Paula Garner's story of love and grief (and sports!) has drawn raves for its realism and intensity. And, after a long wait, it's finally out today!

The Story

The Reviews

This debut novel is a story of loss, love, and friendship, about a teenager coming to terms with the past and dealing with repressed memories that are resurfacing...Readers will find Otis relatable and endearing in his first-person perspective of first love and heartbreak, as well as his unwavering loyalty to his friends. Meg and Dara round out a cast of well-developed characters who have extensive troubles of their own. Most teenagers will find a little bit of themselves in this well-executed work; a must-have for most YA collections.

—School Library Journal, starred review

—Kirkus Reviews

—Booklist

—Publishers Weekly, starred book review writing service.

Today is Jess's release day! Her tale of a Victorian era England beset by demons has drawn rave reviews for its world-building, fast-paced plot, and emotional intensity.

The Story

Henrietta Howel can burst into flames. When she is brought to London to train with Her Majesty's sorcerers, she meets her fellow sorcerer trainees, young men eager to test her powers and her heart. One will challenge her. One will fight for her. One will betray her. As Henrietta discovers the secrets hiding behind the glamour of sorcerer life, she begins to doubt that she's the true prophesied one. With battle looming, how much will she risk to save the city--and the one she loves?

The Reviews

"Vivid characters, terrifying monsters, and world building as deep and dark as the ocean."

—Victoria Aveyard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Queen

—Tamora Pierce, #1 New York Times bestselling author

—Justine Magazine

—Sarah Rees Brennan, New York Times bestselling author

—Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Touched Queen

—Kelly Link, author of Pretty Monster

The Interview

Congrats to Traci on the release of the first book in her trilogy! The Reader has been getting rave custom book review service all over the place for its complex themes and beautiful language.

The Story

The Reviews

“I was spellbound from the first page. An utterly transportive tale of swashbucklers and sharpshooters, masterfully written. Traci Chee has penned a beautiful novel about the power of story, complete with a fantastic cast of characters and an expertly rendered fantasy landscape. This is a book you will not soon forget.”

 “Deftly rendered in beautiful prose, narrated through three shifting time lines woven into an interconnected history of duty, honor, and magic. . . . This is a must-have for all those who value a good read with genuine character growth, mystery, unique world-building, adventure, unyielding bonds of loyalty, and pirates. . . . A fresh, diverse fantasy; highly recommended for fans of Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart and female-powered adventures.”

“Commanding storytelling and vivid details, particularly of the magical process of reading, bring the story to life… the first of what promises to be an enchanting series.”

“Chee’s debut is an intricate, multilayered reading experience… An exploration of self-determination and the magic of the written word, Sefia’s story is an absorbing introduction to the Sea of Ink and Gold series.”

“With evocative language, fascinating world building, multifaceted characters, and a compelling plot, this is a series fantasy lovers will want to sink their teeth into.”

—Booklist, starred review

The Interview

The Story

I’m your protagonist—Reshma Kapoor—and if you have the free time to read this book, then you’re probably nothing like me.
Reshma is a college counselor’s dream. She’s the top-ranked senior at her ultra-competitive Silicon Valley high school, with a spotless academic record and a long roster of extracurriculars. But there are plenty of perfect students in the country, and if Reshma wants to get into Stanford, and into med school after that, she needs the hook to beat them all.

What's a habitual over-achiever to do? Land herself a literary agent, of course. Which is exactly what Reshma does after agent Linda Montrose spots an article she wrote for Huffington Post. Linda wants to represent Reshma, and, with her new agent's help scoring a book deal, Reshma knows she’ll finally have the key to Stanford.

But she’s convinced no one would want to read a novel about a study machine like her. To make herself a more relatable protagonist, she must start doing all the regular American girl stuff she normally ignores. For starters, she has to make a friend, then get a boyfriend. And she's already planned the perfect ending: after struggling for three hundred pages with her own perfectionism, Reshma will learn that meaningful relationships can be more important than success—a character arc librarians and critics alike will enjoy.

Of course, even with a mastermind like Reshma in charge, things can’t always go as planned. And when the valedictorian spot begins to slip from her grasp, she’ll have to decide just how far she’ll go for that satisfying ending. (Note: It’s pretty far.)

The Reviews
Kanakia’s mordantly funny story of an overachiever who takes “write what you know” to new extremes will give college-bound readers (and their parents) a gentle wake-up call that success can come in a variety of forms.

Rahul Kanakia’s debut is a definitive metafiction experience. Readers will question whether Reshma is a satirical antihero who reflects today’s convoluted race relations, education system and need for fame, or simply a teen who wants acceptance and love. Readers may not always like Reshma, but they won’t forget her story.

The Interview
Q: Where did you get the inspiration for your book? 



Q: Describe your writing process, from idea to final draft.
I don't really have one? I've tried for years to settle down to some routine, but it's never quite worked out. Every book ends up coming out different. Sometimes I outline and sometimes not. Sometimes I write it all and feel like the first draft is perfect, other times I need to make a thousand tiny and large revisions before it's at all readable.


Q: Tell us about your journey, from finding an agent to publication.
I placed second in this contest, the Tu Books New Visions Contest, and the winner, Valynne Maetani, is/was the most gracious person on earth, and she put me in touch with her agent, John Cusick (now at Folio). The novel that placed second in the contest didn't sell, but in the meantime I'd written this one. John loved it. We did some revisions. He sent it out. The book went to auction, and eventually sold to Disney. Three months later, my editor at Disney left to take another job! I was in editor limbo for about nine months, which eventually led to my book being pushed from 2015 to 2016. However the editor I ended up with, Kieran Viola, loved the book and both gave great feedback and has been a great advocate for it. So not everything is a disaster all the time!


Q: Why would someone want to buy your book?
Really I think they'd want to read it because the protagonist is unlike anyone else you've ever read. She's not charming. She's not quirky. She's not fun. She's bold and merciless. She doesn't even like to read books! What kind of YA protagonist doesn't like to read books. But no, she thinks they're a waste of time. She's every girl you hate in high school, but come to secretly respect ten or twenty years later.


Q: What are your favorite books? What are you reading now?
Right now I'm reading Bonjour Tristesse, which is a French novel, by Francoise Sagan. The book was a phenomenon when it came out in 1954, and it made a celebrity of its eighteen year old author. It's about a daughter and a father who live on the seaside in an air of dissipation and casual love--both carry on multiple affairs--until finally he gets engaged to a woman his own age who threatens to shut down the party. I'm not finished with the book yes, but I'm pretty sure the girl, Cecile, is gonna have something to say about this...

The other, very similar, book I've recently read is Marguerite Duras' The Lover. This is one of those novels that sounds both uninteresting and possibly skeevy when you describe it. The book is about a fifteen year old white girl in colonial Vietnam, in the 30s, who has an affair with a very wealthy thirtysomething Chinese man. The book is about this girl’s sexual awakening: her realization that as a woman she has a power that both enlarges and reduces her. And it’s just very…complex. Because she is a colonizer. In this land in which she has lived for her whole life, but which isn’t really hers, the color of her skin makes her in some way ineluctably superior to this much-older man.

I cannot recommend The Lover enough. It's an unbelievably subtle book. I haven't even mentioned the way that time and point of view shift and wrap around on themselves, creating a much fuller picture of the past and future life of this girl.

Anyway, that is what I have.

Check out Enter Title Here on Amazon, B&N, Indiebound, and Goodreads. And if you're interested in me, you can check out my Website, Blog, or Twitter.

The Story

Seventh grader Eddie is determined to honor his father's legacy and win the school science fair in this fun and quirky debut novel.

Eddie learned everything there is to know about birding from his dad, including the legend of the Golden Eagle, which Dad claimed he saw once down near Miss Dorothy's pond. According to his dad, the Golden Eagle had wings wider than a creek and talons the size of bulldozer claws. But when Eddie was in sixth grade, Dad "flew away" for good, leaving Eddie on his own to await the return of the elusive raptor.

Now Eddie is starting seventh grade and trying to impress Gabriella, the new girl in town. The annual seventh grade Science Symposium (which Dad famously won) is looming, and Eddie is determined to claim the blue ribbon for himself. With Mr. Dover, the science teacher who was Dad's birding rival, seemingly against him, and with Mouton, the class bully, making his life miserable on all fronts, Eddie is determined to overcome everything and live up to Dad's memory. Can Eddie soar and make his dream take flight?


The Reviews
Thirteen-year-old Eddie Wilson is determined to win the seventh grade Science Symposium prize, as his father did, and to spot the rare golden eagle his father claimed to have seen as a young birder. But no one believed Joe Wilson, who had a reputation for wild exaggeration, and Eddie, now mourning his father's death, grapples with uncertainty about his father's honesty. He develops a friendship with Gabriela, a new neighbor from Brazil whose father is deaf and keeps exotic birds. Eddie is filled with adolescent angst but tempers his fear and frustration in dealing with Mouton, a classmate with Tourette's syndrome who taunts and bullies him and has stolen and trashed his bicycle. When his science teacher pairs him with Mouton for the Symposium project, Eddie must decide how to cooperate with his partner and harness Mouton's hidden artistic talent to devise an award-worthy project that will restore his father's good name. Descriptive bird references add texture to the fast-paced and absorbing first-person narrative and balance the emotional elements of the story. Eddie, an avid birder and artist himself, is a sympathetic character dealing with complex personal and practical issues that include antagonism toward his science teacher and concern over his mother's smoking. VERDICT This is an enjoyable read that avoids predictability and provides a satisfying conclusion; perfect for middle school students looking for realism.


The Interview
Q: Where did you get the inspiration for your book? I was teaching fourth grade reading/language arts and finally decided that I wanted to graduate elementary school and move up to middle school. Before my first year teaching sixth grade English, my colleague (the wonderful Cherie Boss!) informed me about our grade level research project on North American Birds. My first thought was “Birds? Puh. I teach English, not science.” But after teaching the project for several years, my students’ excitement for the subject inspired me. I soon hatched a story about a boy looking for a particular bird. That was the fledgling period for SOAR. (I am truly sorry for all of the bird references; sometimes I can’t help it.)

Q: Describe your writing process, from idea to final draft. My writing process is very organic. What I mean is that I hardly ever outline or write down anything before beginning a story. I have a big picture plan in my head, and I might have a few pages of sparse notes, but I never go beyond that. For me, outlining stifles the creative process. I like to arrive at the page not knowing what comes next. I also feel like outlining paints me into corners from which I can’t escape.

Character and plot tend to form in my brain simultaneously. I can’t recall being fixated on one more than the other. Once I begin writing my story, I do a lot of research during the drafting process. While I approached SOAR with a working knowledge of North American Birds, I wasn’t sure which birds were common in Indiana, where the story takes place. I did a lot of research that eventually informed my storytelling in countless ways.

I tend to revise as I write. I will often revise my previous day’s work before moving forward. It’s probably not the most efficient way to write books, but it works for me.

Q: Tell us about your journey, from finding an agent to publication.
After writing for many years and garnering hundreds of rejections from agents, I self-published a middle grade novel called THE COLOR OF BONES. I don’t regret that decision, but it ultimately had nothing to do with me finally landing an agent.

After writing an early draft of SOAR, which was called BIRD NERD at the time, I sent out a total of about 100 queries to agents. I sent ten queries, then ten more, and so on. Many agents requested the manuscript and read it, but no one offered representation.

Then I read a blog post on the Dystel & Goderich Literary Management blog. It was about how authors could exist as both self-published and traditionally published. The blog post was more in-depth than that, and the truth of it stuck with me over the next few days. I decided to send another query to this agency, even though I’d already queried someone there with my book. I looked up who represented middle grade books and found John Rudolph. I sent him a query. Three days later, he requested the manuscript. Four months went by, so I decided to follow up with John. I sent him a short e-mail, asking him if he had a timeline for reading and responding to my middle grade novel BIRD NERD. The next day, John emailed me, explaining that he’d read BIRD NERD the previous night, loved it, and wanted to discuss representation. I received this email while in my car, waiting at a stoplight. (I know that I shouldn’t be checking e-mail while driving, but technically I wasn’t driving).

In the spring of 2013, I signed with John. Over the next six months, we worked on the manuscript extensively. We went through three drafts, and then he sent it out to editors in the fall of 2013. We went through two rounds of submissions to editors, but no one wanted it. John and I talked about sending it out for a third and final round, but I was done with this book. I told him that I wanted to shelf it and move on to something else. The truth is, I was devastated from the rejections. I wanted to sprout wings and fly away from the publishing business and never come back.

In the summer of 2014, I visited my parents in Indiana. One night, I lay awake, thinking about writing and whether I had the courage and stamina to write something new and go through the submission process again. Let’s be honest, this process involves a lot of rejection, and eventually it gets to you. I couldn’t sleep at all that night. At about 3:00 a.m. I had an epiphany. I believed in BIRD NERD. I believed in the story from day one, and that’s what had taken me this far.

I emailed John the next day and told him that I wanted to send BIRD NERD out into the world one last time. However, I wanted to retitle the book with something that better fit the personality of the story. John sent the book out for a third and final time. In the fall of 2014, the book sold to Aladdin/Simon & Schuster as MIGHT FLY AWAY. As you can see, that title didn’t last either. Eventually, it was pushed out of the nest to make room for SOAR.

Q: Why would someone want to buy your book? Heart and humor. If you like a story that pulls at your heart strings but also makes you laugh, then my book is for you. And of course if you like birds then SOAR is a winner-winner-chicken dinner.

Q: What are your favorite books? What are you reading now?I don’t have a list of favorite books. I read so many amazing books that it’s really difficult for me to narrow it to my favorites. There are so many awesome books that are unique and inspiring for completely different reasons. However, here are a few that are particularly memorable:

The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein (for demonstrating altruism in its simplest form)

Lizzie Bright and Buckminster Boy, by Gary D. Schmidt (for its imagery and profound sense of place)

Reality Boy, by A.S. King (for its truth, told through the eyes of someone who feels rejected by the world)


Check out Soar on Amazon and on Goodreads.