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SPARK by Holly Schindler- Cover Reveal

Hey bookworms, Welcome back to MYABL! Today, I am happy to reveal the cover of a upcoming YA read, Spark by author Holly Schindler! Check it out! All of the juicy details about this novel, as well as the author, are posted below. Keep reading for more. SPARK comes out next year (May 2016)! Make sure you add it to your Goodreads if you'd like to read it. Links for Goodreads and pre-orders are at the end of this post. I'm excited because it has the most amazing elements of Romeo and Juliet wound into it's blurb. Description: Holly Schindler’s Spark: When the right hearts come to the Avery Theater—at the right time—the magic will return. The Avery will come back from the dead. Or so Quin’s great-grandmother predicted many years ago on Verona, Missouri’s most tragic night, when Nick and Emma, two star-crossed teenage lovers, died on the stage. It was the night that the Avery’s marquee lights went out forever. It sounds like urban legend, but one that high school senior Quin is ...

The Secret

Eight Keys (Audio)

Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur (NY: Random House Listening Library, 2011). Middle school changes everything for Elise. She loves her Uncle Hugh and Aunt Bess, who've taken care of her ever since her dad died when she was three.  She never knew her mother, who died when she was born. She's always loved playing make believe with her best friend Franklin, but now she's starting to feel like she needs to grow up a bit.  Her locker partner makes fun of her from day one and smashes her lunch in the locker every day.  She can't get a handle on the homework either, and then even her home life gets disrupted when a distant relative and her baby move in.  Everything seems off kilter.  Then Elise finds a key with her name on it in the barn that unlocks an attic room, one of eight rooms that have always been off limits to Elise.  The rooms and their contents, left for Elise by her dad before he died, are just what Elise needs to regain her bearings in her widening worl...

How Not To Be Popular

How Not To Be Popular by Jennifer Ziegler (NY: Delacorte Press, 2008). Maggie's free wheeling, hippy parents have moved her all over the country her entire life, and she's managed fairly well, latching onto the popular kids in every school she's gone to.  But leaving Portland for Austin has been more horrible--she misses her best friend Lorraine a lot, and then her first-ever boyfriend Trevor breaks up with her by e-mail before she's even arrived at her new home--so Maggie determines that she needs a new strategy to survive Austin with her heart intact.  She doesn't want to make any friends, so that when her parents inevitably uproot her in a few months she won't have to suffer any more losses.  She will cultivate her inner nerd. She chooses the strangest outfits she can find in the vintage shop her dad is managing and avoids making friends, even subverting friendly overtures from the obviously pretty crowd (called Bippies, for beautiful people).  Still, one od...

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman (NY: Random House, 2003). Alice Thrift is an overworked surgical intern who has expended so much energy on becoming a doctor that she has overlooked the crucial fact that she lacks the people skills to be successful, a fact that's becoming more apparent each day of her internship. Her roommate Leo, a gregarious nurse in the neonatal unit, tries to clue her in, but Alice is socially inept.  She knows she has problems reading cues, so she turns down the overtures of one Ray Russo who comes in for a consult about getting a nose job. He claims to be a lonely widower, and Alice senses that there's something not right, but ends up calling him, just for the company, especially when Leo becomes involved with a midwife and Alice moves into her own studio apartment.  Alice's new neighbor, resident Sylvie Schwartz, also attempts to bolster Alice's social skills, but alas sleep deprivation leads Alice into a horrifying surgical mishap w...

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (NY: Scholastic, 2007). In 1930s Paris, young Hugo Cabret tends to the clocks in the large train station, fearful that the Station Inspector will notice that his only relative, his uncle--the man who is supposed to be caring for the clocks--has been missing for months.  Hugo knows that he'll be put in an orphanage, or worse, if he's found out.  But then the old man at the toy shop catches Hugo stealing a small toy mouse that Huge needs for its parts, so he can continue fixing the automaton, a machine that ties Hugo to his father, who had died in a museum fire while working on the automaton.  The old man takes away the notebook of drawings that Hugo's father made to help fix the automaton, and Hugo needs the notebook back.  Luckily, the shopkeeper's granddaughter agrees to help Hugo, and then Hugo ends up working at the shop as well to earn parts for his beloved machine.  He has no idea what the completed machine wi...

The Emerald Atlas

The Emerald Atlas , Book One: The Books of Beginning, by John Stephens (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011). Fourteen-year-old Kate has always tried to do what her mother charged her to do--take care of her two younger siblings, Michael and Emma--as they've bounced from one orphanage to another in the ten years since their parents disappeared, most likely to save their children.  Now the kids have landed in a strange and dilapidated mansion in the ghostly town of Cambridge Falls, and they soon learn that they have unique powers and a special destiny linked to a magical book with world changing implications. How many times have you heard a book called "the next Harry Potter" or "Lightning Thief" and rolled your eyes?  Yeah, me too.  But this one is the real deal with all the right components--sad orphans, a kind yet powerful and mysterious wizard, time travel, epic battles, frightening magical creatures, dwarves, a menacingly evil countess, and a plot to achieve world dom...

The School for the Insanely Gifted

The School for the Insanely Gifted by Dan Elish (NY: Harper, 2011). Daphna Whispers is nearly twelve and composes utterly entrancing music; her best friend Harkin Thunkenreiser (aka Thunk) builds amazing machine, and her other best friend Cynthia Trustwell has starred in multiple Broadway musicals.  They are all insanely gifted and students at the Blatt School for the Insanely Gifted, an institution founded by the extremely colorful entrepreneur Ignatious Peabody Blatt.  Daphna's life had been fine until her mother disappeared two months ago, and she was slowly starting to adjust to her new reality with her neighbor as her legal guardian (her father had died from consuming sour yak milk when she was a baby).  Then a mysterious burglar surprises her in her apartment and she discovers clues that lead her to investigate her mother's disappearance.  Soon Daphne, Cynthia, and Thunk are winging to Africa in one of Thunk's amazing inventions, barely making it to their dest...

Amy and Roger's Epic Detour (Audio)

Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson (Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio, 2010). Amy Curry never expected to be moving from her home in California to Connecticut.  Her father has just died, her twin brother is in a North Carolina rehab facility, and her mother has taken a job on the other side of the country, leaving Amy alone for a month.  Amy blames herself for the car accident that killed her dad, so she won't drive any more.  This means her mother has to hire Roger, the son of a family friend, to drive Amy and their car cross country once Amy has finished out the school year. Roger needs to get to Philadelphia where he is supposed to spend the summer with his father to amend for bad grades at the end of his freshman year at Colorado College.  His girlfriend Hadley had dumped him during finals and he feels utterly adrift.  While Amy's mother has mapped out a banal route that includes Terre Haute, Indiana, Amy and Roger, each needing to resolve issues ...

Bath Tangle

Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer (1955; NY: Harlequin, 2004). Serena, the willful and beautiful daughter of the late Earl of Spenborough, sorely misses her beloved father and expects to live quietly with her father's young widow, Fanny.  Her father, however, seems to want to exert control from beyond the grave and leaves Serena's inheritance in a trust to be managed by the Marquis of Rotherham, the very man to whom Serena had been engaged several years before, but whom she had broken off with a month before the wedding.  Serena claimed he was too arrogant and overbearing to be a suitable husband for her.  Serena and Fanny end up in Bath, and the tangle ensues when Serena becomes secretly engaged to a previous beau and Rotherham announces his betrothal to a shy young debutante. Heyer is a master of the Regency romance genre, and Bath Tangle is no exception.  While lacking in the social satire and timelessness of Austen's masterpieces, to which Heyer's works are freque...

Girl, 15, Charming But Insane

Girl, 15, Charming But Insane by Sue Limb (NY: Delacorte, 2004). Jess Jordan has a crazy wild imagination that amplifies ordinary situations into hilarious comedies.  She's obsessed with the size of her rear end (massive) and her chest (minuscule) and loves her best friend Flora dearly--except that Flora's so beautiful Jess is sure she looks like a baboon in comparison. She rarely sees her father, but he sends her made-up horoscope text messages every day.  Her mother works as a librarian by day and an activist the rest of the time, so she doesn't even notice that Jess is creeping out to a party one evening with her brassiere padded out with baggies full of minestrone soup.  Disaster ensues when a secret camera catches Jess cleaning up after the inevitable leakage, but fortunately Jess's long-time pal Fred heroically rescues her from certain social leprosy that a wide viewing of the film would cause.  Now Jess just has to figure out how to attract the stunningly goo...

My Not-So-Still Life by Liz Gallagher

My Not-So-Still Life by Liz Gallagher (NY: Wendy Lamb-Random House, 2011). Vanessa is an artist who believes her body is her canvas. Her mom won't let her get a tattoo, so she plays with her hair color, makeup, and clothing.  Of course she's labeled a freak at school, but she has her best friends Nick (who's gay) and Holly (a dedicated musician who goes to a different high school).  Above all, Vanessa longs to be grown up and free to be herself, away from the pettiness of high school.  Her new job at the art supply store, some new, older friends, and a crazy new art project should help her break away, but is she really ready? No, she's not ready.  Not by a long shot.  And by the end of the novel, she's learned that, but not until she's (barely) made it through some cringe-inducing situations.  These occur throughout the novel, but most especially all the times Vanessa tries to act older than she is and inevitably gets caught out.  She also has a tende...

The Lonely Hearts Club

The Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg (NY: Point, 2011). Penny Lane Bloom is named after a Beatles' song but is pretty sure money can't buy her love after she disastrously discovers the boy she's always loved half-naked with another girl. And that's after a string of dating disappointments that leave her thinking she's better off without boys.  For her junior year,  she decides that instead of dating, she'll focus on her own needs and her friends.  She's tired of watching how girls ditch their friends and change their personalities for the sake of male attention.  Little does she know that her initiative will become a club--the Lonely Hearts Club--that will set her school's social world into a tailspin.  And even though she's sworn off boys, she starts to wonder if there might be a few good ones out there, even one for her. Oh, the irony.  Why, why, why does a fine girl power story have to be undermined by romance, as though getting the guy is...

Saving June

Saving June by Hannah Harrington (NY: Harlequin Teen, 2011). Reviewed from e-galley provided by the publisher via netgalley.com . Harper is struggling in the aftermath of her sister June's suicide.  Her mother is devastated; her father is typically absent; her aunt is intent of the proper placement of June's urn on the mantle.  Harper just wants to understand why June took her own life, and more importantly how she could've stopped June--classic survivor's guilt. Now she knows she must save June from stagnating on the mantle.  A chance encounter with an enticing guy who June had tutored propels Harper and her best friend Laney on a road trip to California to launch June into the Pacific. The road trip of self-discovery is getting a lot of play in YA literature these days, and Saving June is a good one to add to that shelf.  Harrington depicts Harper's raw grief well and realistically, especially her distaste for her relatives' hackneyed expressions during and ...

Quest of the Demon

Quest of the Demon by M. L. Sawyer (n.p.: Smashwords, 2010). Review copy provided by author. Darci is an average teen who enjoys basketball and hanging out with her best friend.  Investigating an odd noise in the night, she pokes at a curtain only to find herself transported to a land called Nahaba, somehow summoned by an apprentice wizard named Taslessian.  He has no idea how to get her back to her world,and then it turns out that there's a larger purpose to her arrival--she is needed to save this world from an evil demon.  A wise dragon equips Darci, Taslessian and three others--an elf, a taciturn female warrior, and an intrepid knight--for their quest to rid the world of this demon. Their perilous journey takes them over land and sea where they meet many foes intent on foiling their quest, but they persist until Darci meets the demon. Quest of the Demon is a fantasy story that uses many standard fantasy devices, like dragons, magical creatures with unpronounceable na...

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