I went to Carleton College, a lovely liberal arts school in Minnesota. The student body is small, just under 2,000. Although Carleton is known for its excellence in the sciences, it has also produced some novelists. Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World and other tragic tales, graduated from Carleton in 1979 and is probably the school’s best-known writer of fiction.

My own class of 1998 also boasts a handful of published authors. Beth Kendrick just released her fifth novel for adults and has also written YA books under the name Beth Killian. I haven’t gotten to her new book yet, but I’ve read all of her others, and they’re so witty and entertaining. And today, I just discovered that another classmate of mine, Lara Zielin, has her first YA novel coming out next year! It’s called Donut Days and looks like a lot of fun.

Are there any other noveling ‘98ers lurking in the shadows? Only time will tell…

I went to Carleton College, a lovely liberal arts school in Minnesota. The student body is small, just under 2,000. Although Carleton is known for its excellence in the sciences, it has also produced some novelists. Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World and other tragic tales, graduated from Carleton in 1979 and is probably the school’s best-known writer of fiction.

My own class of 1998 also boasts a handful of published authors. Beth Kendrick just released her fifth novel for adults and has also written YA books under the name Beth Killian. I haven’t gotten to her new book yet, but I’ve read all of her others, and they’re so witty and entertaining. And today, I just discovered that another classmate of mine, Lara Zielin, has her first YA novel coming out next year! It’s called Donut Days and looks like a lot of fun.

Are there any other noveling ‘98ers lurking in the shadows? Only time will tell…

Oh, how I wish I had written this book. If I had written this book, I would constantly congratulate myself on my own brilliance and my ability to make readers salivate as they turned page after page.

The Luxe is flawless. Godbersen masterfully weaves a web of tension so tight that her characters move about like chess pieces on a trecherous board. Love triangles, deception, scandal…it’s all right here, and every encounter is fraught with emotion that can’t be shown, at least not in proper 1899 Manhattan society.

I may not have written this book, but I learned a great deal about the kind of writer I want to be as I read it. And I’ve already ordered the sequel, Rumors.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I got a chance to read two books that I’d been looking forward to for quite a while, and both were outstanding.  It is also worth mentioning that both were published by Dutton, just like TMI.  I’m honored to be in such fine company.

Mr. Green has a fan base and following that make me (and many other authors, I’m sure) salivate with envy.  His third effort, a piece-the-puzzle-together tale of a missing girl and the boy who is obsessed with her, was positively addictive.  I found myself gripping the pages more tightly during a few scary scenes, and Green kept the romantic tension afloat all the way to the last page.  How does he do it?  And how does he continue to think of the funniest one-liners and character quirks?  I swear, I will laugh every time I think of Radar, a sidekick friend who deals with the burden of living under the same roof as the world’s largest collection of black Santas.

Rosemary Goode, an overweight fifteen-year-old who works at her mother’s salon, is such a believable, sympathetic heroine.  Supplee did a masterful job of conveying the realities of food addiction without being over-the-top, and her deft hand with character development made me recall people I’ve met in my life who resembled Rosemary’s friends and family.  Rosemary makes a stunning transformation over the course of the novel, and even though I finished the book in three days, I felt like I’d journeyed through several months with her.  This book should be required reading for all freshmen girls.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I got a chance to read two books that I’d been looking forward to for quite a while, and both were outstanding.  It is also worth mentioning that both were published by Dutton, just like TMI.  I’m honored to be in such fine company.

Mr. Green has a fan base and following that make me (and many other authors, I’m sure) salivate with envy.  His third effort, a piece-the-puzzle-together tale of a missing girl and the boy who is obsessed with her, was positively addictive.  I found myself gripping the pages more tightly during a few scary scenes, and Green kept the romantic tension afloat all the way to the last page.  How does he do it?  And how does he continue to think of the funniest one-liners and character quirks?  I swear, I will laugh every time I think of Radar, a sidekick friend who deals with the burden of living under the same roof as the world’s largest collection of black Santas.

Rosemary Goode, an overweight fifteen-year-old who works at her mother’s salon, is such a believable, sympathetic heroine.  Supplee did a masterful job of conveying the realities of food addiction without being over-the-top, and her deft hand with character development made me recall people I’ve met in my life who resembled Rosemary’s friends and family.  Rosemary makes a stunning transformation over the course of the novel, and even though I finished the book in three days, I felt like I’d journeyed through several months with her.  This book should be required reading for all freshmen girls.