The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart

A year ago, Frankie Landau-Banks was her father's bunny rabbit. Sweet. Unassuming. Mildly dorky. She was a debate team member; regarded by the fellow students of Alabaster Prep as Zada's little sister. She went relatively unnoticed- and she was okay with that.

But in the summer before her sophmore year, Frankie goes from slight and gawky to majorly devleloped- and even more majorly overprotected than before. Of one thing Frankie is certain: she is sick of being her daddy's bunny rabbit.

When the newly sexy Frankie returns to school for the year, it is no surprise that the boys (namely her adorable, hilarious, word-obsessed crush, Matthew Livingston) take note of her new appearence. Several run-ins and a secret golf-course party later, Frankie Landau-Banks is the Girlfriend of Matthew, and suddenly privy to a fascinating realm of boy interaction. She adores Matthew, and Matthew adores her, and Matthew has wonderfully entertaining friends who seem to like her as well. Which is why, when Matthew starts lying to her (and not doing a very good job of it), Frankie is first, confused. And second, angry. Suddenly, all Frankie's hearing is no.

Can she keep her date with Matthew if his friends call five minutes before?
No.

Can she touch the silly basset hound statue in his dorm room.

No.

Can she join the illustrious secret society of which Matthew is King and with which Frankie has quickly become obsessed?
No.

But Frankie Landau-Banks is not your typical YA heroine, and she is not taking no for an answer.

Instead, Frankie will infiltrate the Loyal Order of the Basset Hound. She'll get through from the outside, and under her clever manipulation, the Loyal Order's pranks are better than ever before. Surely, when Matthew sees that, he'll realize that she's more than just a silly girlfriend. Surely, they'll let her join after that.

Or, you know, not.

I know that every book and every review claims to have a different sort of lead character. There are certain traits that are very popular in YA fiction- probably in fiction of any sort- that are listed in the book's opening pages, but are not always demonstrated. Intelligence, for instance, is one of these qualities. Every heroine these days is shrewd, observant, clever.

Frankie is one of the few who has full right to all of those things. It's less of an issue of her mental capacity, though, and more of what she does with her mind. Frankie has a driving force behind her intelligence, and she uses her wit to get what she wants. She is practical, she is clever. She understands what she needs to do to achieve the things that she is after. Frankie pulls off expertly imagined and executed pranks, finds something that generations of impassioned boys have been searching for. This is all because she knows what she wants, and she is going to get it. There is definately something to be said for her reasoning behind her relationship with Matthew- she loves him, but she isn't willing to sacrifice her wants and needs to be the cute girlfriend who is never any trouble. She refuses to be the cute girlfriend, however cute she may be.

On the topic of being cute, the Basset Hounds themselves were fascinating- both the history of the society and the current members. The book was full of information about secret societies that never became bothersome or boring; E. Lockhart included anecdotes related to several real-life societies as well as the Basset Hounds. The interaction between Matthew and Alpha was endlessly amusing; they had a cunning, snappy, peculiar way of talking to each other, a specialized dialogue that only results from years of being best friends (or, you know, really fabulous writing on E. Lockhart's part). Matthew himself was not greatly appealing to me- I liked the idea of him, but he came off as very condescending, which was bad. I ended up being much more a fan of Alpha's.

The narrarator was very interesting in that he/she seemed to be somehow linked to the story. It's impossible to tell where exactly he/she fits in, but bits of first-person and chapters dedictated to the neglected positive gave the novel a bit of a Lemony Snicket*-esque feel, which was awesome.

What I perhaps loved most about the novel was it's views and approaches on gender discrimination. The things that Frankie does with the Loyal Order are not merely pranks; they are political statements for feminisim, which is a topic that has been vastly ignored in the novels that I have read recently. Frankie is not your stereotypical feminist: she is girly and attractive, she has crushes on boys and she wears cute clothes and reads In Touch. But one of the major points of the novel, I think, is that these qualities do not make you less important, less intelligent, less worthy of equal regard. Frankie fights for this idea. And Frankie, readers will quickly learn, is quite the force to be reckoned with.

Five cups of coffee with as much sugar as you want, because that just makes it better:

Caroline

*For the ignorant: A Series of Unfortunate Events

PS: Snappy enough for you, Steph? :)

MeMe TiMe

All right, then. Here comes more MEME-age. The book meme, for starters, which I was tagged for by Abby O. If you read the blog regularly and are thinking... woah... DeJa Vu!... think again. Heather did it a few weeks ago and now it is my turn.

The Rules, in case you do not know them, are as follows:
Pick up the book closest to you.
Turn to page 123.
Find sentence number five.
Post sentences numbers five, six, and seven.
Tag.

The book closest to me is My Friend Leonard, by James Frey. Actually, that is a lie. Kind of. It is the book closest to me now, because it's in my lap, but when I decided to post the Meme, the closest book to me was my mother's Joyce Meyer book. So I went for the book closest to the door of my bedroom.

Without having ordered, coffee arrives. I take a sip, it's hot, strong. I
feel it immediately, my heart starts racing.
Time for the serious talk, my son.

I haven't started reading this book yet, but I'm going to today. It is a
memoir about the author's post-imprisonment experiences with his best friend, a mafia member named Leonard. It looks very interesting, and I do like sentences five, six, and seven of page 123.

My second order of business is to inform you of something that you may have already noticed. We have a lot of books on our to-be-reviewed icon. And the sad thing is that those are not the only books that I have read and am
planning
to review. So, I'm going to give you a list of books that I
have
read and am planning to review, and I am going to request that
you leave a comment, telling me which book you would most like
to read a review about

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Lock and Key, Sarah Dessen

The Key to the Golden Firebird, Maureen Johnson

Suite Scarlett, Maureen Johnson

Blue Bloods/Masquerade, Melissa De la Cruz

Impulse, Ellen Hopkins

Sandpiper, Ellen Wittlinger

The Dispreputable History of Frankie Landeau-Banks, E. Lockhart

How To Be Bad, E. Lockhart, Lauren Myracle, Sarah
Mlynowski

That's all that I can recall at the moment, but I've read most of the ones that hang out in the sidebar, fighting for attention.

You're it.

Caroline

Interview with Catherine Ryan Hyde

Hey readers! This is our first interview!!! Yay! We're definitely excited about this. Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of Chasing Windmills, (see the review below) among many, many others (just wait until question #12 for the full list). Since we've recently read that one, we'll start off with some questions concerning that:

1) In Chasing Windmills Maria gives Sebastian the nickname Tony and continues to call him that for the rest of the book. Which do you call him: Tony or Sebastian?

I call him Sebastian. Because I think the "Tony era" had a sense of unreality about it. When two people fall in love, especially when they do it suddenly, they tend to try to remake each other. In the end, I think he continues to be sebastian.

2) When you came up with the idea for Chasing Windmills did you know you were going to connect it so much to West Side Story? Or was the story an idea first and then you added that piece in?

Neither, I think. I didn't have it in mind in advance. But I didn't purposely find a place for it. The story just seemed to develop in that direction.

3) Which do you prefer: Romeo and Juliet or West Side Story?

I'm not a big Shakespeare fan. He's a bit obtuse for me. West Side story I can at least understand, since I was alive during that era.

4) Who is your favorite character in Chasing Windmills?

I'd have a hard time deciding between Sebastian and Maria. I think Sebastian would be an easier person to know in real life. But my heart goes out equally to both of them. Also, I'd love to meet Delilah in real life if such a thing were possible.

Now--since some of you haven't read Chasing Windmills (you definitely should)--there are some general questions:

5) Do you prefer to type or handwrite the first draft?

I always work on a computer. At all phases.

6) Do you use a system of organizing the books on your bookshelf? What is it?

Organization? What's that?

7) If you could team up to write a book with anyone, who would it be?

Maybe Kurt Vonnegut, if it weren't already too late.

8) When did you first realize that you wanted to write?

My sophomore year of High School. Thank you Mr. Horowitz.

9) Where is your favorite place to write?

In my studio, overlooking the coast.

10) Is there one book in the world that you wish you had written? What is it?

There are many. I guess Flowers for Algernon might top the list.

11) What's your answer to our May poll? Bookmark, dog-ear, or memorize the page number?

Definitely bookmark! It drives me crazy to watch people dog-ear pages of a book on purpose.

And last is the best question ever:

12) What is your favorite question to be asked during an interview? What would be your answer?

I like to be asked about the total body of my work. So many people know about Pay It Forward and maybe one or two others. I like a chance to say that I have ten published books (and one fothcoming as of this writing). They are: Funerals for Horses (adult), Earthquake Weather (story collection), Pay It Forward, Electric God (adult), Walter's Purple Heart (adult), Becoming Chloe (YA but strong adult crossover), Love in the Present Tense (adult), The Year of my Miraculous Reappearance (YA), Chasing Windmills (adult but strong YA cross-over), and The Day I Killed James (YA but suitable for grownups). Forthcoming is the YA novel Diary of a Witness.


Thanks again to Catherine Ryan Hyde for providing us with our first interview! It was a lot of fun! And thanks to all of you out there reading this.

♥Heather and Caroline

(p.s. Add Catherine on myspace here)

The Year of Secret Assignments, Jacyln Moriarty

The Brookfield/Ashbury penfriend project has long been a source of woe and misery for the students of both schools. Last year, in fact, as Lydia Jaackson-Oberman writes in her Notebook, last year, many students ended up dead(or, at least, very unhappy). Lydia, Cassie, and Emily are best friends and Ashbury girls with lawyer parents, and none of them have any interest in writing to the sure-to-be druggies, muderers, and theives of Brookfield.


Reluctantly, each of the three girls write their first letters and mail them off, each in their own styles- Emily in a girly babble that doesn't speak wonders for her intelligent, Cassie as a project set by her counselor to tell her 'life story' to a stranger, and Lydia, claiming to be a fish and proposing a drug-trafficking scheme.


Against all odds, their new male penfriends manage to surprise them as well. Charlie Taylor scrutinizes Emily's misuse of words and idiotic-sounding prose, Seb Mantegna begs Lydia to earn his trust by setting off the fire alarms at Brookfield, and Matthew Dunlop sends Cassie a... death threat.


Desptie these rough beginnings, the penfriends begin to connect, and somehow, remarkably enough, fall in love.


Or so it seems.

But Matthew Dunlop has a nasty surprise for Cassie, and his betrayal sets Lydia, Emily, Seb, and Charlie on a mission for revenge. Chaos, kissing, assignments, and some seriously excellent writing ensues.


The Year of Secret Assignments is written entirely in penfriend letters, emails, Notebook entries, and, of course, Lydia's Secret Assignments. I immensely enjoyed the similar format in another book by Jaclyn Moriarty(The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie) so I was excited to see it again, and I loved it even more this time.


Each of the characters had a unique personality with complicated problems; and yet each was extremely original. Cassie, Emily and Lydia are the sort of friends that everyone wants to have, the group of girls who adore each other unconditionally. They are quirky, fun, needy, supportive, sweet, cynical, and a whole variety of other wonderful contradictions. Because of the format, the story is fast-paced. A little too fast paced, because it flew by and was over much, much, much sooner than I wanted it to be. I was miserable to see it go. But fast-pacedness is a good thing, technically.

The only thing that I didn't like about The Year of Secret Assignments was how... matchy everything was. If Lydia and Seb were flirting and falling in love, than Charlie and Emily were falling in love; if Charlie and Emily weren't talking, Lydia and Sebastian would fight. Not because their friends were fighting. They just happened to argue at the exact same time. It struck me as an odd and somewhat lazy move on the author's part. That aspect just didn't feel very realistic to me.

However, that's not too likely to bother anyone who isn't me and therefore insane, and it doesn't take too much away from the supreme gloriousness that is The Year of Secret Assignments. Though a somewhat light, funny book, it managed to be touching and poignant at the same time, and I loved that about it. I would recommend this book heavily to anyone, and I'm dying to read more by Jaclyn Moriarty. Btw, I read somewhere that she has a blog, but I cannot find it. Does anybody happen to read it or have the URL? If so, please leave it in a comment.

In love with Charlie, Seb, and Aussie slang,
Caroline

PS: DOG-EARERS UNITE! WE HAVE ONLY TEN SHORT DAYS, AND WHILE WE HAVE LITTLE HOPE IN TAKING DOWN THOSE NASTY BOOK-MARKERS, WE CANNOT BE DEFEATED BY THE SMARTY-PANTS PAGE MEMORIZERS. CAST YOUR VOTE TODAY.
It's an affectionate gesture, gosh darnit.

Chasing Windmills by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Sebastian is 17 and isn't allowed to leave his house all because of an overprotective father. The only times he escapes are when he goes running (only allowed because of doctor's orders) and when he sneaks out in the middle of the night. Maria is 23, with two children and an abusive boyfriend who happens to be the father of the two children and the only boyfriend Maria's ever had. She's terrified of what he'd do to her if he found out she lost her job and isn't going to work those nights she leaves the house.

So when they meet on the subway during their secret nightly rides, they instantly get caught up in a romance that could either leave both of them with nothing--and possibly dead--or have them whisked away to something more, something sudden, something forbidden.

It's dangerous to plot, but one night Sebastion (aka Tony, courtesy of Maria) asks Maria to go away with him, run away to the Mojave desert where he recently found out his grandmother lives. To the windmills he so desperately misses and she so desperately longs for. Where they both can be safe and happy. Fearless.

But in a story known as a modern-day rendering of West Side Story, nothing can be perfect. They fight to get there, and when they do can they stay? Can they really start over and forget everything? Can they really build a new life on their love?

Chasing Windmills isn't West Side Story. It is--in my opinion--infinitely better than that, as classically told as the original, Romeo and Juliet. But one of the best elements about Chasing Windmills is the similarity to both of those stories; the ultimate tale of love and pain. It's an interesting evolution, especially as we come to the end: Romeo and Juliet leaves both lovers dead, West Side Story spares only Maria, and in Chasing Windmills, both survive- but love depends on more than just survival.

Catherine Ryan Hyde writes with raw, strong, realistic feeling. The writing captivated me immediatly, with it's graceful style and incredible word choice. The style is very characteristic of the inside of a teenager or 23-year-old's head. Short, incomplete sentences, contradicting thoughts, flaring emotions.The relationships in the story were fascinating: the bonds between Sebastian and his controlling father, Maria and her abusive boyfriend, as well as the less central relationships, like Sebastian and his friend Delilah's.The romance between Maria and Sebastion turned out to be the best fictional relationship I've yet to read about. The Bella/Edward romance is sweet because it's dangerous and forbidden, but the Tony/Maria romance is even more dangerous and forbidden--not to mention illegal--because it's real. It's happening. It could happen.

It's scary. It's well-told. It's perfect. In every sense of that impossible word, it's perfect.

Like I said, I'm getting a bit tired of the constant fives, but there is no way I can't give this amazing work of literature the full 5/5 cups of coffee. The new Folgers my sister brought home that enables me to drink coffee every Saturday and Sunday which I couldn't do before because all we had was hazelnut and I hate hazelnut.

♥Heather (with pieces and parts of Caroline)

btw, this is our first ever collaboration review where we actually incorporate both our reviews together. could you tell?

oh yeah, and there will be an interview with Catherine Ryan Hyde herself in a day or two. Look for it!

Perfect You--Elizabeth Scott

I actually got this book so I could enter a contest. Don't get me wrong--I'd wanted to read it in the first place, but this contest was just more incentive to buy it at that particular time, that particular moment. So there I was in Book-a-Iillion, and I picked up this book (after searching for some time because for inexplicable reasons, I kept missing it). I'd liked the cover already, but seeing it in person was better. I turned the book over and read:

Kate Brown's life has gone downhill fast. Her father has quit his job to sell vitamins at the mall, and Kate is forced to work with him. Her best friend has become popular, and now she acts like Kate's invisible.

And then there's Will. Gorgeous, unattainable Will, whom Kate acts like she can't stand even though she can't stop thinking about him. When Will starts acting interested, Kate hates herself for wanting him when she's sure she's just his latest conquest.

Kate figures that the only way things will ever stop hurting so much is if she keeps to herself and stops caring about anyone or anything. What she doesn't realize is that while life may not always be perfect, good things can happen -- but only if she lets them....

Now, I must say, that's a pretty good summary, except for the terribly cheesy third paragraph that seems to be one every book...but I'd still like to elaborate.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Kate's dad doesn't just quit his job to sell vitamins, he quits because his desk broke in half. Steve Brown has a dream of selling Perfect You vitamins and when he walks into his office late one morning and his desk is broken, everything on it as well except for the single bottle of Perfect You, he decides it's time to go after that dream, leaving his family with financial issues.

Also, there's Anna, her ex-best friend who ignores Kate for no reason. That sucks. Especially because Kate is left with no one to talk to about her problems. But she does have somebody she seems to want to talk to:

Will. I think the second paragraph captures Will in a nutshell, except for a few vital opinions on him, which I'll gladly add--in just a second.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book--and Elizabeth Scott's style in itself. I felt connected to some of what was happening--even though I've never experienced any of it.

And I felt strongly about each character. With Will, those feelings were positively directed. His character was dynamic, witty, smart, and personal; he wasn't a distant crush or a brother or just a friend of a friend. He was always there. His actions were played out in the best ways, making him a bit confusing and entertaining but all the while you knew exactly who he was and what he was thinking. He was real and funny and undeniably awesome.

As for Kate, not so much. My thoughts about her were negative--with the exception of laughing at her and Will's witty banter. I thought she was selfish, whiny, masochistic, oblivious, a jerk, stupid, and egotistical. I absolutely hated her. All this horrible stuff was happening in her family and all she could think was that she wished Anna would talk to her (aww, poor Kate, her overly-ambitious friend won't talk to her anymore and that's more important than her family), that she hated Will but couldn't stop thinking about making out with him, that she had "the worst life ever."

It just annoyed me so much. so much that I'm giving this book--this book that I actually liked--only 3.5 cups of coffee--albeit delicious, strong coffee with two extra shots, caramel, cinnamon, and chocolate in it. I'm deducting the 1.5 just for how much I dislike Kate.

Not a remarkable novel, but definitely a worthy read.

having the sudden urge to eat tacos in the park and wishing the title had come from something better than the name of the pills,
♥Heather

p.s. there are so many post scripts that I'm not even going to bother with the multiple posts, I'm just going to number them:

1) Happy Birthday to Hank Green who turned 28 today!!!! Who coincidentally has the same birthday as
2) Scott Westerfeld who we are also wishing a Happy Birthday towards and
3) There will soon be a review of Chasing Windmills by Catherine Ryan Hyde plus
4) An author interview with the same so
5) Look out for those to come soon!

The Pact by Jodi Picoult

The Golds and the Hartes have been like family for nearly eitheen years. Melanie and Michael Gold movied in next door to Gus (short for Augusta) and James Harte when each of the women were pregnant. Gus and Melanie nearly instantly became best friends, taking James and Michael along for the ride. Not long after, Chris Harte was born, and just six months after that came Emily Gold.

Within hours of her birth, she and Chris were sleeping in the same bassenet, holding hands.

Now, eitheen years later Emily is dead, Chris is in jail for killing her, and their parents don't agree on whether he's guilt or not. Melanie just knows Chris did it, Michael doesn't believe he could have, James appears to think his son killed Emily, and as much as Gus doesn't want to believe that Chris was suicidal--that would mean believing his story of a suicide pact--she knows he's not guilty. Who is right? Is Chris lying when he says they were both suicidal? Did he really kill the love of his life? Or did something else happen?

As is with all Jodi Picoult books, The Pact was sad, beautiful, and completely wonderful. There wasn't a moment where I wasn't trying to figure it all out--wanting to trust Chris the whole time. And also as is with Jodi Picoult books, it involved flashbacks and the judicial system.

Each and every flashback was perfect, revealing just a little piece of the characters until they were whole human being with feeling and reactions and pain. In Part I: The Boy Next Door, you got to know Chris Harte and what he went through as a child. You learn how he went from being inseperable friends with Emily to being something more than that. In Part II: The Girl Next Door, you learn all about Emily's pain. You get to see a part of her that is contradictory and sad, but still undeniably gorgeous. In the very last part The Truth, you find out what really happened that night, and it's a great story.

After finishing this book, I don't think I could have shed another tear. I was indifferent as I read the last word because I don't think I had enough sadness in me after letting it all out. This is a heartbreaking, melancholy book that I suggest you read--there are happy parts to it, and funny parts, and parts that will make you smile just thinking about how sweet Emily and Chris' relationship is. There will be no book to make you think like a Jodi Picoult novel can.

I give this 5/5 cups of cheerful steaming coffee on a dismal, dreary, gray day.

♥Heather

p.s. I'm starting to think that their last names were Harte and Gold because each and every character had a heart of gold (except, maybe Melanie, but that's just becuase she was kind of a jerk to Gus)

the boyfriend list- e. lockhart

So picture this:
Me. Sitting on the floor at Books-a-Million (YA section, more sprawled across the floor than actually sitting upright)... laughing hysterically.

This is not, "oh, that's so funny," laughter. This was crazy laughter. Doubled over laughter. Way past reasonable limits on laugh amount allotted for girl sitting all alone anywhere, much less for a girl sitting all alone on the floor of a bookstore. Way past.

This is me, reading the first 70 pages of The Boyfriend List, by e. lockhart. (I can't bring myself to spell her name with capital letters. It reminds me of e. e. cummings.) Anyway, that is another topic for another time. This is The Boyfriend List.

Ruby Oliver is having a bad week, which is turning into a bad month, which could very well lead to a bad year, or, most likely, a bad life. In the last ten days, Roo has: lost all of her friends, lost her boyfriend, lost a lacrosse game, experienced a massive amount of public humiliation relating to a list, become a leper, and had many interactions with many boys.

It is a combination of these events that leads to a panic attack, which leads to a parental attack, which leads to the office of a psychiatrist named Dr. Z. After listening to Ruby's rantings, which include a lot of the word 'just' and, of course, a lot of boys, Dr. Z asks Ruby to write the Boyfriend list.

What follows is a charming, funny, sweet, wonderful novel, as well as several lists(which, you know, are a total weakness of mine.) The chapters of this book are divided into each of the 15 boys on the list. But these are not, you must understand, all boyfriends. This is a list of every boy who has ever entered Ruby Oliver's mind as a maybe-kinda-possible romantic interest. These boys include Adam, who she used to play mermaid with; Micheal, who was the first kiss that she NEVER wanted to have; Gideon, her friend's older brother; Tommy, Ruby and Kim's imagined version of Prince Charming; and Jackson Clarke. Jackson who has been her boyfriend for six wonderful months, until he broke up with her, only to move on to her best friend two days later.

This book had so many incredible aspects that I couldn't possibly list all of them, but here is it's very best attribute, at least in my humble opinion: our heroine, Ruby Oliver. I realize that every single back-of-the-book says that the heroine is so true-to-life and so relateable, but that is usually not the case. In Ruby Oliver, however, e. lockhart has created the most life-like, relatable, and likeable heroine that I've seen in a long time and a lot of books. Why? Because Ruby is intelligent but still makes idiotic mistakes- and the same idiotic mistakes that every teenage girl is making today. (Tossing an un-labeled list of boys into a school trashcan when everyone is out to get her anyway?). She is spunky but she still allows the people she cares about to walk all over her, if it will keep them by her side. She has hopeless crushes and embarrasses herself and overthinks to no end. She doesn't want to give up on the people she loves, even if they've let her down, even if they don't deserve her loyalty. I identified with Ruby in a way that made me wonder if perhaps e. lockhart had written her especially with me in mind.

The other characters in the book are excellent as well. I immensly enjoyed Ruby's dynamic with her close friends; I loved nearly every boy to grace Ruby's list. (Not Jackson, though.)

This book is the most accurate description of a teenage girl's mind out there today. I would reccomend it to anyone who has a teenage girl's mind, who has ever had a teenage girl's mind, or whoever has ever wondered what exactly goes on in a teenage girl's mind. It's a made-of-awesome book with delicious characters and excellent writing and debacles.(and lists.) (and FOOTNOTES!) I can't wait to read the next two books, as well as e. lockhart's others!

Five cups of coffee, straight from the coffee capital of the United States! (Seattle, which is where the book is set.)

Perusing her own mental 'boyfriend' list,
wanting some coffee from seattle,
appreciating her much-more loyal friends,
still waiting for Tommy Hazzard(even though Gideon was my favorite),
Caroline

Special BOOK-related Meme That I Just Couldn't Pass Up

So that was a long title. I might as well have called it supercalifragilisticsexpialidocious (sp?) and called it a day. I'm sure you didn't read the whole title, did you? You just saw the words 'BOOK' and 'MEME' and jumped for joy. I know you. That's exactly what you did.

I was not-so-much tagged by Heather (haha, that's me!) Brewer.

So, here are the rules for this spectacular heap of brilliance:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to the person who tagged you once you've posted your three sentences.

Got it? Good.

Nearest book to me that I can open to page 123 and the plot wouldn't be wrongfully revealed to me is...The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray!! Weird that I should have this in the computer room...I don't normally. Normally this large hunk of awesome sits in my room, on my bookshelf...hmmm....that's odd. But, ANYWAY, back to the meme. Let's see...pg 123...sentence five...

"A lady I've seen in my dreams before. She's a magician's assistant or a medium of some sort, for I see her with a Dr. Van Ripple, an illusionist. She writes on a slate as if in a trance--a very odd message."

Wow, those lines are so suspenseful. Gemma says them, btw, if you couldn't tell. I mean, it's obvious, but, you know...

This is an awesome meme.

Who do I tag? I tag The Story Siren, Reviewer X, The Ravenous Reader (ambeen), The Book Muncher, and Aella from the Maelstrom. That is five, right? I haven't been very good at counting today...

♥Heather