Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Sophomore Switch
Author: Abby McDonald
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Why I Read It: Another impulse pick at the library.

Summary: California party-girl Tasha gets caught on video doing something embarrassing in a hot tub. So she agrees to a last-minute foreign-exchange swap with an Oxford student named Emily. But neither of them is prepared to live the life of their complete opposite.

Stopped on Page: 62
Why I Stopped: The curse of the alternating points of view strikes again! I have a hard time getting into novels that use that technique.

Tasha was the first character to have a go at telling her story. But her California-speak turned her into somewhat of a caricature, making it hard for me to connect to her. Here, she’s describing an “athletic blonde” student:

OK, so I’m being tactful here; by “athletic,” what I really mean is butch. Cropped hair, baggy sportswear, and if that doesn’t paint a clear-enough picture for you, she has a rainbow badge on her bulky backpack. Hey, I’m not judging. I just don’t see why a same-sex preference has to go hand in hand with complete fashion backwardness. I mean, look at Portia de Rossi: a hot wife and an Elle subscription. It can be done!

I wonder how I would have responded to this book if the straight-laced British girl Emily was the one to start talking first. I tend to like that style of voice more.

Your Turn: Should I have kept going? Or was I right to stop?

Note: As an aspiring author, I respect the extraordinary amount of effort that goes into writing a book. I did not write this review in order to be unfair or negative about the book. My goal is simply to articulate why the book wasn’t for me.

Peter at Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations recently wrote to me about how the Unsung YA Heroes project inspired him to beef up the YA list offerings on his site.

From a girl who thinks everyone should give YA a chance, I say: Hooray for YA!

Peter would like to post one YA list a month, and to kick it all off he asked a few book bloggers to recommend their top 2009 YA picks. Guess who got to submit one of her own picks?! Check it out:

The Best Young Adult Books of 2009

Your Turn

What was the last flashlight-worthy book you read?

Photo by margolove.

On Saturday, I attended the annual conference put together by Austin’s chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. As with all the SCBWI conferences I’ve attended the last few years, this one gave me a much-needed jolt of inspiration.

But this time, something happened that’s never happened before.

I registered to get 6 critiques of my manuscript. That’s not the new part. I always try to snag a critique slot. But I should have submitted my NaNoWriMo 2008 manuscript—you know, the one that’s actually been edited. But I was still riding the high from my NaNoWriMo 2009 win and completely in love with it, even in its unedited rawness. So I chose the first 10 pages of that zero draft to submit for my critiques. All 6 of them.

Flash forward a month. I sat down across the reviewer for my first critique. And it quickly became clear that I made a grave mistake in submitting my newest manuscript. Duh, right? Lesson learned.

Still, the critiques—especially those from published authors—lit the foggy path of revision.

And then. I was in my last critique of the day with an author. An award-winning author. She showered me in encouragement. She had suggestions for improvement but also pointed out the parts she loved and the things I do well. She wanted to hear where the story was going.

Then she pulled out a sheet of paper and started writing on the back of it.

“I’m writing down my agent’s contact information,” she said. “I want you to do one revision and then submit this to her.”

It took all my strength to pry my jaw from the floor and force my mouth into a coherent “thank you.”

She saw enough goodness in my zero-draft writing to give me this gift. A gift of motivation, a gift of support, a gift of a DEADLINE. Because I know this opportunity will expire if I let it.

This is a small step, I know. But it’s the first glimmer of success I’ve had on my road to publication. So I’m going to bask a teensy bit before I get to work.

Your Turn

Do you have advice for how to revise a NaNoWriMo draft in, say, 8 weeks? Or for how to get my head out of the clouds and in the revision game?

Photos by RIPizzo and Saparevo.

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Girlfriend Material
Author: Melissa Kantor
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Why I Read It: An impulse pick at the library.

Summary: Kate’s parents are fighting again. This time, her mom decides to leave town to get some perspective. The only problem is, she’s dragging Kate along, shattering all of Kate’s summer plans.

Stopped on Page: 74
Why I Stopped: Part of it was I still felt a little bitter from getting stuck with my last book and finishing it when I should have stopped. But I also had trouble connecting to the main character in this book.

The entire first chapter is about how mad Kate is at her mom for dragging her away from home. But on the second to last page of that chapter, you find out Kate’s actually been excited about the trip all along.

After she’d worked me up into an empathetic state of outrage that her mom was forcing her to tag along and leave all her own summer plans behind, I felt a wee bit hoodwinked. So at that point, I found myself not really caring about Kate’s troubles. And I stopped reading.

Your Turn: Should I have kept going? Or was I right to stop?

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: It’s Not You, It’s Me
Author: Kerry Cohen Hoffmann
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 1/5
Why I Read It: I saw it on the shelf at the library, and the cuteness of the cover lured me into checking it out.

Summary: After 6 months of happiness, Zoe’s boyfriend Henry dumps her so he can focus on his band. But Zoe thinks—no, knows—he’s made a huge mistake, and she sets out to win him back.

Review: Jack Tumor was an impulse pick from the library that paid off. This impulse pick, not so much.

From the very start of the book, the main character was over-the-top psycho, with a capital CRAZY. She just could not function on even the most basic level.

How about an example, lest you think I’m being unfair? In the first chapter, Zoe calls her boyfriend Henry at their normal time of 9 pm. He doesn’t answer. So she calls one of her friends, then another, to discuss what might be going on. Here’s a snippet of her second conversation, with her friend Shannon:

“I know you,” Shannon continues. “You’ve already turned this into Something Meaningful. Nothing’s happened. He didn’t answer his phone, that’s it.”

“But in six months?” Zoe can hear the whine in her voice. “In six months we haven’t missed a nine p.m. phone call.”

“Zoe.” Shannon only uses Zoe’s full name when she means business. “I’m not saying things look good, but you have no proof that things are bad either.”

“Maybe I can get proof,” Zoe says in a measured voice.

“Zoe.”

“I could go over there, just happen to be walking by.”

“Zoe!”

“Or I could quickly peek in the windows. I’d only have to see Henry to know what he’s feeling.”

This is on page 4. Her obsession only ramps up from there. Later, she does “just happen to” walk by. And worse.

We’ve all experienced a touch of the crazy in our dating lives. But this is extreme. And the way that it’s presented, I often had the feeling I was supposed to be laughing at Zoe’s ridiculousness. That didn’t exactly help me empathize and connect with her. Zoe is a caricature, not a character.

The mechanics of the writing were fine. I just didn’t care about the main character. The only reason I finished reading it is because I got caught holding a napping toddler without another book to switch to.

Your Turn: Have you ever been burned by an impulse pick?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Tempo Change
• Likely Story: Red Carpet Riot
• Riding the Universe
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing