Angieville

I have been waiting for this day for what feels like forever. If you've followed this blog for basically any length of time, you have heard me singing the praises of  Ellen Emerson White . I am a devoted fan of her spectacular  President's Daughter  and Echo Company series. And you should read and own them and spread the good word immediately. But Life Without Friends . This book was the beginning for me. Beverly and Derek and Boston and the Public Gardens. From my review : This book kind of ate me alive at fourteen, and I have reread it pretty much every year since. It has become what you might call a Monster Comfort Read. I have been buying up used copies of this previously out-of-print book for years now and sending them to readers I knew needed them. I am so delighted to let you know it's now available on Kindle for just $2.99 or free with Kindle Unlimited. And I really love the new Kindle cover (above left), while I will always be inordinately attached to th...

You guys. I've been waiting to fall this year. I've been waiting for that first review (embarrassingly late, I know) to need to be written. I've been reading and reading. And I've really liked a number of things (reviews on those to come, promise). But the night before last I fell into a book that filled me up in just the way I needed to kick me into gear to talk about it. Which is good, because you'll want to pick this one up.  His Road Home by Anna Richland is a contemporary novella that I wished was twice as long as it was because I didn't want to be separated from the characters and their compelling situation by its ending. Happily, according to Richland's acknowledgments at the end, we may have a sequel to look forward to in the near future. This is my first outing with Ms. Richlands writing, and I picked it up based on my trusty Chachic 's rating over on GoodReads. Grace Kim's fairly straightforward (very quiet) life is thrown into rather...

I have my pal  Li to thank for steering me in the direction of Elizabeth Harmon 's debut novel Pairing Off . She clued me in to its existence, pointed out that it featured Olympic figure skaters, and well . . . that was all she wrote, folks. I am a huge figure skating fan. And while I actually haven't read many books that focus on the sport, there was simply no way I was going to not read a book billed as " The Cutting Edge with a Russian twist." I adored that movie as a kid. As you can probably tell, I haven't been so much with the review writing of late. Happily, that is in no way an indication of how my reading has fared, because I have been reading up a storm. But lately I never seem to get around to sitting down and hashing it out. But with the figure skating World Championships coming up in a couple of weeks, I thought it was the perfect time to highlight this little gem. Carrie Parker is fairly certain life as she knew it is over when her career as a p...

So we'll just agree to go into this review knowing that I really enjoyed   Rosamund Hodge 's debut novel Cruel Beauty , shall we? In general, fairy tale/Greek mythology mash-ups complete with lovely words are welcome in these parts. And so I confess I was excited but just a little bit sad when I found out the next entry in the world would be a novella. Give me all the pages, please. But. It was to be a Cinderella retelling set in the same world and, as that was clearly awesome, I resolved to take what I could get and be grateful for it. I like this cover, although it's a bit bland for my taste and doesn't inspire quite the same swirling dread as the cover of Cruel Beauty.  I do like what they're doing with the stairs. I think I might have liked a hint of Maia somewhere in there to humanize things. And, as it happens, there is a whole heaping helping of dread in this little book, so something more sinister would have worked splendidly. But, as I said, take what I ...

If you'd asked me last year if I was a fan of novel serializations, I would have issued a flat no. But then there was Truly . And it took me exactly no time at all to become a very big fan of this particular serial. It helped that I basically spent last year blowing through Ruthie Knox 's backlist. Truly represented a somewhat different venture, as a handful of new chapters were posted each Monday morning over a period of several weeks. I began to look forward to Mondays (a first) with a kind of gleeful hunger. And those chapters just always came through the way I needed them to. And then I was able to hop on Twitter and gab about them with all the other poor saps following along. In other words, it was the height of fun. The first in Knox's New York series, Truly was available to read for free for a couple of months on Wattpad . It was then taken down in anticipation of the ebook release in August. This is the point at which I apologize for not getting a review up while ...

I am here to deliver the only piece of important news you will receive today. And it is this: Ellen Emerson White has released all five of her Echo Company books (that's right, that includes The Road Home ) for Kindle! I repeat, all five Echo Company books are available as e-books. Just $3.99 apiece. This is the series that introduces the irascible Private Michael Jennings and the one-of-Angie's-favorite-characters-of-all-time Lieutenant Rebecca Phillips. As you know, I have purchased countless used copies of The Road Home over the years and sent them careening across the globe to good homes. Now, if you have a Kindle, this stellar series can be yours at the click of a button. Word is, they will be available for other e-readers in the near future. So go. Go buy them now. Do not let me down . On Christmas morning, Rebecca lost her moral virginity, her sense of humor—and her two best friends. But, other than that, it was a hell of a holiday. Buy:

Nothing draws me to a book like a passel of reviews that are all over the board. I literally cannot help myself. Where will I fall on the spectrum? Will my feelings be ferocious or will they dwindle away after leaving the pages and characters behind? The questions, the questions. So it was that I came to download a copy of The Coincidence of Callie & Kayde n by  Jessica Sorensen  awhile back. Pretty kissing in the rain cover aside (I might be a bit of a sucker for those), I had previously stayed away because of the said all over the board-ness. Originally self-published new adult contemporaries are turning into quite the beast of late. Some readers are immediately turned off. Others have enjoyed enough of them to keep their engines running, so to speak. I tend to go on a case by case basis. I've been burned before, but I've also been taken by delightful surprise. This was happily a case of the latter. For those interested, Grand Central picked this one up and will be ...

I can thank the ever-reliable Carolyn Crane for inspiring me to track down an advanced copy of this one. I read her mini-review on Goodreads and was seriously sold. She said it was romantic, smart, and full of "character mysteries," a term I had never even really thought of before but that I instantly got and loved. So it was Carolyn's review and the following little teaser line from the novella that piqued my interest: I will meet you on Wednesdays at noon in Celebration Park. Kissing only. Um, yes. Yes, please. Shades of Ruthie Knox 's Big Boy began to drift over me (Knox actually blurbed this one). And we all know how I felt about that little bit of perfection . So basically at that point nothing--but nothing--was keeping me from giving Mary Ann Rivers ' debut novella a shot. Carrie had a minor existential meltdown at work. Just a minor one. It involved her supervisor (and friend) at the library offhandedly remarking that an Alaskan cruise with Carrie...

I will admit, I liked the cover of Allison Parr 's debut novel Rush Me right off the bat when I first saw it floating around the blogosphere. I could tell it was going to be marketed new adult as soon as I saw it, and that's probably a marketing win right there. But the reason I liked it was because everything I knew about the book seemed to come together in the cover. The bold stripes of color and the font work really well for this sports romance. I particularly liked the colors set across the black and white photo, and that the couple was sort of naturally or ordinarily presented (and attired). It was both a relief and an eye-catcher, if you will. I still waffled back and forth a bit on picking it up until I read Li's review over at Me and My Books . In it, she compared it to another new adult title she'd read and found this one to be decidedly preferred. Li has excellent taste, in case you were wondering. And so that (and the extremely attractive price) was all ...

I feel like contemporary YA and I are going through a rough patch. We're having trouble seeing eye to eye. We seem to be going in different directions. We don't want the same things anymore. Take your pick. I realize this is likely just an unfortunate string of mismatches, but after a little while it's hard not to take it personally, you know? So much good chatter surrounded today's release of Jessi Kirby 's Golden . Not having ready Kirby's previous two novels, I found myself curious about the fervor. Then I heard whispers of a decade-old unresolved mystery and something about Robert Frost and I was on board . Somewhat uninspiring Generic Sunlit Girl cover aside, I like that it doesn't lead the reader too much as to what to expect inside. That combined with my lack of knowledge of the author's work in general made it possible for me to go in with fairly untouched expectations. Which is always a nice thing. Parker Frost (yes, that Frost her father ma...

It's difficult to resist the siren song of an as-yet-unread contemporary author, isn't it? For the most part, I tend to dip into those waters with caution. Sometimes I make out like gangbusters . And others I wind up feeling as though I was force-fed treacle , or that I was curiously emptied while reading the book rather than filled. I tell myself it's worth it, though, to find those gems that make your blood pump and the tips of your fingers tingle. I tell myself it's worth the racing anticipation and the occasional deep disappointment. And it is. Even if an author's entire bibliography doesn't work for you. It's worth it if that one, perfect match does. Cause then you get to hold onto it for the rest of your reading life, and pull it out and revisit those characters and that place and those moments whenever you need them. All of which is a rather long winded way of explaining how I found myself giving Sarah Ockler a try for the first time. I wasn't...

I . . . I am just not going to be able to pull off being at all dignified about this book. I couldn't possibly manage it and, what's more, I am not the least bit interested in trying. Because this book is so good it makes my teeth hurt. And I just wasn't expecting teeth-hurting goodness, you know? I was expecting a bit of fun, an engaging evening. It's a novella , for crying out loud! How much awesome can Ruthie Knox pack into 66 pages? Honestly. I should just stop asking myself that question. It doesn't even signify anymore in a world of Courtney Milan and Ruthie Knox novellas. I read Knox's How to Misbehave novella not long back and thought it was extremely cute. And so when I heard about this Strangers on a Train compilation, I knew I'd be reading Knox's contribution for sure. If you're interested in the story behind the anthology, I highly recommend Knox's take on it here . I love reading about how authors come together behind a single...

Jennifer E. Smith gets the cutest covers in the world, doesn't she? I  picked up  The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight almost entirely on the merits of its adorable cover alone. And when I saw the cover for This is What Happy Looks Like , I immediately began daydreaming about how happy they would look next to each other on my shelves--an activity I engage in all too often when it comes to books of a feather. And given how much I loved   The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, I felt that my feelings for her next novel were sort of a foregone conclusion. Especially when you take into account the much-billed You've Got Mail meets Notting Hill premise. I ask you--who can resist the wild potential of that setup? No one. That is who. But one of the things I loved the most about The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight was how it packed so much more of a punch than its name or cover suggested. It was deeper and wider than its slim-is...