New at Forbes: Why this book dedication is going viral

The humorous dedication in Ben Philippe's debut novel, The Field Guide to the North American Teenager, is going viral. Why? Find out in my latest article at Forbes online.

Read this: The Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Robin Palmer

As a complete scaredy cat, daughter of an alcoholic and YA fan, I loved this YA novel, The Corner of Bitter and Sweet. The end of my week has pretty much sucked, but this book made me happy. Check out this Great Q&A with Robin Palmer.



Especially this quote:

The thing is, once you start going outside your comfort zone and taking risks (some people would probably call that living life), a weird thing starts to happen. Something gets flipped, and soon enough the thing that keeps you up at night and reaching for your notebook to make a list is the fear of not taking one. Once you’ve accumulated experience that shows that not only does the risk taking not lead to your world blowing up, but it actually makes your world bigger, it feels more uncomfortable to stay small.

How How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr sucked me in

I have what I guess could be called a bad habit of skipping from one book to another. It's not necessarily because I don't like the one(s) I'm reading, but more that my curiosity about whatever's new compels me to start reading whatever catches my eye, to see if I must read it right away. And in the case of the new YA novel How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr (who's on a book tour), the answer is yes, I need to devour it ASAP. I got it for free from Amazon Vine in the mail today and am already totally engrossed. The story is told from alternating viewpoints, that of Jill, whose father has died ten months previously and her mother decides she wants to adopt a baby, and Mandy, who is pregnant and looking to give her child up for adoption. One of my favorite novels tackling pregnancy and motherhood (and, in that case, OCD) is Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio, which I'd like to reread. The way the three narrators in that story, including a fetus-turned-baby, collide and contradict and interact, is marvelous, but that's another post (been thinking about it, and mentally ill, possibly unreliable narrators and how fascinating they are after finishing excellent OCD young adult novel A Scary Scene in a Scary Movie by Matt Blackstone).



Someday maybe someone can teach me how to properly use Blogger and indent and make things look pretty like I can on Tumblr. Until then, my ham-handed clumsyblogging, alas. Speaking of this blog, I'm looking into revamping it (I know, it's forever overdue, but rent paying takes priority). Stay tuned! From How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr, from Mandy's POV, as she's riding on a train to meet Jill and her mom for the first time:

"Um, hey." He shifts his body so that he's sitting on his side, facing me and leaning close. "It's Peña, by the way. My last name. And I'm..." He laughs. Lines appear around the corners of his eyes, and there's tea on his breath and stubble on his chin. "This is stupid. I'm not really married. I just said that because I thought you were trying to hit on me or something, and it seemed kind of weird, because...well, then I thought obviously picking up some stranger is the last thing on your mind right now. And you're probably half my age, and most likely you have someone, anyway, given..." He gestures to my belly. "That."

This. This rolls inside me, stretches a limb. I touch where it moved and wonder if it can feel my hand there.

"I'm nineteen." Almost.

"There you go. That's exactly half. I'm thirty-eight." He sips form his cup. "So, how long before you're a mother?"

I smile. I'll never be a mother. "About a month, I think."

Alex scratches his stubble. "Most women I know can tell you to the minute."

"I'm different." Being so specific with dates is silly. No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure it in years and by the things that happen to you, and when this life is a whole year, I won't be in it."

That passages was so bold to me; I'm fascinated by Mandy and what she's going through to deal with her pregnancy, how tough she sounds, even though I'm sure as the novel progresses (I'm on page 22), that toughness will have to crack a little. And the "This rolls inside me" line also was so powerful, and taught me more than that umpteen writing books strewn around my bags and my floor about what I want to learn how to do with my fiction.

Flattery will totally get me to buy your book

I was all "Elizabeth Miles knows who I am?" Let me read her YA novel Fury! On my Nook, alongside other YA like the OCD novel A Scary Scene in a Scary Movie by Matt Blackstone (reading September 21st with other YA authors at NYC indie bookstore Bluestockings, which is how I heard of the book) and Burnout by Adrienne Maria Vrettos. Plus a few I'm reviewing and others I want to pitch. Yeah, I constantly battle my love of reading with my love/hate relationship with writing, so when I get to write about books I'm very happy!



Plot description from Amazon:

It’s winter break in Ascension, Maine. The snow is falling and everything looks pristine and peaceful. But all is not as it seems...

Em is thrilled that the guy she’s been into for months is finally noticing her. But if she starts things with him, there’s no turning back. Because his girlfriend is Em’s best friend. And on the other side of town, Chase’s social life is unraveling and the stress of his home life is starting to take its toll. But that’s nothing compared to what’s really haunting him. Chase has done something cruel....And it’s only a matter of time before he’s exposed.

In Ascension, mistakes can be deadly. There are three girls—three beautiful, mysterious girls—to choose who will pay. Em and Chase have been chosen.

I heart this book cover

Will be reading it this weekend! Via the super fabulous The Contemps, where I've gotten so many wonderful YA recommendations. I dream of someday having a book featured there (just gotta, um, write it). Yes, at the erotica writers conference in Las Vegas, I'll be reading YA and Pretty by Jillian Lauren.

Read this if you like Greek myths and YA: Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs

Thank you to Amazon Vine for sending me Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs (also available in a Kindle edition). Visit her blog for a chance to win a copy!



My review:

I've been a fan of all of Tera Lynn Childs' YA novels, and this new series delivers on its premise and more! Taking another cue from Greek myth, this time Medusa, she presents a new series featuring triplets Gretchen, Grace and Greer. Gretchen is an old hat at accessing her superpowers and fighting smelly monster all over San Francisco; she's tough, from her Kevlar wrist cuffs to the daggers she stores in her boots. Grace and Greer discover their powers and have to both make sense of them, and the danger they're in, and come to terms with no longer being "normal."

The dragons are colorful and creative, looking to anyone not able to see their true nature like regular people, but the girls can see the truly hideous outsides and their murderous intent. Childs once again makes mythology come alive as each sister uses what she knows, along with a little help from some special elders, to help her do her duty. There's also the requisite cute boys, or in Greer's case, a mock surfer stud; Greer's chapters are among the most fun, because she's got the most to lose.

This is a delightful start to a trilogy, and even though I remembered almost nothing about Medusa, I quickly learned about the myth (or, in Sweet Venom's world, the "myth" of the myth). I'm not really a gore lover, but the scenes where the girls have to use their literal sweet venom to attack are fun and the girl power here is not the Spice Girls kind, but the creative, ingenious, bonding kind. I'm looking forward the next installments in the series.

Want to read: All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

Yes, I found plenty of books I want to read, and started some on my Nook, like the thriller The Sixes by Cosmopolitan editor Kate White, but of course I always have more on my to read list (which I actually just made into a formal list so I don't forget). One of them is the excellent-sounding YA novel All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin (click through to watch a trailer on Amazon where she takes you to Jacques Torres). I mean, no chocolate and no coffee!!!??? The horror!

Here's the premise:

In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city's most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. It consists of going to school, taking care of her siblings and her dying grandmother, trying to avoid falling in love with the new assistant D.A.'s son, and avoiding her loser ex-boyfriend. That is until her ex is accidently poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she's to blame. Suddenly, Anya finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight--at school, in the news, and most importantly, within her mafia family.

Hell House comes alive in YA novel Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

This book is so so good. I think the trick to writing a YA novel like this is you can't come across like you have all the answers (okay, any novel, really). You can't make fun of your characters. You can condescend to them. You have to live them, you have to make the reader empathize with them even if they don't know what they're talking about. I didn't grow up in a tiny town with nothing to do and had no idea what Hell House was until a few years ago when Julie Klausner acted in the play (make of that what you will, you don't learn a lot about these things in Teaneck or Berkeley). But Lacey wanting to play "Abortion Girl?" I'm so with her. I like Lacey Anne Byer as a character a lot. The first paragraph I quote below, if we take it away from the context of Hell House, well, what teenager hasn't wanted the spotlight? What adult for that matter, whether on a small scale or a big one?

Melissa Walker nails a lot of things, and one of them is teen alienation, even for good girls. It's gripping and I'm only sad I don't have more time to devour this ASAP. Here's the review in the New York Times, which they wisely gave to Carlene Bauer, author of Not That Kind of Girl, who could bring her evangelical upbringing into it.

See also: USA Today, "Young adult novels explore religion:"

The novel was inspired by an article Walker did for ELLEgirl magazine on Hell Houses, haunted houses often run by fundamentalist Christian churches. Their emphasis: people who don't accept Jesus as their savior are condemned to hell.

Also, the heart in the apple on the cover? Genius. Read it!

From Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker:

Last year I watched Julia Millhouse play a pregnant teenager. When the lights went up in the nursery, where they staged her scene, she said her lines with so much emotion that people in the audience started to cry. I'd see them come through the lobby after the show and hear them talking about her performance. I want that spotlight. I want to be able to affect people that way too.

I've grown up with Hell House all my life, but Dean's cousins in the next county over think it's something weird that religious nuts do. It's not. It's a way to show people the right path. My dad always plays the devil--he thinks it's funny to be the children's pastor and the Antichrist. And Pastor Frist's Jesus bathes Hell in white light at the very end, leading the audience into Heaven (also known as the church library, all done up in white sheets and cotton clouds), where they get decision cars. Most people fill out the cards and agree to at least explore a Christian life. It's a magical weekend and an incredible outreach, especially for young people who don't have a path to Christ like I've grown up with. Mom always reminds me how lucky I am to have that.

I'm sitting with Starla Joy and her sister, Tessa, who's finger-coming her wavy brown hair as we wait to hear about this year's production. Tessa played and EMT last year in the drunk driving scene, and she got to say, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kerner, your daughter is dead." Everyone thinks she'll get a big part this year since she's pretty much the senior girl with the most rank here. Even in church--especially in church--there's a social hierarchy.

Want to read: Fins are Forever by Tera Lynn Childs

Fins are Forever has been at the top of my 2011 want to read list and has been; I pre-ordered my copy and am eager to dig in to this sequel to Forgive My Fins. I got hooked on Tera Lynn Childs' work with her YA novels Oh.My.Gods. and Goddess Boot Camp and have enjoyed every one since. Plus she sends cool swag (I have these bookmarks and temporary tattoos on me, so just ask for one if you see me at an event):





Official description below. Click here to read an excerpt and see author Tera Lynn Child's collages she made for inspiration (and a most excellent example of an author website done perfectly, with everything neatly organized, easy to navigate, fun extras and more)!

On Lily Sanderson’s eighteenth birthday she’ll become just a girl—still a mergirl, true, but signing the renunciation will ink Princess Waterlily of Thalassinia out of existence. That leaves plain old Lily living on land, dating the boy she loves, and trying to master this being-human thing once and for all.

Now that Lily and Quince are together, mer bond or not, she’s almost content to give up her place in the royal succession of Thalassinia. But just when she thinks she has everything figured out, the waves start to get rough. Lily’s father sends a certain whirlpool-stirring cousin to stay with her on land. What did Doe do to get herself exiled from Thalassinia and stuck in terraped form, when everyone knows how much she hates humans? And why why why is she batting her eyelashes at Lily’s former crush, Brody?

The seafoam on the raging surf comes when a merboy from Lily’s past shows up—Tellin asks Lily for something that clouds her view of the horizon. There’s a future with Quince on land, her loyalty to the kingdom in the sea, and Lily tossing on the waves in the middle. Will she find a way to reconcile her love, her duty, and her own dreams?

And I just found out she's in New York tonight:

* June 28, 2011
* Readers For Life Booksigning
* 5:30-7:30pm
* Marriott Marquis Times Square
* 1535 Broadway
* New York, NY

* July 8, 2011
* Blue Willow Bookshop
* 7:00pm
* 14532 Memorial Drive
* Houston, TX

* July 9, 2011
* Katy Budget Books
* 3:30-5:30pm
* 2450 Fry Road
* Houston, TX


If you're into YA or know someone who is, do check out her work; I have a feeling you'll be hooked too!

And just because it's so gorgeous, here's the cover of Forgive My Fins again and my review. Click here to read an excerpt.



Spoilers. Forgive My Fins features Lily, a half mermaid, half terraped, with the soul of a teenage girl who's desperately in love with Brody. The only problem is, she gets kissed by Quince, the annoying boy who's always spying on her. This wouldn't be such a big deal except that in her world, that means they are bonded for life unless her father, King of Thalassania, gives them a special separation agreement. First, Quince has to learn to swim, as well as absorb the news that Lily is actually a mermaid.

This story was beautifully told, and while elements of special powers will be familiar to readers of Childs' previous books, this one is special and, dare I say, even better and more romantic. Lily insists on thinking that her feelings for Quince are only due to the bond that's been placed on them, which allows them to read each other's thoughts. The reader is treated to umpteen examples of Quince's gentlemanly charm, but Lily persists in her delusions, while also trying to acclimate to being back underwater after three years away at a regular high school. The push/pull between Quince and Lily is beautiful and touching, as he, the supposed tough guy, puts his heart on his sleeve again and again and risks so much, including life on land, to prove his passion for Lily.

This is a charming, delightful book, and I will indeed be reading the 2011 release Fins Are Forever. The only off note in my opinion was the very end, which dealt with a side character, Lily's cousin Dosinia, and seemed to come out of nowhere; it gives a preview of what's to come but I was still blissed out on Lily finally figuring out what's in her heart. Watching stubborn Lily reject Quince again and again, coupled with her fish puns and the descriptions of the magical underwater world, where tears make a mermaid's eyes sparkle, was great fun.

Want to read: Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter

Uncommon Criminals is the second in a new Ally Carter series and it's wonderful! I both want to read it and am already reading it, almost done. It's a fast-paced read about teenage thieves; in the last book, they were stealing back stolen Holocaust art. This one involves a 97-carat emerald and all sorts of security measures, plus family and romance, but mainly heists. Click here for Ally Carter's book tour dates and visit Heist Society on Facebook to read an excerpt from Uncommon Criminals (it opens with Kat in Moscow stealing from the KGB!).

I read it while getting a pedicure:



I recommend all of Ally Carter's YA novels, both her Gallagher Girls series and this series!

Official description:

Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners. There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long — and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself. But it’s the third problem that makes Kat’s crew the most nervous, and that is . . . the emerald is cursed. Kat might be in way over her head, but she’s not going down without a fight. After all, she has her best friend — the gorgeous Hale — and the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe, dodging curses and realizing that the same tricks and cons her family has used for centuries are useless this time. Which means, this time, Katarina Bishop is making up her own rules.

Want to read: What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay

Found this YA novel, What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay by Amanda Cockrell, via her guest post The Contemps. Dear Wall Street Journal - YA fucking matters.



Description from Amazon:

Angie never used to think much about God—until things started getting strange. Like the statue of St. Felix, her secret confidant, suddenly coming off his pedestal and talking to her. And Jesse Francis, sent home from Afghanistan at age nineteen with his leg blown off. Now he's expected to finish high school and fit right back in. Is God even paying attention to this?

Against the advice of St. Felix (who knows a thing or two about war), Angie falls for Jesse—who's a lot deeper than most high school guys. But Jesse is battling some major demons. As his behavior starts to become unpredictable, and even dangerous, Angie finds herself losing control of the situation. And she's starting to wonder . . . can one person ever make things right for someone else?

From the post:

The germ of the plot was my college senior thesis, a play in verse heavily under the influence of Christopher Fry. It concerned a girl who has been praying to the statue of a saint, which suddenly comes alive, claiming that God has de-sainted him for not being holy enough. I don’t write blank verse nearly as well as Christopher Fry did, and there is not a lot of market for historical plays in verse. But years later I thought the premise still had possibilities, and we were in the middle of a war - again - and I thought the saint probably had some old battle scars of his own.

War is a very different thing when you are fighting it than when you are supporting the troops on the home front with “Power of Pride” bumper stickers and magnetic ribbons on your car. Angie, my heroine, is fifteen, and anyone her age has grown up with these wars. Even Jesse, who was hot to join the Army at seventeen, was a child when it started. For them, it’s always been there. And yet I wonder how real it seems to teens if they aren’t in a military family. I’m reasonably sure that Jesse didn’t know what he was getting into. I looked at the pictures of young people cheering when Osama Bin Laden was killed, as if they were at a football game, and I had a sense that to them it was a game.

During the Vietnam War, it was clearly no game because any male might get drafted and sent to fight. At first you could get a deferment by staying in college, but after a while it became clear that the war was unfairly taking the boys who couldn’t afford college, and so they began a lottery – literally. Numbers were drawn once a year corresponding to birthdays. If your birthday got a low number, you were gone. Every man I know of that generation has some scar left over from it, whether he was drafted, volunteered, protested the war, or even went to Canada with the draft board and the FBI on his heels. Even the unscathed ones have a sort of survivor guilt about that. But now, I wonder. We have no draft, and I thought that it was likely that for someone like Angie the war would only get suddenly and extremely real when someone she knew got hurt or killed.

Want to read: What Would My Cell Phone Do?

I've actually started this YA novel, What Would My Cell Phone Do?, by Micol Ostow and it's a fun sendup of Dr. Phil and a cute romance. I recommend it! The back cover is also pretty chihuahua-tastic.

From YA Book Central:

When Aggie Eckhart's family moves from Miami, Florida, to Denville, Alaska, because of her father's job, Aggie feels like a fish out of water.

Not only is frozen Denville a far cry from sunny Miami, but she's got no friends, her mother is driving her crazy, and she loses her cell phone within the first month - cutting off her lifeline to civilization.

But when an online search for her phone (using the schmancy built-in GPS tracker) reveals that the cell is enjoying life up north much more than Aggie is, she adopts a whole new outlook. No more woe-is-me, now it's all WWMCPD (What Would My Cell Phone Do)? And before Aggie knows it, things are looking a whole lot brighter in this charming, fun, and lighthearted YA romance.

Want to read: A La Carte by Tanita Davis

I found out about A La Carte by Tanita Davis because I'm on a bunch of publisher newsletters regarding teen books. The first cover is the new paperback one, the other is the hardcover version. This looks wonderful and I love the unique subject matter. I have plans to write my own YA novel, which I will not say any more about until the manuscript is done and it's sold (my goal is by the time I'm 36th in November, or end of this year), but either way, I love reading books for kids, from board books to tween and YA.

Official desscription via Amazon, where you can also read an excerpt (paperback is out June 14th):

SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD LAINEY DREAMS of becoming a world famous chef one day and maybe even having her own cooking show. (Do you know how many African American female chefs there aren’t? And how many vegetarian chefs have their own shows? The field is wide open for stardom!) But when her best friend—and secret crush—suddenly leaves town, Lainey finds herself alone in the kitchen. With a little help from Saint Julia (Child, of course), Lainey finds solace in her cooking as she comes to terms with the past and begins a new recipe for the future.

Peppered with recipes from Lainey’s notebooks, this delicious debut novel finishes the same way one feels finishing a good meal—satiated, content, and hopeful.





And two reviews, via Amazon as well:

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up—Seventeen-year-old Lainey has an uncommon dream: to be the first African-American celebrity vegetarian chef. She shows promise, helping out in the kitchen at her mother's Bay Area restaurant and concocting mouthwatering dishes in her spare time. (Hand-written recipes are included.) Cooking is her salvation; she turns to the kitchen when things aren't going well, particularly in her precarious relationship with Simeon Keller. While she cares for him as a friend, she overlooks the way he uses her. When he runs away from a bad situation at home, she offers him brief sanctuary in her home, giving him $500 and food before he jets out of town. Lainey's mom hounds her for details about his disappearance, details that she withholds for weeks. When Sim returns, months later, she's more self-assured and certain of her own plans for success. While Davis's first novel at times suffers from awkward wording and slow moments, it's still a book with a lot of heart. Readers will relate to Lainey, who doesn't always say the right thing, who has a love-hate relationship with her mother, and who finds her dreams realized at the novel's end. Secondary characters, like Lainey's formerly dorky family friend, ring true and add depth to the novel.—Jennifer Barnes, Homewood Library, IL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

How many African American female chefs have their own vegetarian cooking shows? High-school senior Lainey, with help from her mom’s gourmet restaurant and St. Julia (Child), is well on her way to being the first. Though she never wavers in her dedication to her culinary future, Lainey suffers a blow when her lifelong friend, Simeon, borrows $500 and runs away. Sim’s departure leaves Lainey feeling alone and strains her relationship with her mother, who disapproves of Lainey’s loan. When Sim finally returns, thoughtful, likable Lainey faces the truth about her friend’s character and the role she really played in his life. Davis’ first novel shows much promise for good things to come. Too few novels feature well-drawn, well-educated, middle-class African American characters like Lainey and her family. The text is seasoned with Lainey’s original recipes, and Lainey’s use of cooking as a means of meditation and self-expression may encourage readers to embark on their own kitchen experiments. Grades 7-10. --Heather Booth

3 June books (and 2 others) I cannot wait to read: Ink Flamingos, Uncommon Criminals, Fins are Forever

Here are three books I'm thrilled will be coming out in June and cannot wait to devour. Like, plan to buy on release day or stalk in case I can find them sooner.







2 more YA books I also want to read:

2 young adult novels whose covers sold me: Populazzi and Shut Out

I'm working on lots of posts for you, including 5 books I'm reading now and very excited about that (I can multitask like that) and trying to write things (trying being the operative word these days) but I wanted to share 2 YA book covers of books I'm very excited about. And if you wanted to be awesome, you could click over to Populazzi author Elise Allen's blog and leave a comment mentioning my name. Whoever gets the most namechecks wins a galley of her book! Book titles/covers link to Amazon, where you can pre-order.

I'm posting these specific covers because they each made me want to read the book before I even knew more about them, which I think is the job of a good book cover.

Author site: Elise Allen



Populazzi

Cara has never been one of those girls: confident, self-possessed, and always ready with the perfect thing to say. A girl at the very top of the popularity tower. One of the Populazzi.

Now, junior year could change everything. Cara’s moving to a new school, and her best friend urges her to seize the moment—with the help of the Ladder. Its rungs are relationships, and if Cara transforms into the perfect girlfriend for guys ever-higher on the tower, she’ll reach the ultimate goal: Supreme Populazzi.

The Ladder seems like a lighthearted social experiment, a straight climb up, but it quickly becomes gnarled and twisted. And when everything goes wrong, only the most audacious act Cara can think of has a chance of setting things even a little bit right.

Author site: Kody Keplinger



Shut Out

Most high school sports teams have rivalries with other schools. At Hamilton High, it's a civil war: the football team versus the soccer team. And for her part,Lissa is sick of it. Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is always ditching her to go pick a fight with the soccer team or to prank their locker room. And on three separate occasions Randy's car has been egged while he and Lissa were inside, making out. She is done competing with a bunch of sweaty boys for her own boyfriend's attention.

Lissa decides to end the rivalry once and for all: She and the other players' girlfriends go on a hookup strike. The boys won't get any action from them until the football and soccer teams make peace. What they don't count on is a new sort of rivalry: an impossible girls-against-boys showdown that hinges on who will cave to their libidos first. And Lissa never sees her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling, coming.

3 novels I'm reading: Abandon, family, Skinny

No time to go into more about these books that are all different from each other. Probably, even though it's paranormal and based on Dante's Inferno, Meg Cabot's Abandon is the lightest. family not only has chilling subject matter, but it's told in a chilling way that's also disconcerting (lowercase "i"s). You can read an excerpt of Skinny at Jezebel (I'm not anywhere near that part yet) and an interview at Crushable. If you're wondering, I got all these in the last two days. I'm also reading a few books I'm reviewing, and want to blog soon about the extremely fascinating Bobby Fischer biography Endgame by Frank Brady which was utterly engrossing. And I bought the first two, a copy of Skinny was sent to me by the publisher, Harper Perennial.

Author sites and Twitter feeds:

Meg Cabot (@megcabot)

Micol Ostow (@micolz)

Diana Spechler (@dianaspechler)

Cover image links go to Amazon, where I got the plot descriptions from:


Abandon by Meg Cabot

Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she's never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.

But now she's moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.

Only she can't. Because even here, he finds her. That's how desperately he wants her back. She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven, yet she can't stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.

But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.


family by Micol Ostow

It is a day like any other when seventeen-year-old Melinda Jensen hits the road for San Francisco, leaving behind her fractured home life and a constant assault on her self-esteem. Henry is the handsome, charismatic man who comes upon her, collapsed on a park bench, and offers love, a bright new consciousness, and—best of all—a family. One that will embrace her and give her love. Because family is what Mel has never really had. And this new family, Henry’s family, shares everything. They share the chores, their bodies, and their beliefs. And if Mel truly wants to belong, she will share in everything they do. No matter what the family does, or how far they go.

Told in episodic verse, family is a fictionalized exploration of cult dynamics, loosely based on the Manson Family murders of 1969. It is an unflinching look at people who are born broken, and the lengths they’ll go to to make themselves “whole” again.


Skinny by Diana Spechler

After her father’s death, twenty-six-year-old Gray Lachmann finds herself compulsively eating. Desperate to stop bingeing, she abandons her life in New York City for a job at a southern weight-loss camp. There, caught among the warring egos of her devious co-counselor, Sheena; the self-aggrandizing camp director, Lewis; his attractive assistant, Bennett; and a throng of combative teenage campers, she is confronted by a captivating mystery: her teenage half-sister, Eden, whom Gray never knew existed. Now, while unraveling her father’s lies, Gray must tackle her own self-deceptions and take control of her body and her life.

Other bloggers' book recommendations: Jen Lancaster and Stephanie Klein

I wish I could spend all day telling you about awesome books, but I have to write my own, so I will share links to book recommendations by bloggers Jen Lancaster and Stephanie Klein that got me to want to read and to buy some of their recommendations. Soon I hope to be as on the ball about recommending books as they are, because I am always reading.

Jen Lancaster's book recommendations - Most of these sound like I might like them, but young adult novel Here Lies Bridget intrigued me because of the premise, because Paige Harbison is the daughter of bestselling author Beth Harbison and she's, yes, 21! Oh, and the first line of her official bio on her site is "I am kind of a snarky bitch." Yes, I'm so reading her book ASAP.



Stephanie Klein's book recommendations - I ordered Epiphany as an impulse purchase immediately after reading this. These days I can use all the inspiration I can get, though generally, ideas aren't my problem, it's following through on them.

Beautiful book cover of mermaid YA novel: Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs

I love how gorgeous this cover of Tera Lynn Childs' new YA novel Forgive My Fins is. I recently read her first two connected novels, Oh.My.Gods. and Goddess Boot Camp, about a teenager who discovers she's a descendant of Nike and goes to school with other descendants of Greek gods. Both were hilarious and delightful. I don't usually read anything fantastical but wanted to check out this mermaid novel.



Official description from Tera Lynn Childs' site (click to read an excerpt):

Lily Sanderson has a secret, and it's not that she has a huge crush on gorgeous swimming god Brody Bennett, who makes her heart beat flipper-fast. Unrequited love is hard enough when you're a normal teenage girl, but when you're half human, half mermaid, like Lily, there's no such thing as a simple crush.

Lily's mermaid identity is a secret that can't get out, since she's not just any mermaid—she's a Thalassinian princess. When Lily found out three years ago that her mother was actually a human, she finally realized why she didn't feel quite at home in Thalassinia, and she's been living on land and going to Seaview High School ever since, hoping to find where she truly belongs. Sure, land has its problems—like her obnoxious biker-boy neighbor, Quince Fletcher—but it has that one major perk: Brody. The problem is, mermaids aren't really the casual dating type—the instant they "bond," it's for life.

When Lily's attempt to win Brody's love leads to a tsunami-sized case of mistaken identity, she is in for a tidal wave of relationship drama, and she finds out, quick as a tailfin flick, that happily ever after never sails quite as smoothly as you planned.

Interview with Efrain's Secret author Sofia Quintero

I interviewed Sofia Quintero, author of the YA novel Efrain's Secret over at SheWrites. Check it out!

Want to read: My Tiki Girl

School Library Journal just ran an article about gay and lesbian teenagers in YA novels, and among the ones they mentioned was My Tiki Girl by Jennifer McMahon, whose cover makes me swoon. From the article:

“It’s like [Dahlia]…emits some kind of electricity, like static that gives you shocks, raises the hair on your skin, shoots sparks. You can’t be near her without picking up on it. And you feel like maybe it’s dangerous….” Maggie, 15, shut herself away after a wreck killed her mother and left her a limping “Frankenstein girl” in Jennifer McMahon’s My Tiki Girl (Dutton, 2008). Now caught up in Dahlia’s bohemian life, Maggie’s crush on the teen is soon reciprocated, and turns to sexual exploration. Rich imagery and free-spirited prose convey Maggie’s emotional struggles over body image and self-acceptance, along with themes of popularity, grief, mental illness, and homophobia.



Here's a tiny excerpt from the author's site (read more there):

All the girls in tenth grade hate Dahlia Wainwright. They say she's a witch and that if you touch her, you're cursed. They say she’s so fugly the boys have to put a bag over her head to bone her. But as far as I can tell, Dahlia doesn't waste her time with boys. And the truth is, the girls hate her because she's prettier than any of them and it's not that all dressed up with blue mascara kind of pretty like Sukie Schwartz or Heather Tomasi. It's the kind where she could be covered in mud or stung from head to toe with bees and her beauty would still turn heads. The girls hate her because the boys all want her. The boys hate her because they can't have her. So Dahlia hangs out alone between classes, sneaking out to the soccer field to rest her back against the goal and smoke. Today, during lunch period, she’s right where I knew she’d be: braced against the white goal frame, the net behind her like a spider web, while she watches to see who might wander in.

I had walked into the cafeteria and the first thing I saw was Sukie Schwartz holding court at a long, rectangular table. I heard the buzz of their talking, laughing, teasing, and it mixed together in this sickening way with the gray meat smell of overdone hamburgers, perfume, sweat, new sneakers and floor wax. I hurried to the nearest exit before Sukie could catch my eye, and now I’m hobbling my way out to the soccer field where a single girl stands smoking and reading.

I say hobbling because I am a Frankenstein girl. The bones in my right leg are held together with screws and a metal rod. I walk with a stiff-legged limp. I used to use a cane, but don't anymore. My father says I still should, that I haven't healed completely from my last surgery, but he’s not the one who has to deal at school. I mean, the movie monster limp is bad enough, right?