Semi-Perfect By James Pope Piccadilly Press, pound;5.99

Disconnected By Sherry Ashworth Zero Per Cent By Mark Swallow Collins Flamingo, pound;4.99 each

Can it be coincidence that three of these authors have chosen to show adolescents crumbling under the pressures of coursework, exams and pushy parents? Two of the main characters - Belinda in Semi-Perfect and Catherine in Disconnected - are high-achievers from ambitious middle-class backgrounds. Both are previously docile students who have worked hard for top grades, but reach overload and rebel against family and school. Both are encouraged to “write the whole thing down” to make sense of their experiences. This is a rather hackneyed justification for lengthy first-person narratives, yet many teenage readers do prefer the direct approach, and will readily engage with these troubled girls.

Semi-Perfect is a clever title. For Belinda, approaching her GCSEs, A-grades are expected, Bs are semi-perfect, a C is “a near-death experience”. The cycle of pushing herself towards top grades, redoing work that’s less than perfect and seeing more assignments pile up, sends her into deep depression, embodied in “my misery monster sloping around inside my head”. As in Sherry Ashworth’s Disconnected, we see puzzled and concerned parents trying to make sense of the changes in their daughter’s character. After vandalising her bedroom, rejecting her best friend and landing herself in trouble at a party, Belinda accepts that she needs help. Phone numbers and website addresses are provided for readers with misery monsters of their own.

Catherine, in Disconnected, is a year older, approaching Year 12 exams at a Manchester independent school. Demanding, Oxbridge-oriented parents oversee her homework sessions and remind her that private education comes at a price. Having so far managed to please them, Catherine now questions the point of it all, finding solace in alcohol: at first a solitary gin and tonic from her parents’ drink cabinet, then booze hidden in her room, empties sneaked into the dustbin, and vodka in a flask to ease the tedium of lessons. Rejecting her school peers, she befriends the “moshers” who frequent the city park.

Chapters are addressed to various key people - her mother, a teacher, a (maybe) boyfriend, an examiner, and a new-found confidant who encourages her to confront her problems and connect the various strands of her life.

Zero Per Cent is an assured novel which fizzes with energy and wit. Jack Curling, an intelligent but disaffected boy, lives close to Heathrow, his life punctuated by the sounds of departing aircraft, one of which carries his father away. Jack is an outrageous narrator who delights in language, wordplay and subverting authority. As the clock at the head of each chapter ticks away the minutes of his last GCSE exam, he reflects on his school career from local comprehensive to London crammer and back again, with sexual experimentation and money-making ventures en route, including a flawed plan to steal and photocopy GCSE papers to sell to desperate candidates. Mark Swallow’s accurate rendition of adolescent language may alarm some adults, though teenagers will take it in their stride. With its bold street-art cover, this book won’t spend long on library shelves - especially if readers are allowed to think it’s their own secret discovery.

These novels neatly illustrate the gender differences noted by secondary teachers - for able girls, the conscientious slog and the risk of burn-out; for the bright but cynical boy, lethargy redeemed by last-ditch effort.

Linda Newbery is a former English teacher who writes teenage fiction