My Writing Holiday Gift—Robin

Today we had our annual Children’s Writers Holiday Luncheon and book exchange. It’s always a blast to catch up with our local writer friends and then watch their mouths drop when you steal a book from them during the gift exchange. Ha! Just trying to keep it interesting, y’all!

Last year, I walked away with my own copy of Twilight. Which turned out to be a new favorite of mine. So I’m hoping this year’s book will turn out to be another.

I have (ahem, stole…sorry, Yvonne!) a copy of What I Saw and How I Lied, by Judy Blundell. Just the cover art and back flap got me excited to read it. Here’s a review from Publisher’s Weekly. Anyone else hearing buzz about this book? Can’t wait to dig in!

Review
Blundell, author of Star Wars novelizations, turns out a taut, noirish mystery/coming-of-age story set in 1947; it's easy to picture it as a film starring Lana Turner, who is mentioned in these pages. When first met, 15-year-old Evie and her best friend are buying chocolate cigarettes to practice smoking. Evie sheds that innocence on a trip to Florida, where her stepfather, Joe, back from the war in Europe, abruptly takes her and her beautiful mother, Beverly, and where Evie falls in love with glamorous Peter, an army buddy whom Joe is none too happy to see. But after a boating accident results in a suspicious death and an inquest, Evie is forced to revisit her romance with Peter and her relationships with Joe and her mother, and to consider that her assumptions about all three may have been wrong from the beginning. Blundell throws Evie's inexperience into high relief with slangy, retro dialogue: Peter calls Evie pussycat ; Beverly says her first husband kicked through love like it was dust and he kept on walking. Readers can taste Evie's alienation and her yearning; it's a stylish, addictive brew. --Publisher's Weekly