Changes!

Hey Guys, ReaderGirl's going through some remodeling so bare with us ok? Things should be all new and sparkling soon! :P

xoxoxo

ReaderGirl

Win WIngs!

The Ravenous Reader has a contest going to win a copy of Wings by Aprilynne Pike, go enter! You know you want to! ;)

http://lushbudgetproduction.blogspot.com/2009/04/author-interview-with-aprilynne-pike-of.html

Check it!

Hey guys, go check out Reviewer X's awesome contest to win an ARC of the Prophecy of the Sisters!

http://reviewerx.blogspot.com/2009/04/contest-prophecy-of-sisters.html

Also check out Michelle Zink's pub story here!

http://reviewerx.blogspot.com/2009/04/pub-story-michelle-zink.html

Too Many Books Tuesday (A new Meme)

OK, so, I've been wanting to do a Meme (caps?) for a while now and I got to thinking, "What would be a cool idea for one that I wouldn't have to stretch too much to pull off?" Well I think I've found my (Not totally original or interesting, but it's fun and will be good kind of...)answer.

I bring you: Too Many Books Tuesday! In which I will relate the books I've bought or gotten from the library since the last Tuesday!



Here we have...

Frostbite by Richelle Mead (Loving Vampire Academy!!!)

How to Live Like an Italian by Annalisa Coppolaro-Nowell (I don't belive she's Italian do you?? XP)

The Declaration by Gemma Malley (Seems Interesting!)

Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress by Tina Ferraro (Review coming sometime this week, keep an eye out!)

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray (Research... e.e)

Boys Will Put You On A Pedestal *So They Can Look Up Your Skirt* (I've gotten this quite a few times because I never get a chance to finish it! =/)

So there's my books! How about you guys? What books have you gotten this week? What books are you reading? Love to hear from you!

xoxoxo

Peoples Choice YA Book Blog Awards!

Go vote peoples!

http://heyteenager.blogspot.com/2009/04/peoples-choice-ya-book-blog-awards.html

ReaderGirl

We have a winner!

And the signed copy of one of Tina's books goes to.....

PARADOX!

Congrats! Just email me your mailing address and be sure to tell me which book you want signed!

xoxoxo

ReaderGirl

Tina takes over the blog, oh my!

Reader Girl was kind enough to contact me, to say how much she enjoyed reading The ABC’s of Kissing Boys. Which delights me, of course! And got me to thinking about the elements I enjoyed most about writing it. And while that answer might differ depending upon my mood (a-hem), today my thoughts returned to the character who made the book come alive, and brought me some of my favorite moments.

I need to backtrack and explain that while I had the idea, the theme, the setting, the main character and her family for the book early on, the “hero” eluded me for quite some time. I kept plopping in characters (I call it “auditioning”) but nothing worked...and I was at the point of scrapping the whole book...until the morning my 15 year-old freshman strutted onto the scene...

His name is Tristan Murphy. And I must say, he is not your average high school freshman. Already over six feet, he’s buff from years of playing water polo, has water cooler blue eyes--and a man-sized crush on the two-grades-ahead Parker Stanhope. Who, I am sorry to say, does not seem to notice that he is alive.

But one day, circumstances occur in which she lowers herself to speak to him. And she incidentally discovers that he’s an expert in the one area of schooling where she seriously needs tutoring: kissing.

You see, Parker’s in a curious and serious jam. Her soccer teammate-friends got promoted to varsity without her, and the only way she can finagle her way onto varsity involves giving the prom king the kiss of a lifetime at the sports fair kissing booth. Yes, it's far-fetched, but it could work.

Which happens to be what Tristan studied at summer camp, wiling away the evenings with the other counselors. He learned about butterfly kisses and steam kisses and caterpillar kisses, and played games like Spin the Bottle and unwrapping Starburst candies in his tongue.

But that was just for fun. And with girls he didn’t care much about. Now this is Parker, the girl of his dreams. Who is giving him this one chance. Who is expecting him to be cool and smooth and in charge...

Can he do it?

The morning of their first lesson, he showers, changes his shirt three times, puts on aftershave (even though he hasn’t had to shave yet this month). Only to find her in an oversized T-shirt and ponytail. Is this all she thinks of him? Tucking under his arm the playbook he'd hastily penned, he’s tempted to run for his life. I mean, who is he to teach the beautiful Parker anything?

But she rocks his world by making the first move. A big one, smack on the lips. She says she wanted to cut the tension, to get the first kiss over with so they could relax. Which makes him realize, in astonishment, that she’s nervous, too.

Wow.

So he decides that yeah, he could go through with this. Crazy as it seems, he’ll be her kissing coach, and help her get she wants. And then maybe, just maybe, it’ll lead to what he wants, too: her respect. And maybe more...

Okay, I’ll stop now. I have a tendency to go on and on about these characters--like book length on and on!

Thanks to Reader Girl for this chance to blab about my boy, Tristan, and if anyone has any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments.

The ABC's of Kissing Boys Review!

Parker’s life is going great. She’s in with the popular crowd and is about to get pushed up to varsity soccer in her junior year. But when the list of new varsity members goes up, and Parker isn’t on it, she’s crushed. Determined to come up with a way to get back on the team, she cooks up a plan with her older brother, Clayton, and his friend Luke Anderson, the boy who every girl at Parker’s high school still has the hotts for even though he’s already graduated.
The plan is a kiss, between Parker and Luke, at the Sports Fair’s varsity soccer team kissing booth. There is a contest to see who can raise the most money to get a parking spot for the coach. Parker’s positive that Varsity Coach Hartley will have to give her a spot on the team if she’s the one to help them raise the most money by kissing Luke, but she’s also painfully aware of the fact that she has little to no experience in that area.
She needs a teacher, someone who knows tons about kissing, as well as how to tie cherry stems into a knot with his tongue.
Enter Tristan, her neighbor from across the street, and son of her father’s arch enemy. He seems like the perfect teacher, only being his student comes with some consequences. When Parker's friends from school find out she’s been hanging out with a freshman, they plan all sorts of evil pranks to embarrass her and make her life miserable. And then there’s the problem that when her parents find out about her meeting with Tristan, she’s accused of fraternizing with the enemy.
As the Sports Fair and her goodbye with Tristan nears, Parker can feel her attachment to Tristan growing stronger and making her wonder if saying goodbye to Tristan is really what she wants, even if being with him will only make her life more difficult.
But sometimes you have to follow your heart, and ignore what other people say for what makes you truly happy. Times when after everything you’ve been through, you come out of it and realize it’s time to pucker up.

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This book was too adorable! I loved it so much! I'm a sucker for the happily ever after ending, and I liked that Parker seemed to come away from all of her experiences with a better attitude towards her life, and everything she wanted. The ABC's of Kissing boys was a great light happy read that I'd definitely recommend! :)

4 stars!

And the winner of the Poseur contest is....

Amberrsaiddd! Woo! Send me your adress and I'll get you your book! :)

xoxoxo and congrats!

Interview with Tina Ferraro!

What inspired you to write The ABC's of Kissing Boys?

I almost always start a book with a title, and since my books are mostly fake “self-help” titles, an A-B-C idea struck me, followed by the idea of kissing. The hard part was to somehow connect it to soccer and friends bring promoted to Varsity without her, which was an idea that had been circulating in my head for sometime...


Having a kissing technique for every letter of the alphabet much have been hard! Did you really know them all from experience?

Oh, it was all research! And since the idea struck me just before Valentine’s Day, the bookstores were filled with books on love, so it was really fun and easy to research. I also scoured websites, and talked to friends and family. For instance, my niece, who was just starting college, is the one who told me about the Starburst wrappers! Then I chatted the idea up with more friends, and soon, I was writing...

In The ABC's of Kissing Boys, Parker deals a lot with friendship troubles. She starts realizing her friends are not friendly after a while, and then there's all these problems caused by social hierarchy at her school. Did you have to deal with a lot of those same problems when you were her age?

I had a pretty tight circle of friends in high school, and I was not only any sports teams. But, like most girls, I witnessed and was the recipient of a bit of Mean Girl action. That helped me to not only feel for Parker, but made the Mean Girl “voices” easier to write. I think all writers bring a degree of personal experience to their characters, but often it’s not something they can directly point to, as much as just overall compassion or a feeling.

As an adult looking back, some of those teen problems might have seemed like silly kiddy problems, which some it is, but I felt like you really treated those situations with respect, and didn't try to downplay their importance. You know to a majority of your audience, that stuff is going seem important and even if you were trying to kind of subtly explain that these things aren't the end of the world, you still don't want to come across as preachy, or as if you think they shouldn't really care, you know? Any thoughts on that?

Thank you! Well, I am the mother of three kids in this age range, so not only do I remember those feelings and the sense of life-threatening urgency about things, but I see it with my own kids. And I respect it.

But I think the key in writing YA fiction that readers are going to relate to, is zeroing in on the issues that teens DO think are critical, and leaving the others behind. That said, my editor and I did six full revisions on Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress, because I'd gone TOO far in making the
main character feel everything, and wee needed to make the story easier to follow!


What made you decide to write YA Fiction?

Believe it or not, there was never a decision. I started writing YA short stories when I was about 12...and just never stopped! I love the drama and the promise of the coming-of-age years, and have just never moved away.


What were your favorite books as a teenager/ Now? (Do you read YA fiction?)

As a teenager, I read widely, but I remember really loving Christy by Catherine Marshall and Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell, which were both already classics.

As far as current books, I’ll name two I recently read that I thought “had it all”: Looking for Alaska by John Green and Blood Brothers by S. A. Hazarin.


Do you prefer classics, or modern books?


I do prefer modern books...I love to see what’s coming out each week!


Do you listen to music when you write?


Not usually. The only time I do is when I’m nervous about a big scene, and then I’ll often play heavy bass music LOUD to sort of scramble my thoughts and distract me. But once I have something on the page, I’ll turn off the music for a quiet edit.


Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?


To remember that it’s “okay” to be bad, that sometimes the good stuff evolves out of sucky first drafts!


And on an end note, what project are you working on now?


Right now, I am waiting for my editor to give me first revisions on my summer ’10 release, When Bad Flings Happen to Good Girls, and playing with some new ideas for other books.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks so much to Tina for doing the interview! My review of the ABC's of Kissing Boys will be up tomorrow, and don't forget to enter the contest for a signed copy of one of Tina's books! You can see the contest requirements on the last post.

Also today is the last day to enter to win a copy of Poseur!

xoxoxo

Author Spotlight Week: Tina Ferraro

The first annual Author Spotlight Week featuring...


Tina Ferraro, author of Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress, How to Hook a Hottie, and coming in 2010, When Bad Flings Happen to Good Girls!

All week we're gonna have fun stuff going on! So keep an eye out on the blog this week for a review of The ABC's of Kissing Boys, an interview with Tina herself, and more!

In honor of having Tina with us this week how about a giveaway of a signed copy of one of Tina's books? If you win you can choose from The ABC's of Kissing Boys, Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress, or How to Hook a Hottie which is currently a finalist in the Romance Writer's of America's contest for Best YA Book of 2008! :) Yay for Tina!

Now, all you have to do to get entered for a chance to win the book is follow the blog through the convenient little google follower thingy on the right side on the page and your automatically entered to win! Now, if one entry isn't good enough, you can show your love for Tina on your blog and send me a link to get an extra entry!

Doesn't that sound fun? Enjoy the week everyone!

xoxoxo

Vidalia in Paris by Sasha Watson

Vidalia wins a scholarship to study art in Paris during the summer, and she couldn’t be more excited. A summer in Paris, how could she not be?? Even though leaving her mother, who’s clingy and seems in constant need of Vidalia’s help, makes her anxious to leave her small town home, and even though she knows the summer will be spent with her being pushed together with her ex-bff Heather, things seem to be going good upon her arrival in Paris. She meets a nice boy named Julian who works at a bookstore her mother visited in her youth, and her host family, though a little absent, seem like nice enough people.

Things only start going downhill when Vidalia meets her new French art teacher, Monsieur Benoit, le maitre, who seems overly harsh and uncaring to sensitive Vidalia. Class with Monsieur Benoit is anything but easy, but Vidalia has to make it work, and besides the fact that he’s been nothing but mean to her, she feels like she has a lot to learn here.

But then she meets Marco, a friend of her host family, and suddenly becomes very distracted, very quickly. He’s practically all she can think about, and every second she spends with him feels like magic, but then she finds out that Marco has some not so good habits, and secrets that, if she knew them, would turn their relationship upside down. Vidalia’s convinced that she’s falling in love with Marco, planning on going to Italy with him after her five weeks in Paris are up, and leaving poor Julian in the dust, but things are starting to unravel, and Vidalia’s not sure how much more drama she can take in one summer. Then, when Heather starts feeling depressed and ends up in the hospital, things get even more complicated, and Vidalia starts to doubt that she knows right from wrong anymore, and with whom she can place her trust.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ok so being totally honest here, I really didn’t like this book very much at all. I was truly disappointed, as I love books where the main character goes on an adventure like this, and I just expected more. I think I was hoping for the perfect travel fiction. The kind of book that would show me the places visited without a drawn out description that was too hard to read through, as well as a romance that I thought would last well after the last page was turned.

By the end of Vidalia in Paris, I felt the ending coming without feeling much resolution. The ending left me feeling really unsatisfied, and in truth, I had to skim the last half of the book because I just couldn’t finish it fast enough. There were a few to many drag-ons, and then some parts where it sped straight through important parts! Plus, I didn’t like how Vidalia just fell all over Marco even though he was doing so many dishonest things.

Now I hate writing reviews for books I don’t care for, because I always feel like I’m being so mean, but I also feel like as a reviewer, it’s my responsibility to write a truthful review, as well as putting a bad review out there to warn people from spending their time on books that aren’t really worth it, when I know all our “to read” lists are so huge already.

So in ending, I must at least say, that I can appreciate, as a writer, the work that Mrs. Watson put into the novel, and I can only hope that one day I’ll read another one of her books and enjoy it more.

I give Vidalia in Paris 2 stars. =/



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just for comparisons sake, here's a nice review of the book by The Story Siren. :)

http://www.thestorysiren.com/2008/12/vidalia-in-paris.html

xoxoxo



P.S. 2 more days to enter the Poseur contest!

Done, Done, and Done.

Woo what a rush! Happy Support Teen Literature Day everybody!!! *clappshappilyingirlishway* I just got back from dropping my books and let me just tell you it's a LOT harder to leave you're books in a random public location then people make it out to be! XD Plus for one of the books I had to sit there watching a guy eat pizza around the book cause I had to drop them at Peter Piper,

My books were The Luxe by Anna Godbersen, and Love Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli.


There they are after I'd put in my bookplates and everything...

And here's what I wrote inside them...!




Then where I "dropped" them. hehe *likespictures*




That's my sister's hand as she tries to be sneaky and get in on the book dropping...XD naw really I was a little embarrassed to be taking pictures of books that I was putting in the booths (and then running giddily away from...) so I asked her to come sit with me while I took the picture so it wouldn't look quite as weird. NOT sure we succeeded.... e_e..... ANYWAYS!

It was such a rush but at the same time kinda sad to leave my books somewhere public like that, especially cause Peter Piper is NOT the cleanest place on the block (but still, their pizza is amazing >_<). Anyways I was soo eager to drop one that I did one when we first got there, but that way a mistake cause then I had to watch the person eating around it, and that was.... well really hard to watch.... it's like "Here take these napkins sir!" >_< But oh well... A few times I was really tempted to walk up and say, "Hey, sorry, I accidentally left my book here...." so I could go find someone who seemed more bookish to leave it by, but that wouldn't have been in the spirit of the book drop so I just left it alone even though it was killing me slowly inside....

Anyways on a lighter note, I did the drop and I loved it even though it was hard! XD I might do this more often just because it'll make me giggle. xD But I had a FUN time and all thanks to the Readergirlz! :P Thanks for setting this up ladies!

How'd all your book drops go? Did any of you post about it? I'd love to hear! And you know what this whole book drop thing has put me in such a good mood (XD I know....) So I'll give away a copy of....




In honor of Support Teen Reading Day! Woo! Ok so here's the rules, if you follow me you get 1 entry, and if you repost to your own blog (letting others know about the contest) and let me know (link) you get 2 entrys! I'll pick the winner next Wednesday!

(Unfortunatly contest is only available to residents of these 50 states. =/ Sorry.... hopefully I'll everntually be able to do over seas but I've never sent anything like a book before so I need to learn all about it first plus A job would be nce but reviwewing takes up all my time! >_<)

xoxoxo

FREAKING OUT!

Ohmygoodness you guys I'm freaking out! I don't know where to drop my "Operation Book Drop" Books! D8 ANy suggestions? SO far I have Peter Piper, A Park, or maybe in a bathroom? Obviously I need some better suggestions. >_< Help?

Award Win!

Readergirl Reviews just won the Zombie Chicken award, awarded by the Cupcake Witch! So thanks girly! I couldn't be more proud! *dancesabaout*

In other news, don't forget to "Rock the Drop" tomorrow guys!

I know hardcovers can be expensive, but this is a super important cause and plus, you can always look at your own shelves and pass on a book you enjoyed to someone else! For this one day, let's just totally geek out and spread the word about how much we love the books we love! Reading is so important as far as learning goes, and even from books that I don't read from school I learn stuff so it's just such a great resource, plus just getting sucked into a book can make you totally forget about any troubles YOU might be having and take you off into a whole new world. Let's get our fellow teens reading, and loving it!

xoxoxo

Intervieeeewwweeedddd

By Steph over at the Hey Teenager blogspot!

Thanks Steph, I'm honored!

That's basically the blog she started, but then she's recently made a sister site to the YA Book Blog Directory by the Story Siren too, so be sure to check um out and, if you have a book blog, join up!

xoxoxo

House of Night Video

Up on my youtube page now! Go check it out! Go! Go!

Review coming soon!

New Cast Video!

Enjoy!
xoxoxo

And we have Youtube!

Woo! This means I can finally make some cast videos for the books I've reviewed which I've been meaning to do for like, ever! So yay! Also i may attempt to make some trailers, but I'm not really sure how to do it with out it being a huge pain, but if you guys know a way lemme know cause I'd definatly like to give it a try!

http://www.youtube.com/user/ReadergirlReviews