I'm not sure if I'm agreeing with everyone else, or coming to a directly opposite conclusion, but for what it's worth...
For my taste it's all too low-key, bearing in mind they're about to commit a criminal offence. There's no sense of excitement or strain or fear for the first 250 words, and not a great deal thereafter, and what you do have is mostly telling not showing -- where's the sweaty hands, the dry mouth, the desperately needing to pee? Like much of your writing, this is all rather cerebral rather than emotional, which is perhaps not what you want just here. My suggestion would be to push more excitement and tension into it, the beginning especially.
As to emotion, yes, for me the anger was missing, even if it's only anger which he's remembering and/or manufacturing at this point for the purpose of screwing his courage to the sticking place. Think Treebeard -- "They're felling trees, healthy trees!" -- and make it personal for Adam. He's damned if this wonderful old oak, a major part of his life, where he had his first kiss, is going to be snuffed out by corrupt bureaucrats and thieving capitalists just so the mindless prats of the town can have another f*cking shopping mall. He'd go to prison, rather. Well, perhaps not prison, but he'd pay a fine. If it wasn't a large one. And if he didn't get thrown out of school before his GCSEs.
As to Adam himself, I've obviously no idea how he will develop, but for me your cerebralness bleeds into his character -- if I'd not known in advance this was YA, I wouldn't have guessed he was an adolescent, with see-sawing hormones. I also have to confess that for the moment he reads to me as Orc-lite -- worry, angst and sexual jealousy, and a lot less gumption than is usually considered helpful for the protagonist -- and that Jezz will be playing the Cass role of being more active and can-do, but still only the subsidiary character.
Also for my taste, you've started the scene about five minutes too early. For me, no matter how realistic, the back-chat didn't advance the scene enough to justify its place in its entirety, and I'd prefer to wait to find out about the teenagers and their exact relationship later. I can't recall if the broken link fence is a plot point. If it is, I'd start it where she's literally just about to snap the links. If it isn't, I'd leave it out altogether, and start with her brandishing the bolt-cutters, and then they see the other 3 figures, so don't do anything after all. In either case, just a brief scene-setting of the compound and two or three lines of dialogue as a maximum before the snapping or seeing. Basically, start the action earlier.
Not sure if that's of any help, not least as I never read YA so I haven't the faintest idea what they want to read on the first page of a novel, but there we are.
For my taste it's all too low-key, bearing in mind they're about to commit a criminal offence. There's no sense of excitement or strain or fear for the first 250 words, and not a great deal thereafter, and what you do have is mostly telling not showing -- where's the sweaty hands, the dry mouth, the desperately needing to pee? Like much of your writing, this is all rather cerebral rather than emotional, which is perhaps not what you want just here. My suggestion would be to push more excitement and tension into it, the beginning especially.
As to emotion, yes, for me the anger was missing, even if it's only anger which he's remembering and/or manufacturing at this point for the purpose of screwing his courage to the sticking place. Think Treebeard -- "They're felling trees, healthy trees!" -- and make it personal for Adam. He's damned if this wonderful old oak, a major part of his life, where he had his first kiss, is going to be snuffed out by corrupt bureaucrats and thieving capitalists just so the mindless prats of the town can have another f*cking shopping mall. He'd go to prison, rather. Well, perhaps not prison, but he'd pay a fine. If it wasn't a large one. And if he didn't get thrown out of school before his GCSEs.
As to Adam himself, I've obviously no idea how he will develop, but for me your cerebralness bleeds into his character -- if I'd not known in advance this was YA, I wouldn't have guessed he was an adolescent, with see-sawing hormones. I also have to confess that for the moment he reads to me as Orc-lite -- worry, angst and sexual jealousy, and a lot less gumption than is usually considered helpful for the protagonist -- and that Jezz will be playing the Cass role of being more active and can-do, but still only the subsidiary character.
Also for my taste, you've started the scene about five minutes too early. For me, no matter how realistic, the back-chat didn't advance the scene enough to justify its place in its entirety, and I'd prefer to wait to find out about the teenagers and their exact relationship later. I can't recall if the broken link fence is a plot point. If it is, I'd start it where she's literally just about to snap the links. If it isn't, I'd leave it out altogether, and start with her brandishing the bolt-cutters, and then they see the other 3 figures, so don't do anything after all. In either case, just a brief scene-setting of the compound and two or three lines of dialogue as a maximum before the snapping or seeing. Basically, start the action earlier.
Not sure if that's of any help, not least as I never read YA so I haven't the faintest idea what they want to read on the first page of a novel, but there we are.
