We suspect this might be the Next Big Thing in young adult fiction…

‘I read The Call in one sitting. Well, ‘read’… I should actually say ‘inhaled’, or ‘devoured’, because I don’t think I took a single breath between opening the first page of this novel and the end.

Every child in Ireland knows that the time will come for them to answer the Call – that terrifying moment that they are transported to a brutal underworld to run for their lives against the Sidhe’s Wild Hunt. Naked and unarmed, barely one in a hundred makes it back alive. But the odds are changing.

The few veterans of the Call have set up schools to teach the next generations the language, combat skills, and knowledge they need to survive. One student, Nessa, tries harder than the rest. Crippled by polio, her parents debated killing her themselves as a mercy before the Call takes her, but Nessa is determined not to go quietly. At the Boyle Survival College she hones her strengths alongside her classmates. But as her friends are Called one by one and their mangled bodies returned, the odds stacked against her seem worse and worse… and she’s running out of time.

I wolfed this book down, roaring through the pages like a freight train as the story barrelled towards its conclusion. The brutality of Nessa’s world, the unpredictability of the Call, the combination of fairy mythology with a modern-day setting was totally compelling. Calling it ‘Harry Potter and the Fairyland meets The Hunger Games’ is a bit simplified, but it’s probably the best I can do. If you’re into YA fiction, read it. If you know a teenager, gift it.’

– Lian Hingee

‘I’m reluctant to say that reading The Call was like reading The Hunger Games for the first time, because I know that’s what press releases and other reviews will say… but, really, reading The Call was like reading The Hunger Games for the first time. I just couldn’t put this novel down. I had a choice between making dinner and reading, and so I ended up eating toast for tea while I devoured page after page. Peadar Ó Guilín gives us the thing we’re always chasing in great YA lit: a world you can’t stay away from and a plot that keeps you guessing until the end.

The phrase Next Big Thing gets bandied about a lot, but I’d wager a hearty toast dinner that this is the real deal.’

– Holly Harper

‘In The Call, teens are 'called’ to the Grey Land, the depressing world where the Irish banished the Sidh (faeries) to thousands of years ago. There, they must run or fight to survive for 24 hours in faerie time, or three minutes and four seconds human time – before being returned dead or alive, whole or not, to our world. Interestingly, I started reading The Call and looked up three minutes and four seconds later to discover four hours had passed human time and the book was finished. Thankfully I was still in one piece and only mildly traumatised from my experience.

The Sidhe are beautiful and full of laughter, but they are also twisted, terrifying and evil in a entirely imaginative and uncensored way. Reading what they did to the teenagers they manage to catch had me swearing out loud in a kind of horrified awe. On top of all of that, Ireland has been completely cut off from the rest of the world and doesn’t even have internet anymore. A true horror story. I freaking loved it!‘

– Dani Solomon

'I read the first 50 pages of The Call late one night, went to sleep, and promptly had a nightmare.

This book is creepy. There was something about it that got under my skin and disturbed me in a way that I’m still not sure I enjoyed, but I certainly found addictive. It’s a book full of fascinating ideas and terrific world-building, and its short chapters and impending sense of doom keep you furiously turning the pages. Comparisons to The Hunger Games will invariably arise because both feature dystopian narratives centred on the idea of teenagers fighting for their lives, but I would categorise The Hunger Games more as action, and The Call as horror.

The Call is a classic YA-crossover novel – it’s the kind of book I would gift to my thirty-something boyfriend (who reads action, sci-fi and fantasy), my mother (who loves crime fiction and mysteries), my twenty-something cousin (who likes a good page-turner to distract from heavier academic reading), my twenty-something brother (Game of Thrones addict) and any pretty much any sixteen year old, boy or girl, who likes to read and has a decent tolerance for violence. It’s the kind of novel that gets your bookseller antenna tingling, because you can imagine it being passed from reader to reader as it becomes that book everybody is talking about. My advice: get in early and read it first.’

– Nina Kenwood

‘ The Call is the most refreshing and original YA book I’ve read in a long time: a book ripe with horror, action, and psychological torment. In a nutshell – it’s Hunger Games but with sadistic Irish fairies, and Peadar Ó Guilín makes this extreme scenario thoroughly believable. The wonderful hero of The Call is Nessa, and as much as I relished the vivid atmosphere of the Grey Land, the dazzling and scary Sidhe, and the creatively grotesque tortures, Nessa is the reason I loved this book so much. Despite physical limitations caused by polio, Nessa is the most determined, focussed and dogged of all the students at her school. She scraps all the way through The Call, taking on bullies, teachers, herself, and finally the Sidhe.’

– Leanne Hall

‘It is so incredibly exciting to get your hands on a book that you know within the first few pages is going to be talked about by the global YA community and beyond. The Call is just such a book.

I loved the life or death narrative, the flawed but incredibly determined main character Nessa, and the play on Irish mythology and the fairy folk. I was so immersed in this alternate Ireland and the battle between fairy and human that everything else needed to be put off until I had finished reading. Yes, it was terrifying; yes, the descriptions of some of the fairies’ cruel punishments are seared onto my brain forever, but I loved it so much and look forward to reading it all over again. I want to recommend it to my friends, teenagers, my mum, random strangers and everyone who likes exciting, original stories. I suggest you get your hands on it as soon as you can, put your phone on silent and hole up in a quiet room for a few hours to enjoy. No doubt a movie, fame, glory and more await this book and its author but if you grab it now you can proudly say you read it first when hardly anyone knew!’

– Angela Crocombe

‘This novel gave me actual nightmares. Unfortunately, it’s also utterly compelling so I found I couldn’t put it down despite being scared stiff. I was entranced by the world Peadar Ó Guilín has created from the opening pages, and just so impressed by the way he situates Irish folklore within the context of the dystopian YA lit genre. His take feels new and refreshing to me, unlike anything else I’ve read.

I was equally impressed by his fearless approach to depicting the darkness of the world and its complexities. The history that exists between the humans and the beautiful, terrifying Sidhe (the fairies) is fraught and not as straight-forward as first assumed. I really hope we learn more about what happened in coming books.

Plus, I absolutely adored Nessa. I loved the way she fought against other people’s expectation of her weakness, and her fierce attitude. She is a heroine that will stay with me for years to come.’

– Bronte Coates