Run by Daisy Whitney at daisywhitney.com

You know those hypothetical questions where someone asks “If you could be any character from a book who would it be?” I have my answer now that I’ve read E. Lockhart’s “The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.” The answer is Frankie Landau Banks because she is a modern-day rabble-rouser, a provocateur, a troublemaker in the best, most playful sense of the word. Frankie Landau-Banks is a sophomore at the prestigious Alabaster Prep school in Massachusetts (think Exeter, Andover, etc.) when she learns about the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds, an all-male secret society at her school. She’s fascinated with the camaraderie of the boys in it, their clubbiness, but also their exclusivity. She infiltrates the group and begins commanding them to commit a series of fantastic pranks across the school, all without them having a clue she’s the mastermind. And yet it keeps gnawing at her that the only reason she can’t be in this group is because she has boobs. Frankie is a feminist, a malcontent, someone who will always question the social order. And that’s something we need to see from time to time in young adult literature.

I’ve been having a grand old time here on The BookChick.com talking about books I love and I will definitely keep doing that. BUT, I’ll interrupt our regularly scheduled program for a brief moment to tell you all that I AM GOING TO BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR! The details are here on my official Web site DaisyWhitney.com (my alter ego — hee hee). The short story is Little Brown is going to publish my young adult novel THE MOCKINGBIRDS and its sequel! I am thrilled beyond words! And I guess now I have to start blogging. Oh, wait, I do that already! Though now I will need to step it up, so tell me all the sites, blogs, places I should be frequenting for teens who read!

Quinn makes it clear early on in LOVESTRUCK SUMMER that she’s a hipster who likes her music indie and her boys even more so. Which means she also doesn’t like country, doesn’t like sororities and definitely, absolultey, no-way-possible likes Russ, the big-belt-wearing Texas boy who lives next door and might just about be the hottest teenage cowboy anyone’s seen. Of course, Quinn has a hard time admitting he’s the one for her since she’s fixated on the waiter-hating, too-cool-for-school indie DJ Sebastian. Can this girl see what’s in front of her and which boy is actually delivering on everything she want? That is, someone who shares new music, makes her mixes and thinks she’s pretty fabulous. It’ll come as no surprise the boy who’s best for Quinn is Russ, but Quinn’s going to need to ditch her indie-er-than-thou attitude and make some room in her heart for both the cowboy and a better, sweeter version of herself. Melissa Walker’s LOVESTRUCK SUMMER is a heartfelt summer read you’ll gobble up in a night or two.

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.

There’s a reason Alyson Noel’s “Evermore” claimed the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks. It’s a hypnotic read. It’s the kind of book where you say, “Just one more chapter, then I’ll put it down.” Only you say that over and over and over until it’s two a.m. and you’re still not tired in the least.

A teenage girl with psychic powers she’d jettison in a heartbeat if she could, all Ever wants is to quiet the noise in her head. The constant sound of other people’s thoughts has been there since her parents and sister died in a car crash. The only thing that makes the buzzing go away is Damen, the beautiful, mysterious, quite possibly immortal new boy at school. But soon Ever realizes the reason she’s reading people’s minds is because she’s more like Damen than she thought.

Evermore is cut from the same cloth as Twilight, but I think of Evermore as Facebook to Twilight’s MySpace. Evermore is more sophisticated, quirky, and unusual. Characters are fully developed and richly layered and Ever is as tough as she is soft. This book is worth all the praise it’s garnered and them some and I for one am counting the days until my advance copy  of the second book in the series, “Blue Moon,” arrives in my mailbox this week. When it does, you can bet I’ll have devoured it in 24 hours and I’ll tell you all about it!

Blue Moon officially releases on July 7.

When you’re a writer, there are so very many humbling experiences it’s impossible to recount them all. There is one experience though that is both humbling and inspiring and that is reading a breathtaking story, the kind of story that plants itself in your heart, mind, soul and body. Gayle Forman’s “If I Stay” is such a story. The book opens when 17-year-old cello prodigy Mia goes out for a drive with her parents on a February day in Oregon. A horrible car crash takes the lives of her parents and sends Mia into a coma. The story unfolds as Mia watches herself in the hospital while her friends and grandparents and other family members visit and wait and hope. We get to know all of them — her parents, her friends, her little brother, her amazing boyfriend, his bandmates — through Mia’s flashbacks as she makes the toughest choice of all. Should she go and join her parents in the next life, if there even is one, or fight to stay here on earth, living with unspeakable loss, but living, nonetheless?

The book reminds me of another amazing novel, “The Lovely Bones” in that it tackles big issues like life, love, loss and, frankly, why we’re here. “If I Stay” has its own answers and I hope you all will read it.

As for me, I said the book is humbling and inspiring. It is humbling because it shows me what greatness in literature is, and for that same reason it’s inspiring. Which means, it’s time to write…

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.

“The Lovely Bones” popularized undead narrators and not of the blood-sucking variety. Now we’re seeing more books in which the main character has passed on to another world. “Elsewhere,” by Gabrielle Zevin, imagines that world with precise accuracy, down to the roads, the clothes, the jobs, the dogs, even the scuba gear that inhabits the afterworld. But Elsewhere isn’t a novel about the afterlife or ghosts; it’s about understanding how to live your life a new way when everything changes. Because everything does change when 15-year-old Lizzie is struck by a cab while riding her bike. She dies and takes a boat to Elswhere, where she meets the grandmother she never knew (her grandmother died before she was born), develops new friendships and discovers love, all while learning to let go of the living. But Elsewhere has its own set of quirks – you age backwards, getting younger by the day until you eventually become a baby and are sent back to earth to live again as someone else. This novel is a must-read because it’s a testament to the power of imagination. Elsewhere is a place so wholly realized, you might actually find yourself wondering if it really is where we go when we die.