to risk their lives in his search for the truth about his existence?
~~~
Things to ask your sister:
✓ Why she’s obsessed with reality TV shows
✓ What’s with all the glittery nail varnish
□ Whether she can help once you’ve escaped the force field around your boarding school
Um…
If Dax’s fox senses are right – and Dax’s fox senses are always right – his school is no longer safe. The security perimeter may look as if it’s to stop dangerous people getting in, but to Dax, it seems pretty clear it’s to stop dangerous people getting out. People who aren’t easy to contain, because of their amazing, limitless abilities. People like him and his friends.
This place has been Dax’s beloved refuge, but it’s fast becoming his prison. Can his air-headed little sister and an old adversary help him escape? It’s time to find out. Because Dax Jones will not be tamed.
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I said when I finished reading Finding the Fox for my main book bingo that the Shapeshifter series was a huge part of my childhood, and I absolutely stand by that, even though I’d never read the last book in the series until this week (and apparently there’s also a spinoff series which fills in what happens between the main series and the newer last book, so I know what I’m reading next!)
The books hold up incredibly well even reading them as an adult – they’re all reasonably short books but the amount of plot and character development that gets packed into each of them is incredible. I found it genuinely difficult to put each of the books down, and I even got forgot to come back from break during my therapy group because I got so invested 😅
Also, shout out to this series for being exclusively from the POV of a child (he becomes a teenager in later books, but still) and still having nuanced portrayals of adult characters – some of the adults are the villains, which is kind of standard for kid’s books, but it’s clear that even the good adults aren’t perfect but that they’re trying their best, which is a hard balance to strike even when you aren’t writing from the perspective of a twelve-year-old!
Content warnings for alcoholism, arson, child death, child neglect, confinement, fire injury, gun violence, imprisonment, parent death, terrorism, and trafficking.
Oh and Luke is alive. Hits sister was torturing him, but dax and his friend saved him. However, even after Owen shot Catherine, she used mia to heal herself back to life. Grrrr, someone needs to chop her up, and scattered her entails over the pacific ocean.
