Run by Daisy Whitney at daisywhitney.com

Travel abroad, beautiful boys, heartache.

SEA has it all. Heidi R Kling’s debut young adult novel is a story of a California girl who travels to post-tsunami Indonesia as part of a relief mission. While there, Sienna not only helps a local orphanage, she also falls for a beautiful tsunami survivor, 17-year-old Deni. The pair travel around on motor, eat fluffy rice and sneak off at night to kiss, kiss, kiss. But life’s not easy in a place that’s been devastated by a storm and both Deni and Sienna are pulled in different directions. SEA brings tsunami-torn Indonesia alive as a character itself in this novel, rich with details on the heat, the ocean, the people and the culture. They all form the backdrop for the kind of first love that can often only happen when you’re traveling and there’s an expiration date.

The book releases in June.

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.