Below you will find the Longlist, then a list of Notable Mentions, who just missed out, and finally a list of Readers’ Favourites (those who did not make the LL).
Right, time to get serious – this was so hard to do – the list is longer than I planned because there were so many novels we couldn’t say NO to!
Missing out on this long list is not a reflection of quality, simply the old combination in any creative pursuit – LUCK, TASTE and TIMING.
There were at least 40 more novels that could have gone onto this list and not reduced the quality in any way.
That said, the novels that did make it were INCREDIBLE.
How did we decide?
Entries were read 7 times (5 adult readers, 2 kid readers) and to make the list, you needed to get 6 or 7 YES votes!!! I KNOW!!!
When you receive your personalised feedback, you’ll get the number of YES votes with it – if you had 4/5, know that you just missed out and that this is still a great achievement – most of your readers wanted to continue. That’s a win in my view.
We also averaged the scores given by the 7 readers – the top 20 average scoring entries also all made the LL, regardless of YES votes, but mostly these overlapped.
Then we had our Readers Favourites – each reader told us their favourite and we took this into account in composing the list. Ultimately a few didn’t make it – we have listed them at the bottom. 4 novels got 2 readers favourite votes. Those were also added to the list if they hadn’t made it on other criteria.
So, I think you’ll agree, we’ve been thorough, we’ve done all we can to reduce the subjectivity of a single reader or 2, so we hope this has created the strongest possible list.
Of course, we are bound to have missed a few off here which will go on and be successful. See above comment on LUCK, TASTE and TIMING. If you weren’t successful this time, it’s due to that, not a lack of ability or promise in your novel.
Thank you to everyone who entered, and we hope if you’re not on this list, you’ll find the feedback we send useful, or at least enlightening. All I ever want to know when I miss a list, is how close I was and what did the readers think, and you all now have that chance, if you chose it at entry.
If you are on here (or even if you’re not) feel free to tweet about it using #WMCNA but if you’re on the longlist, do not tweet your title. You may tweet your title if you are on the bottom two lists.
Without furthering the agony, here is the list of novels (anonymous to allow impartial judging) that made it onto our long list.
Longlist
| A Broken Sound |
| Against All Odds |
| An Unquantifiable Spark |
| Cheese Boy |
| DANCE, DANCE, DIE! |
| Daughter of No Temple |
| Follow The Silence |
| For Never Was A Story |
| Generation 13 |
| Ghost Town |
| How NOT to Grow Parents |
| I Land |
| Lovespell |
| Mené |
| Miss Alexandra Twopenny Plays Doctors and Corpses |
| My Life Without You |
| Patsy Scribble |
| Rumi and the Cats of Istanbul |
| Searching for Stones in the Sand |
| Shadowchild |
| Summoner’s Revolution |
| The Colour of Words |
| The Curse of the Weird Wolf |
| The Darkest Corner |
| The Definition of Thomas Stonefeather |
| THE Dragon’s Suicide |
| The E.G.A. (Exceptional Gamers Academy) |
| The Fabulous Freddie |
| The Failed Genius Club |
| The Fiend of Aviary Mountain |
| The Glass Hotel |
| The Impure |
| The Keeper of the Books |
| The Lion’s Mouth |
| The Shape of the World |
| The Sluagh at Strange Garden |
| The Song of Anubis |
| The Time Thief |
| The Wonderful, Whimsical Wall |
| Title Pending |
| Tulip Finola Barnacle |
| Two Like Me and You |
| Viva La Valiants |
| Whisper Pier |
| Wishyouwas |
NOTABLE MENTIONS
| Alex Atkinson | The Girl Between |
| Amanda Thomas | The Stealth Pigeon |
| Carolyn de la Harpe | One Egg Short in Ballymory |
| Devyani Kothari | The Girl who saved Daro |
| Hannah Dunn | The Boy From The Mist |
| Helen Gordon | The Ragged Gull |
| Julie Farrell | FRACTAL |
| Katie Mason | The Girl Next Door |
| Laynie Bynum | Child of Night |
| Lorraine J Daggett | A Boy Made of Sand |
| Michael Mann | The Ghostclouds of London |
| Nadine Rajeh | Dinosaurs And Demons |
| Nicola Keller | The Old Oak Hotel |
| Rachel Hanville | Here Comes the Sun |
| Rebecca English | Forest School |
| Ross Harrington | The Child of Fire & Fear |
READERS’ FAVOURITES
| Alex Marchant | The Order of the White Boar |
| Andrew French | The Queens of Heaven |
| Annie Walmsley | Jedediah Dreaming Ransome |
| Debbie Roxburgh | HUNKY PUNK MOON |
| Debbie Roxburgh | THE GIRL WHO LEARNED TO FLY |
| Joan Haig | Tiger Skin Rug |
| Katherine Latham | Atlas of the Darkside |
| Melissa Charles | R.I.P. (REAPER IN PROGRESS) |
| Nicola Keller | Traitor’s Eye |
| Phillipa Bayliss | The Time That Wasn’t |
| Sharyn Konyak | These Pieces of Me |
| Tess Burton | The Young Volcanoes of Tenemere |
| Thompson McLeod | FAKING IT: A RECIPE FOR DISASTER |