Title: Noughts and Crosses

Author: Malorie Blackman

Genre: Young Adult

Publisher: Penguin

Format: Paperback

Pages: 400

Rating: 5/5 stars

Synopsis (Goodreads):

Sephy and Callum have been friends since early childhood. And that’s as far as it can go. Because theirs is a world full prejudice, racism, distrust and mounting terrorist violence.

Despite all this, a romance builds between the two friends. But this is a love story that could lead both of them into terrible danger . . .

Review:

Wow. This book has shaken me to my very core and brought out all the feelings. I read this book for our school book club and I really want to take a moment to thank the teacher that suggested we read this book. Because it is amazing and is a book everyone should read.

The book is based on the civil rights movement from back in the 1960s. When race was what separated a group of people and it was illegal to love someone who was not the same colour as you.

Sephy and Callum are friends. Best friends. But they aren’t allowed to be friends because of the colour of their skin. Sephy is a Cross- which are the dark skinned people that run society, and Callum is a Nought- the white underclass that is constantly mistreated. When Callum is allowed to go to Sephy’s school, she sees the mistreatment and injustice firsthand, and struggles to understand why society is the way it is, and why she can’t love a boy because of the colour of his skin. Your heart really reaches out to Sephy and Callum, and their struggle. The author took a difficult topic and put it into an interesting perspective, one that was both obvious, yet really made the reader think.

Callum said something in the book along the lines of what would happen if the situation changed. If the Noughts were in charge and the Crosses were not. And that is exactly what Blackman did: she took the two sides of race and switched them, reimagining a society of things were opposite. And it was just as sad and ugly as the other way around.

Happy reading!