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This book is satisfyingly voyeuristic. A collection of anonymous secrets on postcards, POSTSECRET: CONFESSIONS ON LIFE, DEATH AND GOD is delicious and inspiring and intriguing all at once. Plus, it’s a cinch to read. The book is a smallish coffee table book, with each page bearing a full-color postcard and its accompanying secret. The postcard art is often as captivating as the secret - my favorites are the ones with scanned receipts turned into postcards because receipts really can reveal a lot of secrets.

There are also maps and paint swatches and even crossword puzzles that people have turned into postcards and sent to Frank Warren’s PO Box. Warren is the author and the blogger behind “PostSecret,” the Web site where he shares all the postcard secrets he’s received. His “PostSecret” books are are a sort of “best of.”

Some of the best secrets are:

• “I’m starting rabbinical school and I love bacon.” (It’s written alongside a comical looking pig.)
• “I worry that my candid sleep talk will one day cost me my marriage.”
• “I wanted him so badly that I slept with him, knowing he was going home to you. Now that I know he would cheat, I don’t want him anymore. I’m sorry.”

There are more, of course, many more. And sometimes you’ll see yourself reflected back in other people’s secrets.

Take a deep breath and steel yourself for Amy Reed’s debut novel “Beautiful.” It’s beautiful for sure, but it’s not easy, nor is it supposed to be. Consider the verbs Reed uses: punched, scraped, gutted, crush, explode, smash, destroy, cutting, burning, scarring. But really, what better words are there to describe thirteen-year-old Cassie’s harrowing descent into the world of drugs, alcohol, abuse and the sex she wishes she weren’t having?

“Beautiful” is a gut check of a young adult novel. It’s the slippery slope of how one choice, one decision marks the line between the good road and the very wrong path. Neither drugs, nor alcohol nor thirteen-year-olds with their legs spread are glorified here. Instead, Reed depicts with a stark kind of poetry how Cassie is ripped apart by each and every decision she makes or doesn’t make. “Beautiful” is a living, breathing organism. With sharp, shattering emotions, the novel reads like a memoir so you feel a part of it, Cassie’s pain your pain, the novel’s pulse the fear of a crash and burn.

Or maybe not.

Because, remember that for a novel like this to work, there has to be redemption. Where and how and if Cassie can find a way out is what will keep you turning the pages. That, and the hope that she will.

It’s rare that I will quote from the actual text in my recommendations, but “Beautiful” is true to its title so share I must. Here are some of the parts I read over and over:

“At first I see a shadow, a blue-black shadow on ribs and side and stomach. But the shadow becomes liquid, a lake of blood under the surface, pain turned into pigment. Then it is solid, bruised flesh stretched over porcelain bones.”

“But not because of the usual reasons I don’t speak, not because I am concrete and my mouth is stuffed with glass.”

“I am not the girl with the fire or the shovel. This is not my forest. These are not my doll parts burning, not my legs, my arms, my head, my smooth pink torso.”

“This is what I am now: beautiful, with this new body and face and hair and clothes. Beautiful, with this erasing of history.”

One of the great traditions in book blogging is the weekly “In My Mailbox” post. I learned about this first from the prolific “Story Siren,” who was inspired by “Pop Culture Junkie.” While my “IMM” post will pale in comparison I’ll participate nevertheless!

Here are the books that arrived in my mailbox this week:

“The Cinderella Society” by Kay Cassidy: The book releases next spring and I’m pleased to report the lovely Kay signed my copy and I’ll be hosting a giveaway contest to readers once I read it! So stay tuned because this book is generating some serious girl power buzz.

“Either You’re in or You’re in the Way” by Luke and Noah Miller: This book was sent to me by a Twitter friend and it’s about a pair of brothers and the promise they made to their father to have a movie made and get Ed Harris to star in it. It’s not my usual cup of tea, but I’m eager to check it out since the brothers are local.

“Shark Girl” by Kelly Bingham: My husband picked this up for me at the library and I’m intrigued. It’s very Bethany Hamilton because it’s the story of a teen girl who loses her arm in a shark attack. I skimmed the first page and the writing popped.

“Her Fearful Symmetry” by Audrey Niffenegger: I pre-ordered this on my Kindle and it magically appeared on Tuesday morning. The first few chapters are strange, but I’m really enjoying it now…

“The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks” by E. Lockhart: The book has been on my mind for a few weeks as something I absolutely had to read. I’d seen it in bookstores, visit it on Amazon, look it up online. Finally, I said “Screw the book-buying diet” (because my TBR pile is HUGE!) and I bought it last night. I read the sample on my Kindle and it’s amazing so far. I’m going to read it after I finish “Her Fearful Symmetry.”

So that’s my mailbox. What was in yours? What are you reading?

What constitutes beauty — perfection or flaws? The answer, or answers, in all of their sizes and shapes are worthy of a book and now they are in a novel. In Justina Chen Headley’s “North of Beautiful,” the protagnonist has been at war with beauty for all of her 17 years. That’s because she was born with a port-wine stain on her face, descending from her eye down to her jaw. She and her mom have spent thousands of dollars on countless procedures and all Terra has to show for it is a Beauty Box full of magazine photos of fashion models and the most expensive makeup to cover up one half of her face.

It isn’t until Terra travels halfway around the world to China that she learns what true beauty is and she finds it over and over in unlikely places and people and things.

“North of Beautiful” isn’t about the story so much as about the ideas. It’s a meditation, in fictional form, on art, beauty and the maps that lead us to who we are, who we aren’t and who we can be.

Blue Moon is the “Empire Strikes Back” in Alyson Noel’s “Immortals” series. It’s the moral center around which the other two books must pivot. And like the midway point in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, don’t expect “Blue Moon” to be about happily ever after. As Luke, Leia and Han did, the characters in this book will face heartbreaking truths and find themselves in mortal peril again and again. (That’s saying a lot for an immortal to be in mortal peril.)

After learning she had become immortal in “Evermore,” main character Ever begins flexing her newly acquired muscles and talents while being taught by the love of her many lives, Damen, in “Blue Moon,” which releases in July. The soulmates are finally together forever after 400 hundred tortured years of losing each other, but their happiness doesn’t last long. Because the new boy at the high school is clearly casting some sort of spell over all the other students, including Damen, whose powers quickly weaken. As his abilities fade, so does his memory and his interest in Ever. Heartbroken but determined to get to the root of the problem, Ever travels to Summerland to learn how to restore Damen. But when she discovers how to turn back time, she’s torn between saving her family and saving her love.

Oh and guess what? She’s totally a pariah at school and all the other kids hate her, so even though she could theoretically kick any other’s teenager’s butt her high school life is still filled with major suckitude.

But Ever deals and she deals in ways the reader doesn’t expect. Once you think you know what Ever will do next, she’s headfirst down a new path you never imagined. When Ever travels back in time, you’ll desperately wonder how the heck Ever will get out of her predicament. Then Ever winds up creating heaps more trouble for herself and Damen – trouble neither she, Damen nor any reader will ever have expected. And that’s all I will say.

Except, it is the mark of a daring writer to defy expectations and Alyson Noel does that to the power of ten in “Blue Moon.” I guarantee you will have no idea what’s coming in the second book of the series while Alyson Noel surprises you with a big, fat twist and leaves you wanting more, more, more.

At long last, I have finally completed the mind-numbing, brain cell-draining exercise of reading “Breaking Dawn,” the fourth and final book in the Twilight saga. I loved the other books, so I determindely trudged through this one, even though I came to call it ‘”Breaking Bad” or “Breaking my Brain with Boredom.” And even though I don’t pan books here, I feel a mega bestseller is exempt because 16% of all books sold last quarter were written by Stephenie Meyer, so a negative review by me won’t ruin her.

Let’s start with a few basic issues.

1. Nothing happened for about 600 pages

2. That is unless you count being pregnant and then loving your half-vampire half-human child as something happening

3. When something finally happened, it was still nothing

4. Like, how about mixing in an actual BATTLE with the Volturi? All the Volturi did was talk, talk, talk with the Cullens and their witnesses. Yeah, there was Bella throwing her mental shield. Ho-hum. There was Jane failing to penetrate it. Ho-hum.

5. Would it have killed the vampires to actually fight?

6. I would have been OK with some characters dying off in an epic battle of good versus evil. J.K. Rowling had the guts to kill off several beloved characters and Voldemort and Harry actually FOUGHT in the end. They didn’t just chit chat and admire each other’s tchtckes.

7. The idea that Charlie just didn’t want to ask questions about his suddenly supermodel and pale-faced daughter was a cop-out

8. Finally, the other half-vampire half-human child Alice just so happened to locate out of nowhere at the very last minute was the worst (or best) example of Deus Ex Machina I have read in ages. And Deus Ex Machina is totally not rewarding for readers who have invested time and pages and mental energy.

If you thought you had problems when it comes to love, then get in line. Because the characters in Laura Whitcomb’s A Certain Slant of Light have got it much worse. For starters, she’s a ghost. More like a vapor, or a wisp maybe. As for him, well, he was a ghost and then he stole a body, but hey, he’s not a thief because the previous occupant had already vacated the body. Anyway, he can see her and she can see him. And once he lays human eyes on her and once she lays ghost eyes on him, she knows she’s gonna need a body too. Because you can’t really kiss a ghost or a vapor or a wisp. She finds a body she can take, but oops…Maybe it wasn’t the right body to take since the new girl’s parents are pretty wacko. Anyway, the long and short is A Certain Slant of Light is full of complications, conflict, drama, lust and love. All the makings of a good read. Oh wait, add more thing it’s full of — ghosts! Which makes it a winner for me.

You know that scene in When Harry Met Sally when he flips to the back of the book to read the ending first?

Have you ever done that? Are you a “cheater?” Or are you some variant of a flipper-ender-reader-maybe-wants-a-little-bit-of-a-hint person?

I’ll own up to it. I’ve been known to  flip to the last few chapters of a book just to catch a quick glance maybe at a character’s name. I don’t necessarily read the ending. But I will grab a tiny itty bitty sneak peek at what might happen. I mostly do this with books like Harry Potter or the Twilight series to see who lives or who might return at the end. I tried hard to resist flipping to the final chapter when I read “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” nearly two years ago, but I did just so happen to see Harry’s name still there in the epilogue while I was reading. I’ve done the same thing with Twilight books, sometimes ever so casually taking a one-second glance at the back of a book before snapping it shut.

I guess I’m not cheating ALL the way, but I’m definitely going to first base.

What about you?

For the longest time, I resisted.

I refused to read The Lovely Bones. I was adamant that I didn’t want to go anywhere near a book narrated by a teenage girl who’d been raped and murdered. We all have certain lines about stories we will and won’t read and I just couldn’t go there. Even when my sister-in-law read it, even when friends read it, even when they insisted I would love the book, I always declined. Then my friend Ilene read it and, like the others, she said it was amazing. I still didn’t want to crack the spine, but I was also intrigued about what I was missing. So I insisted she tell me how it started and ended. I wanted the spoilers, even if I wasn’t going to read it. Especially because I wasn’t going to read it. But I would at least know what the buzz was all about.

“Are you sure you want to know?” she asked. I insisted I did. So she told me the story and the famous scene between Ray and Susie (or, really, Susie in Ray’s body), but mostly she conveyed that while heart-wrenching, the novel was, as the title suggests, quite lovely. It was then that I decided I could handle it.

And it was like a gift. It’s the kind of book that’s more than a book, the kind of story that lives inside of you, and when you put it down, it stays with you, it lingers, it makes you think there is grace and beauty and that all things are possible. The Lovely Bones might just be the most beautiful book I’ve ever read.

I just received a new shipment today from Amazon and now all these tantalizing novels are calling out to me, whispering, luring me into their pages. No, no, I must keep them at bay for I have a manuscript to edit! But they beckon, all of them. There’s Eclipse, which I have to hide under other books so I’m not tempted to tear into the next installment of the Bella and Edward post-modern love story. (Um, yeah, just kidding on the postmodern thing. I meant VICTORIAN. But every feminist bone in my body still loves it). And now I have Replay calling out to me, A Certain Slant of Light saying my name, and The Grift wanting a piece of action too. What’s a book lover to do? I want all of them, all at once! What do you do when multiple books call out to you and beg to be read?