Angieville

Do you kind of want to die of the awesome in these repackaged Stephanie Perkins covers? I do. With today's EW reveal of the cover of Isla and the Happily Ever After ,  the much-anticipated third installment in Perkins' adorable companion novels, Dutton unveils a dramatically new look for the series. I am a fan. The new covers are sophisticated without losing the life, light, and charm of the books themselves. I re-read Anna (for the first time) not long ago and it held up incredibly well the second time around. It also left me very intrigued to read Isla's story and get to spend some in-depth time with her (and Josh). September's a long way off, but in case you hadn't run across it, Ms. Perkins released a deleted chapter of Anna to help tide everyone over. Happy pining!

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish meme hosted at The Broke and the Bookish I've never taken part in this meme before, but come on! Your top ten auto-buy authors? That's a list worth making. In the interest of keeping it real, I'm going to limit myself to living authors who, you know, have the potential to actually publish a new book. So. In alphabetical order: Sarah Addison Allen - I have read and loved all four of her magical realism novels. Favorite: The Peach Keeper Kristin Cashore -   I feel as though Ms. Cashore holds her writing to the highest of standards. And it shows. Favorite: Fire John Green - It's to do with the awesome. Favorite: The Fault in Our Stars Juliet Marillier - Because everything is always gorgeous when she has anything to do with it. Favorite: Son of the Shadows (if pressed . . . but only if pressed) Robin McKinley - She's kind of where it all began. Girls Who Do Things-wise. Fairy Tale Retelling-wise. Speaks to Angie's SOU...

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...

Have you ever seen Out of Africa ? It's this old Sydney Pollack film starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, and it is sort of loosely based on Isak Dinesen's (pseudonym of Danish author Karen Blixen) autobiographical book of the same name. I ask because it (and its soundtrack) was a staple in my house growing up, and when I first read the brief synopsis for Deanna Raybourn 's latest standalone novel,  A Spear of Summer Grass , it was literally the first thing that popped into my mind. They just sounded fairly similar what with the same setting, though the time period is a good decade later in Raybourn's novel than in Pollack's film. Since I have fond memories of the movie as a girl, this only upped my eagerness to read the book. I get all excited when an author I love changes things up on her readers. I am a devoted fan of Raybourn's Lady Julia Grey Victorian mystery series and I thoroughly enjoyed her standalone Gothic novel, The Dead Travel Fast . As f...

I read my first romance on a dare. The Ana-half of the Book Smugglers was the instigator and the results were fair to middling at best. But then I went into it not expecting very much, so part of the blame rests squarely on my shoulders. I've always been aware of the romance genre. Ever since I was a little girl, my mom's bookshelves were lined with Kathleen Woodiwiss and Judith McNaught right alongside the Dickens and Shakespeare. I knew they were close to her heart and that she reread them often. And since she has always had excellent taste in literature, I'm actually somewhat surprised I never picked one of them up. I think I just assumed they weren't my thing. I always trended scifi and fantasy and never found myself curious enough to find out what was behind the . . . pinker . . . covers on the family shelves. And then somewhere within the last year or two my awareness of the genre became more focused. Thanks to the tireless efforts of smart ladies li...

I kind of have to post this because it is Ronan. On the cover! It's crazy Ronan. And Chainsaw. And it has "thieves" in the title. And it is due out September 17th. And oh my goodness I don't know if I can take it.

I'm relieved the Cover Gods decided to repackage this series. The "I'm gonna eat you for breakfast" model photo from the original cover of Shatter Me was seven different kinds of wrong. The only thing I loved about that original cover was the slashed title. I do miss that and kind of wish they'd ported it over in the repackaging. And while I'm not a huge fan of the sky blue and pink they've opted for in the new covers, I applaud the general direction and the nod to some of the overarching themes of the series. Most of all, I hope it reels in new readers for Tahereh Mafi , because she (and her books) really deserve them. Not long back, I caved and read Destroy Me , the e-novella Ms. Mafi wrote from Warner's perspective. It takes place in between the first and second books, and I finished it even more crazy devoted to that crazy psycho than I was before (and that is saying something). And, of course, I've spent the last handful of months impatient...

I received a pitch for this book a few months back and dithered around on it a bit before deciding to give it a shot. But I had to wait, of course, for the right moment. And that moment came the other night after putting everyone to bed and coming off a rather unsatisfying read the night before. It helped that I haven't really read any true chick lit for awhile. What didn't help was the cover and the title. Nope. Not representative of the book at all, as far as I'm concerned. So if you're put off by either, don't leave yet. Because I settled in with Grace Grows and did not surface again until I had finished it. The thing is it made me laugh right off the bat. In fact, I'd read a passage aloud to my husband before I was three chapters in--a sure sign I'm enjoying a book immensely. If he has to hear a bit of it aloud as I am reading it , then he knows I'm in it for the long haul. Turns out Grace Grows is so readable and engrossing that the "long h...

A couple of years ago I stumbled across a new-to-me book by new-to-me author Lisa Schroeder . I cracked open Chasing Brooklyn with  what you might describe as less than high expectations, with the result that I was utterly blindsided by the reality . I am a decided fan of well-executed novels in verse. Have been for awhile now. And this was just such a one--an expertly crafted study of grief and its aftermath, on survivors reaching out to each other. I read it in a single evening and looked forward to more from Ms. Schroeder. Somehow I never made good on that resolution, though. I think it was that I was nervous her others wouldn't live up to the perfect moment that was  Chasing Brooklyn . Like maybe I shouldn't go out on any more dates with her books for fear none of them would quite match that heady first date. So I held back. But when the early buzz for Falling for You began to swirl so enticingly around me, it wasn't long before my resolve dissolved in the face of a...