Summer Reading - Elizabeth Wein, Cathy Brett, Rachel Ward, Laura Jarratt, Phil Earle and Teri Terry BRING ON THE JOY.

In two weeks, I am going on what is really my first ever proper summer holiday. Beach. Ice cream. Sun. Sea. Ice cream.

This gives me the perfect excuse to kick back, relax, and spend a month's wages all in one go. Yes, it's find-some-books-on-Amazon-and-order-them-through-my-local-indie time (which adds to the financial cost, but saves on the moral one).

I've already started. I am practically drooling over here.

Elizabeth Wein's new book Rose Under Fire is out, and I am HANKERING to get my hands on a copy. I predict that this one will be finished and my face tear-streaked by the end of the two hour flight, demanding to be re-read once I get to the hotel. Those of you who have read this blog before, or indeed EVER SPOKEN TO ME, will know that I rarely shut up about Wein's last book, Code Name Verity. In fact, I like it so much that I've written not one but two review of it - on this blog and on my other blog, Space on the Bookshelf.


Then there's this one:

I'm a big fan of Cathy Brett. Quite frankly, I think she's awesome. And her new book Everything is Fine (and Other Lies I Tell Myself) is already picking up stonking reviews... (If you haven't ever heard of Cathy Brett, this might give you an idea as to her particular brand of awesome.) This book seems to me to have been packaged a little more 'seriously' than her previous books, and judging by the pace building up behind it, it's going to do great things for her. Also: one of the best titles of the year so far.

And this one...

Rachel Ward's Numbers series is something I have longed shouted about, and I was wondering what was coming next from this terrific writer - and here it is! On the surface of it, The Drowning looks very different from the dystopian thrillers of the trilogy that came before, but Numbers was always gritty, and books two and three are very dark and disturbing. I strongly suspect that when the same style and pace is taken into a contemporary thriller, the results will be unflinchingly horror-filled. (In a good way, of course!)

Oh, Laura Jarratt's By Any Other Name. I loved her debut, Skin Deep. A great British teen romance. So I can't wait to read this next one!

Phil Earle's Heroic has been picking up some great reviews, but to be honest, I'd read this whether it had great reviews or not, because his debut, Being Billy, and the follow-up Saving Daisy, were brutally honest and brilliant.

And to complete the line up - Fractured, by Teri Terry. Teri is a good friend of mine, and I read this when it was a manuscript. But I know that some exciting things happened to it after I originally read it, so I'm eager to spot the changes and just generally enjoy it all over again!

I think, seeing as I'm building my own summer reading list, that I should offer up a recommendation, too! And, without hesitation, it's Pantomime, by Laura Lam. I want, nay NEED, to review this book and shout about it to EVERYONE I KNOW, but sadly, any kind of good review would ruin the book entirely. So I'm restraining myself. But go read it. It will be different from any teen fiction you've read before.

I'd love to hear other suggestions if anyone has any! Particularly suggestions of debuts - I seem to have LOTS of follow-ups on my list!

It's a truth universally acknowledged that Romance will ALWAYS be popular... The Return of the Romance in YA

It has been TOO LONG since I blogged. I know, I know, I'm a bit rubbish, but truth is that I haven't had much time for reading recently. And then when I did have time, I found it hard to get back into the swing of things. I tried picking up some of my favourites, but nothing was working.

Everything felt a bit too... serious. (Which I think you'll agree, given the title of this blog, is somewhat ironic.)

So I did what any fan of books does when they're feeling a bit stuck in a rut. I took a recommendation and ran with it. The recommendation was for this:

Specifically, it was for anything by Gayle Foreman. And goodness me, did I fall in love. In this, the 200th anniversary year of Pride and Prejudice, it seems that Contemporary Romance is coming back to bite Paranormal in the you-know-what (pardon the almost-pun).

God, I love both these books so much. In fact, I am currently in the process of buying everything that Gayle Foreman has ever written. Gayle Foreman is an American writer, and I found her books so refreshingly devoid of death and illness (and vampires, of course) that I started hunting down more American writers to sooth my reading woes.

Soon I found...

And...

And finally a British writer...

And then some more American writers - lots of them in fact, in this superb collection of short stories...

Along with most of the characters in these books, I AM IN LOVE. There's something about YA romance that is absorbing and reflective without getting too heavy.

Confession: I usually avoid romances like the proverbial plague. I always had this idea of them as soppy and wet and... well... everything I dislike.

But the romances that are hitting the shelves now are none of these things. Instead they are smart and sassy and, goddamit, they're funny.

Gayle Foreman is one clever cookie - her books are undeniably her, but they're also very different from each other. I'd particularly recommend Just One Day (the sequel Just One Year is an agonising several months away, but I'm fairly certain I'll be recommending it you very soon). Stephanie Perkins' Anna and the French Kiss may sound like a book only thirteen year-old girls would enjoy, but it is truly AWESOME. The perfect romance, and incredibly funny and smart.

Laura Jarrett is the only British author I've shown here. I could be wrong, but I can't find much in the way of Contemporary Romance on UK shelves, written by UK authors. But more and more American writers are appearing on bookshop shelves - so many, in fact, that it seems that Romance is truly on the up. Which isn't surprising, given our recent leanings towards all things dark and fetch-the-kleenex-please sad.

So I have my fingers firmly crossed that the next year will bring more like Laura Jarrett, because, quite honestly, I think we could all use a bit of romance.