Talented author scoops Lancashire's Book of the Year Award for third year running

Cynthia Murphy has won Lancashire's Book of the Year Award 2024, becoming the first person in the history of the competition to take the accolade three times.

Organised by Lancashire County Council, Lancashire Book of the Year is the longest running young people's regional book award in the country. Now in its 38th year, the award remains one of the few book awards where young people themselves are entirely responsible for drawing up the shortlist and choosing the overall winner.

In this year's competition, Cynthia Murphy won the 'Young adult thriller author' category for her book The Midnight Game, after previous wins in a row, with Last One to Die and Win, Lose, Kill, Die.

County Councillor Jayne Rear, Lancashire County Council's cabinet member for Education and Skills, said: "Lancashire Book of the Year is a brilliant award that enables young adults across the county to share their love of reading.

"Studies have shown that children who enjoy reading and read regularly reap the benefits in many areas including academically, socially and in their wellbeing.

"I want to thank everyone who took part in this year's judging process. I also want to give a huge congratulations to Cynthia Murphy for being the first person to win this award on three separate occasions, and even more extraordinarily winning it for the third year in a row."

The winning book, The Midnight Game, tells the story of a group of six strangers from an online forum who decide to meet in real life with one plan in mind: they are going to summon the Midnight Man. And once you start the Midnight Game, you must finish it - there's no other way out! Six strangers. One night. But how many survivors?

After being named winner at the recent awards ceremony, Cynthia, who was unable to attend due to illness, said: "Thank you so much – I'm thrilled that you loved The Midnight Game and I am absolutely over the moon to have won the Lancashire Book of the Year for the third year in a row!

"When I saw this year’s list, I immediately gave up hope that I would retain my title. There are so many fabulous books written by wonderful, talented people on there, and then little old me with another one of my weird and creepy books!"

The Lancashire Book of the Year was the first regional book award for children when it was originally launched in 1987. It was won that year by Philip Pullman, who went on to have great success with the His Dark Materials trilogy, and has previously been won by authors including Malorie Blackman, Anthony Horowitz and Sarah Crossan. For the past 24 years the award has been sponsored by UCLan.

This year, Year 9 pupils from 32 high schools took part in the judging process, with representation from across the whole of Lancashire as well as Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen.

The young judges started with a long list of 66 young adult fiction books from which they shortlisted 12 titles.

The county council's library service worked with eBook partner BorrowBox to ensure the judges had access to the shortlisted titles as eBooks as well as the physical copies in their schools. From those 12 books, the judges were tasked with selecting the winner, which was done via a confidential vote in June 2024.

County Councillor Peter Buckley, Lancashire County Council's cabinet member for Community and Cultural Services, said:  "This is a fantastic and engaging competition and is a fun way to engage young adults to foster a love of reading.

"Reading for pleasure opens the door for young adults to explore new ideas, visit new worlds and characters that live long in their memories.

"It's great to see so many young people get involved with this year after year and I hope this encourages them to continue reading well into their adult lives."