He’s not always an angel, but at the core… he’s always looking to do the right thing. I hope I can live on with his sort of toughness.”

The same with the culture, why are they participating in English activites vs forcing their culture, language and customs on the people they are oppressing? All while disparaging their customs, not participating in them. Callum’s first day at school begins with a riot as Cross parents try to stop the nought children from joining the school. The pupils and teachers at the school also react violently . Sephy is told off for trying to sit next to Callum in class and beaten up for being a "blanker-lover" – an offensive term for Crosses who are friendly towards noughts. Alone in the house together, Sephy and Callum have sex, and Sephy instantly bursts into tears afterwards. Jude and Morgan return before Sephy and Callum are fully dressed and while Sephy is still crying. They conclude that Callum raped Sephy, and they share that someone told the police about them: police arrested Leila, Pete is dead, and Andrew is gone. Jude and Callum fight and while they’re distracted, Sephy runs away into the woods. Callum finds her before Jude or Morgan can, and he points her toward safety. Before she leaves, Sephy shares that Andrew is working with Mr. Hadley—Andrew is the man she saw meeting with Mr. Hadley years ago. Sephy gets home safely, and Callum, Morgan, and Jude split up for their safety.Six months after Lynette dies, Callum and Sephy decide to meet at the mall—but Jude tells Callum very seriously not to go. Suspecting the worst, Callum races for the mall and drags Sephy out—just before a bomb explodes, killing seven people. Enraged when she realizes that Dad and Jude were involved, Mum slaps Dad so hard she breaks her finger. At the hospital, so she can receive treatment, Mum allows the nurse to scan Callum and Jude’s ID cards, which are linked to their fingerprints. That night, to help herself sleep, Sephy tries wine for the first time. The Guardian ranked Noughts & Crosses #88 in its list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. [15] Awards and nominations [ edit ] Noughts & Crosses is written alternately in the voices of Sephy and Callum, in short chapters that grant the two differing perspectives. There's pain and tension here, and anger - it's a mature book, and doesn't shy away from the worst of human nature. It's well written, with both Sephy and Callum growing older, more mature, more disillusioned. For a book that's not set anywhere in particular, about a world that doesn't literally exist, it's a very real story because it pokes right at the heart of so many of our problems and makes no apologies for forcing us to look at ourselves. The characters are realistic and complex. I especially liked Callum, because he was a realist, and smart, too. Sephy irritated me to no end because she was so naive. But then again, I'm pretty sure she was supposed to be that way. It would be weird if she were like Callum, because their circumstances are so different. They are so different.

The two are then surprised by the rest of the gang, and Jude and Callum point their guns at each other; Sephy takes advantage of the confusion to flee. The story ends with Callum and Jude shooting at each other. Their romance is also incredibly toxic and unhealthy. There are numerous example littered throughout the book, but the absolute worst are in chapters 79-80 and chapter 101. If both circumstances consent is violated and in chapter 101 there is a very significant power imbalence, so a trigger warning for sexual assault in both. I've summarized them here: Callie Rose wakes from her coma and finds out that Jude was indeed killed by the bomb. However, she also discovers that Tobey is now dating Rebecca, as she had been in a coma for so long. Callum is able to visit an injured Sephy in the room where she is being held. Alone together, Callum reveals to her his unsuccessful attempt to catch up to her before she left for Chivers. Their love rekindles, and the two end up having sex. Afterwards, Sephy escapes into the woods, chased by Jude and another LM member. Callum finds her first and gives false directions to the others; he then gives Sephy instructions to escape. Sephy then tells Callum that she'd seen Andrew before in her house with Kamal, revealing that Andrew is a government informant. Informing the rest of the LM about Andrew, the remaining members agreed to split up and keep a low profile, not meeting up again until Callum's birthday. Sephy (a Cross) and Callum (a Nought) have known each other their whole lives. In their teens, they begin a secret romance, but relationships between noughts and Crosses are discouraged. Noughts and Crosses usually live separately and attend separate schools, but when Callum becomes one of the first noughts to attend a mixed school (the school Sephy goes to) their relationship is seriously tested.The plot itself-the story arc that propels the book along-is pretty much a thin, Things That Happen, standard kind of plot that wasn't hugely appealing but kept the whole thing tied together quite nicely. There are a few surprises, but I'd wager they're nothing you can't find in half a dozen other novels that are of the dystopian nature. Callum knows all too well. From being constantly suspected of every possible crime and assumed the worst of, to being denied an education and treated like he's not just stupid but incapable of learning the skills the Crosses have - every day he faces the fact that he's lower than second-class because of one arbitrary fact he has no control over: the colour of his skin. Another thing that comes to my mind when I think about the story is the poor poor Meggie McGregor. What did she ever do wrong so as to deserve this magnitude - this degree - of pain and grief and sadness? It literally hurts your heart to think about the grief and the kind of torment that lady has to go through - and that too without any of her own fault. Then, Callum's family life begins to fall apart – his sister, Lynette, dies. Soon afterwards, Callum discovers his Dad, Ryan, This is a very important book for what it is telling you and I think it's very important that the audience this book is written for are children and teenagers. Unfortunately, this means that I dislike it because of that, since there is no theme or amount of excellent writing that will make me enjoy a story that is narrated by annoying, self-centred "AH ME" teenagers.

Written for World Book Day 2003, An Eye For an Eye has been republished in a new edition of Noughts & Crosses. It describes one evening while Sephy is pregnant with Callie Rose when her sister, Minerva, visits her. Minerva offers to patch up things with Jasmine, but Sephy tries to get Minerva to leave, as Sephy was worried about being followed by Jude. As Minerva visits, Jude arrives in the apartment after days of following Sephy, intent on killing Sephy. Then - in spite of a world that is fiercely against them - these star-crossed lovers choose each other. Ryan McGregor: Callum, Jude, and Lynette's father, who is killed trying to escape from prison after the Dundale bombing. classes over white people. But while the setting may be fictional, there are very strong links to recent and historical events in theEven now after sleeping on what happened at the end of this stupid book I am a mess. My eyes are puffy and I hardly slept a wink. I tossed and turned and grumbled and fumbled around until I was a pissy asshole-oh, hey! Just like this book! Ugh. For Laura Preble, "Out" had the instalove factor that killed it just as much as the casual dismissal of all the rules in the overblown society that was working against their relationship, right up until around the time when their relationship was "discovered." Instead of properly developing the characters and the issues they dealt with - it was all about the "love machine," the way they biologically "fit" with each other (*cringes*), and the attitudes that were projected rather than shown in the dynamic and stakes of the story. Five weeks after returning home, Sephy discovers she’s pregnant. Though Minnie initially agrees to keep Sephy’s pregnancy a secret, she ultimately tells Mother and Mr. Hadley. Mr. Hadley insists that Sephy get an abortion, but she refuses. Callum learns about Sephy’s pregnancy on the radio a few months later, and he heads home to see her.

inequality. The story is set in an imagined society where dark-skinned people, called Crosses, are the ruling class. White people are called noughts and were once enslaved. In 2007 she collected stories and poems for the book Unheard Voices, commemorating the bicentenary anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, and in 2009 she contributed to Free? , a book of stories celebrating Human Rights. Recent books include Noble Conflict (2013), a thriller set in a post-revolutionary utopia; Chasing the Stars (2017), a re-telling of Othello set in space, which was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize; and Blueblood (2020), a re-telling of the Bluebeard fairy tale. A fifth novel in the Noughts & Crosses series, Crossfire, appeared in 2019.For Victoria Foyt's "Revealing Eden" - it was ridiculous to the point of oblivion. It wasn't plausible considering the heavily scientifically inaccurate hinging of "melanin theory" in that shaping of the world, it wasn't plausible that Eden Newman (note the name) was the saving grace of the "Pearl" race, "creationist theory" and championing of mankind, and it wasn't plausible in any consideration that she, in her relationship with Bramford, spent almost every other chance denouncing and capitalizing on her prejudices against him among other racial groups, then turning around and saying "I love you". *rolls eyes* Sephy struggles with seeing Meggie losing the last remaining member of her family and decides to give a false alibi to Jude for Cara's death for Meggie's sake. He escapes the death penalty and only serves a few month in prison for LM membership; afterwards, he accuses Andrew of Cara's murder in addition to being a government informer; Andrew is soon shot dead by the LM. Despite Sephy saving his life, still holds a grudge against her and plots revenge. I did enjoy the first part of the book more than the second part. If the book had of continued how it had started it would probably be around a three star read, but it was the final quarter of the book that really let it down for me. Much of the plot was predictable. There were few, if any, surprises. I predicted Lynette's suicide, Gabe joining the Liberation Militia, and Callum's dad's suicide quite easily.