This was a unique and well written story. I loved the premise and the book didn’t disappoint. I did struggle with most of the characters as they just didn’t feel developed enough, however, I loved the protagonist, Seb. Overall, an exciting and unique story.

A great start to a new dystopia series. Being compared to The Hunger Games and Squid Games is always gonna reel me in and this held up well.

We start with Seb being taken by his parents to a 2 week 'happy' camp....what can go wrong with that? But as expected things start to feel really ominous pretty quickly. There are many shocking twists and turns which leads us to a cliffhanger ending.

Really looking forward to book 2!

I’m not sure why it took me so long to get round to reading this book, the premise is brilliant and very topical. It’s really easy to read (well it’s uncomfortable in places but the prose is lovely), and the characters well defined. The ‘big bad’ becomes more obvious as you go though and by the end it’s impossible to understand how it wasn’t obvious from page 1. Very well crafted.

Loved it and have been recommending it in my school library - but it’s begging for a sequel! I thought I had already submitted a review - apologies. Great eye catching cover and title.

An original and solid book with great characters and plenty of promise. Really enjoyed it and will look out for more

Unfortunately this book wasn’t for me; I think that the marketing and book comparisons for this one might have been a little off.

I love the queer rep and there was definitely a lot going on to keep me interested, but there were parts of the book which felt dragged out and parts which felt under-developed.

I do think I’ll give the second book in the series a go because you certainly can’t judge an author by their debut alone, and the concept for this was undeniably interesting.

When the desire for wellness and happiness takes a more sinister turn, Happy Head project is born. A group of teenagers are gathered and put through increasingly traumatic testing in a bid to create happy humans and an ideal community. Of course, enforced happiness is not going to work and the teenagers begin to rebel against the rules with dire consequences. An interesting read and a great debut novel. #happyhead #joshsilver #netgalley #yaread #welfare #statecontrol

As debuts go HappyHead is an absolute triumph. A compelling, twisty read that has you addicted to it from the very first page with it's original plot and captivating characters.

I've been sitting on this review for a while as I'm not sure how to write it. Even now, I'm still not exactly sure how I feel about this, but I wanted to show you guys that I have read this.

The backstory to this is the same as some of my other reads of late: I originally had an eProof from the lovely publisher via NetGalley. However, over Easter weekend, my Amazon was hacked/deleted, all my eProofs got wiped off my kindle. But, I saw this on sale for 99p, I bought it without a second thought, as this book intrigued me as soon as I first heard it.

When Seb is offered a place at a radical retreat to tackle the national crisis of teenage unhappiness, he is determined to do well. But he find himself being pulled to the mysterious Finn, Seb begins to realise that there's something deeply wrong with HappyHead as the tasks that are meant to be help their wellbeing become more and more disturbing...

Like I said in my first sentence, I been sitting on this for a while because I am completely torn over how I feel about this book. This book has really strong positives that work in its favour but, at the same time, there is one big issue that we can't escape from.

The positives. Let's start there. I loved the idea of this book tackling mental health and how people we trust can abuse the level of trust and power, use people's mental health and gaslighting to their advance. We see it in the news so often about people in position of trust who go on the misuse it to horrible and dangerous effect (yes, I was reading this when the Phillip Scofield story broke and am writing this on the Sunday when the mystery BBC presenter story is beginning to come out). The same goes with gay conversion.

Also, I really liked our lead character of Seb. He's relatable, a bit naive, desperate to please. We've all been there, haven't we, as teenagers? He's gay and it's nice of have a lead queer character where their sexuality identity isn't the driving force of the story. Plus, Seb's internal voice is really funny. Very dark, very sarcastic, and it made me warm to him within the first few chapters.

I also liked the writing. Josh Silver's writing was easy to read and was compulsive reading. It wasn't the the most descriptive writing, but there were chapters that tackled Seb's mental health that were gripping and were the best chapters in the whole story.

I did say there was one big issue that I had with this book and there was no way I could escape it: I feel like I read this before and it has been done better, There were feels of dystopian novels and TV shows that tackle the set-up better.

Am I going to read the second and final book in this series? Yeah, I think so. It was an addictive holiday, read on the beach with a nice cocktail. But it didn't leave much of an impact. Hopefully, with the next book, it was give us a sucker-punch. Plus, with Taron Egergton going to adapt the book into a movie, I think this will make a really interesting and gripping movie.

Hmmm… Highly readable, but derivative and unsubtle, this book almost falls into the "with that many puff quotes it's bound to be naff" category, but doesn't quite. We have a lad, Sebastian, plucked by agencies unknown and for reasons untold, to be taken to a high-tech, new-build country mansion, and isolated for a fortnight in order to drum all the badness that is modern teenagerdom out from him. In other words, what we're left waiting well over a hundred pages for confirmation of – the time this becomes a metaphor, with our Bowie-loving hero, for gay conversion therapy.

Before then we have a lot of tropes we will all recognise, with the defence being the target teen might not have done. An unspoken set of rules where the better bedroom is given to the most conforming, a concentration camp-styled enclosure peopled by perma-grinning staff, matching the smiley emblem (seriously?!) all over the place's messaging.

Something so eager to borrow from so much else needs to be told stonkingly well to engage, and this is halfway there. It's just riddled with the inevitable – from within the whole camp to the foursome Seb first finds himself put into. You can see beats of this coming from miles off, unfortunately – including the fact it has a cliff-hanger ending. The biggest sin, for me, perhaps is not that the Scotland setting is only thought worthy of mentioning halfway through, and not that sound is said to come from a microphone, which is impossible, and not that someone questing for food stumbles through a vegetable garden and doesn't ask for anything, but that the characters and set-up and plot are less intelligent than the reader. Witness –

<spoiler>It is absolutely stupid to think that tracking devices in the chips inserted in these guys are only turned on near the end – if the people behind this were serious, and able to put in electrified fences behind their founder's back, they would have included a tracker from the start. And if the people running it are so evilly heteronormative, as the message of it all has it, how come Seb can be around his crush so much with the diet-analysing, temperature-taking chip in him and they are not aware of the physiological changes the combination of the two lads has? It would have been so obvious his pulse and so on would have changed, so they should have known about the pash all along. </spoiler>

This is definitely readable, with an immediacy and high concept drama that will appeal to many. But when I see so much room for improvement, and as hidden above some stoopid plot holes, I cannot really thank it that much. It's an energetic, and interesting, yet clumsy and naive curate's egg, and it's up to the potential buyer to work out if the positives outweigh the negatives there enough.

The best YA book I’ve read in a long time! HappyHead is a unique dystopian thriller with an engaging and relatable protagonist. In this book, the protagonist, Seb, is invited on a radical retreat for teenagers designed to combat the teen mental health crisis. However, it soon becomes apparent that the retreat is far more radical than any of the attendees could have anticipated, and suspicions arise that perhaps it doesn’t have such good intentions…

I would thoroughly recommend this book to teens and adults alike!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This book is another YA novel that evokes the narrative of the Hunger Games, but with a twist. The focus on mental health is an interesting route, as mental health is a real problem for young people across the world so you could imagine an initiative being rolled out to try and solve this. I also really liked the relationship between Seb and Finn. However the book didn't really answer any of the questions I had by the end, which I guess is to inspire you to read the next one, but really left me feeling a little frustrated. But I did enjoy the read enough to search out the next book when it arrives.

A dystopian near future YA book that takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through the lives of teenagers chosen to have their unhappy lives transformed.

HappyHead is a timely book that explores the contemporary concerns of the disengaged youth, caused by solitary lives driven by online living and pressure to be other than you are.
Following selection, participants are challenged to complete increasingly dangerous tasks, working together in allotted teams until only the most successful survive. Seb surprises himself by excelling, but what criteria are really being used and what will happen to those that fail...falling down the rankings?

Silver has created an interesting premise with echoes of Squid Game or The Hunger Games. As the stakes are raised, reality questioned and a realisation that perhaps those attributes prized at the retreat are not necessarily the best that human nature has to offer.

What a great and terrifying concept, a world where depression and anxiety in young people is micro-managed by the state to make the person happier and healthier. Seb is picked to be part of the pilot scheme for Happyhead along with 100 other young people - they are tagged with a tracker, given intense psychological profiling and pitted against one another to try and suceed in the trial.
Some of the elements didnt completely work for me but overall , a gripping and well -planned story with lots to recommend it

I liked the book but it's not better than the Hunger Games!!!

The book reminded me of Nine Perfect Strangers, which I really did not like. But it was interesting

A difficult book to tear your eyes from, but even more difficult to describe and review. As I sit here, with no notion of where to begin, all I can remember is the overwhelming feeling of having to inhale every word, and the utter gutwrench of the finale.

Silver has done something special here. Although some would have you believe this novel is akin to The Hunger Games, I don’t subscribe to that opinion. Yes, we have a group of teenagers in an unsettling and veiled circumstance, where trusting authority may or may not be the best option. The similarities end there.

We explore the idea that an epidemic of unhappiness has infiltrated the minds of the nation, particularly our young people. What if preventative measures could be taken to allow our young minds to be happy? Some sort of wellness retreat or boot camp? Enter HappyHead - the one thing that will make everything better. Tasks, assessments, and teamwork all combine to allow the students to be analysed, catergorised, and ultimately scored. It all seems fairly innocuous, if odd, until things begin to be cast in a strange shadow of doubt.

I was immediately engrossed with this. Silver’s writing allows you become immersed with Seb’s experiences working through both the HappyHead process and his own identity, as they seem not to fit together. From the beginning, there are undertones of disquiet - something feels off; I believed my brain had been programmed to persevere at all costs, and to discover the motives and person behind all of these perplexing cogs.

To say anything else would be cruel of me, as this is one best experienced with an open and untarnished mind. What I will say is that the finale came at me like a slap in the face, and I am craving a sequel.

This is an original YA LGBTQ+ read about Seb, who is being driven to 'Happy Head' (a facility where scientists work on a cure for adolescent depression)having been 'specially selected'.... What follows are a series of tests that must be undertaken - some, not for the squeamish! Josh Silver has created an excellent dystopian debut novel that is certainly set up for a sequel.

It is bonkers in parts and definitely only read if you're into cliff hanger endings - it's done so well though and has you wanting more.

Thanks to OneWorld Publications for the opportunity to preview .

This is a really strong debut novel. A great idea well executed. Kind of like The Hunger Games crossed with Only Ever Yours and The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Believable characters, twists, an ending I didn't see coming and potential for a franchise!

Thrilling and well written, all though sometimes a little too out there to be believable. I liked the main character, but never truly felt I knew why he was picked to be part of HappyHead. I will definitely be reading the sequel when it's out. No doubt, lots of people will like this more than I did, though.

Firstly, the ending. I know I'm not supposed to start by talking about my thoughts on the ending, but here this seems necessary. I got to 92% and still I couldn't see what would happen. I was on edge throughout the whole of the last 20% and the ending just left it on the biggest cliffhanger. The amount of twists was not something I was expecting, and I just could not put this down, so I actually read it in only a couple sittings.

I always seem to talk about how much I loved the characters in book reviews, and this is no exception. Seb and Finn reminded me so much of Simon and Baz from the Carry On series by Rainbow Rowell, especially Finn and Baz, in all their vampire vibe, rebellious glory. I loved Finn especially and I think that Seb was such an interesting narrator too.

Something that I would like to say, however, it that I found some of it a little too convenient. How some things just fall into place and they know exactly what they are supposed to do. It wasn't all of the time, but there were a few scenes where I also felt that the author didn't really know how to write them getting past, for example, an armed guard, and so just made the narrator pass out and magically appear inside.

The premise was so exciting to me, and I really enjoyed my time inside the messed up world of HappyHead. The reasons behind the situation the characters find themselves in was very well crafted, and the pacing was spot on, especially in the second half. I did enjoy the second half more than the first, just because that's where most of the action happens!

The assessments were SO twisted and messed up and honestly the whole book was a little scary but so gripping and I just didn't know what to believe throughout!!

The supporting characters were also very well thought out, but I would have liked to see more of Ash, because I think there is real potential in her character.

The romance element was filled with tension and memories and secrets, but also didn't form a huge part of the plot, which I think was so important the balance between the two was perfect in my opinion (even if I was craving more romance and for them to just KISS ALREADY).

Overall, this was a very unexpected but fantastic read, which I can't wait to see in shops and for more people to get the opportunity to pick it up!

REVIEW POSTED ON MY BLOG 18/03/23
https://zbestbooks.blogspot.com/2023/03/arc-book-review-happyhead-by-josh-silver.html