In My Mailbox - 27 March

IMM is a result of The Story Siren and Pop Culture Junkie brain trust.



As mentioned in the vlog, you can vote for your Top 10 YA titles at this link. You can also check out what April is doing over at Good Books and Good Wine. Be supportive of the YA blogosphere and ensure you vote in both. We plan to compare and contrast results once we've both tabulated our results....which will be very interesting.

Steph Su has also interviewed me as a featured blogger. This is both sweet and a tad embarrassing as I love what Steph does over at Steph Su Reads. I tried to be amusing but I don't think I was all that successful :}

Lastely, this week I launched a new feature on PSnark called The Status Report where authors (not doing the publicity rounds) share where they are at with their current project. Melissa Walker kindly agreed to be the guinea pig for the first week and it revealed some interesting things about her next book, Small Town Sinners.

PURCHASED

Psych Major Syndrome - Alicia Thompson

Patient Name: Leigh Nolan

Age: 18 years

Presenting Concerns:

Leigh Nolan has just started her first year at Stiles College. She has decided to major in psychology (even though her parents would rather she study Tarot cards than Rorschach blots), despite reporting that she thinks, "Psychology is a load of crap."

Patient has always been very good at helping her friends with their problems, but when it comes to solving her own...not so much.

Patient has a tendency to overanalyze things, particularly when the opposite sex is involved. Like why doesn't Andrew, her boyfriend of over a year, ever invite her to spend the night? Or why can't she commit to taking the next step in their relationship? And why does his roommate Nathan dislike her so much? More importantly, why did Nathan have a starring role in a much-more-than-friendly dream?

Aggravating factors include hyper-competitive fellow psych majors, a professor who's badly in need of her own psychoanalysis, and mentoring a middle-school-aged girl who thinks Patient is, in a word, nave.

Preliminary treatment will include Introduction to Psychology, but may require more if she's going to answer these questions and make it through her freshman year.

Diagnosis:

Psych Major Syndrome

I have been wanting to read this from the second I heard about it. Not only is it a contemporary romance but the protagonist is in college, instead of high school. One of the prettiest covers of last year also.

The Dead Tossed Waves - Carrie Ryan

Gabry lives a quiet life. As safe a life as is possible in a town trapped between a forest and the ocean, in a world teeming with the dead, who constantly hunger for those still living. She’s content on her side of the Barrier, happy to let her friends dream of the Dark City up the coast while she watches from the top of her lighthouse. But there are threats the Barrier cannot hold back. Threats like the secrets Gabry’s mother thought she left behind when she escaped from the Sisterhood and the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Like the cult of religious zealots who worship the dead. Like the stranger from the forest who seems to know Gabry. And suddenly, everything is changing. One reckless moment, and half of Gabry’s generation is dead, the other half imprisoned. Now Gabry only knows one thing: she must face the forest of her mother’s past in order to save herself and the one she loves.

Have been hearing mixed reports but I am still going to judge for myself.

Ballads of Suburbia - Stephanie Kuehnert

Ballads are the kind of songs that Kara McNaughton likes best. Not the cliched ones where a diva hits her highest note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies, but the true ballads: the punk rocker or the country crooner telling the story of their life in three minutes, the chorus reminding their listeners of the numerous ways to screw things up. In high school, Kara helped maintain the "Stories of Suburbia" notebook, which contained newspaper articles about bizarre and often tragic events from suburbs all over and personal vignettes that Kara dubbed "ballads" written by her friends in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. Those "ballads" were heartbreakingly honest tales of the moments when life changes and a kid is forced to grow up too soon. But Kara never wrote her own ballad. Before she could figure out what her song was about, she was leaving town after a series of disastrous events at the end of her junior year. Four years later, Kara returns to face the music, and tells the tale of her first three years of high school with her friends' "ballads" interspersed throughout.

So freaking excited to delve into this one. I might come out dishevelled, smelling on smoke and a little worse for wear but I am bound to be satisfied.

Perfect Chemistry - Simone Elkeles

When Brittany Ellis walks into chemistry class on the first day of senior year, she has no clue that her carefully created “perfect” life is about to unravel before her eyes. She’s forced to be lab partners with Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, and he is about to threaten everything she's worked so hard for—her flawless reputation, her relationship with her boyfriend, and the secret that her home life is anything but perfect. Alex is a bad boy and he knows it. So when he makes a bet with his friends to lure Brittany into his life, he thinks nothing of it. But soon Alex realizes Brittany is a real person with real problems, and suddenly the bet he made in arrogance turns into something much more

Haven't heard anything bordering indifferent on this novel. It's been swiped with the awesome brush (and a RITA nominee as of this week).