Good reads.

I don't make friends easily. Never have. I'm the sort of person who has a good friend here, and a good friend there, and they mean the world to me. But most people, I just don't have the will or drive or what have you to befriend closely. I've never understood the sort who seem to make friends everywhere, and have endless plans for brunch.

I think I'm the same way with books and authors. I'm perhaps too often too quick to give up on a book after 50 pages. Or less. I've been known to put a book aside with only 40 or 50 pages left, even. My point isn't that I have magically high standards and everyone else is a chump. It's simply that I'm wired to love very little, and love that little quite a lot.

So when I do finish a book, chances are very good that I'll talk it up a lot and swoon over the author for the rest of my natural life.

This is all a preamble to the blurb announcements I am dying to make, because they come from three people whose books I finished, adored, and will swoon over. Each of the writers in question means something very different to me, when it comes to young adult literature. It can be said, for example, that one is in my opinion a master of language. This author's work with prose itself is exceptional and should be emulated, or at least honored. Another of these authors, to me, is a genius of emotion and voice. A reader aches for that author's characters and gets lost in their heads. The third is a master of writing for young people, and has nearly two decades of brilliant work to prove it.

I've been crazy lucky when it comes to blurbs, which is why I'm chomping at the bit to reveal the three that will adorn BROOKLYN, BURNING. But I have been instructed to wait. For now, though, I want to do something, so I've decided to launch a Goodreads ARC giveaway--as soon as BROOKLYN, BURNING has 100 adds. As I publish this post, it has 14.

Go forth and add!