Articles
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5 Reasons to Read Lock & Mori
I’m a HUGE Sherlock Holmes fan and I mean HUGE. I’ve read the book by Arthur Conan Doyle, watched the BBC’s Sherlock, CBS’s Elementary, and I even have a small Sherlock Holmes collection of various items (my favorite is my Out of Print Sherlock Holmes shirt). When I found out there’s a Young Adult retelling of Sherlock Holmes called […] -
7 Secret Societies
The Order of IV, a secret society devoted to mischief that rights wrongs and pays back debts, sounds pretty awesome. What could be better than gathering together with your closest friends and getting up to trouble under the cover of anonymity? Well, things take a turn for the worst for this group of four friends […] -
Behind the Title: First We Were IV
The title for my upcoming book, First We Were IV, came to me almost as soon as the first impulse of “I want to write a book about four best friends who start a secret society to play vigilante-pranks, but it ratchets way out of control and twists into a weapon of revenge, costing all […] -
Blake Nelson on the Origins of Boy
I have a friend I was especially close to in college and in my early twenties. I was in a band when we first met, the only band on our college campus who dared to write their own songs and be part of the Punk/New Wave movement of that time. We were terrible of course, […] -
Like The Outsiders? Try This!
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton was hands down the best book I was forced to read in school. School districts have a tendency to pick perpetually boring books but The Outsiders is INTENSE. I distinctly remember reading it in 8th grade. Since it was 8th grade, English was only 40 minutes long and we would […] -
6 Reasons to Read Dangerous Girls
I first read Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas when it was first released in 2013 and the story has stuck with me since then. It might be in part because I have a minor fear of being accused for a crime I didn’t commit (ok, no seriously this is a major fear of mine), but […] -
9 Haunting & Mysterious Disappearances
In A Void the Size of the World, Abby runs away into the woods behind her house and disappears. I’ve never been worried about going missing, but this book definitely left new thoughts and fears lingering on in my mind. In an effort to deal with this continuing paranoia, I fell down an internet rabbit […] -
5 Reasons To Read One Cut
On May 22nd, 1995, sixteen-year-old Jimmy Farris and seventeen-year-old Mike McLoren were hanging out outside Mike’s backyard fort, when four boys hopped a fence and approached them. Within minutes a fight broke out — during which both Jimmy and Mike were stabbed, with Jimmy eventually dying of his wounds. The four boys who hopped the […] -
Don’t Mess with The Timeline!
Time can be a tricky thing. So often we see characters traveling through time and creating alternate realities only for it to end poorly. Take Jonathan in In a World Just Right by Jen Brooks: Sometimes high school senior Jonathan Aubrey wishes he could just disappear. And as luck—or fate—would have it, he can. Ever […] -
40 Thoughts I Had While Watching “Younger”
I just need to take a minute to make sure we’re all on the same page about something. Younger is the #1 guilty pleasure show on TV, right? Season 3 just came out, and I’ll admit that I’m a little behind. But I’m on the bandwagon now and that’s what counts! If you aren’t already […]