ONCE AND FOR ALL: That Time I Wrote a Gushing Post About My Favorite Author

AMAZON RATING: 4.2 stars out of 5 | GOODREADS RATING: 3.79 stars out of 5 | MY RATING: 5 out of 5

Since I was a kid, I remember my mom taking me to Borders (RIP) on Saturdays to look for books. I’d head straight for the Young Adult section and spend forever judging books by their covers and back-of-the-book copy, until finally choosing one and devouring it once we returned home. (Shout out to my mom for always encouraging a strong love of books!)

This was how I discovered Sarah Dessen. I picked SOMEONE LIKE YOU up from a shelf at Borders probably sometime around 2004. And… I didn’t like it.

I wasn’t ready for Sarah. But Sarah was there. Waiting.

Months later, bored around the house and looking for something to do, I picked that book up again and decided to re-read the story of Hallie, Scarlett, and the time they had to act like adults long before they were ready. And this time, I had found a new favorite author.

I can’t explain to you why my opinion changed that second time around. But the next time I was at Borders, I picked up another Sarah Dessen book. And the next time… and the next time… before long, I was looking up her release dates and eagerly awaiting her next books, begging to go to the bookstore as soon as they were available.

This story brings me to today’s impromptu, out-of-order review of Sarah Dessen’s latest novel, ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Long story short, this book does not disappoint. Coming from one of the biggest young adult contemporary authors that currently exists, that’s no surprise. One of the things I’ve always loved about Sarah’s books is that while they deal with the normal high school problems that many teens face, she also confronts some of the bigger issues we hope no teens ever have to deal with: homelessness, abandonment, abuse, teen pregnancy and so much more. ONCE AND FOR ALL is no different.

Louna works for her mother’s successful wedding planning business, and she’s just looking forward to starting over now that high school is behind her. She’s surrounded every day with the ideals of true love lasting forever, but there’s just one problem: Louna has already been in love, and it didn’t last forever. In fact, it didn’t last nearly long enough. Ethan’s no longer a part of her life for reasons she finds hard to face and hard to understand. Yes. I’m being purposefully vague.

Along comes Ambrose (who reminds me so much of Dexter from THE TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER that it’s ridiculous), and the last thing Louna wants to deal with is a clumsy, bumbling optimist who thinks the sun never stops shining and just wants to save dogs. On that last point, I identify with Ambrose on a deep, personal level. 😀

I won’t say which hard-hitting point Sarah uses in this particular book, because I want you to read it yourself, but ONCE AND FOR ALL is worth every second I couldn’t put it down. Every time Ethan was mentioned, I COULD. NOT. STOP. On a side note, does Ethan and Louna’s night on the beach sound a crazy amount like Auden and Eli from ALONG FOR THE RIDE (whom they meet at some point, funnily enough), or is that just me?

I have no complaints. I’m biased. I will never have a complaint against a Sarah Dessen book. Sarah, you have inspired me since I was 12, and others since before that. If I ever write contemporary, I want you to know that you are the reason. ❤

 

Still coming is a review of COLD SUMMER by Gwen Cole, with an extra little surprise! Let’s hope I can write reviews and stop reading long enough to catch up with myself sometime soon… 🙂

THE HATE U GIVE: How One Book Changed My Life

Goodreads rating: 4.6 stars out of 5 | Amazon rating: 4.8 stars out of 5 | My rating: 5 stars out of 5

What Would Angie Thomas Do? That’s my new life motto.

Again, this was a honeymoon book. Or more like, a waiting-for-the-shuttle-to-the-airport-and-then-couldn’t-stop-thinking-about-it-on-the-plane-so-I-finished-it-immediately book. And then I texted my mom and told her she absolutely must read it. (She did. She loved it. As will you.)

If you’ve been reading my reviews, you know I don’t really give out 5 stars. I’m a brutally honest person when it comes to books, what can I say? But THE HATE U GIVE is more than just a world to lose yourself in for a few hours. It’s a world that traps you in and makes you think about your own experiences, how they affect the others around you, and what’s really going on in this country.

This book speaks on the Black Lives Matter movement in America. I’ve always agreed with the movement, myself, so I was always going to agree with this book’s message anyway, But what I love most about this book is that it is in no way anti-cop. It is in no way negative toward any position. It’s just about a girl facing the reality that her best friend is dead, after all he did was check to make sure she was OK. It’s about a girl who sees what the media is saying about her friend without getting the facts, or even mutilating the facts and taking them out of context to make sure that people don’t grieve for Khalil. Thomas does such a fantastic job telling a story with no bashing of the other side, and even including such an excellent example of a police officer as Starr’s own uncle.

Starr is, well, a star. She’s a beautiful role model and just wants to figure out how to navigate this sticky situation where she doesn’t even want to tell her white friends at her prestigious school about what happened. What happened was that she watched her best friend get shot by a cop who pulled them over after a party one night. She watches the news accuse him of being a drug dealer, as if that makes it all OK, without bothering to find out the real story, anyway. She finds out who her real friends are as Khalil’s trial looms and more and more truths come out.

This book is already in the works to become a movie. It’s been on the bestseller list, most weeks at #1 (rightfully so), since it was first released this past February. I will be (and have been) recommending this book to just about everyone I know. Seriously. It’s fantastic. Go buy a copy and read it. Now. I’ll wait.

 

 

Angie Thomas, you are a beautiful writer and I hope you don’t ever let anyone take the shine out of your Starr. Thank you for opening my eyes to the reality of the Black Lives Matter movement. Like I said, I’ve always supported it, but let’s be real: I’m a middle class white girl who grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and suburban Virginia. My experiences are not your experiences, and vice versa. Thank you for showing me the other side. Thank you for writing the book of the year. (Is that an actual award? It should be. And you should get it.)

 

Please stay tuned for a review of the new release ONE OF US IS LYING by Karen McManus!

THESE THINGS I’VE DONE: Rebecca Phillips and How She Rips My Heart to Shreds

Amazon rating: 4.4 stars out of 5 | Goodreads Rating: 4.09 stars out of 5 | My Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

I’ve somehow managed to get a cold (or something) in the summer, so let’s get caught up on my book reviews from my couch, shall we?

I’m going to start out by saying that I’m a harsh critic of books. I have multiple books on my Kindle (and probably on my bookshelf) that I started and never finished. So while I may critique a book to its core… if I finish it, I liked it overall. I’ll also go ahead and say there was one thing about this book that truly bothered me by the time I finished. But I finished. I was HOOKED. I absolutely had to know what happened next. Stay with me here.

Since I don’t have a physical copy of this book because I bought the Kindle edition, please accept this photo of my pet bunny Sundance trying to read his first novel.

I read this book during the course of one day while on my honeymoon. You read that right: I spent that long in a single day reading a book while in Hawaii on my honeymoon. At one point my husband suggested getting into the pool and I made him wait because I was at a crucial part that I refused to back down from.

I had read one other book by Rebecca Phillips before: OUT OF NOWHERE, and I really enjoyed it and highly recommend, along with this one. THESE THINGS I’VE DONE just came out last month, and I’ve known about it for a long time (thanks Eric!) and couldn’t wait to read it!

The book is about a girl (Dara) beginning her last year of high school, on the heels of a year-long trip away from where she grew up to get away from rumors and her past. A past where her best friend died in a horrible accident… that she feels responsible for.

Dara’s guilt throughout this book DESTROYED me. Ms. Phillips does such an incredible job of making those emotions come alive. I felt her pain every step of the way, and as her relationship with Ethan changed throughout the book, I felt like I was there with her. In high school. It was weird. (Can we all just agree high school was a weird and oddly traumatizing time for all of us? Moving on!)

There is so much conflict in this book that I felt like I was on eggshells the entire time reading it. And I mean that in a great way. Everywhere Dara turned there was something holding her back from moving on from Aubrey’s death. She couldn’t escape it, and was told to stay away from the one person who had a shot of helping her try.

Which brings me to what bothered me about this book: I felt cheated that a confrontation that was hinted out throughout the entire book never happened (I’m trying SO HARD here to not give anything away. I want you to read it yourself!). Ms. Phillips does this amazing job of raising the stakes and making you need to know how it’s going to turn out, but one of the things that was destroying me, waiting for it to happen, never did. And I’m sad about it. I felt like that’s what could have been the defining moment for Dara: facing up to these people and what really happened when Aubrey died.

 

But all in all, I truly loved this book. I’ll probably end up reading her other ones that are out, and will continue to keep up with her as her writing career continues. I’m a sucker for YA contemporary (I consider my own book half fantasy, half contemporary, if that’s a thing) so this is definitely right up my alley. Thanks for writing, Rebecca Phillips ❤

INKED: A Review of Eric Smith’s Awesomeness

Have you ever gotten a tattoo that ended up defining you?

In Caenum’s world, everyone has. And he’s terrified of what his upcoming Ink will tell him.

INKED by Eric Smith is a young adult fantasy novel about a world where all citizens get Inked on their 18th birthday. When you’re Inked, whatever shows up on your skin tells you what your profession will be for the rest of your life. Did flowers and plants start growing up your arm in beautiful, artful ink? Looks like you’re going to be a florist.

If this sounds restrictive to you, Caenum thought so, too, and immediately wants to run away to avoid being Inked and have a chance at choosing his own path. The only problem is, if you don’t get Inked, you’re considered an Unprinted, which basically translates to “social pariah on the run.” Oh, and Caenum gets involved with someone who does magic on their own WITHOUT any Ink, and this is a problem for all sorts of reasons I loved finding out over the course of their adventure.

I absolutely loved the whole concept of the magic ink in this book. The descriptions of how it moved on your body and even reacted to the world (for instance, if you had flowers, your tattoo would mimic the plants’ death in cold weather). The novel keeps chucking unknown enemies and unlikely friends at you until you’re screaming at your Kindle and trying not to chuck it at the wall, but in a good way. Because yes, this book is only available digitally 🙂

To give you an idea of Eric’s process, I got the chance to do an email interview with him because he’s an awesome person who will talk about books until he’s blue in the face. ❤

What made you want to write INKED?

So a few years ago, I was lucky enough to work at Quirk Books, where I did fun marketing things for books like Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. While working on that though, I knew it was important to read in the genre I wanted to promote. After-all, you can’t be part of a community if you aren’t actually part of that community, you know? So I read a bunch of YA, and just totally fell in love with it. I always wanted to write, but hadn’t found my place. Thanks to all that, I had.

Who’s your favorite character and why?

Kenzi. He probably has the widest arc of all the characters in the story, including when we get to Branded. Villain to good guy to morally ambiguous. He wrestles a lot with his past and what it means for his future, which is something I think a lot of us deal with.

Did anything in your life influence the plot of INKED?

Yes! Two things. One, video games. I always loved the golden age of Square Enix RPGs, like Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana… and one thing that constantly happens in those kind of games, is we see some kind of ruling power doing messed up things with magic, and the people suffer because of it. And, you have a rag-tag bunch of heroes who rise up to fight back against it all. Inked follows a similar path, and was really influenced by those.

Of course, it was also influenced by scores of adult and YA fantasy that I’ve read through my life. I mean, you have to read voraciously to be any kind of writer. But those games had such a huge impact.

The other thing, was a tattoo artist friend back in Philadelphia. He gave me the little quotation marks I have on my wrists. He made an off comment one night, about all his tattoos, and how he’d “always be a tattoo artist” because of them. And it sort of gave me this lightbulb moment, about tattoos forcing you into a way of life. Choosing your destiny.

Now, of course, I know that’s not the case in real life. 🙂 You can have tattoos galore and work anywhere. I mean, I sure do. But it was something I wanted to explore in the story. Brian, if you’re reading this. It’s your fault.

What’s one thing you want readers to take away from the book?

That your destiny isn’t chosen for you. We are who are make ourselves. I feel like a lot of teenagers have to deal with that pressure from family, to maybe study a certain thing, pursue a certain career. That they are trapped. I wanted them to feel like they could break free from all that. That’s what Inked is about. Fighting to be you, as opposed to what someone else thinks you should be.

What are you most excited about regarding its sequel, BRANDED?

For the story to be finished! 🙂 Inked shows you the world, the struggles, and the start of the fight. Branded finishes it. Takes you away from just the few places you see in the first book and into the wider realm. I hope people like the bigger world!

 

In case you didn’t catch that, INKED is only the first in a duology of the world. BRANDED, the sequel, will be out on May 23rd! BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. You can go ahead and preorder it on Amazon if you so desire. (I did!)

Talking As Fast As I Can: Why Lauren Graham Makes Me Inadequate

Amazon Rating: 4.6/5 | Goodreads Rating: 4.08/5 | My rating: 4/5

The literal second I saw that Lauren Graham (AKA Lorelai Gilmore AKA light of my life) wrote a memoir, Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between, I had to have it. I bought it for my mom for Christmas and as she unwrapped it, I immediately informed her I’d be borrowing it as soon as she was done.

Please enjoy this photo of me pretending to be the other (creepy) half of Lauren Graham’s face.

Let me give you some background: I have seen every single episode of the original Gilmore Girls at LEAST seven times. I cheered Rory on as she panicked through high school to get into Harvard (and then went to Yale). I grumbled at the TV every time Luke and Lorelai missed an opportunity to get together. I cursed Emily right along with Lorelai when she messed up their relationship in the fifth season, even though the rest of the time, Emily gives me life. This show got me through middle school. While I was being teased at school, I had Rory and Lorelai at home, who were always there with a quick quip and some coffee. My mom and I sing “Where You Lead (I Will Follow)” by Carole King on road trips regularly. I was a freshman in high school when the last season aired, and I actually remember telling my first boyfriend that he was very lucky that I still texted him and held conversations between the hours of 8 and 9 on Thursday nights. It was a problem.

Because of all this, I flipped out when the series did the reboot on Netflix and when I saw Lauren had written this book. But there was one part that will never fail to make me feel as inadequate in my own publishing journey as possible. Lauren talks about how with her first novel, she began writing as a release. When she just mentioned to her acting agent what she was up to, she was immediately set up with a literary agent and was basically signed and published in a heartbeat. (That’s an exaggeration. Writing a book, no matter who you are, is never done in a heartbeat.) Can I have your life, Lauren? I want it to just happen that easily! You make it sound like it was just a blip on your radar when we both know it was probably anything but. Publishing is hard. Writing a book is hard. Thanks for making me feel like the struggle is mine and mine only.

All that said, this book gave me feelings. Lauren describes her experience being a shut-in for a few days to hunker down and rewatch the entire original series with her own memories peppering in as she watches herself and Alexis Bledel as two of the most iconic characters of my lifetime. She gives a play-by-play of her most memorable days as they filmed the reboot for Netflix, and it was amazing to get that inside knowledge. Someday, I’ll read the novel Lauren published a few years ago. My TBR pile is alarming.

Disclaimer: Lauren Graham, you are amazing and I’m insanely proud of you for accomplishing all of your dreams, from making it on BroadWAY to landing the character of your dreams to writing (and publishing!) two books. Keep being you.

Back to the Beginning

Serving/bartending has taken over my life for the past few days. Covered in fry grease and beer foam, I’m writing after an 11-hour shift. But this post makes me happy.

So the other day, I got really, really bored and started going through old stuff on my phone. Now, I put grocery lists in the Notes on my phone constantly, so I decided to go and delete all the ones from the past few months (by the way, I buy some random stuff…) and you’ll never believe what I found:

This, my friends, is my “idea” document from when I was trying to flesh out what my book was going to be about, which all culminated to be WHEN I WAKE. It was kind of cool to see how the thought process went and where it ended up in the document, then what ended up in the actual book. A LOT has changed from the first draft.

I actually started plotting out and researching for that “each of the seven wonders” idea until I dropped it because WHEN I WAKE was starting to come through. That last note was when I stopped making notes because I started really plotting the book for real. I started the first draft around February of 2016 after fleshing out the plot for most of January.

I’d also like to point out my epic nerd factor because this was apparently written (or last updated? Not sure how the time stamp works on Notes) on New Years Eve of 2015. That’s why I always keep idea documents on my phone because I always have that on me no matter what, even if I’m in Spain with my fiancé’s family, as I was on NYE of 2015.

Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool. I’m never getting rid of it. 🙂 What are some of the ways you all keep track of things while out and about? Did you keep them all?

Starting Out

Since I’m horrible at beginnings (aren’t we all?) I’m just going to start out with what I did today.

Today I entered into the Adventures in YA Publishing Red Light/Green Light contest! The contest asks for your three-paragraph pitch and the first 250 words of your manuscript. I entered this for the first time back in November, and I actually made it to the final round! This time, I’m going for the gold. I’ve rewritten my first page only about a million times since November, so here’s hoping. *raises glass*

I haven’t sent out my first *actual* query yet. Both because I don’t feel like my query letter is particularly stellar yet and because I’m completely and utterly terrified. That’s why I like contests like this. I like getting my foot in the door somehow, and I always meet some really cool people in the process!

Can we talk about how awesome these contests are? These people get literally nothing out of hosting them, and yet they do it for us anyway. The publishing world is a strange and wonderful place, my friends. If you haven’t yet, start connecting with writers on Twitter.

Currently getting ready for #PitMad on March 23rd! Who is gonna be pitching with me on Twitter?