Since You've Been Gone

Y'ALL. I LOVE THIS BOOK.

Emily, the main character in Since You've Been Gone, is suddenly friendless. Her best friend Sloane disappeared at the beginning of what was supposed to be a great summer. Instead, Emily is at odds with nothing to do and no one to hang out with. Sloane didn't leave her new contact information, but did leave a To Do list for Emily. Emily starts working on the list and makes new friends, including her school's Golden Boy, Frank Porter. The blossoming romance between Emily and Frank gave me butterflies in my stomach. So cute. Emily's transformation over the summer is remarkable. The To Do list takes Emily out of her shell.

I'm always a fan of YA romances, especially when they are stand-alones like Since You've Been Gone. I liked this one so much I first read it in October of 2014. And I just reread it again. Also great is Matson's Second Chance Summer.

Famous in Love

Do you ever read and enjoy a book and then see negative reviews on Goodreads? I really hate when that happens. It makes me question my judgment. Famous in Love was one of those books.

Famous in Love the story of a teenager picked to star in the latest YA hit book's movie adaptation. Her two leading men are potential love interests. (Though one is 22 while she's 17, which made me a little skeeved out.) The movie is based on a book trilogy (a la Divergent or Hunger Games) and this book only covers the making the first movie.

I can see where some of this book's negative comments are justified (insta-love), but I sped through it.  I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, which will be out later this year. The series is scheduled to have at least 3 books. Suspend Some belief and it's a fun read.

I purchased Famous in Love for my library. I'm anxious to see what the circ stats look like. I hope people pick it up and enjoy it like I did.

Kissing Ted Callahan (And Other Guys)

slight spoilers:

I read an excerpt of this from the YA Buzz Books Spring 2015. It intrigued me. I enjoyed this, but wasn't crazy about it and didn't like it as much as I thought I would. I liked the platonic relationship between Riley and Reid. It's nice to read something different than the best friends falling in love plot that's common. The loss of the book Reid and Riley shared lead Riley to think the same thing I did: How stupid to write all of that down. (As in these characters are stupid.) Ted wasn't much of a character. He was just there. As Riley's love interests Garrick was so much more interesting. The rest of the characters seemed to be too young and too old at the same time. Uneven. I will purchase for my library, but it won't be at the top of my list.

New Tag: Purchased for Library

I'm the YA person at my library. Part of my job is collection development. Since I started at the beginning of last summer, I've been a weeding machine. It's hard pulling books that you loved when you were younger, but I always remind myself it's so the new books have more visibility.

Probably my favorite thing about my job is buying new books. Our library has a pretty small book budget. My portion of it is approximately $4700. Can you imagine getting to spend $4700 on books? It's a dream come true. 

I'm making a new tag for books that I've purchased (purchased for library) so you can see what I'm spending some of the money on.